Torpedo - a go go

Ben Wilder — 2007-01-07T20:05:24+00:00

The girlfriend has gone home to see her family in Australia for a few weeks. So i've had a little time
to do the things considered 'naughty' when she's around. Namely:

Drinking in the bathroom.
Waking up to DVD menu music every morning
Playing around with Torque

Oh the glamour!

But on with the update (see previous plan for game idea):

With some VERY placeholder art in place for my submarine multiplayer game, i have been delving into Ken
Finneys excellent book and actually getting my hands dirty with some script!

What have i achieved then? and where did i run into problems?

1) I now have a test server (based on FPS starter kit) that clients can connect to (both on the LAN and through my pix firewall from the internet.

This highlighted a number of issues, as many forum posts have detailed, it's common amongst newbies to
assume everything works well until tested under a true client server scenario.. so i have had to
understand a little more of the client -> server messaging. Kens book is great for this, as well as

TDN.

2) The submarines now fire torpedos that cause damage to other players

This caused a little fun, due to my player object being a flyingvehicle:

%player = new FlyingVehicle(submarine) {
dataBlock = submarine;
client = %this;

meaning

%obj.getDamageState()

was required not

%obj.getState()

Old TGE forum posts quickly showed me the error of my ways here!

3) The submarines can ping and the sound attenuates nicely

Lots of fun here working out how sounds on the server and client differ!

4) My Sonar implementation is getting underway

Very early stages and really just me working out what is possible without having to modify the C++
source code. Currently i am experimenting with the following:

player sounds a ping which plays in 3D
Server sends back a delimited list of all other client positions.
Client will then perform some calculations and then briefly give the user an idea of opponents location

How is the gameplay shaping up then? Well it's getting there, since visibility will be fairly low, i
will need a method of locating other players. This will be done by sonar. Currently players can sound a
ping, which can be heard in their locality by other players. The ping will show them briefly the rough
positions of other players.

The benefit of pinging therefore, will be to get an angle on where your opponents are, however when you
ping, it will be heard in 3D and will assist your opponents in finding you!

Next areas to explore:

Death / blow up animation for the submarines
score board gui
A basic map based sonar display
Reduce the frequency with which torpedos can be fired
Reduce the frequency with which pings can be sounded
Creation of animated sea creature model and have it follow a path

Will keep you posted!

Learning curve... my eyes!!!

Ben Wilder — 2006-12-03T19:47:07+00:00

Ola peeps,

Thought i'd doc / blog my progress with TGE, may go some way to keeping me involved and interested!

A little about me:

Skills:

Developer: C#, VB, Perl, SQL ..and all sorts of scripting languages
Admin: Windows server, Fedora, All sorts of Dbs etc

Game programming skills:

Spectrum 128K (feel the power)
Easy Amos on the Amiga

Gamer profile:

Exceptionally low boredom threshold when it comes to games (where's the gameplay these days?)

Stop sniggering. The speccy ruled! But that's really it - no game programming background to speak of!

So i stumbled across TGE and garage games, thought "what the hell" and bought it, with the intention of having a tinker to see if it was the sort of product i could actually get on board with and create something.

And yes indeed it is. Rather a learning curve. I think the amount of resources is fantastic - but there is a distinct lack of tutorial resource for those that have followed the getting started turorial and want to progress to the next stage. Having said this, i did buy the superb "Game programmers guide to Torque" and it goes a long way in helping!

What i have learnt so far is this:

Fiddle - Tweak, delete and test, it's the only way to really start understanding how TGE works
Backup - I backup every 30 mins, trust me if your new to TGE.... backup up your work often
Gui editing - Fear it. You'll mess it up, and if you haven't got backups.. you'll cry.
Art assets - Unless you have a mate who's good with Photoshop and Max (or Gimp and Blender), you gotta do it yourself!

Enough rambling... what am i creating?

Something FUN.

I haven't the time to spend a year creating the finest textures / models / audio known to gamerkind and i don't have a team of 20 highly qualified game industry nuts. I have me, and most evenings a can of Cider, a rather understanding girlfriend and the telephone number of a very reputable local pizza delivery franchise.

So.. it's a sub game. I've put about 40 hours behind it so far from purchasing TGE and boy is it fun :)

Here's the skinny:

Game concept:

Underwater submarine scenario
Mulitplayer deathmatch style with a twist
Atmospheric without oodles of natty art (yes that IS possible)
Players use submarines, with a focus on control of their vehicle as well as trigger finger
Simple random power-ups / bonuses that don't make player capabilities too uneven but do add some spice
Simple graphics, relying more on entertaining game play than fancy art!

Tools:

TGE - game engine
Photoshop - art
Soundforge / Cooledit pro - audio
Milkshape - 3D modelling
Scrumpy Jack Cider - relief
www.slayradio.org - C64 remix radio ... the ultimate in geek

Intesting TGE bits so far:

Easier to do an underwater game not underwater! Have used plenty of fog and tweaked the sky / sun parameters
Needed to buy and download the Warsparrow content pack to figure out how flying vehicles with weapon mounts were done in milkshape! (awesome - purchased, downloaded, read through and fully functioning submarine model created within a few hours!)

Here's what it looks like so far:

Keep you posted.

Blog for Ben Wilder at GarageGames.com

Torpedo - a go go

Learning curve... my eyes!!!