Blog for Ian Roach at GarageGames.com

Its a good time to be a tgea owner

Ian Roach — 2008-09-20T14:10:33+00:00

So its been awhile since my last plan so i thought i would show off what my small team has been prototyping the last few months.

In my last plan i showed a few different prototypes we had worked on to try and get a feel for the type of game we wanted to make. After a few refinements we decided to go an even more cuter/kiddie look, but also try to appeal to adults as well.

One of my most anticipated games coming soon is a Playstation 3 game called Little Big Planet, its a huge inspiration for me as it combines my love of oldschool 2d platformer with a great community aspect and level creation.

So we want to create a similar concept using the built in level editing tools we have and try to make it even more accessible to a wider audience. We also wanted to stick with our original idea of a soldat style arcadish game .

Thus Tinkers was born :)

Our initial player design revolved around an existing concept known as the Munny

A nice simple design that allows tons of customisation through simple addons (hats e.t.c) and swappable skins.

However we didnt want to deal with copyright hassles e.t.c, Thankfully i found a modeller (Teck Lee Tan) who came up with our own unique design. Presenting Tinker V2.0 :D

Despite the similarities to Sackboy , the design actual is inspired by the old Muppet style designs where the upper head moves seperately from the lower jaw :)

So what exactly is a Tinker ?

The story of Tinkers revolves around the dreams of a little boy, involving his favourite teddy he calls tinker. Every night he dreams of new and exciting adventures for his heroic little friend and this allows us to have a high degree of flexibility in our map themes and designs.

But even though tinkers are cute, they also know how to fight :)

Animations

One of our current tasks is to get the tinkers animated and in game, thanks to Sean boyette for motion capturing our current animations and rigging them up for us. You can see some movies of our tinker in action below :

The animations shown are :

- Run
- Air Guitar (My favorite)
- Crouch
- Mouth movement
- Death
- Electric Shock Death
- Idle
- Jump
- Karate Kick
- Muscleman
- Salute
- Wave

Over the next few weeks we plan to add many more in, including more facial movements and transition animations

Weapons

Early on we made a conscious decision to ensure all weaponry will fit our cute theme and style, so as a result all our guns will be nerf gun style weaponry and all melee swords e.t.c will be foam padded style toys. At this stage we are just using some placeholder art. Heres a vid showing off our basic sword attack movements

Scripting

On the scripting side we have also been doing numerous prototyping, most recently integrating afx and moving to a more pure 2d sideon camera.

We messed with everything from physx integration to a more isometric camera/movement until we settled on our current model. For aiming/movement simplification we've decided to stick strictly to 2d movement, similar to our main inspiration soldat

Big thanks to Marc-Andre Vacon for all his scripting help thus far.

Over the coming months we plan to expand on the platforming and customization options (level editing/character outfitting e.t.c)

Big thanks to Teck, Sean and Marc-Andre thus far for all there help, we look forward to showing of more of Tinkers over the coming months.

We are looking for modelers and coders especially to get onboard and help us add even more features and customization into our current prototype.

- Ian Roach

2008 and Prototypes WITH PICS

Ian Roach — 2008-06-13T04:20:05+00:00

Hi everyone with all the cool plans lately i thought i would post what my small team been doing the past few months.

For the last 4+ years my time has been consumed with everything Illumina. My team decided to shelve a tgea version of illumina for now until we can rework it abit and give it a unique flavor that isnt trying to compete with the likes of gears of war/halo e.t.c . We definetely plan on getting back into it very soon, most likely with a completely different look to what ive shown previously.

So with us shelving Illumina for now, my small team decided starting working on some other prototypes. With my daughter recently turning 1 , ive found a unique appreciation for simple cartoony styles and designs (Must be all that Sesame Street and Wiggles). Seeing games like Team Fortress 2 with there very unique cartoon style brings a smile to my face :)

So both prototypes are fairly cartoony in design. But like the Lego Series of games we hope to appeal to both adults and children alike.

Toons Of War

Toons of war is our first prototype idea. Its heavily influenced by an old 2d game called Soldat

Soldat is an old 2d game that utilised excellent physics, cool guns and just frantic fast paced action. Im hoping to recreate that in a 3d Setting with some new twists and ideas.

- Fast paced gameplay (quick spawn times, quick weapon selection, fairly quick movement)
- Use of jetpacks for vertical gameplay (Floating levels/platforms)
- Additional use of "Force" powers to enhance the fast paced action. Force powers are akin to the halflife 2 physics gun as 1 example. Being able to do a quick hand movement , grab a nearby barrel and toss it at your enemy.

We also want to expand on the theme in the future to create all sorts of Worms like wacky theme levels. Space/Underwater/Pirates you name it, however the first prototype will deal entirely with modern day war themes but still in a wacky/cute style.

Marine

Terrorist

Heres some movies

Prerendered movie showing off the art style and environments we want to achieve in TGEA

First Model ingame and running/firing

Otoko

Otoko is a VERY different prototype from Toons Of War. We wanted to get away from the shooting aspect for this project. With heavy influences from zelda/banjo/mario ,we want to create a cute platform game which appeals to adults and kids (who doesnt want to be a ninja)

The lead character is a small boy by the name of Otoko

The world is a simply redone dungeon pack at this stage though we hope to give it a more wacky feel soon. We want to mix both the platforming of mario with the swordfights/dungeon exploration of zelda.

Some early rendering attempts using my very basic texture editing skills :)

Ink

Patch

and finally the look we decided to settle on

The "Jigsaw" style is something not found in many games so we think its a cool style to explore. We hope to increase it more with puzzle shaped trees/platforms and enemies and incorporating lego style build mechanics into it (Walk up to a pile of jigsaw pieces and build a platform or bridge)

At this stage Otoko will be purely a singleplayer/coop prototype.

We are always looking for help , so if there are any programmers or artists who like our ideas and want to help out let me know :)

Our small team currently consists of Matt Vitelli,Sean Boyette and myself and we would love to get more people onboard. We arent aiming for complete games at this stage, just fun prototypes that will move onto more fleshed out games.

Sorry about the large screens, ill attempt to resize them later.

Regards

Ian Roach

Homeworld in torque

Ian Roach — 2008-01-09T05:27:31+00:00

Hey guys, following last weeks plan i thought i would digup some old projects i started working on over the christmas break.

I took some time out from Illumina to attempt a space game idea ive had in mind for some time now. To me one of the best space games (and the best rts imo) is homeworld and homeworld 2.

I managed to find the old homeworld 2 ship models and with some quick exporting the results are below.

Below are some quick shots of homeworld 2 models inside tge with some added resources (space resources).

Im fully aware these models are copyrighted , they are just fillins , it was more a test to see how good they looked in tge, i think theyve held up well since there about 3 years old.

Havnt decided if i will continue with the project but thought i would share none the less :)

Illumina in 2008

Ian Roach — 2007-12-30T09:30:11+00:00

Hi Everyone, hope everyone had a great christmas and an even better new year :) .

I thought i would be best served putting up a final .blog for 2007 :)

Well its been a pretty up and down year, the birth of my new baby daughter being the big highlight and also one of the reasons not much has happened on the gaming front :).

But im looking to jump back into the fire so to speak. Our game Illumina has been on and off for many years.

It wasnt that long ago that a tge build was released to mixed reception. Since that time ive been tweaking gameplay and trying different engines in an effort to get something unique and fun :)

We finally have a new gameplay direction which i think will offer some excellent and fun gameplay in both online and offline modes. I wont go into it to much as you will see plenty more next year :)

In recent months ive been working with sean boyette from Fluid Images who has been doing some excellent mocap animations for our game. We are still refining them and tweaking them but they are coming together really well.

We put together a small teaser to showoff our models and generate some interest for the new year (be warned i did say a short teaser ) :)

Music was done by Blake Lowry and animations by sean. These are ingame models however rendered via maya, we dont want to show off too much ingame stuff just yet.

You can find the teaser at these locations

Youtube Illumina Teaser

Flash Illumina Teaser

WMV Illumina Teaser

Matt Vitelli has been working on hard on new tgea shaders for us to use and they should provide some excellent graphic updates and will be the core of our new gameplay direction.

On the mapping front Alan james and Arkolis have been stepping up and helping with a few maps and interiors (See below). Look forward to seeing much more of there work in the next few months.

As well as all of the above we have been tweaking our menus and controls. Below are 2 samples of what we hope will be the new menus and controls moving forward (keyboard and xbox controller support)

Anyway happy new year to everyone :) and i look forward to showing more of TGEA illumina next year. If your interested in helping out on the project send me an email :)

Illumina TGEA progress and screens

Ian Roach — 2007-07-29T14:10:51+00:00

Wow its been awhile since ive posted my last .plan . Ive been very busy the last few months with my newborn baby ( 4 months now YAY) and work so Illuminas progress has slowed to a crawl, however that may change very very soon :)

Over the last few months i have been combining with a number of community members in an effort to keep the ball rolling. The guys at Masterdom Productions (Civil Disturbance) have been a huge help in sorting out some script issues. It also gives us a nice framework to integrate singleplayer and coop into our prototype.

On the coding front alot of stuff has been added in recent months

- Full Team Selection and Weapon selection (controlled by server admin)
- Lobby join system for promoting teamwork and grouping
- Full admin system including map voting, player banning , weapon banning , amongst others
- Overhaul of the script codebase to promote plug and play gametypes and addons
- Full tournament mode to promote tournament play and prevent spectators/observers
- All of our players/weapons/effects ported from our TGE build.
- Complete menu based voice commands for easy communication
- Ported our recoil and cone of fire from TGE build
- Camera enhancements for different player poses, crouch/sprint/ironsights e.t.c

Currently in progress
- Gears of war cover system to promote sticking to cover and leaning around corners

Some of the things i hope to get added in the next few weeks/months
- Numerous Item pickups
- More User Friendly Weapon Selection gui
- Spectator mode for dead players/observers

Big thanks to Matt Vitelli and Jeff Raab for there help in integrating shaders and cover system
We are also hoping to add some unique weapons/effects to really give it a scifi feel.

Another member who has helped us tremendously in the last few months is Apparatus, who has provided us with numerous concepts from menus/maps/story/vehicles and more. I wont post his concepts unless he gives me the go ahead, but nevertheless they have helped tremendously to rework our story , define our maps and give us some mockups to aim for.

Finally another huge boost for the game has come from Blake Lowry from Cellien Studios. Blake has kindly given me permission to use some of the now defunct Terra:Formations models to give us a boost on the art side. It will really help give us a next gen feel and should give us good leverage for the future.

Another bonus to this , is that it has taken Illumina back to its original goal of Humans Versus Aliens. That was put onhold in the TGE build as we felt it was beyond our scope, however with a more robust starting point we feel we can make something more unique that fits our original game design.

The following pictures are renders of our models/textures and not in TGEA yet, however with any luck we will have them rigged and imported in the coming weeks.

If im able to integrate the above models to tgea i will most likely give away my current player models and weapons as a freebie to the GG community, so hopefully all goes to plan :)

So yeh, apologies for the long .plan but im making up for lost time :), i hope to keep more regular updates in the coming months.

We are looking for everyone from scripters/tgea engine programmers/artists and mappers to help keep illumina TGEA moving along nicely. So if anyones interested send me an email :)

Our site is currently in the state of overhaul at the moment but that should hopefully change soon also.

What a Year its been

Ian Roach — 2007-04-23T13:15:46+00:00

Hey guys, been awhile since my last update so thought i would do one now :)

The biggest news i have to share is im now a Dad .

Lily Louise Roach was born on March 19th at 8.52 am . These last 5 weeks have been an amazing time and mum and baby are doing well.

We put up a website for her which we hope will grow over time (feel free to sign the guestbook :) )

Lilys Website

Illumina

For those wondering what ever happened to illumina, the good news is we are not dead :) . Much of my team has since moved onto other projects, however im still slowly getting things back on track.

The biggest change with Illumina is that is now running on TGEA . Thankfully my engine programmer managed to integrate alot of our old features, however there is still alot missing .

The plan with Illumina TGEA is to completely redo all of the existing art assets and also completely redesign the game. Currently however i am using old tge art assets.

The new changes with illumina are:

- Game lobby system (similar to an xbox live network game session)
- Simplified Weapon and Team Spawn System (all done via the lobby before entering the game)
- Integrated MultiGame system (Thanks to Zod for all his work)
- Completely third person (no longer an fps)
- Maps now more arena based.
- Weapon/Item/Powerups now pickups on the map.
- Integration of Ai Enemy and Ai Coop bots

Some movies of it in action (no fancy shaders or effects yet)

www.singlecellgames.com/illuminatgea.avi - <- xvid
www.singlecellgames.com/tinman.avi - <- xvid

AstroTurf

The other game im currently prototyping is tentatively called AstroTurf, with my few weeks timeoff i have managed to help myself learn torquescript more by making a small space game.

My objectives for the game are to turn it into a starfox/mariokart style arcade flyer and shooter .

- Race gametypes as well arena/deathmatch
- various wacky powerups
- arcade flight model
- unique and gorgeous space backdrops

Heres a quick movie i made . Special thanks to Ward De langhe for his free and awesome space skyboxes

www.singlecellgames.com/astroturf.avi - <- xvid

My primary focus is getting illumina up to speed however i would like to expand on Astroturf eventually.

Im looking for Artists/Programmers wanting to help out on either projects so feel free to email me :)

Illumina Demo Just in time for Christmas.

Ian Roach — 2006-12-24T08:41:54+00:00

Ill just mirror my dev snapshot :)

Merry Christmas Everyone.

To celebrate the christmas and new year, ive decided to wrap up my illumina build and release it to the community for FREE.

Demo Contents
This demo contains

- 5 maps
- Team Deathmatch
- All weapons
- Jump Jets
- 5 Backpacks. Cloak / AntiCloak / Medic / Assualt / Engineer
- 3 Armour types. Light / Medium / Heavy

Vehicles and other gamemodes have been removed for this build . Jumpjets make up for the loss of speed though.

Download Links
You can download the Game from

www.savagecabbage.net/illumina/IlluminaDemo.rar

or alternatively you can use the following mirror :

www.singlecellgames.com/IlluminaDemo.rar

The game weighs in at around 110 meg. Windows Only Atm, if there are any mac or linux volunteers please let me know :)

Forums are available at www.singlecellgames.com. I look forward to hearing your comments and opinions.

Special thanks to all that have helped me with illumina along the way

- Josh Moore (Programming)
- Matthew Sanders (Programming)
- Chris White (Maps/Art)
- Blake Lowry (Music/Art)
- Keith Killiea (Producer)
- Eoghan Quigley (Animations)
- Feargal Plant (Skins/Art)
- JC Smith (Programming)

I would appreciate as many ppl as possibly hosting servers or even a few more download mirrors.

Also please use Right Click Save As for the first download link, becuase it doesnt seem to work by clicking on it.

Would love to get feedback on the online play side of things.

Future

I have some things in the works for illumina in the future, but we will just have to see how it pans out. Until then enjoy this Free Demo.

Some map shots from the Demo:

Aftermath

GhostTown

Hidden Jungle

Meadows

Arctic Frosty

Enjoy!

New Game Ideas

Ian Roach — 2006-12-18T04:15:31+00:00

Its been awhile since my last .plan , so i figure i may as well do an update.

Whilst my last 2+ years of my torque life have been dedicated to one project "Illumina" , more recently ive begun looking into new ideas and oppurtunities.

Illuminas progress has stalled in recent months, however it will be back in some form in the not too distant future. When it does return it will be very different from my previous builds. More focused and more playable. When the time arrives to show it off i will :) .

In the meantime i managed to start on another project. The new project shall be utilising TGEA and will be using a number of old Illumina assets to get the ball rolling.

What i dont use for illumina, will most likely find its way into my new project. I wont go into too much details gameplay wise as i dont want to spoil it just yet. Once i have something more solid ill be sure to post it.

So far its just myself and Matt Vitelli and a work collegue jumping onboard, im hoping we have the majority of the art we need based on all the work done before in illumina.

Unlike illumina, this game will be much more focused , more arcadish, more accessible (utilising xbox360 controller) which should mean a much smaller development time :)

Here is a basic teaser (just a simple dropin of the model into tgea). Specular/normal maps will be toned down abit.

Still no name for the project yet, just PrototypeX for now :)

Arcane Fx + Illumina

Ian Roach — 2006-11-28T00:24:41+00:00

Over the last few months ive had the pleasure of beta testing the upcoming Arcane Fx. Its a fantastic pack with some awe inspiring effects, coupled with the lightingpack it gets made even better.

I spent the past weekend just integrating the features i want for illumina. Since illumina is not an rpg (and never will be), ive been trying to find ways i can adapt arcanefx to my needs.

Since im not using the orc skeleton, i decided to takeout all the animation/constraint code, since im not going to be performing spells and i dont need all those fancy effects.

So ive decided to start by adapting one of the Arcane Spells but using it for my cloak activation. You can see my results here

www.singlecellgames.com/afx.avi -- 4 meg.

Now that ive got the basics in place my plan for the next few weeks

- Continue learning the ins and outs of AFX and adapt my cloaking effect to my needs (change the color/effects)
- Addin new effects for Medic/AntiCloak/Engineer/Support effects when used ingame.
- Addin effects for Capture the Flag and other Gamemodes
- Addin explosions for vehicles and other items.

Im hoping with a little tweaking (since im no artist) i can find the right spell effects to fit my needs. Who knows i just might get a scifi drone in there somewhere as well :)

Thanks to Jeff Faust and all his arcanefx help along the way.

Illumina + Helicopters

Ian Roach — 2006-11-16T23:52:31+00:00

Time for my weekly .plan update.

This week ive been working on the 3rd person camera and also implementing my flying vehicles.

Third Person Camera

Ive been tweaking back and forth on where my camera will position when moving, still not quiet there yet, but i do have it in a pretty good over the shoulder location. My next trick is to use it across all things (vehicles/turrets e.t.c)

Not related to the camera, but ive also now been able to get multiple crosshairs for different occasions, so a smaller/less visible crosshair is used when not using the iron sights, but it switches to a larger/more focused crosshair when using the iron sights.

Helicopters

I took the excellent helicopter resource available here, and adapted it to work with my assualt helis. It currently flies well, but still feels too "Floaty" and can basically stop dead in midair, with no affect to my gravity or no inertia, so it kind of feels like a hovervehicle atm. If anyone knows how to give it a more "heavier" feel please let me know.

As part of implementing helicopters, ive been trying to use the "playThread" commands to plan multiple animations.

My vehicle currently has 4 animations, all of which i want to trigger when i mount. However using playThread multiple times on different thread numbers doesnt seem to work. Likewise using setThreadDir to reverse the animation when i dismount doesnt work either.

If anyone is familiar with playThread,setThreadDir and stopThread i would love your help :)

Here is a movie of my helicopter in action

www.singlecellgames.com/helis.avi <- 21 meg, xvid

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My task for the next week is to cleanup the camera, tweak my player movement settings, fixup animation issues and look into general interface/cleanup.

If all goes well, expect a new demo in a few weeks :)