Xeno Versus: Space Melee
by Chris Jorgensen · in Torque Game Builder · 10/10/2006 (8:41 am) · 64 replies
I'm going to post these screenshots in a blog entry, but I thought I'd put them in here first. These are a few screenshots taken last night from my game "Xeno Versus", which is a Star Control Melee / Space War clone that I've been working on for the past 7 months in my spare time.
Some of the visuals (the fog overlay, the particle effects) are temp placeholders, but I thought it'd be fun to share what I'm working on.
The game has three zoom levels. While the zoom (and camera position) are still being tweaked, the basic idea is that I want to keep all ships visible at all times without constant zooming.
Edit: Hmmm... these are slightly too wide for the forum. Dang. You'll have to scroll to see the sidebar I guess. :(
Zoom level 1:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom1.jpg
Zoom level 2:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom2.jpg
Zoom level 3:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom3.jpg
Obviously my AI right now thinks hte most brilliant strategy is to just run into its target. ;) Anyway, lots of work to do. I suppose I'll update that blog in a minute. :)
Some of the visuals (the fog overlay, the particle effects) are temp placeholders, but I thought it'd be fun to share what I'm working on.
The game has three zoom levels. While the zoom (and camera position) are still being tweaked, the basic idea is that I want to keep all ships visible at all times without constant zooming.
Edit: Hmmm... these are slightly too wide for the forum. Dang. You'll have to scroll to see the sidebar I guess. :(
Zoom level 1:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom1.jpg
Zoom level 2:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom2.jpg
Zoom level 3:
www.xenoclone.com/images/xv_zoom3.jpg
Obviously my AI right now thinks hte most brilliant strategy is to just run into its target. ;) Anyway, lots of work to do. I suppose I'll update that blog in a minute. :)
About the author
Owner of Cascadia Games LLC
#42
Great game, you must have a great team!
Things I like:
Dynamic Combat
Many different types of ships, all different
Art Style/Implementation
Simply . . . Awesome gameplay.
Things I didn't like:
The last ship of my enemy's fleet employed some kind strategy where he just went to a corner of the screen and teleported to 4 different points in the map. It really disoriented me and made me angry.
Another enemy was able to sense every single power up that appeared and made a beeline for it. Thus I had him down to half health 3 or 4 times and he got all the way back up to 100%
The ships could stand to have some more animation. Easy thing to say, I know it would be hard to animate all of them more, but right now they seem static.
Overall:
Amazing job my friend, keep up the good work, I'm really impressed!
11/25/2007 (4:38 pm)
Chris,Great game, you must have a great team!
Things I like:
Dynamic Combat
Many different types of ships, all different
Art Style/Implementation
Simply . . . Awesome gameplay.
Things I didn't like:
The last ship of my enemy's fleet employed some kind strategy where he just went to a corner of the screen and teleported to 4 different points in the map. It really disoriented me and made me angry.
Another enemy was able to sense every single power up that appeared and made a beeline for it. Thus I had him down to half health 3 or 4 times and he got all the way back up to 100%
The ships could stand to have some more animation. Easy thing to say, I know it would be hard to animate all of them more, but right now they seem static.
Overall:
Amazing job my friend, keep up the good work, I'm really impressed!
#43
I have committed fully to the split screen idea. And with it I think I'm going to build in support for multiple resolutions, simply because 4-way split screen is fairly crammed on an 800x600 resolution. Here's a pic of the HUD in progress:
I think it's fairly clear that a modestly sized HUD takes up a lot of screen space at the low resolution. SO, that will be for sure an update soon-to-come and much needed. Especially since I'm heavily leaning toward doing a Torque-X port when finished.
The "real world" outside of games has been busy, but I'm still hoping to get a late beta for people to try out before releasing the final version. :)
12/17/2007 (11:29 am)
Thanks Kevin. I'm working on addressing those very things you don't like --with exception to the ships.... that's just going to be one of those "for the sequel" things, I think. I have committed fully to the split screen idea. And with it I think I'm going to build in support for multiple resolutions, simply because 4-way split screen is fairly crammed on an 800x600 resolution. Here's a pic of the HUD in progress:
I think it's fairly clear that a modestly sized HUD takes up a lot of screen space at the low resolution. SO, that will be for sure an update soon-to-come and much needed. Especially since I'm heavily leaning toward doing a Torque-X port when finished.
The "real world" outside of games has been busy, but I'm still hoping to get a late beta for people to try out before releasing the final version. :)
#44
12/17/2007 (12:10 pm)
Are you going to add arrows around the center of the rings to point you in the direction of your enemies? Otherwise it might be difficult to find someone.
#45
12/17/2007 (1:19 pm)
Oops... forgot to mention that! Yes, probably arrows or a mini-map.... mostly depends on which one takes less screen space and works better. There's also a player-controlled zoom... which will help you pick a zoom level that you're comfortable steering with, while also giving you a sufficiently large view area. :)
#46
12/18/2007 (2:23 pm)
I can't wait to play the latest beta, Chris. I have to change my computer clock to play the current one!
#48
01/23/2008 (9:42 pm)
Yup. It's getting there... slowly. I'd hoped for a January Beta 2.0. But it's looking like it'll be February at the earliest. I've made some significant changes/cuts to get it in a finish-able state, as well as making it easier to pick up and play. But I'm trying not to spam this thread or the GG blogs until I'm at another milestone. You can follow the development blog, however, if you're interested. :) 
#49
this is an impressive TGB project. How does the ship graphics for the game and how are they done? Handdrawn or 3D rendered?
Michael
01/23/2008 (11:24 pm)
Hi Chris,this is an impressive TGB project. How does the ship graphics for the game and how are they done? Handdrawn or 3D rendered?
Michael
#50
I hope to get back to work on XVS soon. Just got a new job and am in the process of buying a house.... plus, am trying to write thesis paper. So TGB-time has been sucked away, for sure.
01/31/2008 (2:12 pm)
Thanks Michael. I've drawn the ships in Adobe Photoshop. In fact, everything but the characters are 100% made in Photoshop. The characters, however, are actually hand-drawn, scanned, then colored in Photoshop. :)I hope to get back to work on XVS soon. Just got a new job and am in the process of buying a house.... plus, am trying to write thesis paper. So TGB-time has been sucked away, for sure.
#51
Sorry to derail ;)
01/31/2008 (6:43 pm)
Thesis? What are you writing? I just finished mine titled "The Role and Interpretation of Information Disclosure in the Australian Capital Market". It should be published early this year in an Australian journal.Sorry to derail ;)
#52
I haven't really come up with a title yet. A conference paper, however, that's based on the research is called "Intrinsic Fault Recovery for Aging Effects in Embedded Systems" and will be at the World Congress on Computational Intelligence 2008. Basically, we've done some initial exploration into how to construct and use evolvable hardware in a real-life application (rather than just simulation). So the thesis is about the physical setup, the code I wrote, the tests I ran, the challenges I faced, the implications of the results, and so forth.... :)
02/01/2008 (4:15 pm)
I don't mind if you derail. I tend to worry more about being a forum hog. This thread's been on here a long time and has a lot of posts!I haven't really come up with a title yet. A conference paper, however, that's based on the research is called "Intrinsic Fault Recovery for Aging Effects in Embedded Systems" and will be at the World Congress on Computational Intelligence 2008. Basically, we've done some initial exploration into how to construct and use evolvable hardware in a real-life application (rather than just simulation). So the thesis is about the physical setup, the code I wrote, the tests I ran, the challenges I faced, the implications of the results, and so forth.... :)
#53
Razor
Scarab
06/30/2008 (9:17 pm)
Hey guys.... wow, it's been a while since my last post. I'll just toss out that the aforementioned paper won Best Paper at that conference... yay! And now onto some actual XVS news. First, we've started up work again. The character art keeps rolling in and it just gets better and better. We've also got the art for two new levels done... and they look really good. As a result, I decided that the ship art needed to be higher resolution. So I'm reworking them from 62x46 res to 128x128. First results below, in old-new order:Razor
Scarab
#54
07/01/2008 (5:57 am)
The new artwork looks great!
#55
I've had to make a few tough decisions in order to simplify development. Those include:
The next pics I'll post should have the finished HUD and some more ships. ;D
11/18/2008 (9:20 am)
With three games released this year, I've turned my attention back to this. For starters, I rebooted the code from scratch with great results. It's only been about a week back on the project, but it's already got the basics in place. Here are a few pics:
I've had to make a few tough decisions in order to simplify development. Those include:
- 9 ships
- 3 ships per fleet
- 2 players
- 4 levels
- Levels will be boxed in; but all ships will teleport
- Only 1 resolution
The next pics I'll post should have the finished HUD and some more ships. ;D
#56
11/18/2008 (10:19 am)
Lookin' very good! 
#58
-nic
12/10/2008 (10:23 pm)
Looks yummy, who does the art for you? Background, and ships look good, especially the shuttle. I like the directional arrow too.. very nice!-nic
#59
12/11/2008 (4:26 pm)
Thanks for the comments. The art is split up by three people, all in-house, including myself. :)
#60
12/11/2008 (4:38 pm)
3 artists, sounds dangerous! (:cD) 
Torque 3D Owner Chris Jorgensen
Cascadia Games LLC
It seems to work pretty well.
The key feature that makes it work, I think, is that each player can control his own zoom level. I think the next
iteration will have a mini-map (radar) and health bars. I will probably also ditch the energy/health rings around the ships. I don't think those are working!
Update: Okay, now I've got a fixed split screen. :)