Deo

Greetings, Torque developers!
It's been a long time since I posted my last blog. This time I want to talk about my game and what we actually managed to produce using this great game engine - Torque 3D. May be most of you are already familiar with my new game called "Deo". It's amazing how people are asking me "what engine did you use?", "is that Unity?" and when I say "No, this is Torque 3D" most of them can't believe it. Yes, this is a heavy modified T3D and what we did was to transform the FirstPerson project into ThirdPerson project.

Everything started with an idea to create an anime platformer game in the spirit of the classical action adventure console titles. For that purpose we created colorful adventurous levels arranged in 5 worlds:

mountains - aquatic world - winter(snow) world - lava world - dark castle

We wanted to achieve astonishing level atmospheres and created different kind of levels varying from castles, mountain tops to lava and aquatic environments. The whole game is about dynamical game play, the player has the freedom to explore in some very huge levels and find hidden areas, the input is very sensitive and enriched with many actions such as acceleration, slow/fast run, small/big jump, normal fire/ big fire, gliding and others.
Another interesting feature about Deo is that the game has a full controller support (you can play the game with joystick/gamepad). In Deo there is an acceleration button which on held down causes the player to run faster and jump higher. The jump button has a double function - if the player is on the ground on pressed you jump, if the player is in the air on held down you glide, on released - you fall. Another interesting input is the fire button. You can use it to throw seven small fireballs or hold the button down to form a big fireball, which you can throw on releasing the fire button.
All these action features make Deo a game where you can get good at.



In fact Deo is a very complex project involving a lot of additionally created sub-systems such as player behaviour and camera. The camera is may be the most complex part of the game and it's diservedly called "the heart of the game". Deo's camera system uses complex movement algorithms and the camera chooses and combines the most appropriate ones based on obstacles and the player's situation in the world.
Below I have listed some details about what is used in Deo:


Visuals:
- Light pre-pass deferred renderer
- Soft Particles
- Shaders: HLSL injection system. Custom shading for many objects.
- Parallel-Split shadow maps
- Lightmapping
- Reflection and Refraction buffers
- Per-Pixel volumetric fog
- Post effects (glow pass, edge anti-aliasing, ...)
- Rain, snow, lightings,...
- Projectiles, debris.

Animation:
- Robust composite animation system
- Blend animation
- Skeletal animation system
- UV animation
- IFL animation

AI:
- Behaviour tree controller
- Path navigation
- Obstacle avoidance

GUI:
- Sprite rendering
- IFL animation
- Animation controller

PLAYER:
- Dynamic collision detection
- Precise stepping logic
- Input prediction
- Controlled by 5 threads. Each thread is responsible for animation of specific bones.
- Custom physics simulation, working at 160 Hz

CAMERA:
- State machine
- Dual container detection
- Common and partial visibility tests
- Dynamic collision detection against walls
- Collision locking detection
- Breadcrumb trail navigation on run time generated virtual curves
- Movable focus point
- Elastic camera controller
- Input prediction
- Transformation warping for smooth operation


Here is the place to mention what an incredible tool PureLight is. It was used for the purpose of baking lightmaps for the level design. I think it's the best lightmap making tool on the market!

I would also like to express my gratitude to Lucky Lion Studios for the incredible soundtrack. Its founder Andrew Riley is a great composer and it was pleasure to work with him.

You can learn more about Deo at its home page : Deo home page

Now Deo is also in Steam Greenlight and if you like the game I'll be glad if you support the project! Support this game in Steam Greenlight

Thank you for reading!