Meatex_Salami suggested that Sumea members band together and work on some sort of game mod. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I mean, one thing that game companies like to see is if you have had made any contributions in a game mod, so I think it's a good experience to have. Also, having a goal like a mod is a good incentive to get people productive, I think. At least you're building towards something. I know people don't have much time, and I'm sure working on a mod is a mammoth task, but I think if we start off something small and easy, and just build upon that, then we can do something cool. Personally, I'd prefer to do something small scaled, and original-ish (not a counterstrike clone), and that we can play multiplayer with.. I'll certainly provide support for the mod on the site, with an upload section and all that. Let us know if you have any ideas, suggest a game engine, or tell us if you're interested in contributing. Or just let us know what you think!
Well, personally, I want to do something with the Quake 3 engine.. it's so heavily supported, and everyone has Quake 3.. and it's a darn nice engine.. but we shouldn't do another FPS shooter. I mean, there are so many FPS mods out there, it's ridiculous.
What I had in mind is something like Quake Rally - it's a car racing game using the Quake 3 engine. Maybe we could do a sub-mod for that?
The reason why I think we could pull it off is that at the worst, we should be able to do at least one map with a few cars. We'll have something to play with at least. I think we can do much more of course, so the more we add, and build upon it, the better it'll get. And it's not dependant on one persons productivity. Anyone can add as much or as little as they want, in terms of cars, models of people driving those cars, maps etc.. I also think it's a great idea because you're not limited to a particular theme either..
So no programming required, and Quake Rally has all the SDKs on their site for mappers and modellers.. Maybe they'll be kind enough to compile a special version for us with our menus which we can distribute, whilst giving full programming credits to them, of course. We'll have to ask them how they feel about this and if they're willing to do it. Just looking at their forum, I see that they're pretty much winding down the production of quakerally (they have only 1 modeller who's moved on, and one coder), so I think we can boost some life into this mod.
Download quakerally at http://www.quakerally.com .. So, what does everyone think ?
Incidently, from the Quake Rally site,
"Quake Rally was a mod for the original Quake created by Impact Developments, namely Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin and Rowan "Sumaleth" Crawford. Both hailing from Australia, but never having met, the two of them set out to do what many people thought would be impossible, turn Quake into a fully fledged racing game."
I've known Rowan from way back, and he knows of this site. .. should get him involved somehow, although he's quite busy. maybe for general artistic feedback.. anyway, let me know what you all think.
I'd like to help out but I don't have much spare time so I can't promise anything. David is right, programmers will be the hardest to recruit but on the plus side you don't need too many for a mod.
As for engine, I'd have to recommend going with something newer, especially given your timeframe. This isn't going to be finished within the near future, and there's at least two engines on the way that will be easily mod-able. Unreal2 is just around the corner, and Doom3 isn't that far off if you want to wait. You can always start on art while you wait for the engine.
Actually, having just downloaded and played Quakerally, I didn't think it was much fun. .. they've done an incredible job, but it's still pretty much a hack. There are more suited engines for that stuff, like this one.. http://www.racer.nl/ ..
I think Bunny is right also.. I didn't realise how aged the Quake 3 engine is until I installed it again last night.
I still would like to keep everything small scaled, so an idea I had was something like a 3D Super Sprint (remember that game?).. small tracks, cars not so detailed, fun to play.. if there was a game like this that we could mod, then that would be ideal. anyway, just an idea..
HMMMMM, I've started(about 2 weeks ago) writing a very basic outline for a mod I wanted to make, it is a single player title, I was planning on using the UNREAL engine for it, (UT2003 or U2) It is planned to be a first person game. although I guess you guys probably want somthing more simple. Its still a long ways off though.
but a community effort mod is a great idea, I'll support it.
(By the way, I'm actually one of the rare people who doesnt have Quake3, I never liked it)
Lead paint: delicious but deadly!
I think the Doom 3 engine would be more better for a singleplayer game, although the Unreal 2003 engine looks pretty nice. But yeh, I think the amount of effort to put in a mod for those engines will be quite a lot.. Textures and skins being made for Unreal 2003 are 1024 x 1024 large.
http://www.fierceworks.com/ut/ for some unreal 2003 pics.
heyas
if were looking for something easy that requires virtually no programming (im thinking racing game here), we could use blenders engine.
of course, its fairly restrictive in terms of special effects etc. and doesnt run all to well. but then again, we are all content designers, so we all prob have very decent vid cards that could get good fps outta anything.
blenders built in physics stuff is why little programming would be needed for a racing game, just need tweaking basically. the only thing that might require some programming is the menu, but there used to be some tutes on that, seemed simple.
getting files into blender should be alright, as there are plug-ins for importing/exporting the .x format, very universal. we could either build our own racing levels, or all create bits to compile into a map.
one requirement was that it was multiplayer, thats 'in the works' for blender... so its anyones guess.
after reading the article on the front page, this was the first thought that came to my head... hmm... i should have slept on it ;(
hmm.. whres the spell check ;(
Do you have a link? I only know of a Blender 3d, which I think is just a modeller? http://www.pablosbrain.com/blender3d/ (seems they're reaching enough money to go open source)
Hey, wow.. I thought Blender3d was just a modelling program. ..
This guy made a small racing game in 8 hours (you can play blender games with a plugin for your browser) http://www.ualberta.ca/~nwy/blender/race_against_satan.htm .. of course, we can do something much better.. anyway, pretty cool!
well speaking from experience of doing games over the net we would want to do a mod with an engine which is well established and has lots of stuff out that that we can use. Like quake3. Indeed the graphics aren't that great nowadays but developing for ut2k3 or doom3 will pose numerous problems as no one will have any knowledge with the engine. There also won't be any resources to exploit for some time after its release. That and those engines are just too advanced for alot of computers.
Also stay away from the UT engine it's really quite horrible.
We could of course mod jk2 as it has a beefed up Q3 engine.
Also developing from scratch for an engine will prove more troublesome than you would think. When moding you at least have reference material which you just change to suit the needs of the project. (hang on can you get source for jk2??)
There was a much better freeware engine though with support for good specail FX but can't remember the name.
We could try using serious sam (which comes with everything including a modeler)
Ah check out www.radonlabs.de --> nebula device
thats if you want to dev for an engine from scratch, which means more coding for which ever poor guy we get. :)
Also why do we have to do a racing game? They are pretty much done to death and anything new that you could do won't get many peoples interests as racing game fans generally are after realism. Hence why GT3 was so popular.
There is nothing wrong with FPS genre as there is still alot you can do with it. It also allows for more imersive experiance (i know my spelling sucks)
I can't stand racing games for the most part (i like ones like extreme G and kind of wipeout) as racing games lacks the fundemental things which makes a game - interesting choices. The only fun thing in racing games is turning around and going the wrong way while trying to destroy as many other racers as possible.
However i do have an intersting idea to do something different with the racing genre. How many people have played star wars ep 1 pod racer?? Well there are a couple of bits where you go into a "zero g" tube like thingy and race through dodging large and small rocks.
We could use that kind of thing, have racing in 3D, this adds the element that racing games are missing, interesting choices. When you can go left or right or up or down around an obstical thats interesting. Also i think it should be REALLY fast lots of rocks and debris (if we set it in outer space in like a force feild tube or something we could have more to dodge than just rocks like space debris, fly through a space ship wreckage and stuff) and be able to have realistic damage like you can have you wing (or something like it) ripped off. Give each ship a laser which you can aim manually at the expense of being able to steer so you can knock out guys engines. Crashes should also be kewl like if you have your wing ripped off cause you hit a bit of a ship wreckage you would go spinning into an asteroid or something. I think it should be REALLY damn fast and you don't get sheilds, so you can die pretty easily but no lives so dieing just takes like 2 seconds of your time. You can shoot asteroids to blow them up and stuff to reveale secrets. Also there should be different size asteroids and with the REALLY big ones if you can fly close to it (with gravity) for long enough you can get a boost when you leave "orbit" kinbd of like slingshotting around the moon.
Anyway i got a bit carried away there to say the least :)
Maybe we should look into doing something different with the FPS genre.
It doesn't matter what we do even if it is a standard racing game i'll still help out. Just giving my opinion and showing you some other choices.
Hehe im so proud i got my name in the news :) hehehe lol
I think i'll shutup now.
Don't mind any spelling or bad grammer mistakes that i made, unless you really can't understand what im saying. :)
Bloody hell its a giant harmonica!
maybe having a look at torque's community project, realm wars, for ideas.
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/projects/realmwars/
urgh. torque. they charge money and it is a pain in the butt to work with (worse than getting stuff into UT)
hmmn, i understand why people don't think q3 has impresive graphics, but a. do you have lightmaps turned on, and b. it runs on my crap machine, don't think q3 would be that bad a choice. (is quick, and can get nice effects with shaders which can be seen when lightmaps are activated)
@Meatex_Salami, if choices are all you are after then take it into the design. (takes a leaf from 'dork tower' style games)example. you get 3 points to spend on a your cars stats, (say speed, attack, sheilds)(sheilds includes brakes)
aim is to finish the track several times (alternativly 'motorball' from 'battle angle alita' could be interesting, but will save that to another message)
perhaps take from mariocart64 the attack levels (lv1. missile ahead, 10 sec to get another, lv2. can hold up to 10 missiles, still fired ahead, get one more each 10 sec, and lv3. 10 homming missiles which take 10 sec to reapear)
if you get hit by more missiles in a 5 second period than you sheild level, your car is stoped, likewise if you hit a wall too fast (get thrown from can and have to run back to it or find another car?)
and the attack level just increases speed....
just some ideas...
DSC
yeah those sound like some interesting ideas
The car points or watever you want to call them could be quite interesting. Maybe a system like in pod racer where you get money (and maybe like bounty for taking out other racers) to spend on upgrades and stuff.
I have never really liked sheilds though as it makes it too easy. Most racers with sheilds you can pretty much hold down accelerate and thats it. Takes the sheilds out and you raise the stakes. The quake 3 engine is still being used today for a reason :) It's probably the most accessable (i know my spelling sucks) engine and it's graphics are more than enough.
Weapons could be nice but we have to decide (if we end up doing a racer) if we want to focus on weapon usage or racing skill.
Without sheild a simple laser is all you'll need and it'll be interesting trying to pick the right time to fire (if we use the idea of sacrifising ability to steer in order to fire)
Well we got quite a few good ideas from people coming in, lets get some more. Lets get all the options on the tables. Lets show our cards. (okay maybe one metaphor too much but hey)
There is nothing wrong with the torque engine (or tribes 2) for doing outdoors stuff. Although admittedly i haven't played around with it much except for botting all the T2 maps.
hmm but i still believe it will be alot easier to do a mod. I have been involved with a couple of attepmts to make a game for an engine over the net. It didn't get very far :(
so i think forst and foremost we most decide what we'll be developing for. So lets hear it.
Bloody hell its a giant harmonica!
I agree a racing game isn't as immersive as a FPS, but we've gotta look at what we're able to do and maybe try a small, and fun project to start off with. And yeh, a bog standard racing game is pretty boring, but it'll much more fun with some elements to make it somewhat more fun (jumps, speed ups, *small* modifications etc) taken from Super Sprint, and simliar to the ideas David mentioned.. also elements from Mario Kart, WipeOut etc.. Although I'm not sure if it's possible to do with Blender3D, but we'll have to find out first.
My rationale for a small racing game is it that it's relatively simple to do.. If someone wants to make up a car (perhaps with a 300 polygon limit.. not super detailed), then it's easy to model and texture in a few nights. A racing track is going to be a bit more work (and we have to be creative here too. I'm thinking fun maps with huge canyons like in Powerslide, and other maps with jumps and hills and tunnels... and someone's inevitably going to do a track on a computer desktop ).. and seems ideal to suit what we can do at this time, seeing as about 4 or so people are interested, with no programmer.
Uhm.. I think a racing game using the quake 3 engine would be just too much for a programmer (if we even get one). They'd basically have to rewrite the physics engine for it and do many, many kludges. It's pretty much the reason why the developers abandoned Quake Rally (for Quake 3). Since we don't have a programmer, blender3d might be the way to go. I've seen some pretty cool stuff with it, and it's got a few things going for it for us which is that it doesn't require a programmer, it's free, I'm sure it can import Max/Lightwave objects, and you can play the result on the web (which means anyone can play it). But one major con is that there aren't any lightmaps/no bsping so it won't look as good, and no multiplayer (although you can set it up to play against may computer players)..
If there's any other game types / ideas that you can come up with that is simple and fun, and doesn't require too much work (programmer and content wise), I'd love to hear it. I'd love to work on something with a FPS, but to do something special with it, we'll need a few programmers, more people involved, and a lot of time and effort.. with a racing game, we can have at least a few maps, and plenty of cars. Although if we're constantly and gradually adding content for it, then we could have a kick ass little game.
I dunno about blender3d (seeing as i was unable to check that link out cause my internet is soo frikken bad)
I have some programmers which i could talk to and see if they are interested.
Also if we are just going to do simple modification then why don't we do an FPS as it would be very easy to play around with the numbers in the existing code. Then we could slowly ad more to it.
i spent many months of my life looking at different engines when i was involved with an indie project and the best one we found was the Nebula Device at www.radonlabs.de
I know a coder whos has experience with that engine. Dunno if he has much spare time though.
If we do a racer we are doomed to have to do a fair bit of coding :(
Red faction you can mod without much coding experience. It also has the benefit of having geomod technology. We could do a very interesting FPS mod with that i reckon.
Is there a link to the blender3d engine home page??
anyway we are going to have to make some decisions soon.
Bloody hell its a giant harmonica!
WTF. thought the base line concept for this thread was making some resources for q3 rally (some cars, a track) There is an engine, it would not require any programming, and you get to see it work. This could be a potentially effective development step...
could work on a concept, wipe outwas mentioned and that was a tight game, both graphically and gameplay (the speed penelties of not driving well (hitting halls brought you to a stop)) also mentioned was 300 polys cars, and that is way more abstract than you I can design good concepts for (irony is that given a complicated concept i can get it to work in 300 polys thanks to n64 work) and having very free form levels (sandhills? dune buggy sort of thing)
A lot of projects seem to fail due to lack of design or bitting off way more than they can chew, and most programmers you will find are quite dangerous (programmer by heart are optimist... and that is a good way of killing a project too (when is it going to be done- two weeks- 6 months latter, when is it going to be done- two weeks...)
nb. sheilds not being gameplay effective. well, make them useful, they don't allow the user to bounce off walls and maintain velocity (as speed is something im thinking of as quite imporrtaint) but they do allow you to asorb wepon dammage and brake faster...
hmmn, liking the sandhills idea...
Quake Rally was merely a suggestion, which I recanted when I actually downloaded and played it. Download it and have a look. (David, you said you wanted to work on a Quake 3 engine because it'll run ok on your low spec machine ? well, the maps in Quake Rally are large out door maps, so they won't run too well)..It seemed like a good idea - taking something exisitng, and using that as a base so that we wouldn't require a programmer. Anyway, the developers have abandoned it, and for good reason to. You can see them contributing to www.racer.nl (which looks awesome, but is a bit boring to play).
The maps you guys have mentioned - free form sandhills, incredible tracks like those in stunt car racer.. there's no restriction to what maps you want to make, if we want to make a car racing game..
Anyway, to maybe get the ball rolling, can we see a show of hands on who wants to do what kind of game? Hands up if you want a FPS, or a Blender racing game? Or any other?
If we vote on a FPS, please persuade someone to program it for us.
If we vote on a racer, I'll post something at http://www.elysiun.com/viewforum.php?f=6 . There are many talented Blender programmers there who, I'm sure, would love to make a game and let us work on the content.. or one of us can figure out the blender..
I think keeping it simple is best, A racing game would be good but have things more interesting than cars, say tanks, hover bikes, a guy in a wheelchair, someone on roller blades with a fan strapped to their back, a dolphin with legs(these are just a few ideas)
So my vote is on a racing game.
As much as I love FPS games, it would be too complicated.
Lead paint: delicious but deadly!
you guys should really check out Red Faction
man i could probably code a mod for that.
I really don't care im interested in doing either but seeing as my favourite games are FPS i'll go with that.
just in case i have sent a call out to some coders i know to see if they are interested.
Bloody hell its a giant harmonica!
If it's easy to make Red Faction into a racing mod where we can have those ideas mentioned earlier, then it definately sounds interesting (Programmer required though, remember!).. although, I hope it does some distance culling, and doesn't require too much kludging..
Although, I think one thing that Blender really has going for it is that it's free - so everyone can edit with it and play the game too.. Definately good for a small project like ours to get a maximum audience, and won't hinder participation from those of us who don't actually own Red Faction..
err um red faction isnt mod friendly at all
it has as few scripts
not even scripts that you can change
and doesnt support dynaic downloading of anything
it would be a bad idea
but id like to be part of any mod that comes out of Oz
id like to be a modeler
i cant really come here that often but please email me if anything comes up
:) regards
Well i have looked into it and it seems very easy to mode
majority of code thats used in the game like entities, weapons etc. All that is required is to edit tbl files
Although you could be right as i haven't screwed with it that much.
However i do think a racing game with it would be quite easy with only some lines of coding :) Seeing as it already has lots of vehicles all we would need to do is change the speed variable.
Also i have no probs with RF engine, it works great on my machine even with lots of craters in the geometry and the graphics are fine (not fantastic).
And it doesn't matter if you don't have Red Faction, thats why burners were made :) hehe lol.
Bloody hell its a giant harmonica!
well, i'm currently bussy on a small wrestling game with a programmer in canada...
how small did you have in mind for your mod (have been (ahem) atempting to design poker machines of late) Personally im interested in procedual gameplay where gameplay variables are controled from withing the game world (simple example- you loose health, you can move as fast) either as secondary or primary effects (drink more 'beer', do more dammage, have less control)
think yoou may find aquiuring a design and artistic resources are not as difficult as getting a programmer to implement all the 101 silly dame design thing you may end up thinking you want...
best of luck.
DSC http://www.websamba.com/davidcoen