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Some alternative games worth checking out

  • In my first and previous post in this game dev log entry, I had written that I wanted to do a game which was a collection of simple retro games. Unity released a new major release (2019.3) while I was putting the initial project together, and I…

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  • Just a test #2. Still working on the new section.

  • So, I got a Commodore 64 when I was in the 4th grade. It came bundled with a Rolf Harris picture building program on casette tape which never loaded properly but from what I could tell by its box cover, you could build pictures from a selection…

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  • (this is just a test, please ignore this entry)

    Here is some of my old work.. the first pic is of a 3d model of a human head I was working on about 2 years ago in 3dsmax, using nurbs. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't model a head with…

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Submitted by souri on
Forum

Just a quick thread on two games that I've found to be quite fascinating and should be a great inspiration for small indie developers. What these games lack in realism they make up for visual style.

http://drivey.com/
A pretty simple (so far) racing game, but the potential is definately there for something really cool. The visual aesthetics are extremely simple yet very effective.

http://www.golfquestionmark.com/
Multiplayer 3D golf game. Again, simple art but it's very stylistic and pretty fun to boot.

Anyway, these games should show what you can do without a huge team of artists.

Submitted by Red 5 on Thu, 11/08/05 - 9:00 PM Permalink

That drivey demo has an interesting style to it.

An amazing achievement for a small (3 person) indie development is Live for Speed.
http://www.liveforspeed.net/

They've managed to turn some heads and earnt the respect some well known big production studios.

Submitted by Kalescent on Fri, 12/08/05 - 2:01 AM Permalink

Project Offset is amazing. Ive been following their progress for quite some time, what these guys have achieved really puts alot of things into perspective.

Submitted by MoonUnit on Fri, 12/08/05 - 3:04 AM Permalink

that project offset is all kinds of cool! i hadnt heard about it before

Submitted by Djenx on Fri, 12/08/05 - 5:38 AM Permalink

Wow! project offset looks fantastic, + full motion blur.... i didn't think we would be seeing that feature in next gen

Submitted by CynicalFan on Fri, 12/08/05 - 6:27 AM Permalink

That ?Project Offset? does look interesting, but ? and it is a big but ? all they show is technology demos not gameplay, what little they do show is nothing more than very basic and contrived scripting ? based on my experienced eye at seeing past the bullshit.

The technology also is not exactly ?cutting-edge? in that it is only current generation (like normal mapping) and not next-generation (like virtual-displacement mapping).

It does make me wonder though, in that FPS RPG?s (like Deus Ex) are usually not as ?pretty? graphically and technology wise than a straight action FPS ? like Doom 3 ? therefore they can get by not having the best graphical features as they rely on story and gameplay to drive the experience ? my preference.

All they need is solid and innovative use of competitive technology, married to said gameplay ? which these guys currently lack completely.

Not as ?wow? for me but I am interested in learning more about their technology and licensing arrangements :).

Submitted by lorien on Fri, 12/08/05 - 9:44 PM Permalink

Needless to say lots of people don't dare make comments about Waco Resurrection [:)] IMHO it makes Escape from Woomera look tame. I've never seen another game where you take out FBI agents... It was on display at acmi for several months (part of a political games exhibition), and those David Koresh helmets are bloody uncomfortable.

Submitted by LiveWire on Fri, 12/08/05 - 10:25 PM Permalink

just watched the new project offset video. agreed, very iompressive what so ew people have done. though the only thing that really impressed me was the full sceen realtime motion blur and particles casting shoft shadows - nice addtions if i do say so myself. other than that it should be noted that the there was next to nothin the the sceens other than two scrippted characters, and small environment, and no backkground. so it's had to guage how much the enging can render. secondly it dosnt look any more ipresive than other next gen engines, so it's nothing strikling new - except of course for one fact: it's been done by only three people! that makes it stand out as an amazing personal achievement, if nothing else.

Submitted by CynicalFan on Sat, 13/08/05 - 2:18 AM Permalink

Yeah, the lack of showing what the engine can do in regards to its limits does tell a lot, but, without all the game code in like AI, any raw tech demo wouldn?t say much at all. I am guessing though, that as these guys have worked on at least one commercial project in the past that they have some experience, and have taken that into consideration when developing the tech to date, so it is probably a bit more robust than the material shows.

And I also think that even with the stated features that make it stand out, that these are still current generation. They may only be appearing at the end of this generation?s life-cycle ? like in the FEAR engine and game ? and will definitely be found at the start of the next generation?s life-cycle, they are still this generation. This will be apparent midway in the next generation?s life-cycle. Regardless, still looks great and is competitive for the reasons in my previous post ? it being an RPG.

But regardless, that is all just tech, I am more interested in gameplay ? one is harder than the other to achieve, much harder ;).

Submitted by CombatWombat on Sat, 13/08/05 - 6:17 AM Permalink

The guys from project offset were part of the team that did "Savage: battle for newerth" which had some interesting gameplay ideas (One person on the team was the commander who plays through an RTS interface, other players build & fight) Like with many online games, the few boneheaded players tended to get in the way of a good game for the other people on the server...

So I'm optimistic that Project Offset will come up with an interesting game even though they're just showing nice tech atm.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 15/08/05 - 1:10 PM Permalink

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

Submitted by LiveWire on Mon, 15/08/05 - 8:07 PM Permalink

i really want to give that a go, unfortunatly i'm not going to be downloading it at home on my dialup, might be time to hit up a mate or two with broadband...

Submitted by Morphine on Mon, 15/08/05 - 11:49 PM Permalink

Project Offset does looking very interesting, even though its short on media (as it would in the early stage of dev) however I am currently downloading the trailer from the site.

It feels LotR's ish to me, but that isn't giving this WIP justice. I'll be eagerly watching what comes of this, and will probably serve a great deal of encouragement for people with their own ideas to work on it and get it out there on show. [:D]

Submitted by souri on Tue, 14/02/06 - 10:36 AM Permalink

Hey, it seems things are going pretty good for Project Offset and the Offset team. Red 5 Studios (comprised of ex-Blizzard developers behind World of Warcraft) are licensing the Offset engine for their MMORPG.

http://www.projectoffset.com/press.html

I know fellow Sumean Rod Green had joined the Project Offset team a while ago, but I didn't know he's employee #4/5 and one of the directors of the company! Good stuff [:)]

http://www.projectoffset.com/team.html

Submitted by CynicalFan on Thu, 16/02/06 - 4:12 AM Permalink

I seem to remember a new studio established by ex-Blizzard team members licensing the Bigword technology for an MMORPG. I also seem to recall it being Red 5. Perhaps they dumped it in favour of Offset or are just using the back-end server technology for this.

Maybe I have it wrong, perhaps someone recalls which studio that was or is willing to do a little looking-into to find out?

Submitted by souri on Sun, 19/02/06 - 11:38 PM Permalink

Hey, this is as cool as hell. This team of four is working "Infinity", a MMO space game inspired by Elite. The universe (solar systems, planets and landscape etc) are all created procedurally. Sure, it's not an original or new idea, but there just haven't been many games in recent years to bother with it (Spore is one notable exception).
Check out the video where you get a fly by from a space station down to a planet and onto a ground fly-by. Really cool stuff. [:)]

[url="http://features.moddb.com/223/?fpage=0"]Interview with the graphics programmer[/url]
[url="http://files.moddb.com/1422/"]Download the video[/url]
[url="http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/"]Infinity website[/url]

Submitted by redwyre on Mon, 20/02/06 - 4:15 AM Permalink

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

I had a go at this, and it is quite interesting. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get into because it's so different.. but after a few goes I think I might actually be able to get the results that I want :)

Submitted by LiveWire on Mon, 20/02/06 - 4:52 AM Permalink

i find i'm always trying to split them up and hook up with the chick, havn't succeeded yet though.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 09/10/06 - 11:19 AM Permalink

Ok, it's another old thread which I'm bringing back up (I think some of the games in this list is still pretty inspirational stuff).

This platformer game is done by one person, and the guy who made it was influenced by some old classic games like Another World and Flashback. The art style of the game is simple, but it looks *fantastic*. The game looks like it's doing something different from your usual platformer as well, with the screen rotating around and objects falling / moving to reveal new paths.

The creator got a grant from the Danish goverment to continue to work on this game, so hopefully it he'll get it done and distributes it online I'd definately buy it!

Limbo website
CG Talk thread
Limbo - an early look

Posted by souri on
Forum

Just a quick thread on two games that I've found to be quite fascinating and should be a great inspiration for small indie developers. What these games lack in realism they make up for visual style.

http://drivey.com/
A pretty simple (so far) racing game, but the potential is definately there for something really cool. The visual aesthetics are extremely simple yet very effective.

http://www.golfquestionmark.com/
Multiplayer 3D golf game. Again, simple art but it's very stylistic and pretty fun to boot.

Anyway, these games should show what you can do without a huge team of artists.


Submitted by Red 5 on Thu, 11/08/05 - 9:00 PM Permalink

That drivey demo has an interesting style to it.

An amazing achievement for a small (3 person) indie development is Live for Speed.
http://www.liveforspeed.net/

They've managed to turn some heads and earnt the respect some well known big production studios.

Submitted by Kalescent on Fri, 12/08/05 - 2:01 AM Permalink

Project Offset is amazing. Ive been following their progress for quite some time, what these guys have achieved really puts alot of things into perspective.

Submitted by MoonUnit on Fri, 12/08/05 - 3:04 AM Permalink

that project offset is all kinds of cool! i hadnt heard about it before

Submitted by Djenx on Fri, 12/08/05 - 5:38 AM Permalink

Wow! project offset looks fantastic, + full motion blur.... i didn't think we would be seeing that feature in next gen

Submitted by CynicalFan on Fri, 12/08/05 - 6:27 AM Permalink

That ?Project Offset? does look interesting, but ? and it is a big but ? all they show is technology demos not gameplay, what little they do show is nothing more than very basic and contrived scripting ? based on my experienced eye at seeing past the bullshit.

The technology also is not exactly ?cutting-edge? in that it is only current generation (like normal mapping) and not next-generation (like virtual-displacement mapping).

It does make me wonder though, in that FPS RPG?s (like Deus Ex) are usually not as ?pretty? graphically and technology wise than a straight action FPS ? like Doom 3 ? therefore they can get by not having the best graphical features as they rely on story and gameplay to drive the experience ? my preference.

All they need is solid and innovative use of competitive technology, married to said gameplay ? which these guys currently lack completely.

Not as ?wow? for me but I am interested in learning more about their technology and licensing arrangements :).

Submitted by lorien on Fri, 12/08/05 - 9:44 PM Permalink

Needless to say lots of people don't dare make comments about Waco Resurrection [:)] IMHO it makes Escape from Woomera look tame. I've never seen another game where you take out FBI agents... It was on display at acmi for several months (part of a political games exhibition), and those David Koresh helmets are bloody uncomfortable.

Submitted by LiveWire on Fri, 12/08/05 - 10:25 PM Permalink

just watched the new project offset video. agreed, very iompressive what so ew people have done. though the only thing that really impressed me was the full sceen realtime motion blur and particles casting shoft shadows - nice addtions if i do say so myself. other than that it should be noted that the there was next to nothin the the sceens other than two scrippted characters, and small environment, and no backkground. so it's had to guage how much the enging can render. secondly it dosnt look any more ipresive than other next gen engines, so it's nothing strikling new - except of course for one fact: it's been done by only three people! that makes it stand out as an amazing personal achievement, if nothing else.

Submitted by CynicalFan on Sat, 13/08/05 - 2:18 AM Permalink

Yeah, the lack of showing what the engine can do in regards to its limits does tell a lot, but, without all the game code in like AI, any raw tech demo wouldn?t say much at all. I am guessing though, that as these guys have worked on at least one commercial project in the past that they have some experience, and have taken that into consideration when developing the tech to date, so it is probably a bit more robust than the material shows.

And I also think that even with the stated features that make it stand out, that these are still current generation. They may only be appearing at the end of this generation?s life-cycle ? like in the FEAR engine and game ? and will definitely be found at the start of the next generation?s life-cycle, they are still this generation. This will be apparent midway in the next generation?s life-cycle. Regardless, still looks great and is competitive for the reasons in my previous post ? it being an RPG.

But regardless, that is all just tech, I am more interested in gameplay ? one is harder than the other to achieve, much harder ;).

Submitted by CombatWombat on Sat, 13/08/05 - 6:17 AM Permalink

The guys from project offset were part of the team that did "Savage: battle for newerth" which had some interesting gameplay ideas (One person on the team was the commander who plays through an RTS interface, other players build & fight) Like with many online games, the few boneheaded players tended to get in the way of a good game for the other people on the server...

So I'm optimistic that Project Offset will come up with an interesting game even though they're just showing nice tech atm.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 15/08/05 - 1:10 PM Permalink

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

Submitted by LiveWire on Mon, 15/08/05 - 8:07 PM Permalink

i really want to give that a go, unfortunatly i'm not going to be downloading it at home on my dialup, might be time to hit up a mate or two with broadband...

Submitted by Morphine on Mon, 15/08/05 - 11:49 PM Permalink

Project Offset does looking very interesting, even though its short on media (as it would in the early stage of dev) however I am currently downloading the trailer from the site.

It feels LotR's ish to me, but that isn't giving this WIP justice. I'll be eagerly watching what comes of this, and will probably serve a great deal of encouragement for people with their own ideas to work on it and get it out there on show. [:D]

Submitted by souri on Tue, 14/02/06 - 10:36 AM Permalink

Hey, it seems things are going pretty good for Project Offset and the Offset team. Red 5 Studios (comprised of ex-Blizzard developers behind World of Warcraft) are licensing the Offset engine for their MMORPG.

http://www.projectoffset.com/press.html

I know fellow Sumean Rod Green had joined the Project Offset team a while ago, but I didn't know he's employee #4/5 and one of the directors of the company! Good stuff [:)]

http://www.projectoffset.com/team.html

Submitted by CynicalFan on Thu, 16/02/06 - 4:12 AM Permalink

I seem to remember a new studio established by ex-Blizzard team members licensing the Bigword technology for an MMORPG. I also seem to recall it being Red 5. Perhaps they dumped it in favour of Offset or are just using the back-end server technology for this.

Maybe I have it wrong, perhaps someone recalls which studio that was or is willing to do a little looking-into to find out?

Submitted by souri on Sun, 19/02/06 - 11:38 PM Permalink

Hey, this is as cool as hell. This team of four is working "Infinity", a MMO space game inspired by Elite. The universe (solar systems, planets and landscape etc) are all created procedurally. Sure, it's not an original or new idea, but there just haven't been many games in recent years to bother with it (Spore is one notable exception).
Check out the video where you get a fly by from a space station down to a planet and onto a ground fly-by. Really cool stuff. [:)]

[url="http://features.moddb.com/223/?fpage=0"]Interview with the graphics programmer[/url]
[url="http://files.moddb.com/1422/"]Download the video[/url]
[url="http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/"]Infinity website[/url]

Submitted by redwyre on Mon, 20/02/06 - 4:15 AM Permalink

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

I had a go at this, and it is quite interesting. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get into because it's so different.. but after a few goes I think I might actually be able to get the results that I want :)

Submitted by LiveWire on Mon, 20/02/06 - 4:52 AM Permalink

i find i'm always trying to split them up and hook up with the chick, havn't succeeded yet though.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 09/10/06 - 11:19 AM Permalink

Ok, it's another old thread which I'm bringing back up (I think some of the games in this list is still pretty inspirational stuff).

This platformer game is done by one person, and the guy who made it was influenced by some old classic games like Another World and Flashback. The art style of the game is simple, but it looks *fantastic*. The game looks like it's doing something different from your usual platformer as well, with the screen rotating around and objects falling / moving to reveal new paths.

The creator got a grant from the Danish goverment to continue to work on this game, so hopefully it he'll get it done and distributes it online I'd definately buy it!

Limbo website
CG Talk thread
Limbo - an early look