Slow progress is better then no progress.

We haven’t spent nearly as much time on the game as I would like over the past week or so due to some minor distractions such as:

1. My son is now involved in a new hobby with some of his schoolmates creating their own Maplestory WMV videos for YouTube (Example). So we spent the past 4 days or so teaching him how to use video capture software, Photoshop and Premier. I must admit this kid is pretty creative.
2. The long awaited Xbox 360 game Halo 3 ODST was released Tuesday, which we pre-ordered for him. So a bulk of his time has been focused on what he likes to call “research”. Who is he kidding?
3. I started the first pass of modeling the new 3D characters for the game and needed a mental break from the polygons and shaders. Not to mention the steps required to properly export the models into the game engine was always a headache in itself and remains to be.

We did however get some work done. We have successfully implemented the melee attack system and now have 4 NPC’s in the game that will chase and attempt to attack whenever you wander within their specified FOV. I say attempt because though this is working as expected, the AI is pretty unintelligent. It’s very easy to avoid and side step the NPC’s turning the game into a glorified version of the childhood game tag. New game idea possibly? Hmmmmmm….

Obstacles, Detours and Road Kill …

Call it what you want but it’s all the same to me, those annoying intricacies that get in your way and delay the completion of your goal. As a former project manager I know in most cases roadblocks are expected and many are unforeseeable until you hit them. But this little project of ours was intended to be a bonding and learning experience for me and my son not the stress inducing grey hair growing pit of despair that it is starting to resemble. Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little.

First off we decided to use our older version of the Torque Game Engine version 1.4.2 which we purchased in 2005. I would love to upgrade to the latest and greatest version but it just isn’t in our budget right now.

An upgrade from V1.4.x to V1.5.x = $50.00
An upgrade from V1.4.x to TGEA V1.7.x or 1.8.x = $250.00

A productive, non productive weekend

During the past week my son and I have been taking baby steps in regards to modifying the source code of the game engine. I’m showing him the differences between modifying the C++ code that requires a recompile/rebuild versus the game engines script that is updated on the fly and implemented when running the already compiled executable (pwnagesauce.exe).

  So we start with what I thought at the time was something simple, defaulting the game play view to third person. Easy enough, a single line of code within the engines script defaults the camera view from first to third person. But wait, could it be that easy? It’s never is, is it?

Shopping for Game engine

Results of our 2 week Game engine research task.
We reviewed each of the game engines listed above and prioritized each one based on our design requirements, license costs and the learning curve.
Click here to download

Project Pwnage Sauce
Aka The Pwnage sauce project.

Let me start by explaining the exact reason for creating this blog.

I have a 12 year old son who is a self proclaimed genius and he knows that he can design his own video game and people will want to play. So the bottom line is we must create this next great PC game. So I'm going to log the project progress here.

So yes my 12 year old son and I are making a PC game. I think this will be a great learning experience for him so I decided to document the process for prosperity. Why a blog to document this design project? Well the word blog is a contraction of "web log"; a phrase not so commonly used these days so it seemed as good a place as any. Besides, I’m sure there’s at least one or two other techies like me that would find this somewhat interesting if not informative or even entertaining.