Nadir - Seeking beta testers

[RipX]

Hey all,

We are currently seeking beta testers for our latest game title 'Nadir'. The game is a fully 3D, mutliplayer space game and testing will start from 1st June 2010. For more information check out the post at http://tileengine.blogspot.com/

Regards

RipX

[RipX]

I just uploaded an early video for you to check out (sorry about the poor quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7QUBAdTdTo

RipX

[.hooligan]

Looks interesting Rip.

[RipX]

Cheers .hooligan

Today I updated our blog with some screen grabs of the in game menus and the updated environment textures. That post can be found here:

http://tileengine.blogspot.com/2010/...ting-down.html


I have also added an updated video on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flek-19aqJU

We have had a good responce but there are a few slots left for beta testers. If you would like to be a Nadir beta tester, please drop us a message using this contact form and we will get back to you within 24 hours.

Many thanks

[ImprisonedPride]

We are currently seeking beta testers...

No thanks.

[RipX]

Anyway, back on topic. For those of you who are interested in the game. Nadir is a dog fighting game set in space. It is realtime multiplayer game and battles are timed. Players can enter a game at any time (as long as there is an open slot in the room, the room details update in realtime). Once the game ends, a battle report is shown along with your ranking. If you are registered, your statistics will be saved. The game will have unlockable achievements and also has the ability to upgrade a range of ships and environments.

RipX

[.hooligan]

Sounds cool Rip. Reminds me of EVE online.

[RipX]

@ .hooligan

Hey, it's quite different from Eve online, the game doesn't persist your characters like Eve does and is not an MMORPG, it will persists your rankings data though. If I had to describe the game as a comparison against another, it would be more like a simple Call of Duty type game with ships in space. The game areas will only allow around 4-8 players in a single dog fight so sadly it is not comparable to Eve.

RipX

[.hooligan]

Ow sorry I didn't mean gameplay, I meant in look. Ships plying around

So its little rounds that you participate in?

[RipX]

Yes, thats right, they are 10 minute manic dog fights where everyone just blows up everyone. If you die, your ship respawns and you get a death against your match rankings, if you bring down a ship, you get a kill against your match rankings

At the end of the round you see the match statistics report and the data will have been saved to our database. A new round will then start automatically and you go crazy all over again!

RipX

[RipX]

Well, for the visuals to be compared to Eve... wow awesome, thanks. I'll definatly take that as a compliment Here is my finalized (famous last words) title screen :



This is an early picture of the main lobby area where you enter any of the current games that have available slots, or, you can create your own match, which can be public or private :



This inside the nebula area (One of the battle areas) - In this images, the ship in front is being controlled from another machine :



RipX

[.hooligan]

Cool RipX. Hope to play soon.

[Alluvian]

Just a few questions out of curiosity.

1) Are you using an off the shelf socket server or a custom one?
2) How are you doing your space physics? Realistic like I-War or arcade like wing commander/Xwing, or pure arcade with no momentum at all? VERY hard to tell in the youtube video without any kind of particle effects to show current vector. As an aside, I would suggest you put in some kind of visual que to the player about their speed/direction. Think windows screen saver particles.

[RipX]

Hi Alluvian,

The game play is very arcade feeling, infact there are only 2 states when it comes to speed, a standard, shall we say cruising speed, and a boost speed which lasts a length of time before it needs to charge up. Whilst you're boosting, the ship shakes, somewhat lessening your aiming accuracy.

As for particles, well, as you will notice from my last youtube video upload, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xzsAbZTY_A . We are looking at visual cues, but we have not fully decided if it would go into the game, we are testing this stuff right now

We are currently developing the beta version of this game on Smartfox server using the raw data protocol. We are doing this for various reasons. Mostly that we feel it is better to have a stable platform to build the game upon instead of beta testing multiple large parts of the server side code and the client from the beginning. Also, we have potential hosting services in London who host a large multiplayer website based on the Smartfox platform, hopefully this will simplify the migration to dedicated servers.

RipX

[RipX]

Oh, Alluvian... don't worry if you think that video is persisting the position of all stars and that would not be neccesary, we would simply add the particles to the screen one at a time and persist them only whilst they are within the view frustrum. That video is just a speed test leading into the partical type stuff so that I can compare my own vector calculation methods against how papervision perfoms at simple vector calculations. To be honest, I'm actually working on a 3d engine whilst I develop this so it's very likely that it will get switched out at some point (hopefully before the 1st June).

RipX

[navidroplets]

the curvature type of sky is getting boxed in after you watch it some. i think you guys may be in trouble with that one for long. if your looking at short-term hype then you'll got a lot interests.

is there a way to double the curve? like now, it looks like your trapped in a ball. could you divide the room into smaller round rooms, rather than just one round room. after traveling a bit you'd open up into a differnt pattern sky and be a little lost is all, like your dimensionless rather than there being a round ball that your trapped in. like that.

[RipX]

Hi navidroplets,

Thanks for your feedback, the game actually uses different scenes but there are no transitions between these as battles last only 10 minutes. Because of this limited time in an environment we chose to apply only a single environment during any one battle.

I think that the transitions you are talking about are actually achieved by simply creating 2 textures and alpha blending between them, this is especially effective if there are progressivly more or less gas cloud decals when going into areas where there are more or less gas clouds, respectivly, within the new environment textures.

Thanks again.

RipX