Diary of a coder 2

The Trusted One — 2006-08-11T10:03:44+00:00

I have been looking at the free version of a plugin for 3D Studio MAx that allows the use of splines to make interiors, then export and open in Quark to export the Dif. I like the idea of using Max for the interiors as our license of Max 8.0 was not exactly cheap (GG should have a chat with the guys at autodesk).

I was going blind from staring at the interriors so I took a step back and have implemented the advanced camera resource to the engine.

We have a few unique aspects we are hoping to have in the engine for this project, here is a quick run down of the publicly available ones:

1. "Place camera anywhere" interface, I want the user to be able to place the camera anywhere in 3d space realative to the player, of course there will be limitations, IE must be within 30' of the player :)

2. "Real anatomical damage" we have licensed the visible human project, my plan is to use the information gathered from this to have a subsystem of the engine determine the force a sword blow hit with and then determine what major structures would have been damaged, so lets say a tendon in the arm was cut right through that character can no longer move the arm in the manor that the tendon controls

3. Neural Network based AI - acutal learning an eveolving NPC's, I am hoping to be able to use the rtNEAT base as a starting point for this section.

4. "Go Anywhere" - This game while it is being based of a linear story we want to have the interface be like GTA (God I hated thoughs games)

5. No stupid ways to die, IE you cant accidently slip of a bridge (however you can jump off it) and plumet to your death

so these are the targets for the engine, there are more I cant talk about, I wish I had more time to devote just to the engine, but I a buried up to my neck in modeling.

I almost have the main char modeled, so today I am going to have to research how to rig/animate/texture and export her from 3DS Max 8.0 into Torque (I hope it is easier then interiors, that took me a while to get to work right).

I will try to post some concept images in my next blog which will probably be on monday.

The Trusted One

Diary of a coder 1

The Trusted One — 2006-08-10T19:15:13+00:00

I find myself in a position that probably thousands who have come before me find themselves, I am a skilled programmer, passionate about making games, I have what I consider to be the most talented people in my area working with me. I have never developed a "Major" game before, so I will be learning as I go. It is my intention with this Blog to document my path, what I learned, how and when so that those who come after me may have an easir path.

I am a 12 year vet of programming, everything from BASIC on my TRS-80 (oh all the lines of code to animate the slot machine arm) to full scale windows/linux distributed information systems. I have played with game development almost all my life however, only recently has life given me the opportunity to dive right in.

Like most developers I started by planning to write my own engine, well long story short 1 runaway terrain engine that forced a OS re-install and I went looking for a better solution. I found TGE and consider it to be the best money I ever spent.

So again with the short version my team and I set out on figuring out what this Game Dev thing is all about, I quickly start to notice that aside from my music guy I am the only one who has any real computer experience, OUCH.

So heres the team,

Heather - Author

John - Lead Artist

Nathan - Concept artist/weapons master (yes he make real versions of all the games weapons)

Josh - Concept artist

Kevin - Music

Brian - were not sure what he does yet, but he drives and brings us jolt and smokes so we will find him a role

Michael - Myself - Software Engineer/Producer/Modeler and a bunch of jobs I dont know about yet.

Michael D - Marketing/Public relations/Graphic Design

After I met Nathan he mentioned that he had been working on art for a game for about 3 years now, hoping to find a team he could work with :) and with that he pulled out 4 MASSIVE cities each drawn on two 3' x 4' sized pages. WOW.

He then told me that there are 6 more he is working on. Okay so we have a HUGE world, good I wanted one.

So I have started to teach them how to use 3D Studio Max. I thaught we were in good shape, until I realized that Max cannot efficiently be used to build interiors.

So I started working with Quark, I hate it, but I am good with it, I cant wait for Constructor.

We are working on building the cities first, in the mean time I will be working with the engine to expand it to waht we need. I will try to post as often as I can.

Blog for The Trusted One at GarageGames.com

Diary of a coder 2

Diary of a coder 1