Hi,
Before I start asking my questions first a little background. I've been in game design in the past for about 6 years, until I stopped the beginning of this year to focus on creating Digital Comics. About half a year before I stopped, I switched from creating 2d&Isometric games to 3D game design. For this I used 3D GameStudio A6. In this time I worked on a game called Commander Josh 3D. Most of the models & scripting I did myself and the result can (still) be seen here:
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/gsL/contest_results.asp Just Scroll down until you see Interactive demo section and First Runner Up "Commander Josh" by Benjamin Aeilkema. I did create 2 more levels for the game but due to a number of reasons never finished the game.
One of the reasons involved was the amount of time going into creating a game with 3D GameStudio A6. It just was too much.
I've still followed the news in game design land and I finally downloaded the FPS Creator and I'm very impressed. Played a little with it, but before I spent hours doing so, I would like to ask some questions.
1. Commander Josh is in 3rd person perspective, although it initially started out as an fps. The focus of CJ isn't mainly on shooting alone, but also on performing certain tasks in the game. These tasks are freeing prisoners and finding certain items before the level can be cleared. Is this possible with FPSC too?
2. In CJ one can free prisoners which then will follow the player. Could this be achieved with FPSC too?
3. Are outdoor scenes possible too?
4. Could one create turrets that shoot the player, but don't move?
5. Can you modify the exsisting weapons? Like I don't want a sniper gun, but a sniper laser gun for example.....
6. In CJ I do use laser beams coming out of the wall. The player has to wait until the beam is come until he can, just in time for the next one to appear. Can this be achieved with FPSC too?
7. I'm not planning on using human enemies, but all android/robot ones. Can I script FPSC in such a way that instead of the robots dying when shot, they will blow up?
8. Can items needed in the game appear at intervals? First they are hidden, but after for example one minute they aren't?
9. Instead of using speech to interact with other characters in the game, could text be used? So no voice, but a text appearing on screen.
10. Can flying enemies be used too? Like planes attacking the player or something like that.
12 Can I make items that need to be picked up rotate so that the player will recognize them easier?
12. One question about the demo, how do I move an item up. All of my items lay on the floor, but I want some floating in the air instead.
I guess that's about it. Thanks for helping me out. As a small thank you for reading this long post, I've enclosed a script I did create for fun (after using the demo for about an hour I started fiddling with some of the scripts to see how easy it was to change them). The script is for opening doors that are locked. Instead of the always the message "door locked: key required" now the message "press enter to use" appears when the key has been found already, and the original meassage appears when the key hasn't been found. Best would be change that text into something like "Found key press enter to open door", you can change the picture yourself.
I just want to say to the creators of the application, that I'm very very impressed with it, you've got a great product, easy to use, quick results yout powerful enough for even the more advanced and demanding user. I'm mostly impressed with the Story Zone Marker, that is such a cool feature. It would be great to see this application turn into a full game engine. Like a base 3D game engine that one can buy modules for. Modules like FPS, RTS, Flight Sims and so on.
So once I've got the answers to my questions, I'll start saving money and try to convince my wife that I really need this
That's the hardest part of all
