I’ve been a whirlwind of development the last 3 days, getting a lot of stuff done.

"We find it very reasonably priced. For inedible slop."

It’s great fun working on it again.

PORTAL TERROR – (Download)

The innocent town of Wilbershire is under a siege of unspeakably vile, nasty evil.
First the entire town was lifted from the Earth and plunged into space. Now, to make matters worse, mysterious portals are opening at random and spewing out hideous monsters!

SAGE – (Download)

Simple Adventure Game Engine (SAGE) is the ActionScript 3 adventure game engine I built in a week.

BLOODY MARY – (Download)

A network toy/proof-of-concept that allows you to control characters remotely (and in real-time) via a database.

TAXI GRAB – (Download)

A game of blatant insurance fraud. You control Ethel, a hideous old woman, as she attempts to shove herself into the path of oncoming taxis.

Megabyte This!! (the arena FPS based on Cube 2) is coming soon. Have fun!

Taxi Grab!

The idea is that you play an old lady trying to make insurance money by flinging herself in front of oncoming taxis. It’s only a small task for my degree so I’m not spending a huge amount of time on it, but I like the idea anyway.

I just finished modelling what I imagine the viruses to look like. I don’t know if they will end up like this in the final game, but here we are anyway.

Evil Virus!

We’re using the superb Cube 2: Sauerbraten engine, so hopefully we can tear out all of their content and perform a complete conversion into what we’re doing. I’m working on it with a great group of guys, and we hope to have it done and dusted by April at the latest.

At the moment we’re doing level plans and generally getting our stuff together so we know exactly what assets we have to make before we can start churning out ‘real’ content. Personally I’ve been really enjoying just diving into the engine innards and, as well as tossing out all the (admittedly marvellous) content the Cube 2 guys have put in, fiddling with configuration and generally making the game our own.

The game concept is pretty simple – arena deathmatch (although we’ll also have CTF and perhaps a domination-style mode). Originally we had this enormous, sprawling idea about a computer virus that gradually gains sentience as it battles through various systems, avoiding anti-virus and destroying data and the outside world without really knowing it. It’s a great idea that we still really want to use, but for now time constraints dictate that we don’t spend time on AI and scripting. So multiplayer-only it is.

The backstory is still in there and flavours the whole game (virus vs anti-virus), but the context is now a sort of sequel to the un-made game, where the virus has multiplied to the point where it is in all-out war. Hopefully next year we’ll get a chance to revisit the original plot and make a prequel!

Content/previews coming soon!

But fear no longer! I’m back, and there’s lots of exciting stuff happening in the near future!

I’m working on a small, Flash-based game with my buddy Brendan (http://www.sketchperception.com/).
He hasn’t actually gotten around to giving me a full (or partial, for that matter) design document, but from what he’s said I know we’ll be wanting a nice rain effect. Accordingly I spent an hour or so last night coding a ‘weather manager’, which can be supplied with a location (and density, speed & wind) within which it generates some pretty looking rain.
I deliberately left the class ‘open-ended’, so it should be easy to go back in and add generation capability for any other kind of precipitation. For now, though, rain it is.

Other than that, I’ve also got at least two highly interesting projects that will come out of my degree course (although they’re all still in the pre-production phase for now), and a whole new idea for a website!

I’ll keep the blog updated as and when cool stuff happens.

Oh, and don’t worry about Marvin. I’ll get right back on that as soon as I am back at that computer.

Progress is moderately speedy, considering I am creating character animations and items as and when I need them. I may even be so bold as to say I’m actually getting quite good with character animation in general!

I’m having a few issues with filesize at the moment; the compiled .exe of the game is currently nudging 60MB and I haven’t even got 1/10th of the game in the editor yet. I’m eager to find out why that is, but it’s not really that much of an issue because I can compress the final builds by a huge amount (got the aforementioned 60MB down to 2.3).

Marvin Meets the Snugglewumpus

Watch this space for more.

I’ve just now finished all of the mouse cursors you’ll see in the game, and I’ve also put together the main menu.

Giving Marvin some pointers

More updates soon!

I’m actually quite happy with this one – looks like the game is back on!

Consider this an impassioned cry for help. If you can animate characters and want your name shown prominently in the credits of the game, please let me know.

murray@murraylewis.co.uk