Blog for Drew Robson at GarageGames.com

Templar Skies - September Update

Drew Robson — 2007-09-27T04:00:14+00:00

This is the September update for Templar Skies, as part of the Dream Games Competition.

I'd like to thank anyone who still reads and follows the development of this game. The public display of the development progress has been an interesting exercise, especially considering how embarrassing this process can be. In my case, I started off with a lot of big ideas and plans, and after taking frequent blows from the reality bat, have wrangled the mangled results into a viable prototype, and a potential game.

Templar Skies is a single-player, 3rd person avatar, tower defense game. The player is a mighty Templar defending their lands against hordes of invading demons. Against these demons, Templars can use brutal melee attacks, devastating spells, and build mighty defensive towers.

The player chooses the abilities and towers they are going to use, then enters the mission. It then plays out like a tower defense game - demons which reach the destination take some lives. The big difference is, the player controls a character in 3rd person view, which can build towers as well as cast melee and ranged spells. Demons follow a fixed path through the mission. Some can even attack the player and their towers.

Templar Skies is currently in early alpha. Most features are complete, but the biggest problem is content. Art costs money, and levels take time to build. And testing, a tedious task. These are the biggest hurdles I'll be facing for the completion of Templar Skies. I'm actually looking forward to marketing and selling, once I get the game finished.

Development can be tracked at the development blog. I still need to update the website for Templar Skies.

The game isn't quite ready for public screenshots yet, so here's some renders of the recently completed male Keeble armor, by artist Scott Thunelius.

Templar Skies- August Update

Drew Robson — 2007-08-31T06:34:55+00:00

This is the August update for the project formerly known as Inspire.

That name and concept have finally been shelved for now, as is the way with some indie projects. The good news is, out of the fires of hard work, code and assets, I'm bringing a smaller, more refined games, titled Templar Skies. It's essentially an evolution of Inspire, based on a smaller feature set. Still has our armless hero, hordes of invading monsters, tower building, resource & points collection, but I've taken out the persistence and multiplayer layers. I'd love to reuse that tech in a future title, but for now it's just not feasible.

Work on this is going slowly, but progress continues. I've been hoping to release a demo for the past month, and that goal keeps sliding out of reach. I will say that most functionality is ready however, and I just have to make it public-ready. This is a bigger task than it seems, and will probably throw up some new bugs along the way.

The most valuable lesson I've learnt from this project is, your project is still to large :P Which I'm taking into my future games, which will be small, focused fun. I'm also going back to 2D for these, much easier for a simple indie like me.

Sorry, no screenshots or media this update.

For more information: Blog

Inspire: July Update

Drew Robson — 2007-07-29T02:24:19+00:00

This is the July update as part of the DreamGames competition. The points tally for the first quarter was released recently and to my joy Inspire is currently number 6, behind some very impressive projects. There's still a lot of points left in the competition however, so the competition is still wide open.

Over the past months there has been a lot of game refining. I indicated that testing was to begin soon - unfortunately there's been business and development problems over the past month which has delayed it. However, Inspire will now have a single-player mode and I plan to release a demo for this at the end of the week for feedback.

After experimenting with a lot of gameplay elements and styles, I've finalized the design and come up with a 1 line description. Templar Skies is an Avatar based Tower Defense multiplayer game. Instead of a God-View like in most Tower Defense games, you directly control a persistent character, with passive & active feats, able to collect resources and use gizmos.

I'm also considering whether launching the game with a lobby is worth the cost, or if it's something I should add once there's quite a few players. The code and tech are there for it, it's more an issue of cost and time to set up a server.

Other stuff you can read about at the development blog:

- Issues with Z-sorting on Skinned Characters.
- TGE doesn't support TGA textures, so I had to add the resource for it.

(obligatory comment on lack of, and conflicting, information)

- Wrestling with an AI system for monsters so they don't stall on each other.
- Music from Jesse Hopkins arrived.
- Models and Animations from Scott Thunelius arrived.
- The camera was changed from my platformer one to an orbit as it suited the game style better.
- Cel shading was dropped as it wasn't working and was too much of a hassle to fix given TGE's lacking in that area.

Media - - -

Main Character Model

Short movie of character animation.

Screenshots

Inspire: Movie, Screenshots, Announcement

Drew Robson — 2007-06-24T05:22:21+00:00

In this update: A major announcement about the state of the game and open testing beginning soon, a gameplay movie, concept art and screenshots.

Since last time:

I hired an artist and a composer to do some work for Inspire. The artist is Scott Thunelius, the composer is Jesse Hopkins. Find out more here.

In my last update, I spoke briefly about a change of direction. I am happy to announce that Inspire is no longer a MMO. While I still believe it's possible for one person to build one, you really need to be smart about the game style and business model. Life places constraints on indies, and due to this I have made a change to the game and business models for Inspire.

The new game is going to be a distributed multiplayer online game. A master server will host the game lobby, account management and character storage databases. Players will be able to chat real time in the lobby, and arrange games. Public and private games will listed in the lobby, however these games will be hosted by players, with a join limit (currently at 10). Each game is 1 zone, and a zone is a self contained adventure area & scenario. Upon quitting the game, the player's character will be saved back to the database.

Inspire will be released as an episodic game quarterly, with free patch & content updates.

Read more about this here.

Templar Skies & Testing

Templar Skies is the first episode of Inspire Games. I plan for it to have 4 maps and 4 game modes at release, with a few monster, tower and weapon types. Small scale open testing will begin soon, so head over to the official website and sign up for your chance to participate.

The Future

My long term plan is for Inspire to become successful enough that I can hire dedicated servers to host all the games, instead of players hosting them, and afford enough content to bring the game to my original vision. For now however, it's a small game hoping to grow through the support of players.

Movie, Screenshots & Concept Art

Youtube Movie - here
Screenshots - here
Concept Art - here

More Information - Offical Website, Developer Blog

Finally, a piece of concept art in the body of this post:

Inspire May Update

Drew Robson — 2007-05-26T08:42:58+00:00

This is the May update for the game Inspire. Inspire is a 3D platformer which was originally planned to be an MMO. This post will briefly outline the development progress for this month. If there is anything that gains your interest, please use the comment system, contact me via my profile or visit the development blog.

The major update this month has been a change of direction multiplayer / server wise. Inspire was initially planned to be a traditional MMO world, but after a review of my technology and business plan I decided a change was in order.

The change was to a Diablo 2 style lobby, with persistent game levels (zones). If a level gets too full, another instance is spawned. 'Heroic / Nightmare' mode levels can also be spawned for hardcore players.

There is a master server process which handles the lobby connections, account and character creation, level spawning and load balancing. Zone processes can then be balanced across other servers.

Another major feature is the new control system. Inspire uses the Advanced Camera resource, and after some user testing, I decided that the traditional MMO movement wasn't friendly enough when running over thin beams. There is a lot of these in my DIF architecture. So I implemented the Player Movement with Separate Camera resource. Which works almost perfectly, there is still a problem with the camera damping putting movement off. W and S moves away / towards the camera, A and D moves left and right. I'm hoping to extend this system to work with a gamepads thumbstick.

Cel Shading has been added to DTS objects. I'm also writing some code to have circular / arc health and stamina bars. Combat is currently being reviewed.

Inspire has:
- State / Goal based AI
- Collection, Crafting and Building mechanics
- Persistent Avatars
- Singular Inventory, Personal Bank
- Now uses AFX
- Capturable Hotspots, Bounce and Teleport Pads
- Defense Towers
- And More!

Finally, the game has reached the stage where I cannot realistically release it without the funding for an art overhaul, server hosting and other production costs, which means I have the fun task of looking for this.

Thanks for reading.

Inspire - 3D sidescroller MMO

Drew Robson — 2007-04-24T01:09:06+00:00

This is my first GG blog post for Dream Games Contest.

Inspire is a 3D platformer, with a fixed 'sidescroll' camera, built on TGE and Dream Games MMOKit. It is not going to be a true MMORPG, rather a series of zones (reset every few weeks) with persistent character elements. It is MMO by definition of 'more than 100 logged in simultaneously'.

The development philosophy is 'keep it simple', since I'm the main developer, and MMOs are traditionally huge projects. The aim is to focus on fun first, by distilling common MMO elements into their basic form, and adding some more innovative elements which I feel need to be given a chance.

Being multiplayer, I feel the game should facilitate people to play together, and not segregate them. Inspire won't have traditional levels, experience points or classes. Rather, a freeform feat system allows players to tailor their avatar to the situation and their preferences.

The core gameplay consists of combat, collection and crafting. Basic combat plays out like Tower Defense, with streams of monsters capturing nodes on the map. Fighting is based on standard MMO hotkey abilities, ala WoW. Various collectible items are scattered across the zone, and monsters also drop them, for anyone to pick up. There will be a number of ladders to compete on, and badges to collect. Weapons, Armour and Items are crafted from resources collected or dropped by monsters. The majority of the game items will come from crafting.

Inspire will be free to play but revenue will come from micropayments and special items.

The cliched backstory:

Demons overran the continents of the world. The remenants of the human kingdoms, helped by the divine Phoenix, escaped to airborne structures floating in the clouds above. The demons made portals to invade the humans' new refuge. Join with other warriors to repel the invasion, collect resources to craft mighty weapons and armour. Collect the ancient relics to restore your immortal king to his former glory.

Links:
Official Site
Developer Journal

Screenshots from a tech demo:

Thanks for reading.