A Game Development Weblog! TK News
Sneak Peak at a City Level
Sneak Peak at a City Level in Tribulation Knights, the video game. The futuristic city is Seattle, and it is on fire, suffering from riots, and fighting in the streets.
Progress Being Made!
Yes Progress on Tribulation Knights is still being made!
Work is progressing and these snapshots show the level building being completed. It is a lot of work to develop a video game. This one is getting closer and closer to being a published reality. It is a RPG/FPS game and will be rated for Teens +. The game content is concerning the End Times, and can be both scary and violent for the young. So we have decided that it is best to have a teen and up rating. It is being developed to reach traditional gamers too.
New Dialog System in Tribulation Knights
A new dialog system that allows a player to communicate with in game characters has been added to the video game Tribulation knights. The video posted below is a test of the Work In Progress as the system is being tweaked. The ability to communicate with the large number of in game characters allows the player to hear and read the perspective of many different characters. This provides a much richer storyline for the player. The game is played in chapters like a book, and the more game characters you talk to, the more pages of the story you are reading and playing.
The video game is being developed using the T3D game engine technology from Garage Games.
Video of WIP of Tribulation Knights game
This past week I posted a recent video capture of work in progress on Tribulation Knights.
It is a video capture of the testing in a room under development.
The NPC’s are inactive and are being used to fill space.
The point was to make sure the player has plenty of space to maneuver in the level with other game characters.
This is only one room of dozens of rooms on this particular large level.
It is an underground government facility in Alaska that monitors all communications and broadcasts.
It does give you a glimpse of what the rendering quality of the game.
I am quite pleased with the Torque 3D game engine and the rendering quality.
Artificial Intelligence in Tribulation Knights
The Artificial Intelligence found in the new version of the Tribulation Knights video game is based on GuideBot technology. Below is some information about how this works and a diagram showing the process.
We are using Guide Bot which is a cutting-edge all-in-one middleware AI solution for games and virtual reality.
First of all Guide Bot provides implementation of standard steering behaviors like chasing, steering, dynamic obstacle avoiding.
The flexible and expandable architecture of Guide Bot is based on intellectual autonomous agent’s theory. Actor is AI controlled entity. Actor can be in one of predefined visual states (like walking barehanded, running with sword, sitting, lying etc). Actor consists of effectors – arms, legs, mouth etc. Simple actions can be assigned for each effector: walk for legs, punch or use weapon for arms, talk for a mouth.
High-level actions are used to activate more complex behavioral patterns like: fighting enemy with different types of weapon (melee or distant), chase/flee enemy, patrol territory, wandering around.
Perception (or sensor) system allows AI entity to emulate eyesight and hearing in the virtual environment.
Each state manages its own set of animations.
Main Character work for Tribulation Knights
Here is a screen capture of the stories main character in the game in the Cyber Monitoring Center.
Also a snapshot of the enemy Enforcers with their glowing eye shield.
The main characters face is based on a real person to avoid the standard dull looking game characters.
The character’s name is Steele, and he holds the rank of Chief Warrant Officer.
of course this character is still being tweaked, along with the weapon systems.
His army uniform will change here soon to work with the new ones I created.
The rifle is a non-lethal energy weapon, and sends a pulse of energy that disrupts a persons nervous system, rendering them unconscious.
Using it on the heavy armored troops requires multiple shots to take them down.
This will be demonstrated soon in a detailed weapons post.
Click on the image below to see it full size.
Game HUD for Tribulation Knights
Here is a visual explanation of the game GUI, and HUD for the video game Tribulation Knights.
It is being modified to create the best gameplay experience.
Since the dialog window pops up at the bottom when the player selects an NPC to communicate with, it is best to keep the heads-up displays at the top of the screen.
The Health meter will show the current level, and can be replenished with food, drinks, and med kits. All these things have to be found in lockers, cabinets, and inside storage rooms.
The Impact Token counter will show you the current number tokens accumulated. An Impact Token is what is given to you by a person that you have made a positive impact on. This can occur in dialog with NPC’s (Non-Player Characters). If you are rude, and cause a negative impact then you will lose an impact token.
The compass will help you navigate maps, and keep your heading when following directions.
The money counter is necessary to buy food, and can be used to help others.
The Battery indicator shows the amount of power available for certain types of devices, and instruments in the game. This can be recharged by picking up new batteries or finding recharge stations.
The Tool Selected indicator. Since there are enemies to be dealt with, there are weapons of different types. Most non-lethal, and all require ammo of some type and form.
Click on the image to see it full size.
Explanation of game gui
Game Character Dialog Designing in Tribulation Knights
I am using a program called Chat Mapper to design and develop the player conversations with the NPC’s (Non Player Characters) in Tribulation Knights. Below is a snapshot of a conversation being designed.
Click on the image to see it full size.
There are a lot of NPC conversations in Tribulation Knights video game, and they are necessary to tell the whole story.
The more people the player talks to, the more information is gathered. This valuable intel is needed to unlock additional conversational and playable branches in the game. You might talk to a janitor and he give you the key to an old unused room with items you can add to your inventory.
How you ask questions is important, since you can be rude which has a negative response. If you make someone upset they will remember when you come back, also their responses will be different if you have been rude. The character dialog is much more than just clicking through to get a key card, or an access code to a safe. There is an impact score that keeps count how many positive and negative impacts you have on people. Conversation with NPC’s is suppose be like in real life. If you are not nice, then people will not like you, and less likely to help you.
3D Game Characters
Quick update!
Here is a screen capture of some of the newer 3D game characters added to the game.
They are critical personalities in the first episode.
Click on the image to see it full size.
Potential Impact to Tribulation Knights
As I have mentioned before, the main game technology we use is InstantAction’s Torque game engine. The particular engine we switched to this year is T3D, (from TGEA) because it is a fantastic looking engine. The game was looking quite dated under the TGEA engine, so we migrated to the new Torque 3D engine. The structure is different, and code references are changed. Also some of the 3rd party components and code we use have not been officially migrated to T3d by their developers. So a lot of redesign work on the game took place this year. Now the bad news.
Unfortunately this past week the company that owns the former Garage Games operation released the following statement.
“Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations. While we are shutting down the InstantAction.com website and Instant Jam game, Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque. We thank all of our past and current customers for their support.”
The company is now looking for a buyer for the Video Game Engine operations.
This is bad news for us. The engine is currently at version 1.1 beta 3, and we were waiting for the full release of T3D 1.1 to release the first installment of the game. There were a variety of bugs that we have been waiting to be fixed. Many have been fixed in the latest release Beta 3, but it is still not a full release. Since Instant Action has shut down most of its operations, there is question that a full release will ever make it to us. Instant Action is looking for a buyer of the game engine part of the company but that does not guarantee the continuation of the engine development. Currently the Gamebryo game engine owner Emergent Technologies are up for sale to the highest bidder. So two major game engines comapnies are making their assets available for sale. This does not look good.
We were in this exact same scenario back in 2005 when we bought a very expensive game engine called Reality Engine. The engine was a dream come true, but not 100% complete. There were bugs being worked on until EPIC bought the rights to the technology so they could add them to the Unreal engine. The main programmer left to go work for WPIC as well. So the Reality Engine died a painful death eaten by bugs and neglict.
We were delayed this year with our flagship game Tribulation Knights as we waited for a more stable version of the Torque 3D to be released, we have to wait on the outcome of the former Garage Games, now Instant Action. Please pray for a good outcome for Instant Action and their employees. This situation affects so many small indie game developers around the world.
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