Friday, July 31, 2009

Possible Game Names

Yesterday i spent a few hours thinking of a game name. I started small with words and metaphors for space combat, first person shooters and space exploration in general. There was over 150 words that can be chopped and changed at any point. I also experimented with synonyms and antonyms that could have hidden meanings or better ways of saying "This is a space combat game".

Here is a list of the best names i could come up with using those 150+ words, & synonyms. Most of them are two word names, as it is easier to tie the two together than to meld them together.

All of the names more or less have a background concept in mind, and some just sound cool.

Pod Zone
Plasma Shock
Plasma Leagues
Space Leagues
Outer Destruction
Dimension Zone
Shock Duel
Dark Matter Duels
Asteroid Attack
Manipulation Zone
Pod Duels
Plasma Shock
Plasma Leagues
Space Leagues
Outer Destruction
Dimension Zone
Shock Duel
Dark Matter Duels
Asteroid Attack
Manipulation Zone
Matter of Faktion
Dark Days
Terrestrial Retribution
Stealthy Retribution
Dead Redemption
Lost Pulse
Blast Origin
Gun Down
Laser Ultimatum
Final Parts
Shattered Cockpit
Surreal Destination
Pod Combat
Podfighters
warp speed warriors
Orbital
Blackout Zone
Foreign Facets
Foreign Dimension
Pod Duels
Pod Wars
orbital engagement
Final Altercation
Pod Contest
Crevasse Contest
Suspended Fued
Borrowed Parts
Potential NRG
Combat Report
Cockpit Contest
Field Fued
Barrier Point
Broken Mission
Mission Echo
Field Echo
Ambient Contest
Retribution Charge
Reprise Duty
Altercation Pursuit
Stolen Operation
Stolen Goal
Pursuit of Redemption
Embezzled Operation
Common Contest
Access Duty
Pocket Duel

I also put the cliche sounding ones in incase one or both of the words could be used elsewhere.
I have no real preference on the ones i like, as there is so many of them. If i had to have a preference, then Final Altercation, Blast Origin or Reprise Duty are the stand outs.

Have a look through that list and possibly pick your favourite if theres any. I can post the word list later on if needed, but its saved anyway.

Race


During the week I thought of this race.

A race called Spicklerz they are a small energetic race who only jump to get around and they are from the planet Swizzle.

They will probably not be one of the main races just a neutral race, maybe they will be on a trading planet where you can buy ship parts from.



If they are in the game they will be more realistic and they will be about half the size of normal people.

Since they do not have hands this could be a problem but they are not made for combat. If they are going to be attackable they might just run around in circles.


Race Idea



Okay, so during the week we've been thinking of ideas for our game, most of which have been explained by the other multimedia students so there's no point saying all that stuff again.

I've been thinking of an idea for a race which the people will be able to play as in our game. The Garlacks, so on Wednesday I drew up a picture of what I was thinking, I also tried thinking of a few ideas for ship designs, but I didn't get very far, I'll post again when I get a decent design or two down.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Space Ships

Okay, been working on some concepts for space ships. I have been thinking obout objects I see going home and at home i.e bus shelters, shampoo bottles, so now I have 4 concepts that I thought I should post for some input. Will post more when I have more.











Programming tasks

Out of the choices i was given for the programming side i have decided to take on the AI flight combat side. The resources Nick provided make it seem reasonably straight forward to implement.

If you would like anything specific adding to this combat system just let me know and i will see what i can do.

I will keep you posted on the progress!

A Programmer...

Ok, i'll work on the model customisation. Sounds like it could be pretty interesting.
What more can I say?

First time for everything


For my first blog i will go over my first week of the multimedia dip and this is also my first time i have posted in anything
I guess the most logical thing to do is to start on Monday. So i find out that im part of a project to create space game which evolves fighting space battles, upgrading our ship, taking planets for your faction and then getting out of your ship and really take control of your character as you fight battles as an alien/human depending on your faction. So i guess that it is a scifi/rpg/shooter combo. After this class i found myself in a different class were i learn how to create/edit sound effects unfortunately the correct equipment was not available so all we did was edit songs to learn how to cut out the ”pop” when you cut say a whole verse out.



On Tuesday i was introduced to the world of creating concepts for movies/games. As my imagination primarily revolves around the medieval ages and fantasy evolved with it like magic, dragons, demons and heroes to combat the evils by in my mind they don’t always win. So with that in mind i decided to come up with stories with that kind theme. After that class 3ds was up next and we had to create a model off one of the reference images provided so we can animate them next week.





Wednesday i spend all day drawing art for the game we are making and i came up with the idea that the neutral planets which the player wants to take over are guarded these creatures >>>


who are blind, very angery, and can shoot a beam out of their enlarged hand

First looks

Here comes my first blog post for our random space game. So far at tafe we have got back into the swing of things.



Monday: The group came up with ideas we got down to the basic ideas behind our game proffessions, missions ideas, tutorials etc we did a little bit of drawing to get the juices flowing i started by dsigning my aliens species, Tim had a look at it and came back to me later with a very cool looking version of my shit ass excuse of drawing. after all that we have a vauge idea of what we plan to do over the next few months it is essentially what you would get if starcarft and world of warcraft had a baby.



Tuesday: first we had concept design comming up with characters writing stuff(oh the horror) but we came up with some good ideas i did a vague backstory on the game and why there is war in the galaxy.



"The great galactic war has raged for over 40 years with each side refusing to back down. Entire worlds and stars have been destroyed in the conflict. Many species have been left scattered and broken, a shadow of their former glory. Very little has been done to try to resolve the conflict peacefully, the longer the war has gone on the greater the difference between the two sides. The war has now entered its final stages and the only way it will end is with total annihilation of the enemy. It is up to you to finish the war once and for all."



Wednesday: a long day of nothing but drawing concept art till I could feel nothing in my fingers I spent most of the time working on my aliens designs from earlier in this concept I made it more fishlike and the drawing was alot less shit than last time. Then i began to work on different variations of the alien but i only did one.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Someting for the Programmers to do

Programmers Take your pick from these 4 C++ changes and make a new post here saying which one you would like to start working on. if you dont like any of these or would like to do your own then talk to either me or nick about it or make a post here.

3d Radar - http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/16417

Model Customization System - http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/2150


AI Flight Combat - http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/7079


Inventory System -
http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/7514

Sites to see

Everything is pretty much set up. This blog will act as a hub for the project and I suggest that everyone (even if they don't like reading) take some interest and investigate the sites.
On the right hand pane are links to relevant sites.

The forums are a place for discussion and I must put forward that I do need everyone to communicate otherwise there will be distinct problems when it comes time for piecing things together. On the forums there are currently 3 discussion threads which I would like everyone (even the programmers) to post on.

The wiki holds documentation, task tracking, company information and all other things relevant to the higher-tier of project management. This site wont be so necessary unless you are unsure of what you were asked of, or if you forgot the specifics of that task.

18 * %week != LONG_TIME

I will have Will post next time, this is just an update for now.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Getting Started

This is always the hard part but also the easy part for the fact we can just dream up anything and suggest it openly. A lot of the ideas discussed today will be written down as concepts on the premise that they may be useful later, even if completely obscure to the main goal.

We currently have a relatively balanced mix of team members; seven multimedia students and six programmers. At a steep contrast to previous projects we have a far different makeup. Networking students are no longer involved, instead we have multimedia students (which are far cooler ;)

Over the first few days I will be setting up tasks, documentation, guiding the programmers through what they need to do for their assignments, creating a power point for the multimedia team to use as a guide when implementing Torque elements to their modeling scenes.

Please note down the time you work on tasks, references, etc and blog them sometime in the week. Add a label with your name and the orientation of your post; be it 'Multimedia', 'Programming', 'General' etc.

Programmers:
Your first task is to find or think of an engine change to implement into the game. This can be found on garage games or any third party site. Our first focus is 'space flight combat', and thus any relevant engine changes to this are most useful. The second block of the project is the character-perspective; this involves things the character does out of their ship, such as; trade, combat, transitioning through areas, etc.

Multimedia Students:
Tim will handle your assignments and all I will give is the parameters of the content. As it stands, you are currently developing prototype designs for races, factions and their ships etc. There will be limits to the final models. I will note these down at a later date once I have the overall poly count for areas finalized. A few notes on the ships:

  • Parts such as boosters, guns, shield generators, etc need to be interchangeable with other ships (separate meshes)
  • Due to the above specification the total poly count should be around 6000 (but only with one of each part inside the scene at any time - it may exceed this if you have the other parts overlapping)

View the wiki (link on the right pane), under documentation are the modeling & animation standards (see quality requirements) as well as modeling specifics.


Everyone:
We still need a game name and artwork associated with it.

You must blog roughly every week. It is part of your Project assignment. A post does not collate to a sentence saying 'I did work for 2 hours.'