Blog for David MacLEAN at GarageGames.com

Sonic Cinemas Joins The Neoastra Dev Team

David MacLEAN — 2007-11-02T19:19:10+00:00

I would like to announce that after *much* negotiation, Jack Ward has agreed to bring the full talents and capabilities of his audio theater company Sonic Cinemas on board with Neoastra.

This opens up a huge resource pool for additional game Neoastra game content which extends beyond Jacks significant writing talents to include character actors to lend their voice and performance to NPC's, more music composition - leveraging Parker's music talents to flesh out what I hope will be a full and robust Neoastra sound track, additional sound FX support to add to Roland's productivity in the areas of environmental sound and various sound FX, and professional quality sound engineering.

To find out more about Sonic Cinemas and some of the works they have done, check out http://www.soniccinema.ca/SCinema.nsf

$10,000 Game Contest 2nd Quarter Draws To A Close

David MacLEAN — 2007-11-01T14:29:28+00:00

Well it has been quite a second quarter for us here in the Neoastra development team. Our team size has bloomed, As of yesterday, we are 11 strong! Our talents covering the areas of art, programming, writing, and sound. New assets pour in daily. But, I think the most exciting developments are yet to come.

By months end, we hope to have our unique character creation system implemented and the custom weapon and ship crafting system implemented. This will allow players not only to create a very unique look for their avatar, but create weapons and space craft that are unique in not only texture, but geometry, and configuration as well.

Also around Thanksgiving, I hope to open the game up to team developers and friends so that they may get to experience what we have accomplished so far first hand.

I hate to miss a photo-op, so there will be lots more screenies as well!

Milestones

David MacLEAN — 2007-10-05T10:23:37+00:00

I figured it was about time for another Neoastra Science Fantasy Game update....

If you are not familiar with the project you can find out all the gory details at www.neoastra.com ;D

We now have an internet project management system in place (Overlord), and I have been ramping up production. While Trac seems a more robust management system, I feel Overlord to be adequate for managing our team.

A couple of new folks have expressed an interest in helping out with the Neoastra game project. That's always nice to have, less for Ben and I to do! (new developers welcome, email me if you have an interest).

I've set our first milestone - NeoMile01 at November 23rd. I hope to have at least some sort of zone built with custom characters and a Neoastra specific interface that folks can run around in and see what it's going to be like. I'm not planning to make this a fully public release, but something that in-house developers and friends can check out. I'll take lots of screenies to be sure!

I've decided to start with Saurokova Citadel as the first zone to be developed. Saurokova is to be the home world of the lizard race of humanoids. We decided to make the world more visually stunning by making it volcanic with seas and lakes of lava. This was for purely visual reasons and not in any way a tribute to Star Wars! The Citadel itself is build around a lava lake. I think it's going to be a really cool zone to run around in.

So far, I have the terrain for the zone built and textured to my satisfaction. You can see it in many recent screen shots, it should be easy to identify. Still needs some nice emitters to cinch the scene though I think .

I have created new body meshes for the player avatars and fit them to a stock skeleton. The next process will involve attaching them to the animation skeleton so that they will become animated. (I'll probably start on that today) In the interest of time, we are using the TMMO Kit and it's stock animations.

I have a number of Saurokovian structures made already. I have only recently decided on a texture motif for them. My short term goal is to ramp up structure production over the next week or two and get Saurokova to the point where it has some substantial content that will wow visitors and they will want to explore.

I may have to push the milestone back as there is some coding required that is probably beyond my skill to do personally. This puts me at the mercy of my team mates schedule. So if they can't get to critical aspects the date will be moved back as needed. I thought it would be nice to shoot for having at least something up by the Thanksgiving weekend though!

I have had a bit of trouble with forum bots as well. We will be upgrading our php version at some point but it's not a priority. For the moment I have new forum accts set to approve, so new folks might not be able to get in right away.

That's news, stop by www.neoastra.com and check it out!

Neoastra Development Update

David MacLEAN — 2007-06-28T18:52:11+00:00

Well the development of our up-and-coming MMORPG epic space fantasy Neoastra continues on...

Our new (no frills) website is up at www.neoastra.com come see what we are all about!

It has some screenshots, I'm not thrilled with the 3rd party gallery software I used for that part of the site, so for now - additional screens can be seen in the developers blog posts.

Our lead programmer Ben MacWilliam has compled our public forum. If you want to stop in and say "hi" that is at www.neoastra.com/forum

Musician Stefan Jonsson granted us permission to use his Kamakura composition for Neoastra. you can give that a listen to here: http://www.liquiddog.net/reunion/MDR-KAKU.MP3

I have been working on a bit of world building and hope to have some sexy screens from that soon as well.

We are also looking to fill out our development team a bit more. If you think you might be interested in working with us on our game project, then please check out our recruitment page at http://www.neoastra.com/recruitment.html

That's news!

A Neoastra Cookie

David MacLEAN — 2007-05-07T20:11:53+00:00

I certainly don't want to spam the GG community with empty prose regarding my game development.

Let it suffice to say that I'm still fighting with Linux but have a semi operational Windows server going and progress is being made.

So let me lend some weight to this post with a reward of sorts. On a remotely related issue, I've made up a fix, or more appropriately a replacement for the ammo.dts with the error message causing collision mesh that comes stock with TGE.

You can download the new ammo.dts from http://www.dreamforgecreative.com/ammo.rar

Unzip it into your crossbow folder and overwrite the old ammo.dts with it.

This is a whole different object. It is 3 arrows instead of an ammo clip. But it doesn't appear to cause any errors ;D

It is free for Licensed Torque Game Engine users to use without credit or compensation.

Enjoy!

Ground Zero - Take II

David MacLEAN — 2007-04-20T19:39:41+00:00

I took the plunge and entered our Science Fiction game into the My Dream Inc 1 year game contest. While I'm not a blogger, one of the contest requirements is to maintain an on-going blog on GG and an external blog as well. With that in mind.....

Hello World!

Were I reading this, I suppose the next burning question on my mind would be "What's he on about?". I'll address that now with a few links and a quick game synopsis. First the links;

You can find out about the game contest at www.mydreamrpg.com

I suppose I shouldn't be soliciting more competition, but I do honestly encourage anyone meeting the contest criteria who is starting development on a new game to enter the contest. It's free, it's a shot at $10k, and by attempting to score well in the contest, you will be meeting many of the requirements of successful game development!

I had gotten a head start on my external blog requirements... That one can be found at http://diaryofawannabegamemaker.blogspot.com/

Our Website is at www.dreamforgecreative.com BUT!!! Due to all the other things on my plate right now, it is currently just a place holder graphic. Check back in a few days and hopefully I'll have something up worthy of your visit!

As for the game itself, it is a science fiction MMORPG tentatively entitled Neoastra. It takes place in a futuristic setting in the Neoastra star cluster on the edge of Anasyetunamed Nebula. Players begin the game solo in a desert planet tutorial zone, where they must salvage wreckage to rebuild a ship to escape the planet while fending off the local wildlife.

(Dare I try a photo link?)

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j259/griffinmac/sandeelv01.jpg

Once back in civilization, players will have a small ship which they can then use to profit and leverage character improvements.

Some of the game elements we are striving for are a flexible crafting system which allows quite a bit of item creation and customization, and no-grind skill improvement system. That is to say that game mechanics will be directed away from repetitive tasks or camping to improve characters. We are also focusing on the creation of unique creatures and worlds. You will not be seeing the standard MMORPG assortment of Dwarves, Elves, and Trolls in Neoastra! (Although we may be biased towards the Torque Orc! But the juries out on that one).

The deadline for contest entry is July 1st 2007, and we are still in very early stages of development. So far, there has been a lot of effort into getting administrative things done such as NDA's, Team Licenses, Blogs! >_> <_< and finalizing a comprehensive game design document. Once all that is behind us, I look forward to sitting down and creating something enjoyable and cool!

Although the core team is assembled, we still have room for another well rounded artist and a creative music person! Artists should be able to work in 2d, 3d, and textures, music folk need be talented, and if you could help out with sound effects, that would be a big plus. Drop me a line if this is you!

If you have gotten this far... Thanx for the read!