Null Grav is a modification of the Unreal Tournament 3 engine, and is loosely inspired by the book Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Null Grav features members of Mobile Armed Null-Grav Tactical Assault Corps, or M.A.N.T.A. Corps, an elite squad of soldiers that act as an orbital and sub-orbital police force similar to SWAT. Since its inception, MANTA Corps has neutralized countless terrorist situations, defused bombs, rescued hostages, and destroyed pirate and smuggler ships. When not out in the field, the soldiers of MANTA Corps spend their time training in a special zero-gravity chamber, located inside their space station headquarters, that gives Null Grav its name. This chamber is designed to train the soldiers for a variety of high-risk and dangerous missions that might involve space combat. To achieve this goal, the chamber is capable of being highly customizable, with the ability to swap out various structures inside the chamber to make for unique arena configurations.
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We finished up our presentation last night, in hopes of attracting new people to our mod while getting more feedback directly from some game developers. The developer from Cheyenne Mountain gave us some good insight on where we should be headed and what we should steer clear of. He liked a lot of our features, the wall walking in particular. Sam Dieter from Rainbow Studios liked that we had a business aspect to our whole project.
- Josh, Lead Programmer
We finally had our presentation Thursday night. Wow, was that nerve-wracking! Right until the end we were working hard on our mod. We knew a lot was expected of us here at Collins College.
But we weren't prepared for just how much attention our little game had gained! Every chair in the large room we presented in was filled, and there were still people lining the walls. There were at least a dozen people from the game industry there, representing companies like Rainbow Studios, THQ, D3, and Cheyenne Mountain. From what I'm told, there were also scouters in the audience taking notes, which is very exciting to us.
Nervous as hell, we set up our computers and began. And we rocked the house! Everyone seemed very impressed with what we had to offer. But they were completely blown away when we unveiled the actual gameplay - not just in Unreal Tournament 2004, but in UT3 as well. And not just game mechanics (wall walking, etc.); we had our player model in game, with customization options. We had a working Capture the Flag map. We even had a full single-player level, with scripted sequences and voice dubbing recorded in a sound booth.
Afterwards, we opened the floor for questions, and received some very positive feedback. A couple members of the game industry offered some constructive critiscism, and gave suggestions on how to improve our mod.
With feedback like that, and the continued support from the ModDB community, I feel confident we can push this game further and make it better. Publisher funding, here we come!
- Owen, Project Lead
Presentation
NewsHey everyone, quick update here. We're due to present our project on Thursday to members of the game industry, school staff, and friends and family. We're...
UT3 Confirmation
NewsThe team has decided to change over to the UT3 system. In just the past few weeks, most of the code has been transferred successfully. We are working...
Engine Update
NewsWe have been pushing UT2k4's engine to it's limits and beyond with what we are trying to accomplish. Tests have been conducted over the past few weeks...
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so sad that this mod died
Wow, so impressive design of characters!
starting to shape up guys ;)
Hmm starting to shape up you say? wheres the updates. i loved the way this is looking but hows it going guys?
A lot of the project is split up into parts so they can be done in sections and less time. Owen should be able to give you a idea on how things are turning out.
This is looking sweet! loved the books!
oki, character in-game, first weapon in-game. Tracking now.
If the enemy's gate is down, then this will be a great mod! Will "freezing" be a feature and, if so, will collision and physics allow players to use advanced tactics such as those employed by Ender's team near the end of their training run? I've never played U3, so I don't know whether or not the engine could support such things.
The enemy's gate is indeed down. :)
Freezing is indeed a feature, one that we actually already have implemented in both the UT2004 and UT3 versions of our mod.
Unreal has a command system built in, where you can order other players and bots to do certain things through pre-set voice commands. We haven't looked too heavily into it yet, but it's something that's planned to be a major part of the game. Especially since there's a per-round based ranking system. The better you do the previous round, the higher up the food chain you go, until you're the one giving orders.
Beyond those features, there's wall walking, zero gravity, and customizable players and levels. We'll also be implementing a class system to give things a more tactical feel...
Sounds fun! In fact, it might even be worth getting UT3 for.