Blog for Richard Elswick at GarageGames.com

GDC 2008 and Beta of SSD

Richard Elswick — 2008-03-12T12:48:53+00:00

Well I got a chance to go to GDC 2008 a couple weeks ago and wow, what fun it was for my second time around.

I had a chance to meet Derrick, Ed and Didi (sp?) from GarageGames and it was very cool. They had a cool booth and all the staff was cool. I enjoyed it. Derrick liked some of the content from our game and you may soon see it for sell as Content Packs here at GG!

What is that you say? You want to see it for yourself, well, stay tuned as I plan to put a link up soon for an open Beta of Street Smart Detroit later this week. It is time to get it out there, although it has quite a bit of work to go.

Right now we have a cut scene, that sets the stage (see my last .plan post) for the demo, but the code doesn't run the video yet. Have to add that and since it is a critical peice of the puzzle, well, we really need to get it working.

Anyhow, off to work on stuff.

Intro Cut Scene - sets the stage for the Street Smart Detroit game.

Richard Elswick — 2008-02-29T13:18:15+00:00

An Intro cut scene was generated by Brad, which sets the stage for the game using the Antics 3D (www.antics3d.com) video animation / recording software. Now I just have to add the Video playback element to the code.

You can view it at YouTube here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUJ00jVDw58U&ei=MwTIR_q5OZ-0iAHS6MCYDg&usg=AFQjCNEejjZLjUYiGbdduNf4uNxTgzySdQ&sig2=tv246sMhZXdsseIECnN92A

Look for the game to be released soon.

GDC and new screenshots of SSD

Richard Elswick — 2008-01-17T05:06:45+00:00

Well,

We have planned out our next release, which is really expected before GDC, well, because I will get to attend!

Unfortunately, I will only be able to make Wed-Friday, but hey, I will take what I can! Hopefully I can get a bit more in than just the expo part though as well.

Anyhow, here is the screenshots image gallery from Street Smart Detroit, including some as yet added content!

http://streetsmartdetroit.bradjensen.info/?q=image/tid/1

Enjoy!

If your going to GDC and want to chat sometime, give my cell a call:

586-782-4434 or

check myGDConf page at:
http://mygdc.gdconf.com/c459827

although I haven't uploaded much as of yet....

Alpha Release 3.1 and first playable Demo

Richard Elswick — 2007-12-27T18:11:39+00:00

Well we have finished our Demo and so far it is looking good!

We have a complete level for the player to work through, get introduced to the story, make it through a complete day. The player finds out that there is a pretty big world out there to be explored. There are about 3 minigames as part of the demo. There is quite a bit of tweaking still needed to be at a point I would feel confortable in releasing as a general downloadable demo, but overall things are looking good.

Basically our initial cut at the game is done and now we just need to expand on the fun side of the game as well as improving the serious aspect in several ways. We also need to flesh out the rest of the art assets and the world, so that it feels fuller and a bit more real. This will be the hardest aspect as we don't have a bunch of artists and animators on the team.

Some items I am looking to add...

- a cut scene at the begining to help set the storty.
- possibly some video play backs, whereby each homeless person that tells their story could actually be an interview with someone that is homeless and maybe even someone that once was homeless (other npcs).
- some additional minigame type stuff to introduce more fun aspects. Right now everything is done in 3D, but something like searching for bottles in trash shouldn't necessarily be shown in 3D. Think of how fishing works in most MMOs.
- improved level design and AI actions.
- a linux executable for testing

- we also need to expand upon the story and full game aspect, so that it becomes more fleshed out.

enough for now, if your interested in testing the Alpha stages, send me an email and let me know.

Rich

Prototype Release 1 (interal) has passed and....

Richard Elswick — 2007-11-01T15:30:40+00:00

Our first Release for internal testing has passed and it looked good so far, unfortunately not all our goals were met or a distributable (to the dev team) code base for some initial testing.

So far we have had some issues with establishing a pipeline for getting our levels as designed in SketchUp (which is an awesome prototyping tool) over to the Torque Game Engine, so we have to create the levels by hand. We are planning another Release prior to the final release of the prototype, so we will probably be able to tweak the game play elements there.

You might also notice the Donation bar on the right side. This money will help us to refine the prototype as it is being designed now, pursue additional investors and customers for the game (social agencies and such). It will also help us to increase our exposure outside of our normal web activities. The 20k is just a target goal which should get us a LOT farther along to being able to implement a full game or at least a prototype that has some decent amounth of what the intended full game would be comprised off.

We have added a LOT of new team members, specifically:

Thomas Stankevich, who is a Texture Artist and a student at IADT-Detroit, a Story Writer
Daniel Nagler, who is a senior at Yale University and a freelance author for Wizards of the Coast. He will be helping us out with our storylines.
Phil Pocia, who is a Masters student at University of Michigan-Dearborn pursuing Statistics. He is helping with the business side of things as well as bringing together some stats for in game education.

For information on the rest of the team - check it out here: Our Team

You can also join the Street Smart Mailing List to get updates to the game by sending an email to:

ssd-subscribe@moyaentertainment.com

Alpha Release 1 coming up!

Richard Elswick — 2007-10-22T17:00:16+00:00

Coming soon, like Wednesday the 24th of October is our intended Release 1 candidate, which is supposed to have the levels implemented .

It is getting tight as we are still yet to convert the SketchUp model of the prototype over to a .map or .dif file format. Found out that to be able to do this, we need the PRO version of SketchUp, which we don't have currently, but have found someone to help us out on this.

I finally got the DeleD editor to conver our first SketchUp model and should know by today if it worked out alright.

A lot of great input has been given to our project as well well as some good links. If you want to know what the homeless in Detroit look like, go here:

http://snowsuit.net/

We have added a Texture Artist, Statistics expert/business help, and a Storyline writer to the team. Things are looking good so far.

We still need to add a pretty good level editor / scripter type and an audio contributor.

First post more or less here on GG

Richard Elswick — 2007-10-06T19:09:57+00:00

Well I normally post to my personal blog at:

relswick.joeuser.com (which will be moving to my own site soon enough...)

I will post some news about once a month or so to keep folks up to date on the Street Smart Detroit project we are working on.

It is a Serious Game about the plight of the Homeless. It's goal is to convey to the player what are some of the obstacles a homeless person has to overcome and convey to the player that a homeless person is a real person with real emotions and such, not just some annoying person on the street.

Anyhow, a project update: The initial Design Doc for the prototype is done and work is underway on the project. Recently www.Delgine.com donated a license to the project for their Dele3D Editor, which will allow us to convert our SketchUp maps to Torque using their Torque Exporter. Good Stuff and I am looking forward to this moving our project along rapidly.

Expect a Playable Demo to be out before Christmas.

Visit the game site for more information:
www.streetsmartdetroit.com

Exporter for Torque - DeleD 3D Editor

Richard Elswick — 2007-10-03T16:06:00+00:00

DeleD 3D Editor

Looks like they have done it at least for their editor. I found this site through our search to find a method to get prototyped levels from SketchUp into the TGE for our Street Smart Detroit game

About $60 for the editor and $15 for the plugin and it might be an option for you.

Now we just have to try out the SketchUp->Blender->Torque pipeline I have heard about!