If you remember, you may have seen a post several months back about a game that I was working on called “Defender” Then, it vanished from the WIP section. Well, it moved to the Team Projects section where it has gained momentum ever since.
What is it?
Defender is a 6 degrees of freedom zero gravity space ship shooter. So you, in your space-ship can sly any which way, and never know which way is up. Don’t let this fool you into thinking of big playing fields with a few asteroids here and there. No, these playing fields are a lot smaller, being tight twisty passages, the current one being a cave.
It is using blender Multi-texture, so can be played on almost any computer.
How far through is it? What are it’s chances of success? So far we have very nearly got a completed template that will eventually include a basic level design set. So far the template includes:
Movement (mouse and keys, or keys only)
5 Primary Weapons
2 Secondary Weapons (with 3 more modeled and awaiting logic)
A selection of enemies
Damage, death and and a high scores system
Pickups, shield, energy, and some weapons (and keys).
and a cavern level (provided by BigJ)
At the rick of sounding prickish I will rate this projects chances of success quite high. I do realize just how challenging motivation will be for making levels, but with that in consideration, much of the hard work is done.
So, another “don’t steal my idea” huh?
On the contrary, this is exactly the opposite. I shall not hide behind the “protection” of the exe, or the “pay me money, and I’ll email you a copy”
Instead, all the files can be found at sourceforge, and the exe is only so that non-blender users can play it (hence being split into two parts).
Within the data are plain, unencrypted blend files that anyone can access. My only request is that you acknowledge the source of anything you take. And, if you want, drop me a message on the forums to let me know what you get up to with it.
Right enough talk…
I agree completely. So just a few more things to say:
The project website. Drop any feedback here or there. You don’t even have to register if you don’t want.
Game-play video (rather outdated, and poor framerate, but it get’s the idea of what you will be doing across).
Screenshots:
Well, that’s that. Let me know what you think, and if you have the will, join the project.
If you don’t mind a couple suggestions, I think the flight dynamics could still use some tweaking. I think it would be cool if the ship had momentum. Not necessarily the keep moving forever momentum of the Asteroids ship, but something. And to me, it would feel natural to press space to go up (kind of like a jump).
Also, the mouse-look seemed slow for me. Maybe that could be adjusted through the options, but I couldn’t get to the options screen.
One more thing, the high score screen was touchy for me. I would press enter and sometimes the screen would appear and fold back even though it hadn’t been visible before. I change the Keyboard Enter Sensor to “Tap” and it behaved much more consistently.
If you don’t mind a couple suggestions, I think the flight dynamics could still use some tweaking. I think it would be cool if the ship had momentum. Not necessarily the keep moving forever momentum of the Asteroids ship, but something. And to me, it would feel natural to press space to go up (kind of like a jump).
Nope, I don’t mind suggestions, actually, I like them.
I agree. Adding in the momentum was easy, and makes it feel better.
Space to go up. Hmm. Nope. Thing is, the space key cannot be easily pressed from either hand while involved in any other action. For this reason the strafe up/down keys are “R” for up, and “F” for down. “Q” and “E” bank. This allows one hand to handle all the motion, and the rolling. The other hand either uses the mouse or the arrow keys.
Also, the mouse-look seemed slow for me. Maybe that could be adjusted through the options, but I couldn’t get to the options screen.
I have had much debate about this one. You see, there should be no advantage to using one controller over another, and so the maximum turn speed of the mouse is the same as the maximum turn speed of the keyboard. The only thing that can change is the time taken to get to that speed, for the mouse that will be set through the options, and for keys it will be set at 1/15th of a second.
In case you are wondering, there is no options window as of yet.
One more thing, the high score screen was touchy for me. I would press enter and sometimes the screen would appear and fold back even though it hadn’t been visible before. I change the Keyboard Enter Sensor to “Tap” and it behaved much more consistently.
Thanks for that. I had noticed that but hadn’t dot around to fixing it. Thanks also for providing the solution.
