iDevGames

Tools

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I programmed mostly in CodeWarrior; part of it in version seven, and part in the copy of version eight. I am testing in order to write a review for iDevGames. I used Meshwork to create the buildings, player models, and one of the handguns. David Drew used Cinema 4D to model all the other weapons. The main menu music was done with the help of John Graham, and the rest of the music I composed with SoundEffects, SoundApp, and the Digidesign Pro Tools Trial, using sound loops created by Carlos Camacho.

What Went Right

Using Skeletal Animation

Basing my character models on skeletons meant I could easily make characters react believably to impacts-from bullets to gun butts upside the head-to blend animations together. My animation editor, based entirely on inverse kinematics and constraints, allowed me to make fluid and complicated animations within a couple of minutes (like the disarm animation).

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Actually Finishing the Game

While Black Shades is still rough around the edges, it somewhat resembles a finished game. Unlike my last entry, GLFighters, I now have a main menu, high scores, a config file, and some background music. This leads to a lot of bittersweet comments from friends along the lines of “Wow, it looks almost like a real game!”

Not Making my Own Sounds

In GLFighters I made my own sounds with a built-in microphone, which did not result in high-quality sounds. In Black Shades, I found sounds from free sites all over the internet and modified them with SoundEffects to make them more interesting. I now use OpenAL for hardware acceleration and 3D sound.

The Graphics Style

Using models with no textures made for a unique look, and also cut down development time for the models that I made by at least 90%. It also allows Black Shades to run at an acceptable framerate on low-end Macs. It would be very difficult to make a game with detailed graphics able to run such a huge city at playable speeds.

What Went Wrong

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Lack of Help or Options

I clearly did not learn my lesson from last year’s contest that most people do not bother reading a ReadMe file. Although Black Shades’ gameplay is much more self-explanatory, it would have helped to have a tutorial level or something that explained how to aim with the iron sights, disarm people, tackle people, etc.

Not Supporting Mac OS X

It seems that by now almost all gamers are using Mac OS X, so many are not able to try Black Shades at all. Others have to play under classic emulation, which has many problems and could lead to negative votes in the contest. I actually tried to Carbonize Black Shades, but it was much harder than it seemed due to differences in things like file loading, mouse control, and timing.

Variable Difficulty Levels

Some people are much better at this type of game than others, and the current setting is very difficult. The last level of the game is almost impossible, which most likely frustrated some otherwise skilled players who then gave it bad ratings. Halfway through the voting period I had to significantly reduce the difficulty of several levels.

Conclusion

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This contest was a good exercise in having a deadline and actually finishing a game; generally I work on a game for a long time and gradually lose steam until I am just not interested any more. Then, I start a new one. The short deadline forces us to actually finish the game before we get too sick of it, which is helpful just for the experience and because now there are 40 more Mac-only games out there to play in my spare time. (Editor’s Note: One entry, The Belt, was cross-platform.) My next game will most likely be a fighting game with gameplay based loosely on Oni but in a very different setting.

• Genre: 3D Action
• Developer: David Rosen
• Team size: 1
• Released date: November 12, 2002
• Project length: 3 months
• Development hardware: G4 733MHz

• Critical applications: CodeWarrior, Cinema 4D, Sound Effects, Digidesign Pro Tools Trial