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Another Home-Brew game post - VOA!

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eds1275:


--- Quote from: Rick on October 11, 2013, 07:49:10 pm ---As someone who worked with RPGMaker VxAce  for months, and only ever managed to build a set of sci-fi panels and a framework for (what I would call) a fantastic story, consider me in awe of your skills. I'll be watching this.

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Rick, I took the risk and peeked at VxAce. I might download it and take a quick run through to see how it works for putting things together - seems quick and easy based on what I read on the website. I was looking at it and wondering if what you create on one version of RPG maker will transfer over - because it would be nice to start working on a game and if it pans out, upgrade to one of the better ones to polish it/finish it up. My friend and upcoming canadian author Sam Wiebe (www.samewiebe.com) has been discussing the possibility of writing an RPG, but more detective than fantasy. We would collaborate on the gameplay - it would be over my head for Unity, but this looks like it would work.

I urge you to not give up on your game if you stand behind the story. Though it is rewarding doing it all yourself, it is also daunting and overwhelming. For artwork, there are lots of websites with premade tileable textures, and I'm sure you could get help on the art if you shared your vision. Maybe not here, but I would not be surprised! The support and talent on this forum is amazing.

eds1275:


--- Quote from: zanna5910 on December 19, 2013, 11:31:10 am ---Pretty sweet.  You have a download link to share for testing?  What are the PC requirements for this?

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I will fire you off a link at some point soon, when I have updated the latest version. As for PC requirements, it runs on my wife's Asus Aspire One with the graphics set to low. That thing is weak, not sure of the specs off the top of my head, but will update that later as well.

I did most of everything in Trimble Sketchup. It's an easy to use tool, however recently I have learned the evil of it's ways. It is not efficient in the least for 3d modelling. I plan on going through and editing the models in Blender - Sketchup makes some seriously poor decisions when you attach or edit shapes, creating hundreds of useless unwanted vertices. The big deal is the hospital itself, which has door and window trim as well as baseboards and windows. I hope to get through that at some point and bring the performance up so that the graphics are easier to run on any system. My goal is to get an average p4 running it with at least medium graphic settings easily. Or better, if I can. There isn't really a whole lot to this game so I believe with some optimization it is possible.

eds1275:

It's been a long time since an update - but don't be fooled, I have been working on it!

I began assembling some levels. Loading up the game with a realistic number of objects made my i7 based computer choke right up... and the culprit was the sketchup models. I have finally really broken through a barrier in my understanding of Blender so have been really working on some new models. Comparing them side by side, a simple pencil object was triple the complexity when made in sketchup. Getting a little deeper, a stopwatch (one of the power-ups) was 12x! I decided to keep my hospital as the sketchup model I had originally created and remake everything else. I am pretty quick at it though so it's coming along fast! And the models end up looking smoother/better. For example a chair has nice tight lines with the simple geometry that it is but then making the cushion look plush without adding unwanted polys is much easier.

Another breakthrough I have made is getting the hair to look good in the game. I have the main character nearly 100% complete.

If you are into the facebook thing, here is a page I created for it: https://www.facebook.com/VOAgame



Though I could have probably gotten away with using less object in the environment I figured it would be better to do a nicer looking game with lower-poly models. In the future perhaps I can turn off real time shadows, implement some touch screen controls and dump it to mobile. Keeping the focus for arcade machines for now though! I am also having some thoughts about what to do for power-ups. So far the only one I have is a stopwatch that freezes the bonus timer for fifteen seconds. I am thinking about making another one that is a small animal carrier that appears and lets you drop off a puppy without running all the way to the kennel at the back of the building. I'm open to ideas!



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