Good day so far. Kickin’ ass and takin’ names. Set down with Jim Miller and got our ADM fiber optic job hammered out. Since dad is outta town (he’s on a plane headed to China right now – should be somewhere over Alaska by now) I’ll be handling all the quote and job running on the fiber side of this one. Right now I’m on the phone talkin’ to Amy G. with Stanion, getting all my prices, etc.
Next, I’m gonna cheat and do some programming for me. I’ve finally got things figured out for the most immediate ‘Next Game’ for Midnight Ryder Technologies. Gonna make heavy duty use of multi-player in this one (something I’ve never done before) plus a single-player version. Should be a blast to play test one of these days – I’ll host a LAN part at the house and do heavier load testing on it that way.
Here’s the REALLY fun part of this project – most of the technology and scripting I need is already there. I’ve got two specialized things to do. One is on-the-fly deformation of terrain. That’s not too bad really – think I got that figured out. Unluckly, the second thing is harder – it seems to require that if you deform the terrain, you also have to re-light the terrain. Otherwise, shadowing starts to look VERY strange. That’s the ONLY hard challenge I’ve ran into yet. Otherwise, all the specialized code is written by other people, and has been contributed to the GarageGames forums and resources. Grab the code, slap it in place, and activate it. Radar, etc. is all there. Most of what I have to do for the game is content development (artwork and levels) and some new code to create fully randomized levels. Fairly simple stuff, really, and I’ve already designed a number of the game elements on paper – just need ta’ transfer them to 3D artwork (ok, and buy a toy that does it easier than by hand).
Cross yer fingers – I plan on doing this in one month to Beta version, and one more month to final. A normal 3D game takes 12 – 24 months to develop, with the average being 18 months. I plan on doing what they say can’t be done – I plan on doing it in two. And without stressing myself out. Lets see if I can really pull of the impossible or not! 😉
(Why two months? Because GG opens it’s online stores in May, and the first releases will get the most attention quickly. I plan to be on that ground floor area.)
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darkswan 2002-04-05 01:41 pm UTC (from 207.18.199.124) (link) Select |
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let me know if you need a long distance playtestor |
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2002-04-05 01:52 pm UTC (from 208.34.45.132, via 208.34.44.5) (link) Select |
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It will be a month at least before it becomes an issue. But I will need a couple of remote play testers – gotta test the multiplayer code for both LAN and Internet play. You on cablemodem or dialup? |
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darkswan 2002-04-05 02:43 pm UTC (from 207.18.199.198) (link) Select |
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satilite modem which is dailup …. kinda massive downlink itty bitty uplink. |