ambershee

0 comments by ambershee on May 1st, 2008 digg this super bookmark

You may not have heard much out of me for the past few weeks - but that certainly doesn't mean anything is going on. For the past five weeks, me and some of the more veteran Shee Labs crew have been working our socks off to create a prototype game using Unreal Tournament 3. You'll probably never get to see it, but it will be showcased at The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Zurich next week.

So what's the point? Well, it was an important exercise in team work (and a way of helping out a friend finish up their university coursework!) before we embarked on something a little bigger.

The next step, in case you missed the little recruitment drive in the forums, is a proper, public project.

It started out as a game mode, derived from the five week project, however it rapidly mutated into a monster. We had originally set our deadline to the third week in June - it all seemed so easy for our couple of programmers and our artist. Then design kicked in. We haven't even started yet, and we've decided to bring in the specialists, have doubled (looking to quadruple) the size of the team.

We're working on a small total conversion now instead; this isn't just a game mode for UT3, this is a whole new setting and way to play. It needs a complete scrubbing of the original assets, and the creation of entirely new ones. We're working on some new nuances in game dynamics, giving the visuals a much stronger tying in to the action; rather than having them a pretty overlay to the game - using advanced shader and camera techniques to signify more than eye candy. We even have a budget put aside for extra assets, are working on online ranking stables, and we're going to be filming live action sequences to overlay into the game environment! - something unheard of in a mod yet, as far as we're aware.

We're still aiming to release third week of June.

It's going to be a long stretch, but consider this the first (very quiet) official announcement of Shee Labs Game Development's 'DataRun'.

Until next time!

AmberZ