PGD Survival
by Robert Fritzen · 01/03/2013 (4:56 pm) · 3 comments
Lots of hard work, and it has finally come to it's conclusion.
It seems like only yesterday that I stepped into the world of Torque 3D for the first time with the idea of presenting my ideas into finalized projects, and I have to say, I could not have been happier with any other choice out there.
The work needed to put together a game that I could call my own had many challenges, especially with big name giants out there holding a firm grip on a large amount of the community, but they too had to start somewhere, and I think that my project was a great example of why one needs to simply try to succeed!
Two months ago, I gave my small sized community the news they were waiting for, that I would be delivering my first completed project, PGD Survival, a zombie FPS on December 27th. I do have to say, making that call at the time was a tricky one, especially with past date calls on old projects that fell apart, and then had to be scrapped. But somehow, I just knew that this project would be the one, and now, I can say that it has indeed finally come to fruition.
PGD Survival is a co-op or solo zombie FPS game, with one simple objective, hold on for as long as you possibly could. I provided a nice small map (shown in the preview) to survive increasingly more difficult odds against on, while doing what I loved to do, working with the engine I started with back in 2004 (Tribes 2).
Getting this project together proved to be a challenging task, especially with my codebase being on T3D 1.2 around the time of the MIT announcement. I thought my idea was going to take an even longer period of time to accomplish due to the migration of all of my code to the new version, but I actually found that to be quite easy. A more difficult challenge came in the final days of the project assembly, as one game stopping problem persisted, the pesky TCPObject issue. I was having migraines from the thing crashing for no apparent reason when sending large amounts of data. I only recently found a very viable solution to the problem, and thankfully one of my past projects had me construct a working patching tool such that I could easily distribute this much needed fix to my problem.
But, now that the problems are behind me, I can look to what lies ahead. I have a small community that I am now working on growing, a released game that is not only fun to play, but also fun to challenge each other on, as my players work to accomplish weapon progression to unlock even more destructive tools in the arsenal, and with my patcher tool, the promise of expansion packs to add more maps and hopefully (when I learn how to do artist stuff), more guns.
All in all, I am proud to be a member of this great community, and to have many great members to help me solve difficult and challenging bugs. And I have to provide my thanks to the GarageGames team, not only for the engine, but for those great art packs (Alien/Zombie) for getting my game the tools it needed to reach even higher grounds.
It seems like only yesterday that I stepped into the world of Torque 3D for the first time with the idea of presenting my ideas into finalized projects, and I have to say, I could not have been happier with any other choice out there.
The work needed to put together a game that I could call my own had many challenges, especially with big name giants out there holding a firm grip on a large amount of the community, but they too had to start somewhere, and I think that my project was a great example of why one needs to simply try to succeed!
Two months ago, I gave my small sized community the news they were waiting for, that I would be delivering my first completed project, PGD Survival, a zombie FPS on December 27th. I do have to say, making that call at the time was a tricky one, especially with past date calls on old projects that fell apart, and then had to be scrapped. But somehow, I just knew that this project would be the one, and now, I can say that it has indeed finally come to fruition.
PGD Survival is a co-op or solo zombie FPS game, with one simple objective, hold on for as long as you possibly could. I provided a nice small map (shown in the preview) to survive increasingly more difficult odds against on, while doing what I loved to do, working with the engine I started with back in 2004 (Tribes 2).
Getting this project together proved to be a challenging task, especially with my codebase being on T3D 1.2 around the time of the MIT announcement. I thought my idea was going to take an even longer period of time to accomplish due to the migration of all of my code to the new version, but I actually found that to be quite easy. A more difficult challenge came in the final days of the project assembly, as one game stopping problem persisted, the pesky TCPObject issue. I was having migraines from the thing crashing for no apparent reason when sending large amounts of data. I only recently found a very viable solution to the problem, and thankfully one of my past projects had me construct a working patching tool such that I could easily distribute this much needed fix to my problem.
But, now that the problems are behind me, I can look to what lies ahead. I have a small community that I am now working on growing, a released game that is not only fun to play, but also fun to challenge each other on, as my players work to accomplish weapon progression to unlock even more destructive tools in the arsenal, and with my patcher tool, the promise of expansion packs to add more maps and hopefully (when I learn how to do artist stuff), more guns.
All in all, I am proud to be a member of this great community, and to have many great members to help me solve difficult and challenging bugs. And I have to provide my thanks to the GarageGames team, not only for the engine, but for those great art packs (Alien/Zombie) for getting my game the tools it needed to reach even higher grounds.
About the author
Illinois Grad. Retired T3D Developer / Pack Dev.
Associate Ron Kapaun
3tdstudios.com
Nice, seems I recall a thread where you were going to quit. Glad to see you didn't! Your game looks interesting and if I had time to play, I would. Alas, I am very busy but, I wanted to say GOOD WORK! Everything adds up to experience, and in the end, experience matters more than anything.
Ron