The "Pwnage Sauce" Project

Sunset of the Pwnage Sauce project

2010-03-04T12:36:00.004-05:00

Yes, it’s true, I’ve decided to sunset the Pawnage Sauce Project. (Brief moment of silence)
It seems that I now have to face the ugly truth that my soon to be teenage son has so much going on in his busy life that the thought of spending a few hours a week dedicated to a project is just unfathomable. Besides, what was I thinking? There are friends, girls, Myspace, Facebook, Xbox live & more girls. And I expect this 12 yr old to spend 6+ months with his old man in front of a workstation muddling through source code or 3D artwork? So for now, we will sunset the project and revisit it in the near future. After all I do still have my 8 year old. (Evil laugh)
We will however keep the Pwnage Sauce name and parlay it into a few smaller recreational projects such as our gaming merchandise and web cartoon, coming soon.
http://www.zazzle.com/dmosthated*

I’ll continue to keep this blog and make updates if not weekly at least monthly.

Thank you all for following our progress and I promise to be back with more educational and entertaining entries for your enjoyment.
D.Isaac

Change is good. Isn't it?

2009-11-09T14:09:00.002-05:00

I know it’s been a month since our last post and I do apologize for that but we have been steadily moving forward. Aside from a little downtime due to illness each week has been a little more productive then the prior. At a high level, we now have our initial map completed which contains 8 city blocks, roads, 50 interiors/buildings and some miscellaneous items such as trash cans, fire hydrants and street signs complete with textures, everything needed to make a true urban environment. We also have successfully implemented code to produce different types of bullet holes depending on the type of object or material being shot. So yes, we have been busy.

And just when I thought I was ready to upload some new screenshots and update our progress a good friend decided to share the following link with me.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/udk.html

(Unreal® Development Kit is the free version of the award-winning Unreal® Engine 3)

It seems that the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is now a free resource. I have made a few Unreal maps in the past and like most I’ve always loved the engines capabilities but to design our game using the Unreal 3 engine at no cost is more then I could hope for. As I read over the list of the tools included within the kit and the initial documentation I am leaning more and more towards restarting our project using the Unreal 3 engine. So we now have a sub-project, to recreate the basic functionality of our existing game using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) with a hard timeline of 1 week max. If this can be accomplished we will definitely head down the Unreal road.

Screen shots and more detail of the sub- project coming soon.

Art Work

2009-10-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

So I’ve decided to take a break from the thousands of lines of code and start working on the games graphics. Over the weekend we purchased the Jason character pack from Eivaa Games for a mere $25.00 to give us a head start with the games main character and NPC’s. I prefer to avoid the painstaking task of modeling and rigging a character from scratch, so if I can purchase one which falls within my so called budget and tweak it to fit my needs, I’m all for that. So I give you, until we change his name, Jason.

Initially I wondered why this character was priced less then most other character resources for the Torque game engine. Well after a few emails with the good folks at Eivaa I found out that they apparently had some issues with the biped rigging of the character so the final version was released rigged with bones instead of a biped. Not a major issue I thought since the standard animations were of course included, run, walk, jump, etc. I soon realized a problem, you cannot use any of the standard or extended animations that are packaged with and produced for the game engine. Those packaged animations are produced for a biped therefore the nodes (bone names) that control what bone to animate and by how much do not exist. Additionally since they are bones and not a biped I can not utilize my motion capture library which I was depending on to make the game play a bit more realistic.

Now I must admit, the folks at Eivaa were great, give them a 10 for their customer service. They sent me the original Jason character rigged with a biped and all I had to do is ask why they used bones instead of biped. So now I’m feeling warm and fuzzy again with thoughts of utilizing this newly rigged character with “out of the box” engine animations and hit the ground running. Well running in place is more like it and that warm and fuzzy feeling I had seems to be the makings of an ulcer. The issues with exporting this new character to Torque are too lengthy to list here, I apparently didn’t pay attention when the folks at Eivaa said they had multiple issues with the biped model. Well it seems I have now inherited those issues if I plan to utilize the stock animations and my motion capture files. Tired and frustrated I decided to use the character rigged with bones and start on the graphics for our environment. I enjoy working on the artwork so this should be a good change of pace for me. Enjoy the first pass out our city ruins map.

Map Test 01

Map Test 02

Map Test 03

Considering an upgrade ... again

2009-10-06T13:22:00.000-04:00

Yes, once again I am considering an upgrade of the game engine. The latest and greatest version is now available. T3D will run us a cool $900.00 bucks! That's $100 less then retail as a current license owner. That upgrade will not happen anytime soon but I am considering the jump from V1.4.2 to the advanced engine V1.7. I had a buddy of mine render my current test model in his 1.7 version and improvement in render quality and lighting alone makes me want to seriously consider the upgrade.

Here is the same exact model rendered in both engine versions.

Version 1.4.2

Version 1.7.0

Guns, Guns and more guns!

2009-10-04T23:08:00.000-04:00

We have guns!

After a long and tiresome battle with incomplete code resources and attempts at reinventing the wheel we've added 5 guns and what I think is a pretty nice cycling system, the mouse wheel. Oh yeah, we also have grenades that are currently launched with the ease of a simple right mouse click. And I do mean launched, we're still working out the bugs in the code to force the grenades to look as if they are actually thrown. As it stand they look to be launched with little to no regard for gravity. I have to talk to the defense department about our little rocket launched and self propelled grenades, there may be a market for these.

We continue to work on the HUD as you can see. Now when you switch weapons the HUD displays the current weapon and ammo amount. I've also included a reload function that needs some tweaking. I want the reload to check if the current clip is full before actually reloading the gun. Full clip = no reload. For some reason we can not figure out why the initial weapon image will not display in the HUD. It's as if the function is called after the weapon is changed for the first time which I know is not the case because the correct ammo amount is displayed at start. 1 or 2 days and I'll figure out which section of code I fat fingered and resolve that minor issue.

Our next steps are implementing the bullet hole/decal system, custom crosshairs for each weapon and fine tune the shooting accuracy, which more then likely will involve me remodeling the characters with many more detail and collision points. But for now I'm happy. We're moving forward and learning a lot.

A little closer

2009-10-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

Each day we are getting a little closer to what I would consider an acceptable and playable FPS demo. As of this mornings code changes we now have a new HUD and weapon cycling system. A simple roll of the mouse wheel will change between the MP5 and AK47 weapons. More weapons are scheduled to be added this weekend. Next steps are to add the decal system to replicate bullet holes when we actually hit somthing. Once that is completed I'll tie everything into the HUD in order to display current ammo, health levels and the selected weapon. Oh yeah, I'm working on a grenade code resource to plug in hopefully by Sunday night. Big steps this weekend, lets just hope they're not backwards.

Press to Restart

2009-09-28T10:46:00.000-04:00

Ok, Lets recap some of the fun we've had so far.

1. We couldn't get a the third person crosshair so we went with a melee system .
2. The melee system was clumsy and NPC's were easy to avoid.
3. Melee attack was just slow and inaccurate.
4. All models required recreation to add detail points for damage detection

So we’ve decided to wipe the board clean and restart. This time we’re taking the simple road. A FPS… period. That’s right a first person, plain as day, easy to code, done a million times, why reinvent the wheel shooter. Now maybe we can get this project finished before my 50th birthday. (I’m no where near 50 by the way.)

Notice how I had to model the arm into the gun model in order to have it display in the first person Camera view. A bit hacky bit it works for now.

Slow progress is better then no progress.

2009-09-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

We haven’t spent nearly as much time on the game as I would like over the past week or so due to some minor distractions such as:

My son is now involved in a new hobby with some of his schoolmates creating their own Maplestory WMV videos for YouTube (Example). So we spent the past 4 days or so teaching him how to use video capture software, Photoshop and Premier. I must admit this kid is pretty creative.
The long awaited Xbox 360 game Halo 3 ODST was released Tuesday, which we pre-ordered for him. So a bulk of his time has been focused on what he likes to call “research”. Who is he kidding?
I started the first pass of modeling the new 3D characters for the game and needed a mental break from the polygons and shaders. Not to mention the steps required to properly export the models into the game engine was always a headache in itself and remains to be.

We did however get some work done. We have successfully implemented the melee attack system and now have 4 NPC’s in the game that will chase and attempt to attack whenever you wander within their specified FOV. I say attempt because though this is working as expected, the AI is pretty unintelligent. It’s very easy to avoid and side step the NPC’s turning the game into a glorified version of the childhood game tag. New game idea possibly? Hmmmmmm….

Other then that we have just slowed down for the time being. We continue to review the project plan, determine next steps, and review outstanding issues. All in all it’s just like any other professional project that I’ve managed. The only thing missing is the ability to blame out schedule change on one particular department or coworker that is not meeting their deadline. (I guess that would be me, bad project manager, bad!)

Obstacles, Detours and Road Kill …

2009-09-15T15:32:00.000-04:00

Call it what you want but it’s all the same to me, those annoying intricacies that get in your way and delay the completion of your goal. As a former project manager I know in most cases roadblocks are expected and many are unforeseeable until you hit them. But this little project of ours was intended to be a bonding and learning experience for me and my son not the stress inducing grey hair growing pit of despair that it is starting to resemble. Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little.

First off we decided to use our older version of the Torque Game Engine version 1.4.2 which we purchased in 2005. I would love to upgrade to the latest and greatest version but it just isn’t in our budget right now.

An upgrade from V1.4.x to V1.5.x = $50.00
An upgrade from V1.4.x to TGEA V1.7.x or 1.8.x = $250.00

There are a lot of excellent resources and code snippets on the Torque forums that users have contributed over the years. The forums were an excellent resource back in 2005 with the 1.4 version but now a lot of the posts are considered old and outdated since the Source code and engine structure among other things have changed so drastically since version 1.4. They are still there, they’re just not updated as frequently or the discussions have changed to “how to implement this for V1.7.1 or higher”. I also seem to run across a lot of functionality that others have requested and tried. There are always a handful of users stating they were successful but no explanation as to exactly how they got it to work. So here I sit with the same compile errors reported in a post from 2007 as a continuously read the multiple threads regarding the same exact functionality without making any progress. So that user that got it to work with TGEA with what he called “slight modifications” may steer me in the right direction right? Well, I wouldn’t know because I only have a license for version 1.4.2 so I cannot access the private forums for the newer versions. I guess I am not worthy until I drop another $250.00.

Unable to get an accurate crosshair in 3rd person view which shot where the mouse was pointing.
Unable to get the Advanced Camera resource to work giving us more options for 3rd person view
Decided to use a melee system & use the default 3rd person camera w/o a crosshair.
(Who needs a crosshair to see what your swinging a sword at right?)
How to load multiple NPC groups into the game without bringing the engine to a crawl.
How to implement the melee attack system for the NPC’s.
(I’m getting tired of being shot whenever I get close to one of my test characters.)

Here is where we stand:

Obstacle: Unable to change default 3rd person cam angle
Road Kill: Advanced Cam resource has multiple old updates and code changes
Detour: Unable to get advanced cam resource to work correctly
Obstacle: 3rd person crosshair remains centered to screen Obstacle
Obstacle: Unable to adjust crosshair for accurate shooting Obstacle
Obstacle: Animated crosshair resource will not compile w/o errors Obstacle
Road Kill: Gave up on 3rd person with crosshair
Detour: Implement Melee System
Obstacle: Melee attack will not attack / swing sword Obstacle
Obstacle: Resolve attack sequence / Change non mobile animation Obstacle
Obstacle: Unable to find resourse to Implement melee for NPC/AI Obstacle

A productive, non productive weekend

2009-09-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

During the past week my son and I have been taking baby steps in regards to modifying the source code of the game engine. I’m showing him the differences between modifying the C++ code that requires a recompile/rebuild versus the game engines script that is updated on the fly and implemented when running the already compiled executable (pwnagesauce.exe).

So we start with what I thought at the time was something simple, defaulting the game play view to third person. Easy enough, a single line of code within the engines script defaults the camera view from first to third person. But wait, could it be that easy? It’s never is, is it?
We seem to lose our crosshair when in third person view. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t so cumbersome trying to accurately shoot down the test NPC as he runs around the level and continuously missing him each time. It’s almost impossible to pull off an accurate shot without the crosshair, so we’ve run into design gap number one. I recall having this same exact issue in our original version of the engine the first time we headed down the game design road. So I begin to dig through my old code and support forums looking for an answer to the third person cross hair issue.
It only took 3 days or so before I was able to implement a third person crosshair solution. We were ready to move forward, or at least we thought. Our first tests of the new code didn’t work out quit as planned. Yes we now have a crosshair in third person but the crosshair remains centered in the middle of the screen. Using the default third person camera places it right in between the models shoulder blades. You could imagine how annoying it was, in order to shoot straight you would have to lower the camera to be directly behind the model obstructing your view of the actual target.

Our new issue was modifying the third person camera angle or possibly implementing a new improved camera system so we can see the cross hair and also view the target we were shooting at. So back to the forums it was. This time I stumbled across multiple solutions, all requiring changes to the source code and recompiling but none of which worked completely. There was one resource in particular that was very close and I did manage to partially implement it but multiple variable errors occurred during recompile. What annoyed me about this particular resource was the fact that at least two others reported the same exact compile errors that I received but there was no definitive answers posted. There were multiple other responses but nothing addressing this particular variable error. I wouldn’t have stressed out about it as much if the posts were more recent which they were not. One was as old as 2 years ago without a definitive answer or suggestion. I understand it’s a semi public forum but the support used to be so much better in the early stages of the engine. I put emphasis on the term “semi-public” because you must have a valid product license to access or contribute to the forums. So I understand spending countless hours debugging code or solving other coders’ issues and not wanting to share that intellectual property with the entire community of users for free. But I thought this was a general enough question that even a suggested solution could have been provided. It’s obviously a highly desired resource considering another user posted the same exact question and cut/paste of the error code back in 2006 that I did just this past weekend.

So until I find a solution to our camera dilemma we are back to square one. This time we are going for a first person view, which can easily be changed later. For now we’re focusing on NPC & AI, art and asset implementation. (Character design. Mission maps, etc.) This is the part I like anyway, so no more code stress for now I think I deserve a little break from from:

IF (real life resembles code)
THEN (you are NEO)
ELSE (you are burnt out and need another beer)

That was my week + the holiday weekend. So back to the drawing board we go.

Shopping for Game engine

2009-09-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

Results of our 2 week Game engine research task.
We reviewed each of the game engines listed above and prioritized each one based on our design requirements, license costs and the learning curve.
Click here to download

2009-08-30T10:13:00.000-04:00

Project Pwnage Sauce
Aka The Pwnage sauce project.

Let me start by explaining the exact reason for creating this blog.

I have a 12 year old son who is a self proclaimed genius and he knows that he can design his own video game and people will want to play. So the bottom line is we must create this next great PC game. So I'm going to log the project progress here.

So yes my 12 year old son and I are making a PC game. I think this will be a great learning experience for him so I decided to document the process for prosperity. Why a blog to document this design project? Well the word blog is a contraction of "web log"; a phrase not so commonly used these days so it seemed as good a place as any. Besides, I’m sure there’s at least one or two other techies like me that would find this somewhat interesting if not informative or even entertaining.

So that there there are no misconceptions let’s address what I feel are a few key points:

I have 20+ years of professional IT experience - I do not and have not ever worked in the gaming industry.
I have a general knowledge of 2 programming languages but I would not call myself a programmer by any measure.
I am a Certified “geek”, “techie”, call it what you want nowadays, since the late 80’s but I am no subject matter expert when it comes to games or gaming. I’m just another opinionated old school gamer.

We've been here before. I've always been the type of father that tried to encourage my
childrens interest so there's an extensive list of project my sons and I have done together. So the first time Darkschild wanted to create a game my initial response was of course you do son. So just like all other projects I wait to see how long this one would hold his interest. So yes, he bugged the hell out of me every day for 2 months until I eventually gave in and we purchased the Torque Game Engine V1.4.2 which looked to be a pretty easy to learn and considerably priced gaming engine. We worked on it for a little over a year and made multiple solid portions of a game but his interest turned to school activities and I didn't have the time to complete the project so that was that.

Now recently he has rekindled his desire to design at least 2 games and as he put it, "The time has given me the chance to fine tune my skills and see what’s out there now. I see what the gaming industry needs and what kids my age play. The gaming industry needs me." Who am I to argue, between the PC, Xbox and anything else he gets his hands on he stays online more than I do these days and that’s part of my profession. With the shift in the economy and job market a lot of my skills are getting rusty. So the project manager in me came out and it was time to hit to get to work. Maybe now that he’s a whopping 12 years old he's mature enough to stay focused and complete a project that he seems serious about. I almost believed that for a second, this is going to be a fun ride.

So I give you Project Pwnage Sauce