Indie game development: Pat's news.
June 4, 2009
Since the last week-end I have started to fill the
coopordiequake2 SVN
at SourceForge.
The repository was initialized with the id Software Quake 2 GPL source code
version
3.21.
I have committed the code and data for the coopordie
0.6
version from February 13, 2008. I have also added some little change I've already
made and that will be released on next version.
The source code include a project file for
Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
which can be downloaded for free.
There is currently no version for Linux, be patient

.
Unofficial dll are prohibited on coopordie.com except for my
betatest
account. If you are a programmer interested by dll modifications, please,
contact me, I will try to create a sort of testing group.
1 Comments
March 27, 2009
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.
2 Comments
March 10, 2009
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.
0 Comments
February 17, 2009
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.
2 Comments
October 10, 2008
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.