The Masters Eye - part III - A trailer is born

So here we are. The third part of the blog about the development of our game The Masters Eye. For all those people who have missed the first two blogs I will tell you in short what has going on before.

History

Years and years ago, it must be in the 80's of the last century, after playing games like Red Moon, Dungeon Quest and more of this on my old MSX, I decided that I would like to develop computergames, and especially the kind of games I just mentioned. So I deepened my knowledge on programming, first BASIC is there still anybody out there, who knows what it is,later going on to Assembly. But at that time, the possibilities to build a game I had in mind were very limited, if not impossible without making compromises. So the years were passing by, and the game-development were in the fridge, sometimes coming out when I had some new hardware or ideas, but never getting any further. Then came the directX SDK and I saw some new opportunities to build my dream. Full of energy I started to build my own 3D-engine...> you might guess what happened. After some progress and many fall-backs it all went to the fridge again. Until April last year (2009). I was on a holiday with my wife and kid and we were visiting San Francisco, Ca, USA. As always on a holiday, no matter where we are, I like to visit some of the local bookshops. So it was this time also. I visited the computer department and found a book about making computer games. Somewhere in this book they mentioned Torque as a new and very good engine I'm sorry, but I don't remember what book it was so I decided to take a look at this engine when I was back home again. And so I did. Using a very famous search-engine and landed at the GarageGames site. I browsed through the available engines and stumbled at the T3D beta reduced price. After thinking it over a few days I stepped into it and bought Torque3D pro. Now we are 1 and a half year later and I proudly present the first trailer of our game The Masters Eye No I didn't forgot the link, it's coming later...patience please....

The Masters Eye

As said, I have this idea for a very long time and have tried a few ways to create this, so I know for most things what I want to achieve. The game is not a FPS or a strict RPG, I would like to get a mix where you can develop your character (m/f) throughout the game, not to select a wizard, thief, knight or so. Also would it be nice if the player gets all the freedom of how to play this game he or she likes, I mean, there will not be a predefined plot or way to play this game. Only the first two mission will more or less be plotted, just to get the hang of it, and to get the game on track. Sure there will be plenty of fights (with clubs, swords, crossbows, shields and so on), but the player also needs his or her brains to get somewhere. Allthough they still can kill everybody they see, if they like....

The game.

The game is settled in the world of Ishkandragh. A very nice world with nice people but suffering under evil monks, monsters, hostile orcs and insane lords... The game starts at the moment the player overlooks the valley of Felsgrate. The player has just decided to leave his home high in the mountains to try his luck in the capital. This will be the players first goal (or mission object). when the player finally reaches the capital he or she will be offered a lot of options: go to school, train your skills, go on a quest or go to church if the player decide to follow that path. There will be no specific order to play this game, and many of the missions will be randomized, so that it will be different every time you play. But that point lies in the future, for now there are a lot of things that need to be done, please read on.

The game needs....

So what do I have to build to get this game up and running. I had a clear idea of how the world would look like, the characters, weapons, spells and so on, but I didn't want the player to be able to pick up everything that comes on his/her way. And with the wide variety of items that I am planning to integrate in this game (weapons, ammo, armor, magick, food and other stuff), I needed an inventory system. So I build a system which is attached to the player and every AI in the level. Doing it this way gave me the opportunity to spawn an inventory when an AI gets killed, whereafter the player can decide which of the AI's possessions will be taken.


Main screen of the players inventory.

As you can see I build a tabbed inventory with a dedicated actionmap and keybindings. Because the gameplay continues while the player is busy in the inventory, the player needs the ability to act quickly, he might be under attack.


Weapons inventory.

The player is able to ready 3 weapons, which can be quickly selected during game play.


Magick spells screen.


During game play the player may learn more magick spells. The ability to cast them depends on his education and battle-practice. And as with the weapons, the player can ready 3 spells, quickly select them when needed.

I also needed the ability to interact with the AI in the game, and I don't mean killing. The player must be able to talk to the AI. So after I had seen the ports of the Yack Pack from Sean Rice and Konrad Kiss (thank you both) I bought this and added it to the game, and I must say, it works very well. I added some extras to it.


Talk to the local Innkeeper.


As this game is set in a medieval fantasy world, I also needed a melee fighting system. I would like to thank Sean Rice here, for his perfect resource about this. It works great and it gave me a start in the right direction. It has now a basic functionality, that needs to be extended, but a kill is a kill, isn't it?

Also I needed some AI, so I bought and implemented the Universal AI Starter Kit from Twisted Jenius. Works great and is easily expandable to my future needs.

My biggest problem.

My biggest problem however, was the following. I am a programmer, I am not an artist, so how the h... do I get some models to populate the world, and more. Luckily there are people out there who create these things, so you might recognizing artwork from BrokeAss Games, DexSoft and Even So.


The main character from behind.

The main character is played by Male ACK or Female ACK from BrokeAss. As I said before, the player can play as a male or a female. This is more or less the only thing that needs to be done on character creation. You will learn throughout the game.


A monster (DexSoft Games Elite Orc).

So how does the world looks like? Below are a few images of the first 2 missions or levels or how you would like to call it.

The trailer ;)

So here are the moving images you are looking for.

The future.

Despite all the sad news about winding down and so on, I am certainly continuing using Torque3D for developing this game and possibly more games. For the near future I am planning to release the demo-game in which you can play the first two missions, but it may take a few weeks. Right now I'm busy adding a save/load game option (quicksave/load included), I need to make the models fully compatible with T3D, meaning trigger addition for footsteps/puffs, adding some animations for the melee system, creating inventory images of all the items, completing the dialogues of the key-characters, adding shops, healers and many many more. But I will keep you informed, hopefully here at this place, but certainly on my website.

Happy message.

For the first time in my life I have the feeling that I can fulfill my dream, by creating this game, which has been made possible by the Torque3D engine, editors and all that fancy stuff that is included (not to mention this community which can be a great help). And I thank Steve Acaster for pointing me to Fraps. A wunderful program which I used to create the video.

So to all of you who have made it through here: Thank you and merry christmas and and a happy new year.