Blogs - Scurvy_Lobster

I have just released a new game called Deadly Tower here on Moddb.com

The game was made at a local game jam called Indie 9000 and is an arcade take on the traditional FPS genre.

In the game you stand on a lift and rise up through a tower. On every side of you skeleton shoot at you and your only defence is a bazooka loaded with rockets. There is currently three levels in the game but if community feedback is possitive I will add more levels since the graphics for these have already been made.

I am very happy to inform that our HL2 mod Crystalline is finally finished! Right now we are making copies of the game on DVDs for delivery on the deadline today at mid day. Once this is over we will get some much needed rest :-)

 As soon as possible we will begin producing screenshots, video and final descriptions for the game. We want the release to go as smooth as possible and you to enjoy our game as much as possible!

Still hard at work on the Crystalline production and gameplay is beginning to take form. We have most of the small things in place but due to a lack of programmers on the production we are behind schedule on gameplay implementation.

Right now our focus is to get as much of the key features in place before deadline. An this is putting a lot of pressure on our programmers. Before the start of this production they had never touched C++ programming or the Source engine. It has been a long month for them where they constantly have revised how to get Source and Hammer to do the right things.

Looking back now we could probably have used another engine with more succes. But as stated yesterday in this blog, we are required to use Source on a DADIU production. This is a huge engine for our small game and that isn't ideal for something that is very far from an FPS style game.

As some may have seen the HL2 mod (total conversion btw.) Crystalline has just been announced. We are a group of eight Danish DADIU students that have been working through March to make this game and we will release the mod at the beginning of April.

A couple of questions we get often is: One month production? And why Source engine?

The answer to the first is easy; since the group is made from student from different universities and art schools in Denmark it isn't practical to make the productions any longer. This has its clear limitations on the scope of the game and makes it necessary to prioritize everything very carefully. One month is what we are given and that is the rules we play by.

The second question is a bit more blurry to answer. Officially we use Source engine because this is the engine selected to be used by all DADIU games. This however has caused quite a discussion on a number of occasions. First of all, nearly no DADIU games have been First Person Shooters and the same is true for Crystalline. Last year in May you could see games like FLIPSIDE and The Way where absolutely nothing from Half-Life 2 was reused. Many DADIU students feel that there is too much Half-Life 2 in Source and that you constantly have to put up with the many limitations this creates.
Several times things are hacked together on top of something else and especially our programmers feel this.
Another thing is the content pipeline in Source which is horribly bad. Where several other engines have more modern tools you are required to have programmers figure out several command line tools, edit files, source code and rebuild/recompile to get anything into Source/Hammer. In comparison an engine like Unity can have content creators update to the latest files even while the game is running and changes are seen instantly. Source engine is 10 years behind in this area.

But enough about Source! We are working hard to bring Crystalline to life and look forward to releasing it! :-)