PogoPogo,
Understatement - yeah. Tell me about it. I know cos I've been around engines since the first desktop computers became available to normal human beings like many others here. Like when my hard disk was an external floppy disk and nothing was saved on the hard disk itself cos there was not enough room. I was lucky, I had a top of the range Atari with 1mb hard disk. Now my 2048gb hard drive makes that seem a long time ago and I still aint got enough hard disk space. Keep filling it up with game engines and content and alike - all I need to do now is get FPSC and make that game
I am not really in any rush to make a game with FPSC as to be honest with you the EA wont have some of the things the game concept ideally would need. Terrain for instance.
So after reading the manual I will need to basically just make some test levels and insert those things that need testing, before I embark on making any actual levels for my game. I would like to gain an understanding of the features and functions which are not relatively obvious and how they behave, some under stress as no doubt the game concept will require that all of the capability of FPSC be called upon to be pushed to the limits whatever they may be.
Then I would like to study and test the scripting functions as I recon I will want to make as much use of them as they will allow in order to give originallity to the game. Same goes for Content so I would want to see how we can utilise our own content wherever possible and do so. e.g. textures, sounds, enemies, possibly weapons and so on. Of course I would probably use much of the supplied media initially as it makes some sense to do so, particularly with basic content other than textures and default sounds etc as creating new enemies for instance is a rather more difficult and lengthy task and one would need to find the best method of doing that.
I would like to re-create around seven levels that I have already built and port them to FPSC if possible. As the game concept requires some features in levels that may not be available in future versions for quite some time I have to ascertain if its possible to create those levels I am able first and then others when features are updated and tag them together. I have some ideas for doing this.
A lot of the levels are set in outdoor areas and some of those may have to wait and see if we get the terrain and some other possible suggested future version features too.
""Does this mean your game uman won't be:
"I'm gonna make this kewl game and your gonna be this guy that is just like a normal dude and one day all this crazyass like stuff happens to him and it's gonna have a lot of interactive levels and really great effects and stuff! yea!""
Not sure if you mean I'm crazy or the games gonna be crazy?
Anyway the game I guess is not going to be crazy though if I could fill it with stuff that would impress you I would certainly do so.
There are not really many ideas of any kind that have not been done before so its good to get a different angle somewhere on what you do to make it different and somewhat individual. FPSC is not really designed to have features that have not been seen before so you a cant rely on that... good story and interesting gameplay is what I will be looking for to set the mood of interest and then the best content I can create.
I have the story set and much content already available so as soon as I can crack on I will and although the overall story and the ending may remain relatively obscure purposefully, and any acttual game may be a considerable time before any release, I will make progress details, screen shots and videos available as it develops.
I dont like releasing any such progress stuff unless I am happy with what it shows so if FPSC proves to be not as expected I am not sure when you may get to see anything made with it by me. However it seems that it may be a capable program and in that case I will post some stuff as soon as I can get a couple of levels full to the brim and reasonably complete.
I have a domain name which I have kept registered for some years in readiness for a launch of the title and if all goes well with FPSC you may see some an announcement about that later this year.
Much of the story will become apparent in the start of the game though the storyline (storytelling) itself may be dropped out initially cos Its a secret at the mo.
All I can say is it has kinda two halves, set in the near(ish) future. First part is on Earth second on another planet - nothing new about that. Its been done to death I guess, but its they way its done that matters and I wrote the storyline long before most game development companies came into existance and I see no reason to change my original concept..........rather evolve it.
One thing is for sure the idea is to make the best environments for gameplay I possibly can and create something memorable and enjoyable worth playing.
Otherwise you wont want to play the sequel will you?
Sorry the posts so long , hope you enjoyed reading it.
cheers