We're building another game!
For years we've heard from you, our users, that game development is a big topic that you guys want to learn. This past December, we committed a big effort to this request in the form of a Tower Defense Learning Flow. It's been a pretty big hit! You guys weren't lying.
Today, we're very excited to share that we're working on another game development Flow centered around the first-person-shooter genre. As with the Tower Defense Flow, our approach with this project is to deliver game development education in a two-fold method:
- Offer a fully-playable game. When we create a CGC tutorial, we believe it's important to legitimize the education with example/result imagery that showcases the workflow(s) we're teaching. With game development, what better way to do this than by sharing an actual game that our community can play? Granted they'll be smaller games, like one level instead of many, since we're only a 4-person team - but a polished, fun, hopefully addicting game nonetheless!
- Release beginning-to-end training about creating that game. If we can prove the project with a polished game, then education about that game becomes that much more valuable. Shortly after the game is released, a thorough Learning Flow will follow that teaches the entire process of creating the game from conceptualization and design, asset creation with Blender, and development with Unity.
F.P.S.
We're almost one-and-a-half months into production on our first person shooter prototype and we're having a blast with it! We've been referring to it as "The Range". It's going to be a beautiful sci-fi-ish aesthetic complete with glorious harsurface environment details, a robot character, and yes, of course bad-ass weapons. Also you can expect some CGC easter eggs o'plenty!
THE CHARACTER
Yeah robots! Who doesn't like robots? We sure do. Tim came up with some sweet design that we are translating into Blender.
THE LEVEL
The level is self-contained as a fairly large structure of hallways, rooms, and a large open courtyard. Jonathan Lampel has spear-headed the level design and after 5 versions, we're really happy with the way it's playing.
THE WEAPONS
Our list of weapons was initially 5 but along the way we decided to double up functionality, which makes the current count 3:
- An accurate, high-powered pistol that can switch to a sub-machine-gun rate of fire at the cost of accuracy.
- A rifle that fires accurately in bursts or semi-automatic (not sure yet which) and can transform into a sniper rifle at the click of a button. The sacrifice is rate of fire for accuracy and zoom.
- Finally, a rocket launcher to blow all the things up.
Here's the design sheet from Tim:
THE GAMEPLAY
Jonathan Gonzalez is hard at work as the sole developer for the game. He's single-handedly building all game mechanics. Here's a taste of the prototype in action:
This is an ambitious project and we still have a long way to go but we're very excited about it. Stay tuned for more dev blogs about "The Range" in the near future!
Update: read the second update by clicking here.
Awesomeness!
Wooooooow!!! That looks greeeaaat :D, cant wait to seeeeee it :D, I am learning a lot with this platform, you rock guys, THANK YOU SO MUCH
One thing I'd like to see in tutorials is not only showing how you accomplish a particular task, but possibly a brief discussion about other methods of doing it, along with the tradeoffs and why a particular method was used.
Love everything here though, and can't wait to see the final course!
Thanks for the input Geoff, it is indeed important on explaining the why something is being done in a certain why. We'll keep that in mind as we're building the courses.
looks awesome, the idea, the game and the tutorials...
this is the cohesive kind of education that is needed...
not just you can do this and you can do that, but what it actually takes to put it all together as a package...
keep on rockin it!!
Right?! We're honestly very excited about this new direction for teaching game development.
Great feedback Geoff. In fact we Blender artists contributing to this project have already been discussing multiple approaches to teach. Good edu is on the way!
Keep up the great work guys!! Looking good so far and can't wait to dive into the flow when it's ready.
Thanks, John!
Thank you, txpetillo!
Is this with the Blender game engine or Unity or something else?
Asset creation with Blender with the game being built with Unity.
Looks awesome, I'm loving the CG Cookie tutorials so far and I will certainly be looking forward to this one as well.
You guys all work so hard on these projects! I love that, and I'll be checking out progress with this! I may be more of an action/adventure lover, but it would be cool to know how to create a game like this! Imagination could sure make it crazy. XD Hee hee!
Our long-term goal is to do this with various game genres, so perhaps we'll do an action adventure game at some point :)
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Can't wait to see many genres of game from you!
Love it! Thanks for the hard work.
CGCOOKIE IS the NUMBER ONE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE for independent artists and game developers at a truly economical price and this is exactly why! Your staff's tutelage is AAA and I don't think I would be where I am today in regards to my creative knowledge and foundation if not for your efforts.
That said, I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to this particular course; your walkthrough for creating a tower defense genre-based project blew my mind in how well-rounded your staff's delivery of essential information was, and it goes without saying that this course will be another home run, in my honest opinion.
You guys keep creating, and I will keep studying!
Derek
Very cool.