My first game, War Wound is out!

Community Forums/Showcase/My first game, War Wound is out!

Makepool(Posted 2007) [#1]
I’m happy to say that I’ve finished my first ever game and it was released for digital download on Monday! A lot of effort over the last year has gone into this and I hope that people are going to enjoy the game. Our website is here http://www.apothecarystudios.co.uk/ and a demo can be found here http://www.apothecarystudios.co.uk/demo.htm






Robert Cummings(Posted 2007) [#2]
Looks very impressive, well done


Barnabius(Posted 2007) [#3]
Very interesting. What tools were used to create it?

Barney


Tri|Ga|De(Posted 2007) [#4]
This looks nice!


Stevie G(Posted 2007) [#5]
Looks like good old Cannon Fodder and seems to play the same judging by the videos. I loved that game so well done! Do you get to split the team up? I guess I'll download it and see.


Robert Cummings(Posted 2007) [#6]
I like how sharp the graphics are. how do you manage that bitmapped look?


deps(Posted 2007) [#7]
Looks great! Well done!


Perturbatio(Posted 2007) [#8]
Looks good, downloading the demo now...


Raz(Posted 2007) [#9]
looks fantastic, especially for a first game, ill give it a go a bit later


Grey Alien(Posted 2007) [#10]
Looks HOT, downloading now...

Anyway congrats!

Is it b3D?

hey a better place to post this would be the Showcase forum.


CS_TBL(Posted 2007) [#11]
Looks 'bloody' good! :P


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#12]
Thanks for all the kind comments. We made the game primarily using Blitz3D, 3D Studio Max and Gile(s).

Yes, the teams can be split up and put back together. Does it show that Cannon Fodder is my favourite game of all time? Certainly on the Amiga anyway. We were influenced by more than just Cannon Fodder, games like Syndicate for instance, but War Wound probably bears closest resemblance to Cannon Fodder. We actually tried to stay away from doing many of the things in Cannon Fodder but often had to capitulate since Cannon Fodder did them in the best ways. We do have a number of things that Cannon Fodder didn’t such as climbing and sniper riffles though. The sniper rifle makes some levels very tactical!

Yeah, I realised after I'd posted it that it ought to have been in the Showcase forum. Nevermind, perhaps a moderator will move it.


googlemesilly(Posted 2007) [#13]
looks awesome ! :)


John Pickford(Posted 2007) [#14]
Very impressive work. Well done.


Azathoth(Posted 2007) [#15]
Its downloading slowly for me


Nathaniel(Posted 2007) [#16]
Looks professional! I can't believe it's your first game! What method did you use to blend the rocks into the grass?


Grey Alien(Posted 2007) [#17]
yeah gotta say it downloaded slowly for me too.


GfK(Posted 2007) [#18]
Thank god for that. Changed ISP yesterday, thought my new 8mb connection was shafted! :D


Robert Cummings(Posted 2007) [#19]
To be critical about it, I think your controls and your UI are your weakest points.

The user interface and presentation need a producer's touch, you're thinking in terms of tiny text and whatnot, it needs to be extroverted, bold and immediately functional in game

For example their health bars along the top, could use massive polish to bring it up to the standard of the game.

I am just nit-picking what otherwise is one of the most polished little blitz finished games I've seen.

did you turn off mip maps on textures for that sharp look?


agent4125(Posted 2007) [#20]
The game overall looks promising! But there a lot of user experience problems, which others have mentioned:

- The file size, for a demo, is quite large
- Very slow connection
- The UI text is too small and vanilla
- The hold-right-click in the menu: bad idea
- The camera movement is jarring
- Lack of any initial help (from what I could see)


North(Posted 2007) [#21]
52.1MB is nothing
Congrats on the release! I'll check it out this weekend.


Dreamora(Posted 2007) [#22]
Nothing for a commercial, too much for an indie

But looks quite nice but have to agree on the UI and healthbar userinput mentioned.

Otherwise, very good for the first one :)


Blitzblaster(Posted 2007) [#23]
so i download the demo right now, but the screens looks good. We play`d the same stuff, because i have the same age as you ;)

The 80`s rocks!

Edit: I play`d the game and i like it. But the man with the rocket luncher is a bit strong. He kills my team in a second:)

When you need ingame music, i give you and your team a good price. For example hear the tracks from my music homepage.

Regads
Blitzblaster


Pete Carter(Posted 2007) [#24]
its great!

I was making a remake syndicate with a mate back along, he talked me into using torque when i wanted to use blitz but he was doing the code so that far enough, i think you just proved that we could have done it in blitz. My firends not around anymore, so i may try and port it over to blitz so i can finish it off.

a for your game I cant get off level 2 how do you get round those guns. i want to play that level in the first screenshot


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#25]
The blending is all clever use of pre blended textures. We did have texture blending on terrain to begin with and it looked very good but unfortunately we encountered Z-buffer problems with the smoke and explosions and could never find a way to stop that from happening. As for the sharpness of our textures, yeah, we have mip-mapping turned off. We thought it just made the game look a lot better.

Some people are finding it tough, ay? We tried to make the AI’s targeting realistic in that enemies find it hard to shoot the player when they are moving side to side, so the more you move laterally in relation to the enemy the more inaccurate their shooting becomes. So, a tip is to not run directly at the enemy, especially at rocket men unless you want to be turned into a monsoon of gibs!

To get past the drone guns on level 2 you need to use a rocket launcher, that’s all I’m saying. Unfortunately, you can’t play the urban level from the first screenshot since it’s not in the demo. There are only two levels in the demo, sorry!


Buggy(Posted 2007) [#26]
Without playing it (just the video), it looks like the movement might be a little too fast for foot soldiers. It's almost as if they're gliding over the terrain.

That is, however, from looking at a small video.

Everything else looks great!

I wish I could make games like that...

Well, I really just wish that I could make games. Period.

Nice work.


Ash_UK(Posted 2007) [#27]
Wow O_O Excellent work Makepool. You must have put a hell of a lot of work into this. Well done! And good luck with your next project :o)

Ash


Blitzplotter(Posted 2007) [#28]
Am downloading now - a game thats a mix of cannon fodder and syndicate - cool (;-) And I disagree on the 52MByte too big for a demo these days - maybe you could provide a smaller download for those with limited dial up - but I still think 52MBytes ain't too bad.


TaskMaster(Posted 2007) [#29]
Nice game.

I took my team to the corner and hid them. Then separated one guy and completed mission one.


t3K|Mac(Posted 2007) [#30]
really nice game.

my mousepointer is not masked. i get a big black square around it. maybe thats a bug with the new nvidia cards?
and why don't you use DDS textures? would be much smaller in download size (personally i don't care about the size of demos) and vram. with dds i probably can run the demo on my intel integrated laptop. give it a try ;)


Blitzplotter(Posted 2007) [#31]
Very nice game, very playable, very polished. I wish you well with your game.


Tri|Ga|De(Posted 2007) [#32]
On my Vista the cursor is a black square!


xlsior(Posted 2007) [#33]
Looks like good old Cannon Fodder


Thanks, no I got that theme song stuck in my head again.

(War! Never been so much fun, ...)


CyBeRGoth(Posted 2007) [#34]
Excellent game, I can tell you were also a huge Cannon Fodder fan :)

I hope it does very well for you and your team, you really deserve it.


Yeshu777(Posted 2007) [#35]
Looks very nice. well done.


Rob Farley(Posted 2007) [#36]
From the screenies I'm thinking Syndicate... Looks really good I'll download this and have a play later.

Looks like you've had the same dilemma with the shadows as I have with my zombie game, personally I've changed my mind with the hard sunlight from one direction option and going for a more squishy ambient shadowing effect.

Looks nice though, will let you know once I've played it.


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#37]
Can anybody experiencing the dreaded ‘black square for a pointer bug’ please give me their system specs so that I can ascertain if the problem is Windows Vista or a GeForce 8 driver problem etc.

Once again, thank you for all the positive feedback. As for the few criticisms with the game, I have to agree with the GUI part. We already thought the GUI was the weakest part of War Wound.


t3K|Mac(Posted 2007) [#38]
Look at my Sig, using WinXp SP2 + Patches.


Who was John Galt?(Posted 2007) [#39]
Any luck on the mouse pointer bug? I'm getting it, too. XP, SP2, 8800 GTS 320MB.


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#40]
As a matter of fact I think I have! I’ve uploaded a new version of the demo which I hope will fix the pointer bug but without knowing for sure that everything’s fixed I don’t want to announce a new version of the demo just yet on our site. I’d therefore be really, really grateful if anybody encountering the pointer bug could download the new demo from the following link and then post back saying whether it works or not.

http://www.apothecarystudios.co.uk/downloads/warwounddemosetup1.1.exe

Thanks in advance to anybody that takes the time to help me!


Who was John Galt?(Posted 2007) [#41]
Yeah that fixed it.


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#42]
Glad we got the bug sorted, thanks for replying.


Who was John Galt?(Posted 2007) [#43]
What was the problem, out of interest?


Makepool(Posted 2007) [#44]
No idea really. We were using a disturbingly bad 2D pointer and have now switched to using a 3D pointer to get around the problem. The upshot of this is it also looks a lot better!


CodeOrc(Posted 2007) [#45]
I dl'd it and it plays great. The problem is I get smoked to fast.

But cool anyway- thanx :)