Friday 12 October 2007

BreakThrough - Update

Well, finally got some play testers and they came back with a fair few improvements. I have implemented them as best I could/can.

Thanks to all of you that have given feed back so far, it is much appreciated, please continue to do so :)




Once the music is done I will be releasing v1.0

Thursday 20 September 2007

Warheads3D - It's coming

Here are a few screen shots of my next offering.....













Oh, thanks to TorquX for the ship models.

Monday 10 September 2007

BreakThrough - Update



Just a quick update. Thanks to Chr0n1x's suggestions the game is looking a little more appealing to the eyes, a few more adjustments some music and we could well be there... :)

Thursday 9 August 2007

BreakThrough - Update



Well almost there with this project now, 10 randomly generated levels, a leader board and a full compliment of powerups and special blocks are now in there.

Current Block Types:

Unbreakable
Yes, this block in unbreakable...

BiggerBall
Makes your ball bigger

SmallerBall
Guess what this does... Makes your ball smaller.

SlowBall
Slower ball

SpeedBall
Increase ball speed

LifeUp
Extra Life (you need them)

ViralBlock
Destroys ALL blocks around them (unless they are unbreakable)

ShrinkBatX
Makes your bat thiner.

ShrinkBatY
Shortens Bat

ShrinkBatXY
Shrinks bat all round.

GrowBatX
Fatter bat

GrowBatY
Taller bat

GrowBatXY
Bigger bat all round

BubbleBall
.... not a nice pick up to get ...

StickyBat
Makes the ball stick to your bat


Already had the request for Multi-Ball, if you have any other block sugestions, post it here..

Monday 30 July 2007

BreakThrough - Update






Well it gets closer to being finished, as you can see most of the menus are done now. I have implemented most of the block, ball and bat features. All that is left is designing the 10 levels.

If you are interested in designing a level, give us a shout :)

Sunday 29 July 2007

BreakThrough - Wanted!



Play testers wanted for BreakThrough. Now that I have my particle system in there and the first level is done I think it is about time we had some testers of the Alpha release. If you are willing to test for DOG then please let us know here. We are always looking for avid gamers to lay down there time to test our stuff. Let us know ASAP if you are interested by posting a comment here with a description of your gaming experience and what genre you prefer.

Thanks.

Friday 27 July 2007

GLOOM: Progress Report



Just a quick progress report on Gloom.

The engine is fully 3D now - no more 2D enemies, scenery or weapon graphics.

Whilst this restricts the end-user customisation options somewhat, since XNA compiles it's game resources when the application is compiled, the game will still ship with a level editor allowing players to create their own maps.

Players will not be able to add new creatures, items or weapons to the game anymore, however I think the move to full-3D is an acceptable trade-off. In the words of Archibald Whitwhicky, "No Sacrifice, No Victory!"

The level editor is extremely easy to use however, and maps can be built literally in minutes.

The game will feature 10 different weapons, a variety of inventory items, and numerous different enemies including soldiers, zombies, and alien monsters.

The engine now supports a variety of different door types, including star trek doors, conventional doors and blast doors.

Various different switches can be put in place to cause earthquakes, kill the lights, auto-open doors, teleport, and activeate lifts, etc.

I'll post more news once an alpha-build is ready.

Oh, which will be about a month from now.

Thursday 21 June 2007

Progress Report - Break Through

Well this is coming along at reasonable pace now. As you can see from the screen shots below we have a menu system and some game play, just need to tidy up the physics and create the levels...




Oh, and tidy up the bat and stuff too, oh, yes and music...

Sunday 3 June 2007

Initial Synopsis - Break Through



I decided to start with something simple and well this is it. As you can guess by the picture above and the name this is a clone of breakout only done in 3D.

There will be ten levels of increasing difficulty, all the usual stuff like bonus blocks etc. You start with 3 lives, get a new life for each score barrier you break or if you hit a life block, etc, etc.. all the usual stuff.


[Chr0n1x] Can make use of Hardware instancing after some hardware checks for compatibility. Would require SM3 or an ATI SM2 card with appropriate support DLL.

[Nemo] Yes, also as this should be a fairly simple game to do I would like this to sit on both the PC and the XBox, especially now I have one :) Be good to come up with a helper class to do all our hardware checks and give us the required report we need to know if our stuff can run on the given client.

Initial Synopsis - Drop Trooper







This was one of our very first ideas, it started out as a 3D first person shooter, but then we decided to go via a turn based route and to do something that was similar to MicroPros UFO: Enemy Unknown, wich I personaly loved, but then as we thought more about it we decided to take a bit of a mixed approach.

It is currently a third person shooter, you get to build a team of mercenearies and take contracts, all that matters is making money, you have a choice of mission types from assasination to resource protection on to stealth driven covert ops....


[Nemo]
Write up more and re edit the above.

Friday 1 June 2007

Our First Game - Gloom


Well Dave has almost finished our first offering Gloom, its a hybrid clone between Wolfenstein3D and the original Doom.


Like McD's we intend to have a rewards scheme for the members of our team that deliver above and beyond the call of duty, and Dave has certainly done that here so he has earned himself 1 DOG star () making him the manager, I guess the rest of us better get shoveling fries or start writing something!

Like all our games you will be able to download the finished article here free, all we ask is you give feedback so we can do our best to create better games that you want to play.

[Edit - Dave]

Manager, eh? :-P

Well GLOOM is proceeding along very nicely. Level editor is up and running now, and it's extremely easy to create maps for the game. The game is built on the Wolfenstein principle of a "grid" for the map, however, un-like Wolf, you can have floor and ceiling textures, per-cell lighting (which affects items and monsters), and you can assign special properties to each cell for things like flickering lights, fog, player damage, etc.

The principle behind this project is to create a Wolf/Doom Clone that makes it very easy for the end user to create their own content and customise it.

Therefore, everything in the game can be modified - maps, textures, bad guys, weapons, all of it.

Oh - and it's not *quite* finished yet. But it won't be long.

Thursday 31 May 2007

Welcome

Welcome to the home of Dark Omen Games (DOG). We are a group of avid games developers using XNA to produce our games. We have only been in existence since May 2007 and as yet have not released any games, but we have a few irons in the fire so either subscribe to our feed or just keep popping back for updates.

If you would like to offer your services to DOG then please feel free to post a comment with your email address. We need people who can create 3D models, in game art, music and just about anything else that goes into a game :)

Regards,

Charles Humphrey (co founder)

- It's the DOG's!