Game Development Community

New release of vSide

by Orion Elenzil · in Torque Game Engine · 07/30/2008 (11:59 am) · 0 replies

vSide has just released Beta 6!

vSide is a Massively Multiplayer Online World for teens, centered on partying with your friends.
It's based on TGE 1.3.5, although with some fairly significant modifications here and there.


new user-facing stuff:

Apartments
--------------

* LGA Tower - a new, larger apartment.
Users in vSide own their own apartment, customizing the surfaces, choosing YouTube videos, placing furniture, etc, etc, and with Beta 6, there's a new apartment to own. LGATower is a much larger apartment than others, allowing users to build wild environments.

* Multiple layouts per apartment
Your apartment can now have three different layouts instead of just one

* Door Codes
You can restrict access to your apartment by setting a DoorCode. Throw private parties!

* Tons more surface materials and furniture for apartments, including customizable picture frames of your friends.


Games
---------

* Sumo! There's now a Sumo Wrestling Hall, where you wear a sumo suit and enter sumo combat!

* The Grind - a virtual arcade game you can place in your apartment. It's got the gameplay of a classic puzzle game, but the screen is a projected hologram so your friends can spectate.

* Other casual, open-ended gameplay enablers.

Shopping & Clothes
-------------------------

* Two new clothing shops and fashion lines: Modz-Podz and Kawaii, and additional gothic clothing and furnishings will be released each week.


First User Experience
---------------------------

* Not so exciting for existing users perhaps, but important for vSide as a product.
We've streamlined our first user experience by letting you design your avatar's initial look on the web, and making the introductory "Gateway" world even more streamlined and fun.


Under The Hood
--------------------

* Naturally the usual bugfixes and general improvements.

* We reduced the size of our installer by about 70MB by baking in only tiny versions of our textures, and dynamically downloading the full-size versions as needed.

* A technique to capture high-quality images of players complete with transparency allowed us to automatically generate the hundreds of images needed to "design" your avatar on the website, such as these:
www.vside.com/images/start/paperdolls/f_Corrugated_Caramel_Tank_Skinny%20Jeans.pngwww.vside.com/images/start/paperdolls/f_Corrugated_Caramel_Cocktail%20Dress_Skinny%20Jeans.pngwww.vside.com/images/start/paperdolls/f_Pigtails_Caramel_Sailor%20Uniform_Skinny%20Jeans.pngwww.vside.com/images/start/paperdolls/f_Pigtails_Ivory_Sailor%20Uniform_Skinny%20Jeans.png

some screenies:
the new kawaii store with it's t-shirt-flinging octopus!
elenzil.com/vside/beta6/kawaii.jpg
kids getting crazy in the sumo ring!
elenzil.com/vside/beta6/sumo.jpg
playing The Grind in a dark alleyway..
elenzil.com/vside/beta6/thegrind.jpg
the materials and surfaces browser
elenzil.com/vside/beta6/surfaces.jpg