Code.Blog

Niln: An Original Mod for The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Matthew Christian — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:22:54 GMT

Here is what I am currently working on, a mod called Niln for the PC game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Niln is designed to be a new settlement on the outskirts of the Imperial City featuring around 10 new buildings with new NPCs all featuring brand new voice overs. Included are about 5 seperate quest lines for the player to complete. Here are some screen shots:

There are two primary ways you can get information about the mod other than this blog. They are:

I'll post more in awhile about where the project currently stands in development and what some of my design and development process has been like.

Game Review: Shadows of the Damned (Xbox 360)

Matthew Christian — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:49:38 GMT

Overview

Shadows of the Damned is 'a survival horror' game developed by Japanese studio Grasshopper Manufacture, known for it's visionary founder Suda51 and the games Killer7 and No More Heroes. The cover art (US) touts the game as 'A Suda51 Trip' and as my first Suda51 experience, I was treated to a unique game with a few flaws.

Design

It's hard to even begin to talk about Shadows of the Damned without first touching on the uniqueness of the direction of the game. Now, I'm no stranger to a unique experience, and knowing Grasshopper is a development studio in Japan, expected some of the uniqueness to come from western/eastern cultural differences, but Shadows really surprised me in that it is unique because of it's direction and ideas that aren't grounded in one specific culture. From a huge friendly demon with a southern drawl to a floating eyeball that drops a number two for a checkpoint to a half-man, half-goat who rides a horse that farts dark matter, it's just an extremely unique experience and this is one of the best aspects of the game. Basically, the game follows a demon hunter named Garcia Hotspur in his quest to rescue his love interest Paula after she is kidnapped by Fleming (a sort of king of the demons). Garcia has a sidekick named Johnson, a firey floating skull capable of transforming into objects such as a motorcycle, a torch, and even Garcia's own weapons.

The writing in Shadows is pretty darn good. Shadows has no reservations when it comes to sexual innuendo and/or dirty jokes but the game acknowledges this and almost mocks itself, turning some of the dialogue into cheesy references and jokes you see coming but still are pulled off by decent enough voice actors. Once in awhile though expect that line to be crossed and the game to deliver a joke or line that falls flat on it's face. The enjoyable writing and commentary provided throughout the game almost always invoke a chuckle though it tapers off towards the end and makes the game feel dull in the final levels.

Even though the game is described as a survival horror game, I found it to be much closer to a third-person action shooter. The game is never really that scary and the only reason you ever would run out of ammo is due to the large number of shots it takes to bring down certain enemies, and by that time you've already realized there is ammo all over the place so pushing forward isn't much of a mental strain that games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill create by limiting ammo and items. Shadows plays similar to Resident Evil 4 in that it's an over-the-shoulder shooter and even has some of the same moves like the quick 180-degree turn around and the melee slam. While the controls are relatively solid, it just isn't all there and sometimes you will find yourself running against walls when trying to turn or being hit by enemies when just trying to move around. Imagine a smooth improvement over Resident Evil 4 but falling short of the polish found in the Gears of War games.

Of course, what good would a demon hunter be without weapons? Garcia is presented with three primary weapons throughout his journey: the Boner (a pistol), the Skullblaster (a shotgun/grenade launcher), and the Teethgrinder (a machine gun/assault rifle). In the game, these weapons are actually formed by Johnson, Garcia's sidekick. As you defeat level bosses the game rewards you with blue gems which are inserted into Johnson's skull (automatically) and upgrade your weapons. Other than the story, the game drives the player forward by providing an interactive weapon upgrade system where the player spends red gems which can be found around the levels or bought in the store on upgrading things like weapon damage, reload speed, and capacity as well as non-weapon upgrades like Garcia's health meter. It's a pretty simple system and with the number of slots you'll have a hard time maxing out everything (if even possible) so in theory you'll need to pick your upgrades carefully. However, while I played the game on Normal (the game starts with Easy, Normal, and Hard modes) the game wasn't very challenging at all and I only died once or twice in the entire play through so upgrading your weapons really doesn't matter until the very end of the game, but by that time you're already so powerful and have gained enough skill that it doesn't matter then either.

Technology

Shadows runs on the Unreal 3 engine so everything that applies to just about every Unreal 3 engine based game applies here. The graphics are still gorgeous and some of the shader effects are really nice but you'll still experience things like entering an area and see the game render an object while slowly transforming it from a very low-res texture to a high-res, bump/parallax mapped texture. It's not a major issue, especially for Unreal 3 tech fans like me, but it still brings you back into realizing you're playing a game.

Alternatively, the game features a few levels where instead of a traditional 3D over-the-shoulder shooter you play through a 2D side-scrolling shooter (think R-Type) in a Vaudeville-esque style where everything looks like it's made of tacked together cardboard (similarly, the between level load screens feature this style as well). These levels try to break up the monotony of the way the rest of Shadows looks, but it's just too unlike the rest of the game to be taken seriously. The first time you enter one of these levels is refreshing but by the end you can't wait until you return to 3D so by the second and third instances of these shooter levels you're basically slamming a shoot button waiting to get back to the regular game.

Conclusion

In the end, Shadows of the Damned is a very unique game that is hindered by some linear design. The game is absolutely worth a play through but I wouldn't recommend purchasing it unless you really feel like supporting Grasshopper (which maybe you should as finding a truely unique game in today's market is rare). In total the game probably took me only 4-5 hours to play through and that included 80% of the achievements so repeat play throughs are only going to be getting those achievements as nothing else in the story or game is really going to change that much. Also consider the fact that beating the game on Normal won't give you the achievements for Easy mode and you cannot skip in-game cutscenes, meaning you'll be forced to watch the same game 3 full times (maybe it's a bonus the game only lasts a few hours?).

Rating: 4/5

Pros

Extremely unique and original
Laughably interesting mature dialogue and situations
Fun (if basic) shooting gameplay

Cons

Very short
Lack of polish in controls
Potentially useless weapon customization

A Return To Tech

Matthew Christian — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:29:32 GMT

Wow, it has been awhile, so let's do some catching up. In January 2011 I joined a local gym and have since been pretty dedicated to that and work leaving me little to no time for personal projects (although I've lost almost 40 lbs!). This includes both this blog, posting at Gamasutra, the Deep Fried Devcast, and anything else. Add to this my recent increased interest in music and guitar and I've been left with very little extra time. In fact, I've changed so much about the way I spend my time that I sold over 75% of my video game collection and am only down to a handful of games.

With that said, I've found time in my schedule where I'd like to become more productive and as a means of achieving that goal, I am going to make my return to the projects mentioned above. I've had more time now that I've started playing video games every night and I just feel like I could spend my time on better things that would help me get to where I want to be (gaming industry). Here is my listing of proposed changes:

Return to GeeksWithBlogs with a different focus: this means this blog will only be tech posts from now on relating specifically to my projects and items learned within. No more miscellaneous posts (after this one)
Update and continue the Deep Fried Devcast with a different focus: the Deep Fried Devcast will also go through a different focus and while I'm not sure of the exact nature, it won't be the dedicated open format I was trying to do before. This means the show will probably return as a one man show and focus on things like news with a smaller emphasis on how they're made to a point
Continue my work on personal projects: this has always been a big issue for me but I think I've gained the ability to focus in the last six months and I know I can accomplish more than ever
Clean my apartment: this is self-explanatory, but honestly it's much easier to work in a clean environment than a cluttered, messy one

Watch for future updates on my personal projects and code tips for game development.

Ambush Beta Released!!!

Matt Christian — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:36:54 GMT

Last night I finished the core functionality of Ambush, an Asteroids-style clone I made while developing RhinoXNA.

You can find the game and source code at my website here.

There are some tweaks that need to be made before the game is finalized (such as asteroid defect updates and some other gameplay oriented tweeks like ship speed and such).

Hope you guys like it, and I'd love some feedback.

Gamasutra Column

Matt Christian — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:52:29 GMT

Most people who Google some form of 'business' and 'games' typically comes across this awesome site that I've read for quite awhile now called Gamasutra.com. Gamasutra features loads of info on the business and development side of games as well as job postings and blogs by experts and site members.

I've been a mamber there for quite awhile now but only started posting there. In fact, today's post there is an updated version of something I posted here. Everything I'm going to be posting there is going to be much more formal and more topic specific compared to this blog where I sometimes have some just general update posts (such as this one).

Recently I wrote 2 awesome articles basically summing up all the blood, sweat, and tears that I've spilled over my game engine from the first days of PongRPG through Turf and finally to today, with RhinoXNA. Check them out!

<a href="http://gamasutra.com/blogs/author/MattChristian/4014/">My Gamasutra Blog</a>

Don't worry, I'll continue to update here, I just don't want to hassle with re-publishing the same articles back and forth. At most I'll probably just mention the blog posts I've done there and link them from here.

Ambush Check List

Matt Christian — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:22:26 GMT

So if you haven't noticed by the loads of info I'm mentioned about it, I'm working on an Asteroids clone called Ambush using RhinoXNA (a graphics library I developed over XNA). I've been working on it for a month or two now and here is a list of what I have left to do:

Must Haves

Collision (asteroids, ship, bullet)
Ability to shoot bullets
Lives and player ship death (including returning to main menu after Game Over)
Finish Help Menu

Nice To Haves

RhinoXNA splash screen
Intro story
Game story
Multiplayer

Still lots of work, but piece by piece I'm hoping it comes together in the next week. Although, with Halo: Reach I don't know how much coding I'll get in...

RhinoXNA 0.0.1 Released (First Alpha)

Matt Christian — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:48:26 GMT

The first alpha of RhinoXNA has been released, go check it out at http://rhinoxna.codeplex.com and let me know what you think!

Working For A Livin'

Matt Christian — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:29:16 GMT

I have been up to mucho in the past few weeks and nothing at the same time. I'm currently in the process of re-designing InsideGamer.org to be my personal portfolio with a whole new color scheme and layout (including a new web host!). I'm continuing work on Project Ambush which is the first full game to use the open source library I'm developing, RhinoXNA. Not to mention several books I've read and games I've completed. All this on top of a 40-hour/week salary job.

All work and no play makes Matt a dull boy... (although, is playing games and reading books really considered work?)

RhinoXNA

Matt Christian — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:33:37 GMT

For awhile now I've worked on refactoring a big chunk of code that I've used numerous times over and have been refactoring in much smaller doses but now I'm taking all the code I've written in XNA (mostly) and creating a reusable function library to make using XNA even easier. Enter, RhinoXNA, providing users with:

Ability to render 2D (sprites, fonts) and 3D (3D needs work yet)
Extendable objects to quickly create game menus, player HUD, and game levels
Built-in, extendable achievement-like system called RhinoAward
Ability to load sprites, models, fonts, and sounds via simple script files
Utilities to make saving and loading games easy

One this library is more stable I'll release an open source version.

Deep Fried Devcast - Episode 2 (Lost in Translation)

Matt Christian — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:55:41 GMT

Episode 2 of the Deep Fried Devcast has been released and is available on iTunes and for streaming at www.deepfrieddevcast.com In this extra long episode we talk about the recent trend of board games being translated into video games and vice versa.

Listen and you could win a copy of Ticket to Ride for the Xbox 360!