Building a new world

Hello readers!

I had a few days off this week so I don't have much to tell about time management game's progress. Instead I want to talk about the process we used creating the Burnin Rubber 4 environments a while ago.

The first step to take is to create a so called 'mockup' of the environment or 'world'. This stage is very important, mistakes made here are hard to fix later on. The city mockup of Burnin Rubber 4 was done by creating a large flat plane with a basic roadmap texture on top. Basic box shapes were added to define some architecture and buildings. Simultaneously the environment was tested by driving through the mockup world. This gives a rough idea of what the distances are and what size of world we're dealing with.

For Burnin Rubber 4 it was very important that the road mesh was perfect. By road mesh I mean everything that has to do with the 'floor' or ground the player is driving on. It can be a real pain to create all those roads, there are more than you'd think there are. I created a so called 'construction set' to make this process quicker and more enjoyable as well.

These pieces all 'tile' with each other. Building the roads with these pre defined meshes saves a lot of time. And I really mean a LOT! Too often I see people trying to create something similar by creating such roads poly by poly. I agree it works, but it is really time consuming. Even if you're done with the modelling work you still have to do the unwrapping. Bye bye time...

The process of building environments or art assets in general using this technique is called modular modelling / modular design.

--Joep

2010 Online game of the year

I hope you all have had a very nice Christmas! This year seems to be a lot more hectic with the holidays being in the weekend. You really need those two extra days as a bonus on top of the weekend, this year we even have new years day in the weekend too. That’s just not right…

As you’re reading this Hydro Storm has moved up to the third spot on the shockwave.com “most played” section of the homepage. In varying compositions, Xform games continue to dominate the chart with at least 150.000 players for our games every single day.

This is something that isn’t bound to stop in the near future, so let’s hope 2011 will give us a lot more plays on the site (don’t forget to tell all of your friends to play our games!). It’s only fair that with all these plays and clicks we have two nominations for ‘online game of the year 2010’. Both Burnin’ Rubber 4 and Race to Rome have been nominated. We would appreciate it very much if you guys would like to help us make either Burnin’ Rubber 4 or Race to Rome the online game of the year on shockwave.com.

So cast your vote here! And of course: thanks to all of you guys for playing like crazy all year!

-- Erik

Boss Level

Dear readers,

Last Friday me and Joep needed a decent version of our games and we're given a list of issues that we should change/fix. We did our best, but weren't satisfied at the end of the day. So Monday and Tuesday we continued fixing bugs. The newest addition to my platform game is the boss level. About two weeks ago we had a meeting discussing the behaviour of the boss (a baboon). The baboon has certain modes. A mode is for example to chase after the player or to taunt. A very common sight in platform games (and which we also do) is that after hitting the boss a couple of times, the boss will start doing something else to break the monotony. This we call a phase. Phases exist of a list of modes together with their duration. The modes in the list are then played sequentially and cycle when at the end. So phase one can be described as (ChasePlayer, 10seconds), (Taunt, 1 second). In this way it's very easy to adjust a phase.

I did have some trouble getting it to work decently with physics. Sometimes I could get stuck and I would have to restart the level which is unacceptable of course. Placing new physic objects is also a delicate matter: if the new physic object overlaps with an existing physic object you'll get unexpected results. It all seems to work nicely now so the next step will be creating more levels and enemies. Here's a little preview of the baboon:

(In case you're wondering: the black bar on his eyes is intentional as we don't like to give everything away. He's not a sex offender in our game or anything. Don't worry...)

Have a Merry Christmas!

-- Stijn

A special Animal

As we are nearing the deadline for the Zoo time management game and the holidays we at Xform have to push extra hard to finish all the work. Last week we decided the Zoo game should have a few extra animals to make the game more varied and interesting. I won't give them all away but there's one I would like to reveal to you. It's a special animal which is very near to our heart here at Xform. At the beginning of this year I went together with Pieter and Diederik to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Of course we had to do some business there, but the main reason we went there was to have some fun. So where in San Francisco do you go to have fun......the Zoo!! After a long taxi ride we eventually arrived at the Zoo which is located near the west coast. We were all psyched up to see some magnificent animals but couldn't help feeling disappointed once we entered the zoo. It seemed like the animals had an off day, they where lying around doing nothing not even bothering to look up when we passed by. We came across a kangaroo which seemed more dead then alive, an ice bear in the middle of a depression and a seal that should have died a decade ago. But then something happened, we came across a cage which seemed empty at first, so we looked around to find the animal which belonged there. And there it was lying in the corner looking at us with his cute little eyes, this animal was clearly happy to see us as probably most visitors would pass him by without a notice. It was a Tapir, it looked like a bastard child of a hippo and a guinea pig, we immediately felt connected with this animal so we hanged around the cage for a while and took some pictures to remember him by.

This is why we unanimously decided the Tapir should make it to the Zoo game as a special animal. Below you can see some concept art, just now I've finished the 3D model, unwrap and bones setup. I'll post you guys a screen shot of the final tapir when it's done.

We'll be returning to San Francisco next year to visit the GDC and when we can find the time we'll be meeting up again with our favorite tapir.

-Matthew

Stressing in the zoo!

The time management game is getting better and better. Last week I solved a lot of (small) bugs and worked on the flow of the game. I also made a new build of the game to be attacked by some of the people over here in the search of bugs. Next up is the 'arcade' mode. You might think, arcade mode in a time management kind of game?.. Yes! The time management game will feature a more action based gameplay mode.

The arcade mode will generally be the same gameplay as the player will face in the campaign mode. But it will be much much harder. For a start, the player will begin right in the middle of a 'game situation', instead of gently building up to the rush of visitors and demanding animals. The animals will need a lot more attention and the zoo will be more crowded during the arcade mode. This will force the player to make it's decisions faster. When finishing a 'day' or 'stage' during the arcade mode, the player will advance to the next one. If the player doesn't meet the current 'day' or 'stage' targets and the end of the game session, it is game over.

The arcade mode will be unlocked if a player finishes the normal campaign. During the arcade mode the player is able to find some hidden objects and unlock trophies only unlockable in the arcade mode.

-- Joep

Hydro Storm has arrived!

The storm has arrived! Sweeping across shockwave.com like a torrent of explosions and post-apocalyptic water racing mayhem!

I present to you: Hydro Storm!

Hope you like the trailer, check out the game here!

-- Erik

A storm is coming...

  















Today our newest game will be released. I’m saying “will be” because the launch will take place in the United States of America and the day starts there as our European working day draws to a close. To “blow the whistle” now would be a bit premature. That’s why I’ll make sure to have a trailer posted here tomorrow in a special blogpost/newsblast on top of the normal one. Of course, I’ll also post a link to a playable version of the game. I mean, that’s the great thing about gaming in your browser right? Instant playability!

Meanwhile, I’ll be drafting a press release for the game and will include some cool screenshots to send out tomorrow. On top of that we really want people to review our game! We’re currently looking around online to send everyone we can a heads up of our newly released game. But, of course we would like to see our game reviewed as much as possible (we believe in the quality you see). Are you someone who reviews browser- or online games? Are you familiar with someone or a site that does this (well)? Please let us know, we would love to see our games reviewed on your site. If you have any info that might help us out, please send me an email.

Keep checking www.shockwave.com for our newest game and while you’re there, check out all of our cool games like the Burnin’ Rubber series and Redline Rumble Revolution. Let’s see if we can claim the nr.1 spot on the site again for a while…

-- Erik