Blog for Joseph Euan at GarageGames.com

My "Nuke base" test/learning project

Joseph Euan — 2008-08-13T12:49:49+00:00

Been getting back in to using TGEA and Torque Constructor...
The only way I could think of doing it and have some fun was to play around making a nuke base map.

So far, I've made:
Nuke missile
Floor
Pipes x 2 sorts
Control Platform
Over head crane
Entrance/Tunnel with room
Sat Dish
Base Roof

To make next:
Forklift Truck
Props
More Pipes
More rooms for Entrance/Tunnel (command room, mess, quarters etc etc)
"more to come"

The other thing with this test... once I'm done.. I plan on just giving it all away (if anyone wants any of it) :P

Some pics: (WIP)

All comments and suggestions welcome

My New Game Design Doc

Joseph Euan — 2008-06-26T19:17:43+00:00

So I've been away for a while... been busy with one thing or another.

But I'm back now, and I have fresh ideas of what I want to do.

I've scrapped my FPS idea (who needs another WW2 game) and come up with a fun game.

Heres my current design doc... It's still work in progress and I'll be adding to this page as I update the doc.

Working Project Name: TBA

Basic Features:
Game Type: Boat, Car and Plane racing
# of Players: Up to 12? online and LAN.
# of Characters: Choice of 6 players each with they're own vehicles.
# of Maps; based on an island - 5 maps for each game type to start with.
Engine: TGEA
Style: Cartoon Shading
Other Tech: Track IR?

Mission Objectives: (More to follow)
Boat:
Come first, second or third in water races.
Capture the flag
Death match (Timed rounds and last man standing)

Car:
Come first, second or third in track races.
Capture the flag
Death match (Timed rounds and last man standing)

Plane:
Come first, second or third by flying through the hopes (checkpoints)
Capture the flag
Death match (Timed rounds and last man standing)

Power Ups:
Missile (1 straight shot)
Triple Missile (fires 1 spread of 3 missiles) - (Boat and car missions only)
Heat Seeker Missile (Fires 1 heat seeking missile)
Speed-ups (5 second burst)
Mines (1 mine) - (Boat and car missions only)
Shield (lasts 10 seconds)
Machine gun (20 bullets)

The Gang (All kids) (temp names)

The Geek: Miles
Looks like: thick glasses, long hair all sticking up in different directions and a lab coat.
Personality: 1's and 0's on the brain, always coming up with wacky inventions.
Vehicle Style: futuristic looking, lots of lights on the console and gadgets all over the place....

The Boy Racer: Ed
Looks like: every boy racer, chav, baseball cap
Personality: lives for speed and loves life in the fast lane
Vehicle Style: sleek looking, supped up, neon lights, lines down the sides.

The Posh Girl: Emily
Looks like: Blonde hair, very posh and rich.
Personality: Enjoys spending daddy's money, loves make up, and is always looking in the mirror.
Vehicle Style: Pink and fluffy.

The Hillbilly and his Dog: Tom and Ruff
Looks like: scruffy looking, dungarees, baseball cap on side-wards
Dog is a bloodhound puppy.
Personality: dumb, chews on straw
Vehicle Style: made of wood and other junk

The Goth: Beth (girl)
Looks like: black hair, white face makeup, black lipstick, lots of ear rings and chains, long black jumper, black baggy trousers.
Personality: thinks the world owes her something, doesn't smile, doesn't talk much,
Vehicle Style: Black and Red with Bats

The Jock: Jake
Looks like: Muscle bound, red school football team jacket, tall hair
Personality: thinks he's the "man" loves himself and thinks all the girls love him... (total show off)
Vehicle Style: Red, looks like a dodge with a v8 engine in the front.

Other things to plan/arrange:

Dev Time Line:
Map Planning
Concept Art Work

--------------------------------

Anyone here play Speed Freaks back in the good old PS1 days?
If you have.. then thats the style I want to go for.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome... if your an artist and fancy helping with the concept art.. please drop me an email

(Edit: Link to Speed Freaks Screenshots)

Thanks

Joseph

GID 24 Theme Poll and TGEA Starter.FPS "How To"

Joseph Euan — 2007-09-08T17:36:28+00:00

The next GID will take place on the 15th/16th of September.

I've setup a poll over on the Gameinaday.net to allow members, to pick the theme for the next GID.

The choices are:
Ghouls and Ghosts
Fireworks
Cartoon
Racing
Movies
Sports

The poll will run for 5 days... so please get voting!

TGEA Starter.FPS "How To"

In my last blog/.plan, I posted some info about a port of the TGE 1.5 starter.fps pack to TGEA 1.0.3
Due to the problems with trying to provide all the files to people to use, I've made a simple "How To"

You can find more details on the forum thread here garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=66985 or you can look at the "How To" over at garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=13534

I'll update it as and when I find bugs/fixes and when other people suggest changes.
Let me know what you think!

Next GID Date and Starter.FPS port

Joseph Euan — 2007-09-01T21:22:37+00:00

The date for the next GID has been set for 15th/16th of September
I'll be setting up a poll on the forum in the next few days once I make a list of possible poll themes so people can vote on the theme for the next GID (the themes for the last GID were pretty crap.. sorry)

Just wanted to give people an early heads up... I'll post a more detailed plan about the next GID sometime next week.

In the mean time.. get over to www.gameinaday.net sign up and get posting! :)

One other quick thing...
I know there's already a starter.fps port for TGEA.. but tonight I spent a few hours doing a fresh port of the TGE 1.5.3 starter.fps to TGEA 1.0.3
I've still got a fair bit left to sort (a couple of texture problems and re-exporting all the models to TGEA format)

I'm mainly doing it for my own projects, but i'll provide it to anyone who wants a copy.
(Just have to find out about giving out the new texture and model files that come with it to non TGE 1.5 owners)

Thanks

Joseph

GID 23 - 11th/12th of August 07

Joseph Euan — 2007-08-04T19:24:57+00:00

Just wanted to let everyone know, the date for the next "Game In A Day" has been set
It will take place on the 11th/12th of August

I've decided this month to just pick a theme myself rather than doing a poll. (due to the time)

The main theme is: Elusive (should be interesting to see what people can come up with)

If you have a problem coming up with an idea using the main theme, the alternative theme is: Water

If you wish to take part in GID 23, please vist gameinaday.net/viewtopic.php?t=94

Thank you, and hope to see you there!

Joseph

GID 22 - 14th/15th of July

Joseph Euan — 2007-06-30T19:53:42+00:00

So GID 21 went really well... we had a lot of really cool entries, so I want to thank everyone who took part.
(Please visit www.gameinaday.net/viewforum.php?f=2 to see entries from GID 21)

Game In a Day 22 will take place on the 14th/15th of July
If you wish to take part, please visit www.gameinaday.net/viewtopic.php?p=269

Theme:
Theres a poll setup on the site so you can vote for a theme

The choices are:
Undead
Sci fi
Cartoon
Stupid Beards (blame Magnus Blikstad for this one)

To vote, please go to www.gameinaday.net/viewtopic.php?t=71

If you have any comments or questions, please post them here

Thank you

Joseph

p.s:
I setup a GID cafepress shop so people can buy some GID branded stuff.
Theres no money made on top of the prices... I just though it woule be cool if people could buy a GID shirt or cup
(theres also a thong.. which is another thing you can blame Magnus for) :)

GID Shop

Game in A Day event is this weekend!!!

Joseph Euan — 2007-06-14T16:07:02+00:00

I just wanted to remind people that Game in A Day is this weekend (16th/17th of June)
If you want to take part and haven't joined the forums already, please go to www.gameinaday.net

The theme is "Retro", so get your thinking caps on!

The forum is doing pretty good at the moment.. we have 89 members, and we've had just over 150,000 hits (total page views)

Another thing I wanted to mention as well was the banner exchange program I setup a few weeks ago...
Since it was setup, there's been over 54,000 banner views, which I think it pretty good for a program that only has about 10 members at the moment.

I think it's a great opportunity for game developers to promote their games for free...
You can sign up at www.simplygamingpr.com/banner/

Link to GID!

Game In a Day Theme

Joseph Euan — 2007-06-01T13:43:45+00:00

We had a poll on the Game In a Day website (gameinaday.net) to allow members to pick the next GID theme.

The poll is now closed and the next theme will be Retro

Just want to thank everyone for taking part in the poll, and I hope to see you all taking part on the 16th/17th of June.

If you haven't done so already, get over to gameinaday.net
Sign up to the forums and get posting!!!

Thank you!

On another quick note.. I've been messing around with TGE 1.5.2 and a test level for a small WW2 game i'm working on (just a hobby game)
I uploaded a video www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9JOZ1K5L14 if you want to take a look.

It looks a bit crap and basic at the moment... but I'm still adding buildings and objects to the level and I have to replace most of the place holder art thats in the video.

Thanks again

Joseph

GID Date and Site Open...

Joseph Euan — 2007-05-17T21:24:38+00:00

A date of the 16th-17th of June has been set for the next "Game In a Day"

I've also opened up the site so people can go sign up and post at www.gameinaday.net/
A theme hasn't been set yet, I've put a poll on the site so you can vote on one (or suggest your own)

Don't forget to tell any game developer friends you have about GID... the more we get involved the better.
We want to make GID a big monthly event!

Also... don't forget to join the GID GGE group over at www.greatgamesexperiment.com/group/GID

Thanks
Joseph

Game In A Day Is Coming Back!!!

Joseph Euan — 2007-05-14T21:10:11+00:00

I was talking to Tom Bampton about GID about a week ago.
Unfortunately he doesn't have the time to continue running it at the moment due to being busy with other work commitments.

And as I didn't want it to see GID just fade away and be forgotten (neither did Tom), I offered to take it over and help make it bigger by getting more people taking part.

In case you don't know what GID is:
Game In a Day (GID) is a great monthly event in which people make a game (or many games) in a space of 24 hours.
GID provides people with a fun reason to test out a prototype and also get feedback on it or just to do something different for a change.
Once we settle on a monthly date, each month a new game theme will be announced.

The website is being worked on at the moment over at www.gameinaday.net
For now, it's going to be forum with a portal... allowing people to enter GIDs, post info, updates, screen shots etc and will later become some sort of fully automated website of sorts. :p

We hope to have it all online and the next GID date announced within the next couple of weeks.

Suggestions on the best time of the month to hold GID are welcome, as are any other comments or any general suggestions.

Thanks

p.s.. Theres also a GGE GID Group setup over at www.greatgamesexperiment.com/group/GID.. drop by and join today!