Plan for Eric Roberts
by Eric Roberts · 08/19/2005 (7:44 pm) · 4 comments
This being my first .plan / blog I'll start off with introducing the development team and myself, our background, the game we're currently working on, and developments underway...
We are Entelechynt Design. We make games. And we don't have a domain/hosting yet... it's somewhere on the TODO list.
We are a team composed of 3 brothers. I, myself am a Computer Engineering student, and I'm therefore in charge of all programming/technical related tasks. Ultimately I get the last say when it comes to design (because I'd have to be the one implimenting it). But I try to stay as flexable as possible. I am the middle child.
The oldest, Chris, is in charge of music, sound, artwork, and design.
The yonger, Kevin, is in charge of artwork, sound, as well as design and does contribute to the music from time to time.
We've already sucessfully completed a game. I personally wrote the whole engine myself, using DirectDraw (2 or 3 years ago). It's currently locked away on a hard drive somewhere. It's called Concussion Kings. It was similar to Brain Child Design's Jump n' Bump (which still an amazing game). You set the frag limit (or none at all), select which powerups would spawn, then choose an arena, then spawn the players in the game. Up to four players could play in an arena, 2 on keyboard, 1 on mouse, and 1 joystick. The idea was to ram your opponent off the edge of arena (fall off the bottom of the screen), and whoever was last to touch them before they went into the abyss was awarded a point. People who landed on your head had no air control, so you could literally bounce someone on your head off the edge as well. So it became a game of trying to jump over being rammed, and not being bounced off someone's head into the abyss in the process. There was also a slew of different powerups.
For me the fun factor of the game lasted about... oh 2 hours. Maybe. But my brothers protest it's still a fun game. But there's a reason why has no one has heard about it...
It was working when we decided to halt development. Months later when I last tried to play it - a bug snuck in where some sort of message box would pop up on exit. I still have no idea about:
a) How it got there.
b) How to get rid of it.
Maybe I'll get back to it someday and actually manage to find the bug, get bandwidth, and then distribute the game for free. But until that day I'll keep in storage.
So we've moved on to using TGE! And here I am to discuss our next project - Android Arena.
All .plans should include a picture - I'm convinced. Here is a picture very early prototype version of Android Arena.
So what is this game all about?
It's a fps/3rd person action/arcade/adventure game. A tad vague? You bet. Gameplay will be discussed in a minute.
The story - as much as I want to reveal for now.
You are an Android named Andy. Designed by an unknown race, you are the pinnacle of design in every aspect for being the ultimate weapon. Your intelligence is vastly superior to anything unlike the universe has ever seen. You are put to the test.
You are thrown into arenas far and wide to test your ability to think, out manouver, out run, and out last all of your opponents. You are constantly being watched...
And that's all I say about the story for now. Until the game is made, you can see how it all unfolds ;).
The gameplay is mainly focused on single player. As you progress through the arenas/tests you recieve upgrades to your design which helps in passing the next set of tests, and so forth. You only have two weapons. Your melee combat skills (your fists). And a gun. Basically your right arm turns into a cannon. But both have lots of abilities atrributed to them. Lots of room for variation.
In the picture shown above we have our first enemy we've created. They hurt me pretty good too (it's hard to see but I'm down to 60.20%) But there's still lots to do.
Here's what's on the done list:
- Layout of the menu
- A Single Player Profile system
- A Basic Enemy system -> needs to be improved
- A Basic enemy (see picture above) - these guys fly up to a certain distance, then swoop down to give you a good smack.
- Updated player movement specilities relating to our game (like charing up for a jump).
- Lots of other nifty engine modifications (stuff you wouldn't be able to see in the screen shot).
- A nifty custom font (see the picture to see the numbers in action).
- Designs for other enemies in the works
Here's on the schedual for stuff to do:
- Fighting back! Still need to figure out a good melee combat system, and shooting in a necessity too.
- Improved enemy system
- Updated HUD / GUI
- More enemies, and art content in general.
- Other gameplay specifics
Here's our major setbacks:
- We can't find ANY docs for the blender exporter, and DTS exporting is a huge pain (as my brothers have informed me). And being as budget as we are, I don't want to shell out for 3ds max or maya (nor could I afford to)
- No documentation on client side interpolation and warping. This is a huge bottleneck for having lots of enemies on the screen (according to the profiler).
- No forcefields!? What?! This was a big design aspect for Android Arena, and I knew they were in Tribes 2. Only recently have I discovered they've been stripped out, and not working. This was a very, very, unpleasent surprise. This happened with AI as well, but I seem to be managing pretty well, so far...
- And of my own fault, games. The reason why I want to make games is because I play them. And that will be either be the reason why this game gets done - or bombs big time. I need to stop playing as much as I do.
Development has been really slow, and I find myself tinkering more with the engine than in script. I always look to see if I can do something in script first before having to go into the code and change something for myself. I like scripting. It feels so much safer knowing that what you're calling from script works. But that doesn't happen when you work with the engine, and have to expose it to script - nosiree, you have to worry about everything...
Ah well.
So that's it! The first .plan. Expect to hear more from us in the future.
- Eric
We are Entelechynt Design. We make games. And we don't have a domain/hosting yet... it's somewhere on the TODO list.
We are a team composed of 3 brothers. I, myself am a Computer Engineering student, and I'm therefore in charge of all programming/technical related tasks. Ultimately I get the last say when it comes to design (because I'd have to be the one implimenting it). But I try to stay as flexable as possible. I am the middle child.
The oldest, Chris, is in charge of music, sound, artwork, and design.
The yonger, Kevin, is in charge of artwork, sound, as well as design and does contribute to the music from time to time.
We've already sucessfully completed a game. I personally wrote the whole engine myself, using DirectDraw (2 or 3 years ago). It's currently locked away on a hard drive somewhere. It's called Concussion Kings. It was similar to Brain Child Design's Jump n' Bump (which still an amazing game). You set the frag limit (or none at all), select which powerups would spawn, then choose an arena, then spawn the players in the game. Up to four players could play in an arena, 2 on keyboard, 1 on mouse, and 1 joystick. The idea was to ram your opponent off the edge of arena (fall off the bottom of the screen), and whoever was last to touch them before they went into the abyss was awarded a point. People who landed on your head had no air control, so you could literally bounce someone on your head off the edge as well. So it became a game of trying to jump over being rammed, and not being bounced off someone's head into the abyss in the process. There was also a slew of different powerups.
For me the fun factor of the game lasted about... oh 2 hours. Maybe. But my brothers protest it's still a fun game. But there's a reason why has no one has heard about it...
It was working when we decided to halt development. Months later when I last tried to play it - a bug snuck in where some sort of message box would pop up on exit. I still have no idea about:
a) How it got there.
b) How to get rid of it.
Maybe I'll get back to it someday and actually manage to find the bug, get bandwidth, and then distribute the game for free. But until that day I'll keep in storage.
So we've moved on to using TGE! And here I am to discuss our next project - Android Arena.
All .plans should include a picture - I'm convinced. Here is a picture very early prototype version of Android Arena.
So what is this game all about?
It's a fps/3rd person action/arcade/adventure game. A tad vague? You bet. Gameplay will be discussed in a minute.
The story - as much as I want to reveal for now.
You are an Android named Andy. Designed by an unknown race, you are the pinnacle of design in every aspect for being the ultimate weapon. Your intelligence is vastly superior to anything unlike the universe has ever seen. You are put to the test.
You are thrown into arenas far and wide to test your ability to think, out manouver, out run, and out last all of your opponents. You are constantly being watched...
And that's all I say about the story for now. Until the game is made, you can see how it all unfolds ;).
The gameplay is mainly focused on single player. As you progress through the arenas/tests you recieve upgrades to your design which helps in passing the next set of tests, and so forth. You only have two weapons. Your melee combat skills (your fists). And a gun. Basically your right arm turns into a cannon. But both have lots of abilities atrributed to them. Lots of room for variation.
In the picture shown above we have our first enemy we've created. They hurt me pretty good too (it's hard to see but I'm down to 60.20%) But there's still lots to do.
Here's what's on the done list:
- Layout of the menu
- A Single Player Profile system
- A Basic Enemy system -> needs to be improved
- A Basic enemy (see picture above) - these guys fly up to a certain distance, then swoop down to give you a good smack.
- Updated player movement specilities relating to our game (like charing up for a jump).
- Lots of other nifty engine modifications (stuff you wouldn't be able to see in the screen shot).
- A nifty custom font (see the picture to see the numbers in action).
- Designs for other enemies in the works
Here's on the schedual for stuff to do:
- Fighting back! Still need to figure out a good melee combat system, and shooting in a necessity too.
- Improved enemy system
- Updated HUD / GUI
- More enemies, and art content in general.
- Other gameplay specifics
Here's our major setbacks:
- We can't find ANY docs for the blender exporter, and DTS exporting is a huge pain (as my brothers have informed me). And being as budget as we are, I don't want to shell out for 3ds max or maya (nor could I afford to)
- No documentation on client side interpolation and warping. This is a huge bottleneck for having lots of enemies on the screen (according to the profiler).
- No forcefields!? What?! This was a big design aspect for Android Arena, and I knew they were in Tribes 2. Only recently have I discovered they've been stripped out, and not working. This was a very, very, unpleasent surprise. This happened with AI as well, but I seem to be managing pretty well, so far...
- And of my own fault, games. The reason why I want to make games is because I play them. And that will be either be the reason why this game gets done - or bombs big time. I need to stop playing as much as I do.
Development has been really slow, and I find myself tinkering more with the engine than in script. I always look to see if I can do something in script first before having to go into the code and change something for myself. I like scripting. It feels so much safer knowing that what you're calling from script works. But that doesn't happen when you work with the engine, and have to expose it to script - nosiree, you have to worry about everything...
Ah well.
So that's it! The first .plan. Expect to hear more from us in the future.
- Eric
About the author
#2
Best of luck :)
08/20/2005 (10:41 am)
Sounds like you have a good start (with some set backs, but at least there aren't that many!). For hosting, i've been using downdoggy as they're cheap, have great security as well as good hosting. ns.downdoggy.com if you want to check them out.Best of luck :)
#3
Blender Documentation
Video Tutorials
Nigel's Blender/Torque videos Checkout the Blender art forum here at GG.
Webhosting:
Check out Lypha for web hosting.
08/20/2005 (2:23 pm)
Blender:Blender Documentation
Video Tutorials
Nigel's Blender/Torque videos Checkout the Blender art forum here at GG.
Webhosting:
Check out Lypha for web hosting.
#4
@David
I was referring to the Blender DTS Exporter docs that apparently were hosted at some point - but the link got broken. But apparently it'll make it's way to TDN. Thanks for your time for posting the links though.
And Lypha looks like a great hosting service - I'm suprised I didn't run into that myself with all of the googling I've done. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Eric
08/22/2005 (8:14 am)
Thanks all.@David
I was referring to the Blender DTS Exporter docs that apparently were hosted at some point - but the link got broken. But apparently it'll make it's way to TDN. Thanks for your time for posting the links though.
And Lypha looks like a great hosting service - I'm suprised I didn't run into that myself with all of the googling I've done. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Eric
Torque Owner John Rockefeller