Firing on All Cylinders!

With the first piece of my next pack, the Advanced FPS Kit out and sailing, I'm now able to turn my attention to the next piece of the pack. First off however, I want to thank the few who grabbed the first piece of the pack, I honestly felt that the modelling portion of the pack would be the weakest selling point, and you guys made me feel all better about that work, even if I didn't make much, it was still so much fun to put it together for you guys. :)

Before I step into the world of illustrious reveals for part #2, I'd like to share a little piece on what I'm trying to accomplish here. So as many of you know, I've been working with Torque for a very, very, long time (since the Tribes 1 / Tribes 2 days, which is almost at the 10 year mark now (wow)), and I've pulled pretty much 75% - 80% of my total computer programming knowledge out of my modifications to Tribes 2 and these wonderful past few years working on the engine itself, and I have to say right away, that you guys are awesome, and I can't thank you enough for helping me move along my development path. Now, one thing I've always been lacking in terms of my current development is in the audio and music department, and I do have some keyboard experience, but am lacking, a keyboard :D (go figure), which is where my pack development has been hoping to remedy, and I'm currently about 30% there in terms of what I've totaled out from all of my prior packs. So, just a little smile thought, and now I've bored you enough. PART 2!!!!

Next up on the pack release line is the FPS Design & Elements package, and this one's got documentation a plenty. The reason being is the big "punch" of this one comes in the form of a semi-book style document I put together on FPS Design Strategies & Techniques which goes into great depth and detail along the FPS design and development path-line. I pretty much cover anything and everything that felt relevant to designing a good FPS game and give you plenty of pointers to avoid bad design elements and hangups in terms of making a good game.


This translates to something along the likes of this once in game.

Now that picture, you've seen me post a grand total of about four times now over the course of my time here at GarageGames, and now this time around, you're getting one of my more "requested" game systems for first person shooter games. I've included in this package piece a full two weapon + equipment system, and I've coded it up in a fashion where you can simply plug the script in, execute it, and go.

And then there's the "big" piece of this release, which comes in the form of this shiny system:

This is my custom loadout creator GUI, and what makes this special, is that you can easily adjust and modify this without touching a single line of TorqueScript, because this GUI populates completely by means of this:


Of course, like all of my scripts I release, I've provided plenty of documentation if you'd like to spruce it up to your own liking, and you'll quickly find that this can be easily expanded to create a wide variety of loadout customizations. On the server side of things, you can easily adjust the system to enforce game specific loadouts or even restrict certain items from being used with a few lines of code, and I provide a few good application examples in the pack's relevant documentation.

So, I'm hoping to wrap everything up by Thursday and give everything a nice smooth run-through and polishing before releasing it this Friday for $10. And for you few who grabbed my other piece, you'll be happy to know that if you get multiple pack pieces, my system will simply recognize your existing purchase and send you a new key to download both the new parts and the old parts you own. I'm sure this one's got bits and pieces for everyone, and stay tuned, because the Radar is the next element on release deck. :)