Archive for the ‘games’ Category

Torchlight!

If you are into gaming at all, especially on the PC, you have may have been aware of the Summer Sale Steam had a few weeks ago. I ended up spending way too much money – which seems to be pretty common during their sales, but I picked up a game called Torchlight from Runic Games. It plays almost exactly like Diablo 2 and the company does have a few people from Blizzard (including two founders of Blizzard North, Max and Erich Schaefer), so it’s not too surprising. The art is very “Blizzard-ish”, which doesn’t bother me at all.

So all that said, I picked up numerous other games – but this one I can fire up and play in 10 minute bursts if needed – which is what I end up doing since we have a newborn in the house (Sean Jr!) who has been getting PLENTY of lung exercise (meaning, he cries a lot). But hey, that’s what babies do right? So I can sneak a few minutes in during those rare quiet moments.

I started playing with TorchEd, the Torchlight editor. Needless to say, I am confused and need to read some tutorials. I guess I better get started on some mapping, would love to maybe work my foot in the game-development door that way (hint hint Runic guys!).

In closing, if you haven’t checked this game out yet – DEW EHT NAO!

A new project begins

After working briefly with my boss on a rewrite of Chivalry and that really going nowhere (due to lack of time – thanks a lot work!) I have decided to attempt my own browser based game. This is going to be my first game – though I dabbled with my own 2D tile engine way back in ’98 or so written in C++. Anyhow, here’s the abstract from the design doc I am working on:

Project Overlord is a battle for supremacy over the land. Each player joins the game and must work their way up the social and political ladder. Eventually, the player will be able to start townships and they can progress into full fledged cities with castles and strongholds. The player *can* start a town from the get go, but without other players pledging loyalty from the outset, their town will not last long. This is a mix between MMORPG and Time Phased Strategy

This is something I can work on in the evenings a little at a time. Eventually, I will be pursuing game development MMO style with a Silverlight front end.

Baby steps young padawan.

At this time, the working title for this project is “Project Overlord”. Inspiring, I know. Once the game gets closer to completion (hell, I am still on the design phase – it will be a while) I will select a release title. As for the specifics of the architecture for this game:

  • Written in C#
  • ASP.net architecture. I have not decided if I want to go with Webforms or MVC
  • Sql Server Express backend. Once more players join (if that ever happens) I will look at SQL Server 2k8
  • Initially, I will probably deploy this to a cloud-based VPS. Sure would be nice if my cloud hosting platform of choice supported Windows images. I may have to look at another provider – the price is a bit outrageous however.

So keep your eyes here for more information. Eventually I will get a website setup specifically for this project – but I need to at least get out of the design phase first 🙂