Sintel The Game - Alpha Development (Current Release: Alpha 01)

[johnyman]

UPDATE - Current Alpha Release: Alpha 01

Original Post:
Wow. It sure has been a while since I’ve posted on the forums. I suppose I should do an introduction for those who don’t know about the project.:eyebrowlift2:

NOTE: This thread will follow development of the Alpha version of the game as we get closer to release.(scheduled for the end of June)

Intro

Sintel The Game is a video game adaption of the Blender Foundation’s film Sintel. I started the project shortly after the announcement of Sintel (2009?) with a couple dudes I had worked with on the Monkey Game Project, along with some new faces too. We spent A LOT of time prototyping game systems that we thought would be needed in a Sintel video game. We designed levels, came up with a story, built characters, systems and finally launched our official website (Sintelgame.org) in July of 2010. (almost 2 years now :eek:)

Shortly after the release of our website, a few members of the dev team traveled to Amsterdam to attended the premier of Sintel. The team even got the opportunity to travel to the Blender Institute the next day and show off what we had made. (video here)

Needless to say, we were amazed at the amount of attention the project received. We got loads of useful feedback, some even from the Sintel film team. We wanted to reach the expectations people had of the game (which were higher than we had thought :ba:) and we realized what we had wasn’t cutting it. So we rebuilt. And then we rebuilt, and rebuilt again.

It has been a long, difficult process, but I am happy to say we are finally at a level I feel proud to present.

The Plan

The plan now is to release an Alpha version of the game by the end of June :eyebrowlift:. The Alpha will have a selection of levels for the you guys to explore and familiarize yourselves with the mechanics of the game. The levels WILL be incomplete. (hence the term Alpha) The idea is to show what we have done, and update that as we continue to develop the game further. I know many people are excited to play even a little slice of the game and I feel like they have waited long enough.

Enough Talk

Help Wanted

We are looking for experienced animators to create some high quality animations for characters. We have had a few animators help us out, but we want to bring somebody on the team to fully take over all character animation. If you are interested, the best way to contact me is by (mailto:jon@sintelgame.org).

We are also interested in programmers (bge python), texture artists, and character modelers. Again (mailto:jon@sintelgame.org) me. :ba:

Contact Stuffs

Sintel The Game - Website
Sintel The Game - Facebook
Sintel The Game - Twitter
Sintel The Game - Youtube Channel
Sintel The Game - Email

My personal Twitter - will contain dev tweets
My personal email

[leonnn]

I toght that this project was dead, good too see it alive again! congratulations

[SolarLune]

Yeah, please keep it up! The graphics are pretty great. I think the grass tiles a bit too much - maybe you can add a detail map or size down the grass UV map. Anyway, great work so far!

[johnyman]

@ SolarLune I have noticed some tiling with the grass. A detail map might be a good solution. Thanks!

I’ve been working on giving the player the ability to grab and push a cart. I’m using a lower-poly version of the cart from the film. I may make some adjustments to it in order to keep objects inside it from falling out. The cart is untextured as of right now and I’m not sure if I will have time to texture it before the Alpha release. It currently copies the player location and orientation when the player approaches it. The plan is to have a notification send when the player is close enough prompting them to press a certain key (probably space) to pickup the cart. A short cutscene will show Sintel picking up the cart and then transition into gameplay.

I’ve made the whole system modular too so we can throw carts all over the city and Sintel will be able to pickup any of them. (as long as she currently isn’t pushing one.) I think this adds a small but interesting mechanic to the game. Guards will be less suspicious of Sintel when she is pushing a cart around, blending in with the working citizens of the town. This also adds some mechanics for stealth.

I will upload some screen shots later, either today or this weekend.

[RossBlenderArt]

This will be amazing! Good job so far.

[acidpenguin]

Agreed, looking forward to playing!

[johnyman]

Here is a screenshot of the cart in progress. Sintel currently doesn’t have an animation for holding the cart (just using the walk animation) so she isn’t holding the cart at the moment. Also notice the cart is untextured. I don’t have the time to give this a proper texture as of right now as I want to nail down the programming behind it before the alpha.

In this level, Sintel carries two food crates in the cart. I want them to have dynamic physics so it looks like they are moving around in the cart moving as crates should. That is the next step. I’ll keep the blog updated on how that goes.

I’ve also been working on writing my own XML parser in python for use with dialog trees. All dialog in the game will be located in an XML file that the parser will read in game. This makes it easy to change without messing around in blend files. It will make translating into other languages a lot easier and it will help with dialog choices.

Lastly, David has been working on adding some environmental elements to the desert level. I’ll post some screens of this soon.

Thanks for the feedback guys! Keep it up.

[Zolito]

Nice job! Looks promising, looking forward to try! Instead of xml, have you considered json? Same thing, no annoying tags, easy parsing ;)…

[johnyman]

Alpha 01 Released!

Keep in mind this is an incomplete version of the game. Most of the game is still unfinished. It contains 3 mini levels. The game’s source is also included, released under the CCBY license.

Only Windows executable files are included – but there is an issue loading the docks level through the exe. To play it, it is best to open sintel_win.blend in Blender (latest version) and run the game there. Runtimes for Linux & OSX can be built from the source. As development on the game contiunes, the Alpha will be updated here on the blog periodically. All updates (including Beta and Final) will be made available for free.

You WILL need a decent computer with GLSL to run the game at a smooth frame rate. Running the game on a smaller resolution may help increase frame rate. Lastly, make sure you READ THE MANUAL FIRST.

[system]

thank you for sharing your game you are a legend

[anon9611744]

hey the next version of the game could it be saved as a .7z file instead of .zip with .zip its 708 MB but with .7z it would probably be around 200-400 MB maybe all i know is it would be way smaller and easier on the servers and to download