Indie game development: Pat's news.

March 27, 2009

Discover Unity 3D

It's funny, but while searching information about Torque3D web capabilities, I've discovered one of its competitors. Unity3D has a very different approach, more targeted at content creators and web developers than traditional coders. It seems to fill the gap between Adobe Shockwave 3D and the Torque Game Engine. I haven't noticed Unity3D before. It was mainly because even if it can produce games for Mac and MS-Windows, the developers' tools were only available for Mac. Since the recent version 2.5 this bug was corrected . The development tools are really professional and polished. It is surely less polyvalent than Torque, but for simple games, it seems easier to handle. Unity3D is natively targeted at web integration. It works on all major web browsers and its plug-in is lightweight. The available works directly playable from the web can speak better, here are a few: The Tropical Paradise demo, a car racing and the cartoony MMO FusionFall.

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March 10, 2009

Back to the garage

Since the start of 2006 I have stopped to use the Torque Game engine. But I've always keep an eye on GarageGames. The interaction between a game and a website has always interested me, so I've watched their web portal InstantAction since the closed beta version. It seems that web integration for games is very popular these days, and not only for traditional casual games. I'm impatient to see what will be the next QuakeLive. Currently the web part of these projects is mainly related to game account, player profile, chat and game lobby. But I'm sure some new features will start to appear with this different manner to play games.

After requested the GarageGames team about InstantAction technology licensing I learned their new Game Engine Torque3D will support basic web publishing options. Playing a Torque based game inside a web browser with easy web interaction is far enough to convince me. But there are lots of other interesting features. The videos from the last Game Developers Conference have finally convinced me. So I've decided to take a more in deep look and I've pre-ordered Torque3D.

One of the things that have really pleased me while coming back to the Torque community is the presence of 3DRT.com. I've always been a fan of Max Shelekhov 3D modeling, and I've purchased several models from him in the past. Seeing his interest to Torque game developers was very cool. All his recent productions are available on DTS format. Having high quality models directly on the native animated models format of Torque Game Engine is a nice plus. That leaves probably presage a future interest on my part.

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February 17, 2009

Doom 3 boss contest: my Imp Boss

The Doom 3 Boss contest is over. My contribution is modest, but I've reached one of my goals: I've learned a lots! My Imp Boss is a sort of a super Archvile with multiple waves of minions.

I have used the open source md5scale.exe utility created by z1corvette to generate a model twice the size of the classic Imp. Due to the use of a bugged md5scale version, I've lost many hours. I have corrected the tool and learned a lot about manipulating the MD5 model format. To the end, I have discovered an updated bug free version, with nearly the same corrections as mine .

After this setback, my main task was about scripting. I have designed the waves of minions for being very configurable from the map editor. I have also created a specific minions, a crawling Imp with only a melee attack. It has a higher movement speed and it jumps to the player more aggressively. I haven't got the time to add a specific attack to the boss, so it only tries to scratch the player when it is enough close to him.

The final result is far from my wish, but dealing with date limit is also part of this type of contest. All this work is available in the The bossimp_9_01.zip file (1.9 Mo). It include a test map with the boss, the md5scale source code, the script files and all needed assets.

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October 10, 2008

Playing with HTTP and content update in doom 3

The first result of my "DOOM 3 exercise" discussed at the Doom3world forum was pointed by PlanetQuake on a news item and a picture of the day.
This example demonstrates the use of an RSS feed and Doom 3 GUI for displaying the PlanetQuake news in-game. Interaction between a game and a website is my hobby horse. In fact, doing it with the DOOM 3 SDK was easier than expected, as all the necessary API was already available.
Of course it's only a first step. Like Doom 3 content files are mostly text based (maps, script...) I'm currently investigating a diff/patch method generated in PHP from a webserver:

• Big data from *.pk4 + small Patch from website = dynamic fresh content.

A WorldServer like COOP or DIE for Quake2 and a login/account system are on my todo list.