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Lets get this over with In case you find any typos, you can keep them. I'm writing this while chatting and watching "the cinema snob" reviewing some porn.
So lets get this going... I really owe some explanation to you guys.
In case you have no idea what is going on here, this is the thread where I explain why I'm unable to release a full version of Shavra - Dead Frequency and this mainly serves as a guide so you don't make the same mistakes with your project.
Lets start with the very idea this was started on. Shavra was ment to be a game for me to practice modeling on. 3D Modeling was new ground for me as I started it and the game would mainly serve as a device for me to design a bunch of semifictional weapons and do some leveldesign. However, the game grew popular. Really popular... so, since the storyline wasn't so bad and it had some characters I could make interesting in it, I decided to take it further.

So, the development was going on rather well and I was making 18 levels within a few weeks with premade tactical cover where the combat will be and of course, the puzzles. It even had a few rather unique gameplay ideas, like kicking in doors
(which didn't work, because FPSC's physics system is just "awesome")

Alright, enough introduction, lets just get a list of flaws that killed it:

Number 1: The combat was just ridicoulus. Thats pretty much it. I started with modified scripts from errant AI (which are actually great) but FPSC decided that as soon as multiple entities have this complex scribts, some might just not act or act out of context. I then decided to go with older scripts I used in deprivation and also other games. However, deprivation had a different layout (and a really wierd title...) that didnt make the scripts work in Dead Frequency.
I also planned on making this having elements of vertical shooter gameplay. (that means, that enemies might often be above or below you in tower like indoor areals). However, these levels run horribly slow and the enemies don't really react to it. The worst downer here is the team combat which was essential to the plot.
It was horrible and didn't work at all. AT ALL.

Number 2: The lag. The whole concept of Shavra bases on gunfight with a large group of enemies. Even though I never went over the 10 enemies per level (3 of them active at a time) I had suffering framerate.good, on my system it kept running above the 35 frames line at all times, but on other systems it would just blow. Especially because the shooter passages should flow a lot better and feel fast paced.

Number 3: The weapons. I know modeling a lot of guns was the main-focus of this thing, but I just kept overdoing it. I made ... 35 guns so far. A lot of them aren't even completely textured (because it takes me one hour to make a gun while watching comedy... and 4 to texture the thing). This would result in another problem: Riggin them all, making VWEAP and PICKUP entities, different sounds that do also sync to the animations, HUD's, editted gunspecs... I just realised the chore too late. So... I just decided to pick 9 guns that would be featured in the game, but here again, frustration strikes! A lot of guns dont really work with the animations, dont look good in first person view and in the middle of a large "rigging session" i somehow changed my export settings because the animations where playing the wrong frames InGame later. (which was so frustrating that I just laughed out loud and didn't do anything for the game 2 days afterwards.)

Number 4: The plot. You red the story in the first post of Shavra - Dead Frequency so you know what its about. (If not...your lazy!) It was simple and in my opinion pretty good for a shooter game. However, I had to explain a lot that was going on in the levels so it had a whole lot of text. And a lot of dialogue I would have to A) Write a dialogue script that at least has some basic multiple choice options ("yes" "no") and subtitles...and all of this should somehow mix up with animations. I even had death sequences planned that should be dramatic...but no matter how I planned it, it always felt cheesy and just wrong.
There where even levels that where just fillers to give the buildings more depht and realism. (I never actually planned any kind of ...you know...gameplay going on in there.)

Number 5: The ESCAPE (from the tower of boredom)
The game was incredibly boring. Level 1 and 2 kinda rock (and I'll release them one day or another) but the rest is totally stiff and looks good but feels completely dull. I don't even know why, it must be the pacing, the combat... the lag of survival elements that kept Euthanasia interesting. I'm just disappointed with every single gameplay element.

Okay... I forgot to add the tutorial part. But thats because I have been interrupted while writing this thing...at least 30 times.

Oh yeah! I stated my farewell to first person shooters. Don't worry, I'll be annoying you soon enough with other projects...that are a lot more pretentious now because:

Summary : Future Development plans:



And now! my Game-o-graphy: (oldest to newest...might mix up some)

1. Never Lived Dreams (2D Action Survival Horror) My first game..and my entry to hobby gamedev // Full Release
2.Untitled Vampire RPG 2D RPG Project discontinued (what was I thinking?!)
3.Untitled Exorcist Shooter Game My first FPSC Game! Boy was it campy (never released, never made it past the build process (in FPSCv.1.0)
4.Nocturne: Templeraider'ish adventure shooter. got lost in harddrive crash
5.Lunar Crisis: Discontinued, later rewritten into Symbiotic
6.Fall of Gaia rewritten into shavra series
7.Missing in Action: recycled into Euthanasia
7b.Nightmare: Discontinued
8. GTFO: German Demo Release only. Discontinued (it was actually pretty good)
9.Disasterpiece: Discontinued
10.Deprivation: Direct Action: Actionshooter, full release
11.Shavra: The Escape from Reaper Harbour: Scifi Shooter, Full Release
12.Shavra: Beyond Cryostasis and Vitrification: Discontinued
13.Euthanasia: Full release
14.Symbiotic: Currently being rewritten to new project.
15.Thanatophobia: Full Release
16.Shavra-Dead Frequency: Discontinued

--->So! Within all these years, I certainly screwed up a lot of titles...but hey! To my defence, I was rather young most of the time...and I might even pick up some of them again. AND! I actually made 8 titles that spawned something playable <---

Planned:

2011:

New Scifi Adventure Game

2012: Children of Dagon(working title) // Relikt

Thanks for reading! ...and I'm actually really sorry that I messed it up with Shavra so much folks!



-Wolf

That is sad to hear my friend... If you ever get the chance, COMPLETE RELICT! I just realized that was not on your list.. Do you even remember that game? Or is that discontinued?

I do believe that your adventure games are better than your shooters. Well, all of your games were great

- Josh


EDIT: Just realized you did have relict in there at the end, but why does it have a k? Was it supposed to be relikt?

Actually sounds like you could use RPGmod.

You should soon see an Official thread by Ched80. He will be responsible for RPGmod after 1 November.

Wolf

It's a bummer when it comes to times like this but look at the positive side of things like learning new skills, modeling ect (which I would like to add are very enterprising indeed).
I too, am well in favour of more puzzle/stratagy based games.

I wish you all the best of luck for your future work.

Ross

It's sad to hear that Shavra is doa... I can't wait to see what's in store for "New Scifi Adventure Game", though. Also, Cinema Snob is amazing!

I'm sorry you feel that way about your work.
I love your work and always will.

Its called

Dark basic pro

This will take away almost every problem you listed here but imagination.

sounds like you lost your own rules, buddy^^

1) that is mainly about DAI-scripting. as you said once, scripting is ok but not your profession, so get the complex things done by someone who can do it. DAI is a hard thing to get done, i give that away to ched&beast to get some samples to understand and edit for further use. i hope they can do these things, its mainly the same as with your setting here. they sound very confident.
they take 5,40€ for a DAI.

2) what system are you running? blue-gene???^^ i am on a amd phaeton 2.8 with everything else neccessary, and i think we all should set something like this up as standard for good performance. its the type of machine that is standard for gaming 1-2 years ago, so its a refference. i also drop down to 20fps in some few seconds, but i think thats ok.

3)believe me: normal setup in design-business^^ do 12 completely designed variations of a project, and the customer takes the 13th wich is the worst and then he is angry that you want money for the other 20 variations of it he wanted to see after that.
ask a photographer: 90 of 100 are useless junk, even for a pro.

4)use animated video-sequences or drop the death-scenes. its only out of luck to get some good ones out of play in fpsc. just my thoughts. yes, a big story needs lot of work that is implemented in a nice way. dont go too far, so do it step after step. the same here as on 1). when its a problem of the scripts, use the guys who can help.

5) overpaced. 18 levels premade without testing the main elements in a basic level? you are totally insane^^ i think here your dissapointment that comes with the other points is too big to get an objective view on the whole thing.

if i where you, take a rest from this (2 days are nothing, give it 2 weeks or more to get other thoughts in your mind). then watch it again, use the scriptservice to outsource some of your problems and wait what the guys say if its possible or not. and kick all the levels that dont feel good when you restart this.
i am working on habitat for 1/2 a year now and even get the basics not done completely. dont ask how many times i had the same thoughts when thinking about animation,levelsetup and moddeling, and i am a newbie to this, so i think its even more fatal for me to get choked of. take a rest and free your mind, then take a look at it again or use everything interesting and kick the rest and restart.

just my 2 cents

but thank you for giving us this behind-the-scenes for this project, sincerely.

maho

Hey there! Thanks for all the uplifting comments

@Exu Corporations:



Of course! Thats still my most ambitious project (and one that actually works so far )

Its going to have selfmade swords and all that jazz now aswell.



Me too! Thanks!
And on another note: There are so many epic shooters out there, but so little good 3D adventure games.



Yes! I decided to rename it =P

@Flatlander

I'm still looking forward to use this for Relikt!
Oh! And nice to see you posting again, Flatlander

@Ross tra damus:

Yes! Its fantastic... everytime I sit there staring at these 4 render windows knowing that I could practically do anything...

by the way, I'm a big fan of your 3D Work and style (I must have almost your entire TGC store set )

@Wraith Staff

Haha! Yeah, he is I watched his entire series while modeling by now.
I will present the new game only with a playable demo so this will most likely take me a while. After this bummer with Shavra I don't want to show up with another Screenshot heavy WiP thread that ends in digital nothingness.
@Uzi:

Wow! Thank you! Glad to have players that enjoy my stressful, frustrating, tormenting and wonderful hobby

@Daniel Wright:

We both know that this is only half true.

I keep track of all the great work the Dbpro community spawns aswell.
However, I do also know about frequent issues and problems: Lag, DBpro's rather clumsy optimization, limitations towards visual possibilities compared to other programming languages.

I don't even want to think about the time it would take me to create a shooter engine that features all the little effects FPSC's has. Its in development for years now by people who are far more experienced in DBpro than I am (I can create a pretty cool spinning cube though /jk).

I made this in ten hours... it would take me ... ages to get the same result in DBpro

Of course, there are pros like evolved that get far better results than I ever will...

but until further notice, I will stick right here with good ol' FPSC.

@maho76:

Yah...I hate it when that happens



Yes! I certainly know who to ask when I have trouble or don't know how to continue (right, Doomster? ) but... you know, this shouldn't even be that complex... and to be honest.Errants Scripts where good enough, its just that they dont work when you have a lot of enemies in an already detailed environment. It results in lag and nonreacting entities.



Intel core 2 quad Your game Habitat seems to flow well from its enemie design (I get to that later in your thread) but I use Errants Task Force Enemies... which have way too many polys.



Oh! I feel your pain Just make it a habit of yours to present your work in a room without any...sharp objects I would freaking loose it if a client would turn out my prime work and pick some scrap.



"use animated video-sequences"... well... I could search for an animator to create me a video-sequence and create the sound for it myself...but that would be a huge load of work.



"test" : enemie works in basic level...jupp.
"later": enemies don't work in not so basic level and appear transparent with every possible shader I have for them after spawning. (the pie-in-the face joke here is that FPSC spawns some nontransparent and others transparent...WITH THE EXACT SAME SETTING)



Of course!



Yeah! Look...lets just remove that discontinued and say frozen. I see what I can do as soon as I'm fresh from a little vacation of this atrocity.



Impressive!



After jumping the shark with Shavra, I kinda owed this to you all



-Wolf

Woo! Thanks wolf! Can't wait to see some updates on it when you get the chance! I thought you forgot about it

- Josh

To be real honest my good freind,I just created a engine with most of all fpsc features in three days, Its also a third person view game with near perfect timing and collition,No lag at all and not as many problems with it as fpsc.

But I must strees mine is not a click and build engine and its this is what people want. My point only was if you wanted to fix most all the problems in fpsc, dark basic pro is the answer, you can even re write all the fpsc Code if needed.

DBP will not fix anything.
DBP itself is not very good in performance. than he should go with something like unity3d or udk.

@Dark Goblin

I 100 percent dissagree, trust me, I have the experience to know beter.I am not the best coder there is,lol,I still ask questions after 5 years, but in all truth, its all in the code you write if you are looking for performance.

yo.
(just give me the models)

and I see we're having trouble with shooting? yeah it's super difficult in fpsc to make convincing.

@ Wolf

I wouldn't sweat the AI aspect just yet. There's A LOT of difference between how AI in v1.18 and 1.19 works. I consider the AI system in 1.18 to be totally broken (hence my lack of MP53 meaningful updates thus far). The improved/fixed system allows for much better responsiveness and less complex scripting. I know the AI I wrote is considered reasonably good by most users but I think that's only because most everything that came before it was so awful. Personally, I hate it and am looking foreward to when Lee comes back from AppGameKit land we can again see meaningful progress on a public release of 1.19. IMO, DAI is still very much broken.

Too bad that the development of Shavra have ceased, I've recently browsed your WIP threads, and all I can say it's they were excellent, all of them even unfinished ones !



Good luck for you future projects !

OFF TOPIC: Hey Errant! Do you have a release date on that MP7? Just wondering of course ;D

@EAI:

I just concidered it FUBAR. I didn't know that there are significant changes in progress for the 1.19 update...in fact, I don't know anything about the 1.19 update. Oh well... I'll look over this again as soon as 1.19 is out. With somewhat working AI...I can see myself releasing this.



I actually like that it accomplishes a lot of different tasks in one script like the melee attacks Compared to most indie shooters I know, it is pretty neat. I'm biased though, because I'm around since Version 1.0 and have witnessed worst AI in videogame history.



Concidering the success of AppGameKit, this might take a while... but lets hope for the best

@Jaden Korr:

Thank you very much! I hope this dilemma won't occur again



-Wolf