Blog for Luke Hopkins at GarageGames.com

A Week and a Half worth of Recodings

Luke Hopkins — 2007-07-03T11:51:31+00:00

For people that have seen my blogs before you willl know i spend alot of time on the music side of projects.

After spending a Week and a half recording my band we finally have somthing to so for it. Our Ep is Called Casual Sadism

We have recorded 11tracks and have put 7 of those on the Ep.

You can have a listen to two of the tracks on our myspace
www.myspace.com/theacclaimeduk

If you want a copy of the Ep it is downloadable until the 24th ask for the link if u want it.

Also if you want a hardcopy then we are giving th first 100 copies away for free.

Our Genre is kinda of Punk/Post Punk/Rock we dont like labling ourselfs so u can feel free to say we're somthing else.

Help start the Viral

Luke Hopkins — 2007-06-18T20:29:34+00:00

If anyone has ever seen my work you will know that its mainly focused around music. What you proberly don't know is that I'm in a band. We are a Viral band which means we will be doing things though the internet i mean, this is an easy way for us to get our music out. All our music will be free, we will be post video/blogs on our youtube, sending live gigs and everything you can think of your way.

We have started recording and are going back for another week next week. Everything will be recorded in my house since I have all the equpiment needs and I have my own studio. We have 20songs to record but thinking that we will record 5-11 of those.

Our Myspace is www.myspace.com/theacclaimeduk

Our website is www.theacclaimedmusic.co.uk/

Your Support would be very much appreciated

We have had some good reviews from our live acts. We dont intend on break any records, but we want to take music in another direction and not just think that myspace will do it for us. We still thinking of new ways to get out on to the internet and get our music accross that way. So we think that doing new things accross the internet. IF you have any new ideas in to how we can get our music accross the internet then give me a buss.

Ill be back to tell you how the recordings went.

2D Fighting Game with real life recorded sprites

Luke Hopkins — 2006-09-01T16:55:58+00:00

A couple of days ago me and a few friends was playing the orginal Mortal Kombat and we loved the way in which the sprites where recorded and the way they use real actors in order to do moves. One of my mates is doing media studies at college and owns a decent camera and another one of my mates owns a greenscreen.
So what we want to do is we want to create a Mortal Kombat type game.

Each one of use will play ourself and then make up three different players to play. We think theres gonna be about 4-6 people who are willing to take them time into recording animations. So this will give us about 12-18 players in the game.

We will should be recording Sunday if goes well we will be just recording 3 people and 3 players. Just to see if we can do this type of project and see how it looks.

I want to use Torques game builder but i dont currently own it but i will buy if all goes well. I tryed the 30 days trail and i kind of got into it. I was also looking for about 1 or 2 people to programme and design Gui's for the game engine. I will post another blog soon hopfully saying how well it went and hopfully showing off some sprites.

Message me or email me at a atouchfocalss2@hotmail.com if your intrested.

Asylum Game (Ep)

Luke Hopkins — 2006-07-06T18:45:28+00:00

Lately I've been getting my self involved in some music projects for games. One being making The Dawn of Men Theme tune. James who employed me to do his theme tune will tell you more about that in the update to Dawn Of Men.

For about 2 Months now I've been working hard on an Ep sort of thing for my Game Asylum. It will consist of 4 songs each one lasting about 2-4mins each.

Here is a link to the theme tune Track 1 - www.monkeywrenchgames.co.uk/Desecrate%20Theme%20Song.mp3
Here is a Sample to Track 3 (Escaping From Asylum) (not finshed Yet) www.monkeywrenchgames.co.uk/Woods.mp3

How I make my music is i take samples from my mate's band and create recordings over the top. My mate very kindly gave me rights to use there songs in my work and projects.

If you would like me to work on anything for you please contact or add me at atouchofclass2@hotmail.com

About Asylum

Asylum is a Project me and some friends are doing in whilst studying games development we are going to take this project slow and steady since we are going to be studying and doing portfolios. Here is abit about the Game.

The project started back in the world war when prisoners sentenced to death row where tested on with alpha and beta drugs, after they started to run out of death row patients they started looking in different places for patients. Now the year is 1980 and the Location is Crowthrone Asylum, England after shutting down the west wing for disclosed matters. They turn the west wing into their testing facilities. After making a major breakthrough in their research they found out they can change the Human genes. The three case files that have made this possible are Crane Epsilon 11, Meadowlark Phi 9 and Peregrine Theta 3. After a power failure the three patients manage to escape from their cells.

Multiplayer Gameplay

Patients

Casefile Subject Codename: Crane Epsilon 11
Patient # 105765
Name: Desmond J. Driscoll
Age: 32
Height: 6' 0'' (183 cm)
Weight: 187 lbs (85 kg)
Psychological Profile: Acute Mania / Demensia
Experiment Focus: Self-Created Energy Dispersal, Eye Enhancement, Body Strengthening
Powers: Thicker Skin (Less Damage Taken)
Hawkeye Implants (Sight Distance Enhancement, High Accuracy, Natural Night vision)
Increased Relaxes (Quicker Weapon Firing, Usage, and Reloading)
Body Enhancement (Faster Movement, Farther Throwing Distance)
Natural Energy Dispersal (Thermal Constitution, Electrical Creation
& Control, Moisture Freezing, Air Regulation)

Casefile Subject Codename: Meadowlark Phi 9
Patient # 100046
Name: Nils Unknown
Age: 23
Height: 5' 11'' ( 180 cm)
Weight: 143 lbs ( 65 kg)
Psychological Profile: Schizoaffective and Manic Depression
Disorders
Experiment Focus: Sound Waves and Vibrations Modulation, plus Minor Body
Enhancement
Powers: Visualizing Sound Waves (Seeing Sources of Sound Originations)
High Pitch Sound Creation (Deafening, Glass Breaking)
Low Vibration Creation (Seismic Shockwaves, Heart Beat Alteration, Hi-Jump)
Vibration of Melee Weaponry (Vibrations Cause Melee Weapons to Cut Easier Through Tougher Surfaces)
Sound Wave Modulation (Create Sound waves in Far Away Locations as Distraction)
Personal Sound Muffling (Ability To Run at Highest Speed Without Making a Sound, Speed Stealth, Gun Muffling)
Boosted Physical Agility (Nimble, Quick, Silent)

Casefile Subject Codename: Peregrine Theta 3
Patient # 089479
Name: Ellwood Templer
Age: 30
Height: 6' 1'' ( 185 cm)
Weight: 160 lbs ( 72 kg)

Psychological Profile: Mental Disconnection / Anguish, Paranoia, Epilepsy
Experiment Focus: Mental Enhancement
Powers: Telekinesis (Lifting, Floating, Throwing, Disarming, etc)
Mind Control ( Switch Limited amount of Enemies to Friendly NPCs,
Overheat Enemies Brains )
Telepathy (Read Minds to receive key codes, information on certain objectives...
Mind Absorbance (Partially Absorb other people's Powers for short time)
Mind Cloak (Make Your Character Look Like Someone Else [Enemies may
still Interrogate you] )
Remove Viewing (See Through Walls)

The gameplay is based around a single player storyline but multiplayer action. It is the patients jobs to escape from the asylum and not get caught buy the guards and it is the guards job to stop the patients escaping anyway they can.

Three people at max can on Patients side and everyone else is on the guards side trying to stop the patients escaping if you die whilst a guards you will respawn but if you a patients you will stay died.

Weapons- Security Guards will have weapons such as:

Shotguns
Pistols
Mp5
Needles (which can send the patient to sleep)
Snipers
Smoke Grenades
Flash Grenades
Tazers

Weapons - For patients will be:

Glass Shards
Sharpe Tooth brushes
Deodorant can and lighter
and their special powers.

Singleplayer Gameplay

Single play will have you controlling a different player from multiplayer. What has happened is whilst being experimented on they have manage to unlock something Evil which has brought everything everyone is scared of to Life. Expect to see China Dolls, Clowns and other weird things coming to life in this Game.

Sorry it's abit lengthy but I just want to make sure people know the storyline
If you want to lend your experience and take part in the project feel free to contact me at atouchofclass2@hotmail.com

Dynamic Sound (Part 1)

Luke Hopkins — 2006-07-03T18:36:44+00:00

Dynamic Sound (Part 1)

Have you ever played a game where the music gives you so much energy to go round killing everything in site as fast as you can? Games I've experience with this are games such as Halo and Geometry Wars.

As a musician and gamer I want combine the two together, instead of having the game playing a song relevant to the level or a song just changing due to level. I'm going to hopefully develop some sort of music engine inside of Torque that can play the relevant samples of music together and then link each one to each other to create music that reacts to the atmosphere and continually plays but is always different. Example: if the engine detects a lot of player activity and enemy the song becomes faster and a guitar solo will come into play. This will work by basically the whole engine will be based up the basics of Music Theory, such as chord structures, beats per minute, scales intervals, pitches, dynamics and tempo. This music theory will then go in the samples made, which then can easily mix within the engine. By doing this people then with a good knowledge of Music can start to join the game industry and they don't need to know any coding as most things will be based up on music samples. The only coding will be to put the files in the right position and to get the samples to react with the right environment.

The image above shows the tracks for all the different sounds that go into the song. This basically shows a song building up to a solo in the way in which more and more tracks and sounds are added in order to build the sound up. Normally the track would not be spilt in the way that it is shown but I have split them up in order to explain how its goings to fix in to the engine.

Next I'll go on to explain how a song is made what rules you have to go by and why these rules are a very important to the engine.

I am going to show you how music theory is applied to the lead guitar and how it will develop in the engine. I am only going to show you a lead guitar part as I would be here for ages explaining all different theories and music you might not understand so I have gone for the most common instrument the guitar.

This picture shows four different sections of the song

I will now cut these four up and explain what theory has to go in to them and why. Basically each bar has to have the same chord structures and end and start on the same tempo this is so when the engine links them together the song will sound correct.

The intro will start on tempo of 120.00 and I the four chords I will use are going to be Bm, E, C#m and D

Now for my other bar I can choose any chord that can link with Bm or D such as A of course you will need to go by the chord patterns for the genre you want. I think I'll stop here for now as either you totally lost or you get were I'm going with this I will post more once I got my samples settled into the engine and I'll make a blog on how I get the samples to work and react with the engine. Sorry if a few of a chords are wrong I don't think they are or just say if you don't think that this engine will be needed for any game engines or projects. Like to hear whether you find this useful or just plan nonsense this is my first big project and I'm still properly grasping Torque but I would like to know what you think to this blog also I know at the moment it has no relevance to Torque but it will do in the next blog.

The Test Game

Luke Hopkins — 2006-06-16T23:20:04+00:00

Basically the past couple of month's I have been getting my head round TGE and TSE. Now after studying these engines I have decided to make my first project in torque. In the game I want a good arcade feel to the game but have a good simulation as well. So what I have decided to do it make a game where you start off as a novice car tester and you have to perform a few stunts and tests such as crash tests and parking tests. Also I want a multiplayer side to the game so I am going to have a multiplayer where there is basically a stage setup and you and your mates can make your own stunt shows. This game is kind of like the roller coaster "ride test track" and stuntman put together. This project I am going to take very slow and start off in TGE and at the end of the project have a fun smart looking game in TSE. I am not hoping to gain anything out of this apart from the ability for people to give me feedback, give them a fun game and learn in the process of making a game. I am going to take this project slow and steady.

This is my first blog and many to come hopefully. So far I have coded the car with front wheel drive, got a more realistic physic to the car and now I am just coding the car to have more grip but also the ability to slide. If anyone could help with this that would be great.

I want to take this first blog to tell you more about me since no of you know who I am. Basically ever since I picked up a mega drive many many many years ago I have always had a dream to be in the games industry and now at the age of 17 a very helpful teacher showed me which paths to take in order to achieve this goal. Me and a few mates helped this teacher then to start games development course at college which will get us a diploma on completion and a good chance of getting in to a good games development course at university. The first helpful thing my teacher did was show me Torque. After my teacher showed me this engine I have been learning alot about games, sometimes knowing how long things really take.

I will hopefully be making more blogs now i have posted this one.

Luke Hopkins