Realm Wars Development Updates

Buttons & Cameras - Why it's so important to get them right

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:11:00 +0000

Some of you are probably wondering what is up with the lack of news updates once again? Well the simple fact of the matter is that we are working on and testing out a lot of changes and features that are pretty cool to us, but are also in a butt-ugly testing state too.

Most of these changes, testing and tweaks have to relate to controlling your character and the camera system that Realm Wars uses, which is single handedly the most important system of the game. When I speak of controls I don't just mean pressing a button, I am also speaking of how the character reacts in the world as well such as how fast can he rotate, minimizing how much the player slides when going from a run into a sidestep and so on and so forth. Essentially the goal here is to make your character feel as though they are a part of the world and are responsive and not a floating camera with a weapon stuck on it.

This is something that we have fought with (especially Markus) for the past few weeks and what we have tried to do here is a lot easier said than done. Its far more involved than just getting all your mapping assigned to the right input, but also ensuring that it feels right (ie. isn't too twitchy but isn't unresponsive either) and adding in features that allow us to tweak the settings. Markus has done an incredible job at getting all of these changes in to where the game is starting to feel real good as you control it. There is still a way to go with this but everything feels as though it is on the right track here towards being something that people will enjoy using from the very moment they start playing the game.

Second area where most of our recent changes have come from are with the camera system. Once again this is one of those areas that you probably look at initially and say "ya so what, its a camera, its what I see" but there's so much more to it than just that. Much like in cinema, cameras in games heavily influence many aspects of the medium and brings in an expectaction to the viewer of what to expect. A camera needs to essentially work hand in hand with the controls so that the player doesn't feel boxed in or confined with what they can do and thus heavily influences their actions.

With Realm Wars 2 we have fought a lot with trying to get our camera angles and positions setup just right and so that it complements the controls. It's always amazing to test out something locally and think that you are on the right track and then realize that it absolutely sucks when you are trying to do a multiplayer game. Through a lot of trial and error we thankfully have something that we are quite happy with (as well as alternate angles that we can test out in game at a click of a button) and feel really helps complement the controls as well as influence how you want to view and most importantly play the game.

Well thats the low down on the key things that we have been working on lately. I wish I could say more or provide some screenshots but most of this stuff is something that you will just have to sample when it comes times. On the plus side though with these two key elements well on their way to being "final" it does allow us to focus once again on building brand new art and missions that work hand-in-hand with what we have done here with the controls and camera. Stay tuned for more updates as the week goes on.

Realm Wars CP Download Links Restored

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:27:00 +0000

FYI the download links for both the PC and Mac version of old Realm Wars CP (WWDC 1101 build) are working once again.

Download Link Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:20:00 +0000

Last week the servers that host the files for Realm Wars including the Realm Wars Community Project build releases was transfered to a new server. Unfortunately some of the files did not transfer over correct and as such the download link for Realm Wars CP will give you a 404 error.

We are working on resolving this issue and hope to have it fixed by this weekend. Sorry for any inconveniences that this may cause you.

Updated to Torque 1.4

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:18:00 +0000

Markus has successfully ported all of our code up to the new Torque Game Engine 1.4 release which provides us a whole bunch of useful new additions such as performance enhancements for PC & Mac, Unicode support, updated world editor tools and so forth.

As for other updates to Realm Wars, unfortunately we have had the need to keep a bit of a low-profile on some of the new features that we have been working on. Hopefully in the near year we can get some new screenshots out to go along with a planned new site :)

Jeff Tunnel's Thoughts on Realm Wars 2

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:41:00 +0000

Jeff Tunnel, one of the founders of GarageGames, took some time to post his thoughts and comments on various games that were brought to IGC this year including the Milestone 1 version of Realm Wars 2 that we brought:

"Realm Wars 2, Wow! So good that GG will be partnering with MG to bring this product to life." - Jeff Tunnell

Sorry that I cannot say anything else about what this may mean, but I thought that I would pass along word to those of you who were curious.

IndieGamesCon 2005

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:40:00 +0000

For those of you who are living under a rock, you might not know that Realm Wars 2 was shown off at the LAN center at IndieGamesCon which was held in Eugene, Oregon this past weekend.

Although the game is still rough (its just Milestone 1 right now) you will be pleased to know that Realm Wars 2 was voted by attendees as the Best Multiplayer game at the show! This is quite an acomplishment considering that Realm Wars 2 hasn't been in development all that long and there is still more to do.

Also for those of you who missed it, Realm Wars 2 was the Image of the Day on GarageGames.com...

Mission Screenshot

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:48:00 +0000

Sorry for the lack of updates, the team has been pretty busy working on the last of the tweaks that we need to get done to show the game off at Indie Games Con 2005 as well as get the closed beta up and running. In the mean time though here is a screenshot of the new RW mission...

LoreCon Results & Beta Information

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 04:27:00 +0000

I apoligize for not posting this sooner, but with the rush to get the LoreCon build ready and out the door the team decided to take a week long break to relax and spend time with family before getting back to development. Unfortunately we neglected to update the site with news about LoreCon :(

At LoreCon 2005 (a convention for Dark Horizins -Lore : Invasion) Adrian Wright and Tim Downs took some time out of the competition to show off Realm Wars 2 to the attendees and let them have a bit of hands on time with the game. Overall the feedback, even though the game is still in an early beta state, was very favorable with all of the attendees seeming to enjoy it and the features that it provided. Thanks to their input, and of course a few bugs they uncovered too, we are working in their feedback into the last of our Milestone 1 goals, which we are hoping to have completed in 3 weeks.

Once we are done Milestone 1 we will of course be moving onto our Milestone 2 goals as well as beginning a beta test for what has been done already. Unfortunately though due to the nature of the project at this time we cannot make this a public beta test as a public test will consume too many resources to manage effectively and divert us away from making the game. We will continue to provide information to everyone as development progresses and thank you for your continued interest of this project.

Exclusive Realm Wars Preview @ LoreCon

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:13:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that attendees of LoreCon (which takes place August 20th in Philadelphia, PA) will get an exclusive opportunity to sample a playable beta of the Milestone 1 release for Realm Wars 2. This is the only planned preview of Realm Wars that will be released for the next month or two so don't miss your opportunity to play it and may other great games.

Improved Spawning Code Completed

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 20:59:00 +0000

During our current development we had had an issue with one of the spawn locations on the test map where the games code would fail to find a valid location to spawn the players of that particular team and would spit them out in the middle of the map way up in the air. This provided for a spectacular view of the map while you were in free fall, but unfortunately as the saying goes "its not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end".

Knowing what was causing the issue Markus took some time out of his schedule today to look into the problem which turned out to be a flaw in the current implementation of Torque's spawning system. The basic problem is that the code looks for a valid location on the terrain (within the radius of the spawn sphere) to drop the player, but the code was setup so that if it found an interior at that location too it wouldn't use that spot and would eventually bail out if it couldn't find anything at all and use the center of the mission world to spawn the player. Most teams get around this in one of two ways, either spawn the players no where near an interior (which sucks and wouldn't really work in the long run) or increase the spawn sphere to such a radius that it latches onto a point outside of the interior you are on (which also sucks). Knowing that we needed a better solution Markus went and rewrote this code so that we don't have to use either of these comprimises and can instead drop the players onto or into interiors that fall within the radius of the spawn sphere thus ensuring that in the long run we won't be limited with what we can do with this game. Great work Markus!

Some New Goodies

noreply@blogger.com (Logan Foster) — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 05:16:00 +0000

There have been a variety of updates and additions to Realm Wars since we last updated the blog so I thought that I would take some time and pass along this information to the general public.

Shield Blocking - As you may or may not know, one of the goals that we wanted to have for this next release of Realm Wars was to have the ability for the players character to use a hand sheild to help counter some of the attacks that were coming against them. There are a couple of implementations of this already done by 3rd parties in Torque (which oddly enough are all based on the old Realm Wars hand to hand code that Markus as now redone) but none of them do exactly what we felt were needed. So how exactly does this new code differ from what's out there? Well for starters the sheild will block anything that comes in contact with its shape, there are no hacks here with a simple raycast, its the entire surface of the object. Also when I say anything I mean anything... melee strikes and projectiles, just as long as they collide with the shield first (obviously). If an attack collides with the shield a particle spark system is displayed to denote that you hit the shield (if you manage to hit the player you actually see particle blood). If the shield blocks an attack against it, it also knock the defending player backwards a small amount and in turn the attacking players attack animation is stopped if they are attacking with a melee animation and strike the shield!

New Sword - I took the time this weekend to create a new bad ass sword for the orc. One that looks crude but also a bit viscous and nasty in every which way that an orc would want such a weapon.

Admin mod - Doug continues work on the Admin mod which adds a lot of extra functionality and ease of use to what many of you might have already seen in a Torque game including a voting system to kick players and cycle to the next map if necessary.

Engine improvements and enhancements that both affect performance and visuals in a positive way.

Lastly the new mission is progressing very nicely. We will have some screenshots to pass along soon enough when we feel that the mission is ready to show off and demonstrate to the public.

Updated Hand to Hand Attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Realm Wars Dev) — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:08:00 +0000

As those of you who played the previous Realm Wars builds will know, the initial Hand to Hand attack animations were somewhat slow and lackluster. As such you will be pleased to know that this is one of the areas that is being addressed in the current build and I am pleased to announce that as of this morning I have completed the updated attack animations. These new animations fit really well into the game and are very dramatic, so I hope that you will enjoy them when the new build comes out.

Blog News & Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Realm Wars Dev) — Mon, 30 May 2005 02:52:00 +0000

As some of you already know, the Realm Wars dev team hasn't been too speedy in regards to keeping the news on this site up to date, we apoligize for this, sometimes its just easier to be more concerned with development than it is with marketing and pushing news out there. We are hoping that by running the news & updates as a Blog we can keep things a bit more current for everyone. (note: the RSS feed might not be working at this time).

Ok so what exactly is going on with Realm Wars, or Realm Wars 2 as some of you may have noticed. Well first up is the fact that the game is no longer a community project, there are a variety of reasons for this but the most important issues that you will care about are: a) there were too many development issues, people only wanted to contribute what they felt were "cool" items versus the nitty gritty things that make a game; b) 99% of community contributions were less than professional quality and thats just not acceptable, nor is it acceptable for the team to take their time to fix or respond to these shoddy contributions; c) we could not leverage the resources we needed to leverage into Realm Wars as an "community" project, in essensce this is stuff like the Lighting Pack, AI Pack, code we created when developing Lore Invasion the unreleased Horse Pack and other 3rd party resources not developed by GG; d) we had to wrap up work on our other games first, some of us were working on Lore Invasion (which was a 2005 IGF finalist) as well as the forthcoming puzzle game Hack It!

So what exactly does this mean to you? Well first off it means that the next release of Realm Wars is actually going to be professional and complete. We are not releasing until we have a solid FPS frame work running and that's something the entire team has agreed upon. Quite literally everything is getting replaced and updated from the ground up. If you are wondering when this release will come out, we are hoping for late June, but Real Life™ always seems to creep its ugly head into development so it might be later. Second is that there will not be any source code released to the public, you will still see limited script access but our development CVS is closed off (if you like the GG CVS is still available to update from). Third is that we will be running dedicated servers and an in-game lobby system in the next update so it will be easier for you to find others to play with.

That's all that I have to update you with now, sorry, but keep checking out the site as the development team will have access to perform updates to this blog as they occur (plus the site itself is eventually going to get an update). Thanks for your interest in Realm Wars!