Timewalker Game

luthyr · Post by **luthyr** » Mon May 10, 2010 12:58 am

I'm working with a team of people on a senior project game using Irrlicht as the rendering engine.
In addition to that, we are using Havok for physics, XACT for audio, and irrEdit for level creation.
I used and modified XEffects to get the directional light shadow, but otherwise wrote my own shaders.

The idea of the game is that you are a witch who stops time and uses these paused objects in order to
maneuver throughout the level. A lot of the gameplay is 3D or hallway based (like Crash Bandicoot).

We currently have 5 weeks until the end of the project.
We're mostly concentrated on getting more interesting levels put together.
Most of the tech is about done at this point.

You can find a video of the game here.
I plan to release a downloadable version when we finish the game in June.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Mon May 10, 2010 9:09 am

Nice, levels which are already playable and looking good :-)

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Mon May 10, 2010 9:57 pm

Ah interesting concept, I like when you freeze the tumbling blocks to walk across.

shadowslair · Post by **shadowslair** » Tue May 11, 2010 3:58 pm

Yeah, your idea is good, but you may need to develop it further. Ask yourself the question:"Playing with time is fun, and I have this power. What`d I do? In what form can this be implemented in my game?". You`re some small magician. You can use your magic powers help you on your way- you can make your character use the staff to shoot small purple fireballs forward and diagonally for example, which can pause the moveable object etc. He can use it to bang the heads of the enemies he doesn`t like when he`s out of "purple mana", running away from them while it`s "charging". Your world looks like very lonely place- putting some ugly-not-that-smart creatures would be nice. Adding quick "restart to last checkpoint" feature will be good- usually the player doesn`t like to see his character die intentionally, even when the aim is to continue his quest. Your checkpoints are almost at every step, making the game far too easy even for a beginner player. The character design is good, but the animations are bad- like the animator was too shy to rotate those bones, or too scared not to do wrong. If it was me, I would add more dynamic to the character and the gameplay as a whole. Would make it more difficult, more challenging. You have plenty of similar games- Crash, Pandemonium, etc. to get ideas from, just observing and thinking on what makes them fun to play.

All this is just some constructive criticism, aiming to motivate improving your game, which has some nice start, hopefully we`ll see even more when finished...

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Tue May 11, 2010 6:47 pm

One of the more completed projects I've ever seen produced with irrlicht. I agree with a lot of the other comments made about it, and I really like the element of time freezing and how you've used it a simply and it looks kind of fun actually.

keep cracking away at it and you'll get better with time and practice. goodluck!

luthyr · Post by **luthyr** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 9:29 pm

We're getting close to the finish. We make our formal presentations tomorrow. Our level designer may be polishing the levels a bit more tonight, so I'm going to wait and make a new video (and hopefully zipped executable) until later this weekend. We have 4 levels, the latter 2 using the mechanic a lot more. We also added the mechanic of picking up objects.

Until then, here's a screenshot:

luthyr · Post by **luthyr** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:45 am

So I have a new video available on youtube now of our final build for class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6fenCYGcQQ&fmt=22

If you're interested in playing and have a decent computer, download the current game here.

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:52 am

Nice work, I watched the video. Good luck with your grade!

Tihtinen · Post by **Tihtinen** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:42 pm

I played it. It was very entertaining! Good job : ) Only thing to complain about was the inaccurate jumping. I could have done with a (stronger) shadow to see where I was about to land.