Re: [Audyssey] Nolan Vs. the Alien Swarm: another Torrent Soundbite
Nice, I look forward to trying this one out. If the game engine can now handle inserting audio, perhaps you might considder adding some extra game modes to give some more variation to the game. One option might be having a mode that's actually possible to complete and get an ending (maybe with cutscenes as well), in addition to the endless levels mode. You might also considder different missions with different objectives, such as collecting supplies for your base, (grabbing power-ups), fending off alien attacks in open space (no asteroids), or fighting off aliens in an asteroid mining zone where you need to protect the asteroids and not destroy them. Obviously this all depends upon what you can make the engine do, and how much stuff you'd be willing to insert into the game at this stage, or into an upgrade? or a sequel? Whatever happens, I'll look forward to trying out Torrent. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: Nolan Darilek [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 6:42 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Nolan Vs. the Alien Swarm: another Torrent Soundbite Despite how silent things may seem here, lots is happening. To prove it, here's another _Torrent_ soundbite! Quite a few bugs were fixed and new features added since the previous soundbite. Here are a few examples. * Ship navigation is more physics-based with drag simulation. Sure, there isn't any air to create drag in space, but there's no sound in space, either. * Collision alerts. When a target is five or fewer seconds from colliding, a collision alert sound overlays its positional cue. After all, being told that you're going to collide is no good if you aren't sure *what* is about to hit you. The alert system doesn't just look at current positions but extrapolates into the future as well, so if you and an asteroid will collide soon regardless of your current positions, the alert is triggered. * The embedded screen-reader is complete. It's complex enough to support dialogues, sliders, buttons, checkboxes and text fields. When sampled speech isn't available, text-to-speech kicks in. * Licensing is hardware-specific but almost instantaneous. Enter your name and email address and either be redirected to a purchase page or have a new key generated on the fly, all from within the game. Waits of hours or days for key generation are non-existent for _Surreal Horizons_ games. * But perhaps the most interesting feature is the addition of aliens. These vicious creatures pursue you relentlessly, navigating the asteroid fields and swarming upon you from all directions. Included is a soundbite of an alien swarm level. The aliens still need some tuning as they manage to hold their own quite well against me, and I might have had a more difficult time had one not collided with another and destroyed itself, but this gives some idea of how they will behave. Much of the explanation from the previous soundbite still applies, though the sound index is again demonstrated. One interesting addition is the speaking state machine. While it might take a second or more to audibly note that an alien is retreating, it seems like it would be instantly visually obvious. As such, when the aliens change states from attacking to retreating, messages are spoken making it instantly obvious. This seems to offer numerous emersive possibilities for future games--speech cues tied into state machine changes might eventually provide a narrative flow of agents' actions to accompany the sound effects of those actions. But, enough talk. [Listen for yourself][1]. [1]: http://surrealhorizons.com/assets/2007/1/19/torrent-aliens.mp3 Just a few more notes. I'm very close to seeking testers for a closed beta. If interested, join the [mailing lists][2] and look for further announcements there. [2]: http://lists.surrealhorizons.com Also, news updates are available as an [atom feed][3], with accompanying audio as attachments. You can subscribe to _Surreal Horizons_ updates via your news aggregator, and even have accompanied soundbites delivered as podcasts! [3]: http://surrealhorizons.com/feed/atom.xml Enjoy. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] Nolan Vs. the Alien Swarm: another Torrent Soundbite
Hello, thanks for the suggestions. Current plans are to include a special wave on every fifth wave, and as I'm looking for more ideas for these, I might try implementing them in some form. I want to reply to the spirit of these suggestions, though, if for no other reason than to let folks know where this is going and why. I've gotten lots of private suggestions that seem cool, but would make the game very complicated. My goals with Torrent are two-fold: 1. Break new ground. Space Invaders has been done to death, and Asteroids hasn't. I'd like to provide a simple-to-learn, fun and infinite arcade game while remaining true to a simple concept-- blasting lots and lots of asteroids. While they'd be fun, complex missions, cutscenes, a storyline, automated drones would make the game too complex for what I envision. 2. Iteratively develop a reusable, easy-to-use, cross-platform engine for sophisticated accessible gaming. I recently broke the engine away from Torrent itself, and that which is Torrent is surprisingly small. My next game will build on the engine component, expanding it and its modules to support 3-D, embedded scripting, more physics and perhaps even multiplayer games. But I needed a simple concept to start out with, and it happened to be Asteroids-like. And, if all goes to plan, that next game will give you all the complexity you could possibly imagine. Though no non-prototype code is written, there's a reasonably advanced blueprint in my head already. Think Lone Wolf., in outer space, with both missions and a campaign mode for longer, more open-ended games. It's also loosely inspired by another very old but wildly-successful concept--Elite. Check it out if you aren't familiar. You might be intrigued. More than that, I'm not saying. :) So Torrent itself will be rather limited in scope, but I think it makes more sense to produce a fun but somewhat limited product that still breaks new ground, then focus my attention on this next project (which is what I wish I could be working on now. :) And my interest in game development hinges more on concepts like procedural synthesis, so many of my concepts will probably be light on story and cutscenes but heavy on random elements and open-endedness. Despite this initial simplicity, however, I'm not planning to leave those of you desiring complexity out in the cold. On Jan 19, 2007, at 2:06 AM, Dark wrote: Nice, I look forward to trying this one out. If the game engine can now handle inserting audio, perhaps you might considder adding some extra game modes to give some more variation to the game. One option might be having a mode that's actually possible to complete and get an ending (maybe with cutscenes as well), in addition to the endless levels mode. You might also considder different missions with different objectives, such as collecting supplies for your base, (grabbing power-ups), fending off alien attacks in open space (no asteroids), or fighting off aliens in an asteroid mining zone where you need to protect the asteroids and not destroy them. Obviously this all depends upon what you can make the engine do, and how much stuff you'd be willing to insert into the game at this stage, or into an upgrade? or a sequel? Whatever happens, I'll look forward to trying out Torrent. Beware the Grue! Dark. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
[Audyssey] Nolan Vs. the Alien Swarm: another Torrent Soundbite
Despite how silent things may seem here, lots is happening. To prove it, here's another _Torrent_ soundbite! Quite a few bugs were fixed and new features added since the previous soundbite. Here are a few examples. * Ship navigation is more physics-based with drag simulation. Sure, there isn't any air to create drag in space, but there's no sound in space, either. * Collision alerts. When a target is five or fewer seconds from colliding, a collision alert sound overlays its positional cue. After all, being told that you're going to collide is no good if you aren't sure *what* is about to hit you. The alert system doesn't just look at current positions but extrapolates into the future as well, so if you and an asteroid will collide soon regardless of your current positions, the alert is triggered. * The embedded screen-reader is complete. It's complex enough to support dialogues, sliders, buttons, checkboxes and text fields. When sampled speech isn't available, text-to-speech kicks in. * Licensing is hardware-specific but almost instantaneous. Enter your name and email address and either be redirected to a purchase page or have a new key generated on the fly, all from within the game. Waits of hours or days for key generation are non-existent for _Surreal Horizons_ games. * But perhaps the most interesting feature is the addition of aliens. These vicious creatures pursue you relentlessly, navigating the asteroid fields and swarming upon you from all directions. Included is a soundbite of an alien swarm level. The aliens still need some tuning as they manage to hold their own quite well against me, and I might have had a more difficult time had one not collided with another and destroyed itself, but this gives some idea of how they will behave. Much of the explanation from the previous soundbite still applies, though the sound index is again demonstrated. One interesting addition is the speaking state machine. While it might take a second or more to audibly note that an alien is retreating, it seems like it would be instantly visually obvious. As such, when the aliens change states from attacking to retreating, messages are spoken making it instantly obvious. This seems to offer numerous emersive possibilities for future games--speech cues tied into state machine changes might eventually provide a narrative flow of agents' actions to accompany the sound effects of those actions. But, enough talk. [Listen for yourself][1]. [1]: http://surrealhorizons.com/assets/2007/1/19/torrent-aliens.mp3 Just a few more notes. I'm very close to seeking testers for a closed beta. If interested, join the [mailing lists][2] and look for further announcements there. [2]: http://lists.surrealhorizons.com Also, news updates are available as an [atom feed][3], with accompanying audio as attachments. You can subscribe to _Surreal Horizons_ updates via your news aggregator, and even have accompanied soundbites delivered as podcasts! [3]: http://surrealhorizons.com/feed/atom.xml Enjoy. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
