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[Jase]

It's been a while since I've been active on here. Decided to throw up a devlog and track my progress over the next six weeks.

Short version: I have six weeks off work, decided to create a small arena-based FPS with construction elements using C#/SharpDX for Windows. My aim is to have something reasonably playable at the end of that time, or consider myself a complete failure if I don't

It doesn't have a name yet.

I go into more detail in my blog entry (didn't want to copy/paste from my blog into this post, it's a huge wall of text and really just wanted this first post to be a short introduction) http://spacedja.se/blog/lets-try-this-again/

Todays progress was just mocking up the first map in Minecraft since it's more or less the perfect environment for block-based prototyping. Pic:


I should have some actual in-engine screenshots over the next few days and I'll be posting to this thread in tandem with my blog, though I won't be linking to each blog post each time.

[Jase]

Just finished the preliminary level loading and rendering for my test level, as well as creating some placeholder textures for the block types.

Here is the level loaded in-game. Not much at the moment (click for big version).



Next up will be making those white blocks actually be ramp blocks to let players actually run up/down ramps without jumping all the time (which would suck).

[Impmaster]

I feel like those brown blocks will just stop the characters in their tracks without giving advantages. Why do you have them?

[Jase]

They're just spawn-point indicators for resources that the players can collect in order to give their team more resources to build their base up.

They will probably resemble trees so that lower section will loosely resemble a very small forest of sorts.

I think it will just add another layer to the gameplay, since some players will head to the lower section in order to stop the other team's defensive players from mining materials which will in turn make their base be less fortified, making runs on the enemy objectives easier.

Well, in theory anyway

[Impmaster]

Sounds cool. A little bit too hard for me to build, but pretty cool. What will the gameplay be like? Fast & furious? Slow, sniping, and building the bases?

[Jase]

Well the idea was that there would be a preparation period at the start of a minute or so, which will allow players to get started on their base without fear of being attacked as there are barriers up. Then once that time expires, players are free to try and complete whatever the objective of the current gamemode is. However, players will still be able to collect resources and build/fix their teams base while other players are shooting at each other etc.

So I think the gameplay for some players will be slow but fast for others. At the moment the longest range weapon only covers 75% of the field length and there are no scopes or iron sights (just a crosshair), so there won't be much real sniping going on.

But of course, this early in the experiment anything could change. I don't know if the resource collection thing will be any fun, so we'll see.

[Jase]

Added sloped surfaces (converted from stairs in the MC level prototype) and I think it looks much better already, even with crap textures and default lighting.





I don't know how frequent is too frequent in terms of updates to this devblog, if people feel I'm updating too much then I can slow it down a bit.

[FamousAspect]

Best of luck in your six week challenge. I hope you are able to pull it off.

[Jase]

I couldn't sleep, so I chucked in a more-or-less temporary stadium model I picked up from Turbosquid to get a feel of the atmosphere. I also dropped in automatic skirting around the actual playable area of the arena so that the arena and the surrounding stadium feel connected.

Pics!




With the stadium in there it's looking much more like what I had in mind when I envisioned the concept, and I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere just having something anchored to the playable arena area instead of it just floating in mid air.

The actual model will probably just end up being a placeholder though, I'll get a nice 'futurey' stadium commissioned in a few weeks once I see how things are fitting together.

@FamousAspect: Thanks, I hope I can too!