Making a game project: Dark Instinct.

[Psypher5]

Right, so a few of us at college decided it would be fun to make a game.

We have got an engine and shader engine, a story plot, and some concept art/modelling going on

We have a decent team of people *including college teachers* who are willing to help us out.

http://str.bull3t.co.uk/mod/index.htm

In a world where you can trust nobody except yourself, sometimes you'll find that you know least about yourself.

To give you a basic idea about our concept;

Dark Instinct : Survivor

Chapter 1 : Training
You are Leela, a 16 year old tom girl from New NewYork,(<--New name coming ) north plate, planet Genesis in the Alpha Centurai system. The year is 2258.
You are no normal girl. You wake in your bunk, where you can learn more about yourself and your world.
Its time to go to training camp. You are a next generation soldier of the 56th squadron, Genesis Infantry, Illuminati Elite.
You are an important comodity and a powerful weapon. The code you live by is; unit, core, god, country.


...and things havent even hit the story plan yet!


Random thread I know, but was wondering about you, technically the target audience think about the game.

Was just going to keep people informed about it as we go further into this new area of interest. So would you be interested in following this?

~Psy

 

[Spunj99]

I certainly would yes.

I like the sound of it.

 

[Zephyrus]

Yep i would, interested already

 

[basmic]

I certainly would, and I certainly wouldn't object to doing any testing for you.

 

[Psypher5]

The main "project leader" guy is having second thoughts about the story He wants something more twisted, dark, psychotic. We could easily link that into the game, and already have ideas how to. Looks like this idea is being dropped though.

I just think the over all story line is to complex for him to visualise. It spans over 2 games, this one, and a prequel.

I'll get my mate to do a blurb of the games. If you could tell me if it is "original" sounding, and not that confusing would be a great help.

Have to convince project leader to stop scraping ideas and stick to one so we can work. *already dropped this once, started a simple paintball game, dropped that and came back to this, now wants a manhunt style game >.>*

Guh, some people. lol.

Thanks for your comments guys, we are thinking of releasing a simple "alpha" stage demo when we have a few models/a map and some textures going just to see if it all looks and works well.

 

[Psypher5]

A mock up back cover teaser?

In a world bent on destruction, when you can trust nobody, your leaders are your captures. You must find a way to save yourself.
You are capable of great things, to protect those that you love and to destroy your enemies. Just remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

 

[Sweetloaf]

Dark Instinct : Survivor

Chapter 1 : Training
You are Leela, a 16 year old tom girl from New NewYork,(<--New name coming ) north plate, planet Genesis in the Alpha Centurai system. The year is 2258.
You are no normal girl. You wake in your bunk, where you can learn more about yourself and your world.
Its time to go to training camp. You are a next generation soldier of the 56th squadron, Genesis Infantry, Illuminati Elite.
You are an important comodity and a powerful weapon. The code you live by is; unit, core, god, country.


...and things havent even hit the story plan yet!

Hi there I don't mean to offend you or come across as negative here but the problem I see is that at the moment from what we know there seems to be little to hook any real interest. By this I mean we have a girl in the future who is a soldier, that is all we have to go off, names of places and the year that a game is set in are of little importance really, it's the mechanics of that game itself that will grab people and make them pay attention to what you are doing. i'm not doubting that your game will be great I hope it is and will be first in the queue if you do something special.

Questions that people will want answers to are:

Is it an RPG?, Is it an action title? Is it online? What are you offering us for our hard earned that no one else is? At the risk of sounding like a marketing **** You have to offer us something we haven't played before, just one simple twist on a genre, something that will make us really want to play!

A Tomboy in the future on a different planet that is a weapon (i.e kills things) doesn't really say much to me.

As I said above I don't doubt that your game could be great but as a plotline so far it sounds a little uninspired with a pretty generic name.

I wish you luck with it and will and hope I haven't come across as trying to **** on your bonfire, I just wanted to offer what I see as constructive criticism.

I actually feel like I've rambled too much, so if it helps, I promise i'll buy it

 

[Psypher5]

Ramble is exactly what I need

It is a first person shooter atm, with a lot of interactive/quest type gameplay.

Trying to cram a page long plot inot a few simple paragraphs for a forum is proving to be kind of hard. And as my mate says:
well, it doesnt tell the story cause.. its not even the full first chapter of the outline!

This is proving quite hard!

I will upload a .txt file with the complete layout asap (a friend of mine is currently writing out a detailed plot outline in chapter/story form to make it all easier), if you don't mind reading it, that would be an amazing help

Right, give me untill the end of the day and ill have the story for you. Cant do it in one forum post, it'll be huge.

Thanks for the comment, was really helpfull, and your queries will be answered.

~Psy

 

[Sweetloaf]

It is a first person shooter atm, with a lot of interactive/quest type gameplay.

That sounds like my kind of thing

Thanks for the comment, was really helpfull, and your queries will be answered.

~Psy

See, now I'm interested and waiting for you to feed me, you have control and my attention


Unfortunately for you games makers, it is people like me that try to make your life difficult, I have never made a game in my entire life and so do not know how much effort is involved, it is because of this that people like me end up demanding far too much from developers who are more reaslistic about the limitations of current technology.....sorry 'bout that

 

[Psyk]

I'd really like to do a project like that. I find the problem is it's too hard to keep thing organised over the net so a lot of mod projects tend to fall through. I wish I could find people at my uni that would be interested but I think we'd end up with lots of programmers and no artists since there are no digital art/design courses.

 

[Psypher5]

The good thing thats come with a group of us doing this is our college has put on a computer games course next year Includes 2d/3d programming, art, and everything in between.

@Sweetloaf, I have only ever made 2d games before, but I feel good enough to do concept and art, and we seem to have just the right mix of people with good abilities to start this off quite well!

~Psy

 

[basmic]

Could we have some background information, on what you're using to create the game, how many (roughly) are in the creation process, etc.

The main reason Half-Life 1 was so popular, was because of the innovation of the story and graphics. The storyline has continued on to Half-Life 2, and will do so for #3. For each generation of Half-Life, I have been awed by graphics and the storyline.

I'm not saying I expect your demo to be like Half-Life or Farcy. But the end-product should be able to either keep-up or challenge other games in it's league.

 

[Psypher5]

Just uploading a simple outline

While I was out my friend created a quite well written overview of both games (equating to the whole story) It's not got everything in as of, I'm going on skype so we can add bits in he has missed and such.

*not yet finished atm*
http://bull3t.co.uk/tpb.txt

Any questions, don't be shy to ask. This is our first stab at anything like this, so any feedback or bits you dont understand and need better explaining just say and I'll work to correct things as needs be.

~Psy

 

[Sweetloaf]

At work at the minute, will give it a look when I get home

 

[Psypher5]

Cheers mate

 

[MiGSY]

What language are you planning to write this game in? It all sounds a little ambitious to be honest. It takes serious work, time, effort and skill to create anything even slightly resembling a first person shooter (Depending on which language/libraries...etc you are using).

 

[Psypher5]

I'm not in the programming side of things unfortunatly, all I know it it is being written in the Torque game engine which uses its own scripting language. http://www.garagegames.com/products/browse/tge/

Only trouble my mate is having is a decision of the first person vie to either be a camera in the model or a seperate animation render of the hands and weapons.

Its not going to be anything glorious and grqphically stunning, blimey its our first game! But it has potential to work. If we get something that playable and doesnt look like pants (Which everyone seems able to do, remembering we have a few teachers who understand the engine we are using) so all seems ok.

 

[Psyk]

Only trouble my mate is having is a decision of the first person vie to either be a camera in the model or a seperate animation render of the hands and weapons.

It's usual for it to be a seperate render for the first person view. That way it can be more detailed without using too many resources (if every characters gun/hand models were that detailed you might get slow down). There are probably other reasons for it being done this way but I'm not completely sure what they are. Still I think it would be good if the third and first person views were not seperate because that would be more believable so if he can find a way to get it to work just as well as seperate renders then he should go for it.

edit- If using Torque gets too complicated consider making it a mod instead. Unreal Engine 2 is great and easy to program for and I'm sure Source is aswell.

 

[MiGSY]

Your first game? And you're writing an FPS? Might be an idea to start on something a little more basic first, like a pong remake

 

[Psypher5]

We have pondered over using a diff engine *or calling say, the unreal engine into torque* to make a mod (the paintball game forexample)*

And Psyk, noted and info passed to my mate Cheers.


Also, not like, a total first game, as I've done some stuff before, and a few others have dabbled in it. Just a first for "us" as a complete game, as a group of friends working together.