big games
Community Forums/Showcase/big games
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| So who here is working on a 'big' game - a game you've been working on for 1-2 years or more? And when do you expect to have it finished? |
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| If have worked with NANO engine and tools from march 2003, so that's exactly year now. Although I have not been working fulltime or anything... just when I have the time. The actual game development has just started a few months back... I expect the game to be finished by the end of the year (I hope). |
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| Bouncer Look forward to seeing the final results. I've been working on Tank Universal for about two years now, but its been afterhours, I've gone down a lot of blind alleys, plus my design is pretty ambitious (3d tank combat with FPS elements, even a little RTS thrown in). But I've realised that if I don't want it to drag on for another 2 year, I'm going to have to get serious this year. Anyone else got a 'big game' on the go? |
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| I've been working on Wandering Knights since June 2002. So it's almost been 2 years! |
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| And when do you think it'll be done? |
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| Hehe dunno. Makes already 2 months I didn't release an update, but it has been ready for at least a month :S I will probably get tired of working on it this year, so I'll probably release it to the public (other places than BB and BC, like freeware sites, etc) and remove it from beta stage later. It has been consuming way too much coding time, and is getting messier every minute ;) I started it as I started learning Blitz and Game Programming. I had been programming for several years, but wasn't aware of the trade of 3d game programming ;) But I think I managed good with it and will probably create another RPG, but more compelx and professional later on. |
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| I am working on a few big games One which I dont expect to be released this year as it is a massive undertaking (I do my own gfx, code and sound) I have not been coding the game or creating the graphics for too long, most of the time has been spent with experiements in AI, data management, game mechanics etc To keep me getting bored I have been creating several smaller games which should be out soon. |
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| Might & Magic Tribute has been in development for about 9 months now, plus there was the 8 months prior to this I spent producing the tech demo, so that's about 1.5 years in total so far! We are still a long way from even having another demo released never mind a completed game, and that's with about 20 people in our development team! Which kind of puts into perspective the amount of work involved in making an RPG... |
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| CyberGoth Can you give us a hint what kind of game it is? Sir Felgar Of all the gametypes I suspect RPG's/MMRPG's are one, if not the most time consuming genres. It's also the one that you're most likely to hear touted by newbies as their goal (You know - it's going to have 50 different monsters, be a cross between Diablo and something else, have towns/dungeons/etc - come back 5 months later and the project's been cancelled. Instead they're going to create a new RPG which will have 50 different monsters....) But your website looks professional and the game nicely developed. Look forward to the final result. Will it be freeware or shareware? If I had had any real idea of the amount of work involved to create even a medium sized game, I probably would have scaled my ideas back to a small game only. Big time eaters so far have been; Sourcing easy to use tools for creating characters/animation and level modelling. This was frustrating (I don't have Max), I spent some amount of money, yet everything I looked at, always seemed to have a hook (can you say Cartograhy Shop3?). Only recently nailed down a stable pipeline. Developing art assets - texture creation, uv mapping, character creation - all been a steep learning curve. AI - not so much in writing it, as debugging it so that it works 100% reliably. This I find, is really time consuming. I've spent about 15 hours so far on a node pathfinding routine. Thought I'd nailed resolving lockups, but after running it for half an hour I came back and found three infantrymen locked in a huddle trying to go through each other and a wall. Sigh. |
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| I keep starting small games that end up being big and then getting shelved! |
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| Been working on the same thing for about two years, though very part-time. I expect to put in another two to get it done. It's ambitious and maybe unrealistic as hell, but I wouldn't have gotten this much done if I had a realistic view on things :P Once I have the code in place, however, I'll probably hire some freelance artists to do the stuff I hate or can't do myself. |
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| Island Storm has been in development for about 2 years and I hope to finish it this year. The engine and editor are functional but I keep adding features as they become available within Blitz (Cube Mapping, DOT3, Dynamic Collisions, Tokamak). I now need to stop and start designing the missions. |
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| OK :P Its an RPG with a difference, if you have ever played Harvest Moon, Pokémon and Zelda then imagine a game with elements from all three games but in a unique mix, the game is called Cerulean Skies and its got rocks in it :) It is pretty funny hearing a rock talk to you as you walk past it and then hide as you get close to it, cracks me up hehe Here is a pic of the character you play (dressed in wizard garb, you could be a fighter :)  |
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| We have been working on MORPHLINGS (one year and few months now =)) - a 3D online multiplayer game where you can meet seriously odd monsters ;) one morphling model just got finished:   and now we are working with this (morphling hippy ;))  |
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| >So who here is working on a 'big' game - a game you've >been working on for 1-2 years or more? A flightsim really, but it turned into an advanced terrainsystem for whole-earth environments instead. I certainly didn't understand the complexity of the project before starting it, but today I have a pretty good handle on it! >And when do you expect to have it finished? I have no idea, I just finished rewrite 7 and I still have a whole list of things to include. However, I have started on a terrain editor, so I hope to have something to show one day, but as I am doing it on my free time, it'll take a while. I am in awe of those people who have had stuff published, and those who are well on their way with games... Actually getting there is so very dificult, and people like GFK are my heroes! Andy |
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| Been working me my main project for a while, must be over a year. It's probably got another 6-8 month left id say :) |
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| I've been working on "Attack Of The Baddies" for about two years, very on and off. FPS/RTS hybrid. More off than on, really. Got a *very* early demo on my website, but since then I've been working on constructible / destructible scenery - and got some solid foundations going on. Next demo a long way off though due to other commitments :( |
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| I get frustrated workin on the same thing, so I have 3 projects on the go...all quite big, but even these are just training for my really big rpg-type game - though I really dont devote enough time to it, and even if I do the absolute best I am able to, it wont be a scratch on some of the stuff I've seen from other 'Blitzers' :) |
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| Coppercircle Looks like Island Storm looks could be a new standard for Blitz FPS games, particularly with Tokamak incorporated. Cybergoth The rocks idea rocks. Nice title. Andy Check this site out, www.3dnature.com. I use this software professionally for illustrative and GIS based work. MrTricks I remember your Baddies demo, it was quite addictive in a mindless sort of way, liked the way the saucers loomed out of the mist and it gave good feedback when you downed one – good to hear you’re expanding on it. Malice Having 3 biggish projects on the go, in prep for an even bigger project? Sounds like a recipe for never getting there. I think the people who get published are those who knuckle under and work doggedly on one project, regardless of frustrations and finally get to throw the ring into the lava. I think the end of this year/next year could be interesting with the release (as long as people don't flake) of a number of bigger games. There's been a number of good quality (better than Darkbasic that's for sure) smallish games, but no professional quality epics so far (at least not to my knowledge). I guess that's due to the time it takes to develop even a medium size game, the part time nature of most developers, and the many different hats a home developer (or is that 'bedroom coder'?) has to wear. But I'm encouraged by the news that Blitz is getting exposure on magazine cover disks. Also, browsing the web, there seems to be a spreading indie scene, with new opportunities for selling games through the web opening up. I recently downloaded Iron Tide, a 3d submarine action game from Trygames.com, 45mb download , full game, which after I’d tried I unlocked with my credit card ($25 US dollars) and it was all pretty painless. |
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| Well, at the moment I'm not working on anything. Hurray! But from past experience I know how hard it is to actually complete large(ish) projects. You certainly need dedication and you cant seriously expect it to be fun all the time, especially if you've been working on the same project for a couple of years. Working on 2 or 3 projects at the same time is insane, frankly. Exactly NONE of them will get finished! MadJack: Would you mind saying what tools you use now that you've "nailed down a stable pipeline"? I'm in a position where I'm trying to do the same and so far have settled on wings3D for modeling. Next I want to learn how to texture and then animate models for use in Blitz. Unfortunately, I have a budget of approximately zilch! :/ |
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| big10p I was lucky in that I managed to pickup a second hand copy of Lightwave 6 and I'd had previous experience in LW. Since I was comfortable with LW, I really wanted to be able to do everything in that environment, including prototype lighting setup and building levels. The opengl preview of LW is pretty good and gives me a good (unshaded) idea of the final look. However, I did try a lot of other tools. CharacterFX, Milkshape, CShop, Qoolw, Truespace. There always seemed to be a catch. CharacterFX & Milkshape seemed too tedious and prone to crashing. CShop had promise, but freezing made it unusable. Qoole - just couldn't handle learning the modelling Truespace just pissed me off (but you can pick up TS3 for free) I always came back to LW. The next challenge was finding the right tools to take output through to Blitz. You can't go wrong with Unwrap3d and also very handy has been Michael Rietzenstien's tweak3d utility. Finally lightmapping. LW's lightmapping just doesn't cut it. Giles doesn't seem to like LW models. So far, Luminescence3d seems to be the deal (going by their beta) Unfortunately, these all cost money. |
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| Been working on mine for, oh... 8'ish months now. Not long enough to really say it's a big game, but it's a signifigant undertaking considering I'm doing everything. I'll have to make the design document public again some time. |
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| I've been working on my game editor for about 3 to 4 years for a game I have not started. I have had to construct the editor from stracth about 6 times already. Not only that but I have learned a lot more effcient ways to program that I would like to impliment in my program. Hope fully in the next 4 to 6 months I'll be able to release it. It will be totally free with most of the code open source. |
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| Mojokool Interesting. I started out without an editor and would manually setup test situations. But as the code's gotten more complex, I was forced to put together a rough 'editor' so that I can quickly place entities, set flags, paths, and then run within the game environment. But I would respectfully suggest that 3-4 years on the editor rather than the game proper is a little lopsided? |
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| Interesting, Madjack. Thanks. I've had that free version of TrueSpace for a while but, like you, absolutely hated it - almost put me off trying modeling completely. Does LW do animation too, then? |
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| big10p Lightwave - it's a professional 3d system - they use it for 3d animated tv shows and movies. I'm using it for segmented figure animations (i.e. rigid jointed figures). Max maybe better, don't know. So that's about 10 big games, about half of which seem to be certs. Any others? Didn't someone have a Homeworld like game on the go? And didn't Sswift have a WWII flight sim in devel. I even visited the website. |
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| I am. Not long to go (after about a year), but it's at the 'finishing off the last bit' stage which as some of you know is incredibly tedious. Hence I keep getting sidetracked... |
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| About 18 months in for me, maybe 3-6 to go. |
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| >So who here is working on a 'big' game - a game you've >been working on for 1-2 years or more? arghh.. you hid a nerve there! ;) Well, I've been working on 'this idea' for about 6 years now, tried it in VB, GameStudio, but when I discovered Blitz3D (about year ago) I'm finally getting somewhere. I'm working on an over ambitious (= never gonna get finished) game engine where the player 'can do whatever he wants'. Also NPC's totally act and think for themselves - i'm not talking first person shooter type dummies, but serious role playing npc's that base their actions on their ambitions and emotions. They get sick, hungry, angry, sad, etc. They walk, run, observe, hunt, eat, fight, talk, poo, sleep, create relations, enemies, etc. and basically have life's of their own - wich the player can interact with ofcourse. From a design point of view the idea is that I ""simply"" define their character, and they do the 'playing' by themselves. The same counts for the player. The game itself has not one of those linear storylines, but basically creates a situation / world if you like. The player creates the stories and intrigues him/herself by interacting with that world... The last year I've just been working on the 'emotional engines'. Getting pretty close to cracking it, just a few more months ;) i hope... :/ -Danny |
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| Danny Sounds well doable with blitz. I guess the issue with that kind of challenge is setting up complimentary rules that work well together and don't lead to odd and inexplicable results. Before I started TU I was kicking around a somewhat similar idea for an adventure game; model a small community - personalities and day by day actions using emotions/needs- but I also had the hazy idea of overarching 'cycles within cycles'. Night and day cycles obviously, but more mysterious and subtle (occult/spiritual?)'cycles' that had odd effects on the townsfolk. I thought it'd be great to have an adventure game that covered one night, in realtime, with the player racing to solve a disappearance before dawn, and the game played differently each time. Any chance of a demo soon? |
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| Hi Madjack, Cool, clearly sounds like you've played with a similar idea as well! Yes, that's the frustrating thing about developing an impossible beast like this. The 'time of day' is a perfect example. If you start on 'A', you need to do 'B' as well; but not before you've done 'G...X', etc. So meanwhile, besides 20 include files just for emotions, I've had to create systems for (short term and long term) events, user interface, level editors, object editors, blah blah, etc. And before you know it it all clogs up and have to start over again. Currently my source is so extremely modular that it would suck the life out of a lego-brick ;) wich alows me to completely drop certain mechanism and re-do them. I'm keeping everything as simple as possible, but overall everything is so complex, that I can't even think about predicting what's gonna happen. The cool thing about blitz is that actual '3d programming' is not so much of an issue anymore. Besides npc's acting on impulses only, I'm also trying to implement 'daily routines' as you mentioned yourself. So that common people stick to common actions. I'd hate to see every farmer in town deciding go out adventuring, resulting in the city dying of starvation ;) I'm doing my best for a demo, but I don't expect anything presentable for a few months :( I'm eager to release a demo, not to show off, but as my (first) contribution back to the Blitz community. Obviously my routines are heavily inspired by other people's work and the help I got from the forums... The only problem I see is that it would be so complex, only a few could make sense of it :) we'll see... cheers, -Danny p.s. Any other ideas & suggestions welcome! |
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| hope traci pops in to mention their rpg game :) |
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| Sounds challenging - it's easy enough to create a complex system from a few simple rules, but if the system has to behave in a particular way then calculating what those rules should be is very tricky. I guess for this kind of project, cascading if..then statements won't do. Do you have an underlying system that gives it some order? |
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| >Check this site out, www.3dnature.com. I use this software >professionally for illustrative and GIS based work. I have browsed it before, but didn't really see a full description of what it is. What I am trying to do is model any planet or part of it and allow the player(person/aircraft/car/horse...) to move freely around, interacting with objects (doors/people/animals/cars etc.), and that I am pretty close to doing now... Andy |
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| MJ- no if..then's no :) Basically every npc has a profile. A profile gives it a set of 'emotions' and base scores to begin with (Some get more hungry quicker than others, some move faster than otehrs, etc). 'Emotions' is perhaps slightly misleading since it's a general term I use (lack of english) to indicate things as happyness/sadness, anger, fear, as well as hunger, energy, intimidation, confidence, etc. Each 'emotion' is constantly shifting because of internal/external influences. Weights are applied to indicate the 'seriousness' of an emotion. Then all emotions are weighed to determine wich should be served (causing life-threatening situations to be dealt with first). Each possibility has a cost and a gain wich again are weighed to make a decision. The decision launches a 'task' to perform ('go bash his head in'), wich in turn consists of seveal actions ('move to table', 'pick up hammer', 'move to burglar', 'bash his head in'), etc. Swinging a hammer will cost him energy, but bashing someone's head in gives him satisfaction in return, that sort of thing. (hope this makes sense?! - not easy to explain 'quickly').. I design these tasks and actions using a graphical editor (sort of flow-design) to make it simple and managable. I'm about a month away to see if all this blah blah actually works. Starting with a simple test-scenario and then build & expand on that... D. |
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| Danny- Darn it looks like your gameplay idea is very similar to part of my own! I hope to create that pipe dream constantly found in rambling game design articles called emergent gameplay. Lifeforms will act based on rules that take into account their randomly generated statistics and "emotions". There is another part to this as well but I won't spread that idea until much later, if I havn't already. But you've got a huge head start already, which is a bit depressing. How much have you been working on this over the 6 years? Occasionally or has it been a big focus? I've been kicking around this idea in my head for a long time and only recently started some of the design document and concept art. I decided to use a pretty small area to make the whole thing as a feasible experiment. I have a pretty good vision of how the game should look and play like, but right now I'm still trying to comprehend how to code some of the systems. The last few weeks I've been trying to think about how to code AI and AI networking much like what you have described. It really is a monster to comprehend isn't it? The balance testing I'm sure will be extensive. Good luck on getting it work. I'm sure what I'm thinking of is quite different; I'm still going to attempt it. I'll be interested to see your demo when you release it! |
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| JAW- Cheers. I've been paying with the 'concept' in my head for years, doing all kinds of research and experiments here and there. Only the last year or two I can say I've actually been spending serious time on something that could really work. The overal thing could be quite overwhelming when you first look at it. Let alone trying to explain it in a 'forum post'. That's one of the reasons why it's broken down in so 'bite sized chunks' - each of wich are actually pretty simple and very straight forward. Once the mechanism is in place, everybody should be able to create or add 'their own intelligence' to it - relatively simple. I've also spend most of my time to prevent exactly that 'balance testing' you mention - Because I realise this is a cliche pitfall and could be an absolute show-stopper. But again, so far I'm still full of air, and still need to proof that all this bla bla will work :) Game wise, I'm actually more of a techy. I'd love to be able to design my own characters, etc. But unfortunately I lack some serious skills in that area ;) That's one of the reasons I'm developing something so 'generic' wich can be used for any type of game. In normal-life it would make more sense to code exactly what you need for the game you designed - saving you tons of time / money to develop ;) I do feel the need to caution you though when starting on (what we call) 'game AI'. Quake style bots, etc. shouldn't be much of a problem - it's been done a 100 times. But something as over-ambitious as what I'm trying to explain will cost you an arm and a leg! "emergent gameplay" is exactly what this is all about. (altough I must admit I had to look up the term to know what it was ;) I'd be interested what you mean with 'the other part' you mentioned. I'd be happy to share ideas if you like (dendanny@...). Cheers, -Danny |
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| I also have a few projects on the go. Id say about 13 months on SolarShatter. In that time the full game engine was re written at about the halfway mark. I also found that the initial planned outline for the game was way to big, and found myself cutting out elements. not cos i couldnt do it but more because it would add more delay on the release of the game. and I want it finished and out the way so I can get on with my next project. :) |
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| CTCC (Computer Touring Car Championship) Coming up on two years this summer and it should be released later on this year, phew! Just implementing LAN/Internet play and adding some tracks/cars. www.imphenzia.com/games/ctcc_home.asp |
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| Kings and knights, or civclone back then. Started that in early 2001 when I bought b2d. Its one of those experiment and learn projects. |
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| Been working on Hunted for almost two years now, still got a lot to do tho. ATM the game is about 43000 lines and growing daily ;), most coding is making small adjustments where needed and completing functions as required ;) |
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| Hey Edzup, can I pre-order a copy of Hunted for when it comes out in 2018 (based on current % complete) ;-) |
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| We're still working on our 3D action-adventure which we started early last year. Lots to do on this still but it's finally beginning to take shape, just need to get a demo up and running. |
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| Me for about 2 years on my game (see signature), although not 2 years in Blitz3D, I started it in 3DRad and about 10 months ago I jump into Blitz3D. I just hope I can finish it by this first half of the year... Paolo. |
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| Danny- I sent an email a few days back. Just making sure you received it. |
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| I've been working on Fields of Mars for about a year and a half now .. looks only half done .. and Rome Total war is coming out Fall this year! .. Arrrgghh! %<~~~~ Seriously I'm only doing this for fun and because noone else was producing a Ancient wargaming engine. I don't ecpect to make any money on an ancient wargame, I mean where's the market? :( Maybe I should add some Orcs and Elves? LOL! http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=3623&log=223 |
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| Jager: We have a TV show here in the UK (name escapes me) where a team of people have to fight ancient battles of the past using a real-time simulator. That screenshot of the Roman army in your log looks very similar to it. Just thought I'd mention. |
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| Ah you mean Time Commanders? That used the Rome - Total War engine |
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| Yeah, that's the one. Thought some of the animation in it was a bit shonky, though. :/ |
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| Rome totalwar engine will apparently blow every other war game away! It's so good it has been used in the doco series, time commanders. Not sure why they're waiting for Fall 2004 to release if it's good enough to use in TV series? Maybe the tacitcal system is running smoothly, they just need to work of on the strategic elements and do alot more system testing! :) On their forum, I've been pushing for historical accuracy but the spin-doctors want romans with rocket launchers and such .. not that bad but you know what I mean. RTW is said to initially concentrate on Rome's mid period, around 250BC to 100AD but will probably cover most ancient periods. I cannot compete with their graphics and especially animations so won't be getting too carried away with my game. |
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| I'm looking forward to Rome Total War. I recently bought Medieval War and enjoyed that - until I realised the way to beat the AI pretty consistently was to 'corral' my troops into a circle and blast at them with cannons. |
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| Joshua- Sorry mate, haven't seen anything. Please send again! -Danny |
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