I'm back

Ok, so I look like a bit of a twat after presentations, but I'm not going to worry, because I know I'll get another shot later in the year. But for now there's a whole load of work to be done so I'd better get on with it.
I imagine there's still some confusion about the game type, I have said before that it is in the puzzle adventure style. If you don't know what that is think King's Quest/Myst/Gateway, if you don't know what they are then think Darkseed/Monkey Island/Day of the Tentacle. If you're still confused then chances are you don't play enough old games and you should check out this site: http://www.abandonia.com/ contains games that have either been released into public domain, or belong to companies that no longer exist, so it's free and legal. Games in a similar style to my project will be under adventure.
There's still some nuts and bolts to be added to the plot before I can post it, but it shouldn't be too far away.
Most games are either third person, with the camera following behind the character, or first person, where the gamer sees things from the characters perspective. Mine is slightly different, it will be fixed camera, so the camera will always view the same scene and the character will move around in the scene in a similar fashion to the final fantasy games. This is handy in a couple of ways, because the background is fixed I can use a 2D backdrop giving me a whole lot of room to breathe in the performance department. The backdrops will be made first in 3D, rendered, edited in GIMP then exported back to blender in 2D form. This way the computer only has to worry about the player, moving objects and anything the player can interact with, because of the extra breathing room I can afford to make those to a high standard.
Hopefully that has cleared everything up, I've got the character movement working perfectly, all I have to do now is sort the inventory system and make... everything.

Presntation 'bleh'

Ok so I kinda froze during my presentation, scary stuff. That's the last time I have faith in my charm and charisma and my ability to 'wing it'. But I'm pretty sure I got the message across about my project. If not, the project is a 3D game in the puzzle/adventure genre, if you don't know what that is think Kings Quest/Myst. Each level will have a fixed camera and the player will move around inside the scene, collecting items and solving problems to open new areas. I'm really quite excited because this style of game play has not been seen this decade. I've made a concept map with the obstacles and items contained in each area, but I won't b releasing it to the class. The story revolves around a robot lost in the desert, more on that later...

Also here's a quick video summary of the presentation, credits to roger for that one

Room to breathe

Ok, so the presentations have been delayed, which is good, because I have a mountain of other stuff to get done. I have been meaning to post a general blog with some background on the project, but I think I will wait until the presentation before putting it out there. I'm currently working on a concept map for the game, which is a bit of a brain fryer. But I'm getting a really solid idea of what it will be like if it ever gets finished, and I must say I'm really excited. I'll put up my big post on Thursday with info on the game, and that will probably be the last until after the two week holidays. I doubt I will find the time to post a blog with my dial up internet (Yes it still exists in dark corners of the earth) But there's plenty to do before then, so good luck with presentations to everyone in the class and expect a nice big post Thursday.

Genuinely Terrified

Here's some stuff I've been working on this week, not really sure if I'll put them in the game or not. But I love to invent stuff like this and I'll advertise it any way I can. The presentation is looming, it's due next week and I'm genuinely terrified. I've pretty much been under everyone's radar until now, I'm positive that only roger reads this blog. Self advertisement is not a strong point. But in a way I'm looking forward to standing up and generating some interest in the project. But I've got a whole lot of preparation to do before I'm ready to get up there, so I guess I'd better get back to work

A quick post

I figured I'd better jot a few things down, went to the 'presentation' on mentoring today, really more a group activity then anything else. But it was nice to put a human face on some of the projects going on and to see how other groups were coping with the workload, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one with a mountain of work to get done. Hopefully I've generated some interest in my own project as well, with any luck I'll get a few more readers to this blog. Got my first red card the other day for networking, waiting patiently for a blog list on the moodle so I can get my stats back up. Until then I'm working on my intro cut-scene for the game, I'm also really starting to nut out the plot-line and the game mechanics, expect a big post on this real soon. Here's a quick taste of the intro, just a hand so far, but there will be more soon,

Progress

It's about time I wrote another blog. Everything is chugging along nicely, I've come to the conclusion that the blender game engine won't be sufficient so I've decided to make the switch to CrystalSpace. CrystalSpace is an open source game engine with efficient hardware acceleration and a nice heavy physics set. I'll be using the Crystal Entity Layer, (CEL) which comes with all the code I need to make a game. Despite that it's going to take me a while to settle into the change, but it's well worth it. The actual modeling, texturing and animation will be done with blender and is easily exportable to CrystalSpace. Without the almighty dollar to fight over, open source software developers tend to work together to make everything super compatible, which makes my job that much easier. I've also found a nice collection of textures (open source of course) which will save me a bucket-load of time. I watched a quick tutorial today on concept mapping software, doesn't seem that great. If I need to make a concept map I think I'll just scribble it on a piece of paper, The example that roger used to demonstrate it was helpful though, it re-enforced exactly what I'm being assessed on. I'm making a few models right now including Geoffrey the tinkerer and electronics enthusiast. Final project submission is also due soon. Here's some screenies,

Demo!

Here is the demo I promised, all the notes and instructions are in the readme file, all you need to do is extract and play. Feed-back is super welcome. Enjoy!
http://www.4shared.com/file/43616565/af19281/HumanElementDemo.html