Redoubt - A tower defence / co-operative shooter hybrid
About Me:
My name is Richard Greenlees, I am a 27 year old IT consultant from London, specialising in Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. 3 years ago I started teaching myself Java and a bit of C/C++ by developing roguelike games and a Quake 2 client-side bot. None of them were intended for anything other than a learning project, but they gave me good foundation in programming and game development. I begin tinkering with the UDK 4 months ago and began working on Redoubt around 3 months ago.
About the Project:
Redoubt is a hybrid of the tower defence and co-operative shooter genres, built in UE3 with the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). The intention will be to eventually release this commercially, but I am keeping things low-key for the time being until more progress is made.
Premise: The basic premise is that the players have to repair their ship, which has crash landed in an inhospitable environment, and protect it from harm so that they can escape to safety. To do this, they can deploy and upgrade turrets, barricades and traps to fend off attackers. They are also expected to join the fray and actively fight the attackers themselves. Repairing the ship costs resources, so they must carefully balance their expenditure between completing the objective and bolstering their defences enough to avoid being wiped out. The game will be set in an abandoned, derelict city.
Gameplay: The gameplay is orientated around a day and night cycle. During the day the players must band together and explore the environment, gathering resources and collecting weaponry and ammunition which cannot be obtained elsewhere. They will encounter various hazards, both environmental and otherwise, which require them to work as a team to obtain the best gear which will in turn increases their odds of surviving the next night.
Once the sun sets, hordes of horrifying creatures emerge from the darkest recesses of the environment and, attracted to the crash site, will converge on it with the aim of tearing it and the players apart. For the players, being caught outside the safety of their base at night is virtual suicide, which means they have to plan their daytime activities carefully so that they can get back safely with enough time to prepare.
What Do I Need?
I have made a good start with the code, but now I need some 3D artists to help flesh out what I've got. I am using placeholder assets scavenged from UT3 and across the internet, and it ain't looking pretty at the moment.
If you can do any of the following, then I would love to hear from you. Specific UDK experience isn't mandatory, but obviously you'll need to learn:
Environments (level design / props, mostly urban decay with a mix of natural)
Character modelling and animation (humanoid mostly with some animal/monster)
Special FX (particle systems mostly)
Weapon models/animation (modern-day weapons with futuristic twist)
The main thing I'd like is imagination and, of course, self-motivation. I have deliberately kept the design open as I want the artists to use their imagination and work with me to create some nice meaty weapons and twisted horrors to point them at, and for the level designers to go nuts and create the most fun and fiendish environment to explore. While there is an overall "feel" I'm going for, this game isn't going to be about the storyline so rigid consistency and realism isn't being enforced.
If you are interested, please don't hesitate to drop me a PM.
You Might be Interested If...
I have a young baby and a job, so progress is steady but not breakneck pace. I put in around 10-15 hours a week and try to achieve something every day, so if you want the opportunity to work on something at your own pace without being required to put in X amount of hours a week then this will prove a good opportunity.
If you have experience in modelling and skinning, but have limited or even no UDK-specific experience and would like to learn, this will be a good opportunity to cut your teeth. I am also learning on the job and I'm happy for anyone who joins the team to also learn as they go along. I will try to offer help where I can!
What progress has been made?
I am happy to produce some gameplay footage and screenshots, however due to the lack of proper assets, the game isn't really in a presentable state. Monsters slide around in the T-Pose, turrets are guns on sticks etc.
Basic Structure:
The day and night cycle is in. At night the monsters spawn and head for the ship and upon daybreak they burst into flames and die. The game ends in failure if the ship dies, and victory if it reaches full health.
Monsters:
Currently only the husk is in, a weak, fast-moving mutated human which relies on numbers and speed to overwhelm defences. Plans will of course be to expand this into a variety of creatures with different capabilities. Navigation AI is in, utilising a mix of navmesh and pathnodes where appropriate. Monsters will also dynamically avoid structures placed by players and attempt to break through them if they can't navigate around them. Monsters will prefer to attack the ship, but will engage players if they're close by and in easy reach.
Weapons:
The mechanics for the weapons are in, and a placeholder pistol, shotgun, machine gun, flamethrower and sniper rifle are functional which have spread and recoil affected by whether the player is using iron sights and/or crouching. The base mechanics for a modular weapon attachment system is also in, allowing the player to customise their weapon a la Crysis. Placeholder sniper scope and flashlight attachments are in and functional, and either or both can be attached to any weapon being currently held.
Also in are mines, grenades (Q for quick throw), C4 (right click to throw, left to detonate), and a welder which can be used to repair structures.
Structures:
Players can currently spawn a machine gun turret and a flamethrower turret which will engage the enemy when in range and hold their fire if a friendly target or the escape craft gets in the way. Players can also spawn a barrier.
Other:
- A basic HUD is in, displaying vital info including the state of the ship. This will be replaced with a proper ScaleForm HUD later on.
- I've added a night-vision ability as an experiment in post process effects, but whether I keep it is another matter.
- Sprinting is in, with a stamina meter that depletes when sprinting and refills when not.
- A quick melee attack which knocks enemies over is in. Enemies will momentarily go into ragdoll mode, then get back up once they finish falling and bouncing. Enemies can now be harmed or killed from being slammed into walls or off ledges of sufficient height.
My name is Richard Greenlees, I am a 27 year old IT consultant from London, specialising in Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. 3 years ago I started teaching myself Java and a bit of C/C++ by developing roguelike games and a Quake 2 client-side bot. None of them were intended for anything other than a learning project, but they gave me good foundation in programming and game development. I begin tinkering with the UDK 4 months ago and began working on Redoubt around 3 months ago.
About the Project:
Redoubt is a hybrid of the tower defence and co-operative shooter genres, built in UE3 with the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). The intention will be to eventually release this commercially, but I am keeping things low-key for the time being until more progress is made.
Premise: The basic premise is that the players have to repair their ship, which has crash landed in an inhospitable environment, and protect it from harm so that they can escape to safety. To do this, they can deploy and upgrade turrets, barricades and traps to fend off attackers. They are also expected to join the fray and actively fight the attackers themselves. Repairing the ship costs resources, so they must carefully balance their expenditure between completing the objective and bolstering their defences enough to avoid being wiped out. The game will be set in an abandoned, derelict city.
Gameplay: The gameplay is orientated around a day and night cycle. During the day the players must band together and explore the environment, gathering resources and collecting weaponry and ammunition which cannot be obtained elsewhere. They will encounter various hazards, both environmental and otherwise, which require them to work as a team to obtain the best gear which will in turn increases their odds of surviving the next night.
Once the sun sets, hordes of horrifying creatures emerge from the darkest recesses of the environment and, attracted to the crash site, will converge on it with the aim of tearing it and the players apart. For the players, being caught outside the safety of their base at night is virtual suicide, which means they have to plan their daytime activities carefully so that they can get back safely with enough time to prepare.
What Do I Need?
I have made a good start with the code, but now I need some 3D artists to help flesh out what I've got. I am using placeholder assets scavenged from UT3 and across the internet, and it ain't looking pretty at the moment.
If you can do any of the following, then I would love to hear from you. Specific UDK experience isn't mandatory, but obviously you'll need to learn:
Environments (level design / props, mostly urban decay with a mix of natural)
Character modelling and animation (humanoid mostly with some animal/monster)
Special FX (particle systems mostly)
Weapon models/animation (modern-day weapons with futuristic twist)
The main thing I'd like is imagination and, of course, self-motivation. I have deliberately kept the design open as I want the artists to use their imagination and work with me to create some nice meaty weapons and twisted horrors to point them at, and for the level designers to go nuts and create the most fun and fiendish environment to explore. While there is an overall "feel" I'm going for, this game isn't going to be about the storyline so rigid consistency and realism isn't being enforced.
If you are interested, please don't hesitate to drop me a PM.
You Might be Interested If...
I have a young baby and a job, so progress is steady but not breakneck pace. I put in around 10-15 hours a week and try to achieve something every day, so if you want the opportunity to work on something at your own pace without being required to put in X amount of hours a week then this will prove a good opportunity.
If you have experience in modelling and skinning, but have limited or even no UDK-specific experience and would like to learn, this will be a good opportunity to cut your teeth. I am also learning on the job and I'm happy for anyone who joins the team to also learn as they go along. I will try to offer help where I can!
What progress has been made?
I am happy to produce some gameplay footage and screenshots, however due to the lack of proper assets, the game isn't really in a presentable state. Monsters slide around in the T-Pose, turrets are guns on sticks etc.
Basic Structure:
The day and night cycle is in. At night the monsters spawn and head for the ship and upon daybreak they burst into flames and die. The game ends in failure if the ship dies, and victory if it reaches full health.
Monsters:
Currently only the husk is in, a weak, fast-moving mutated human which relies on numbers and speed to overwhelm defences. Plans will of course be to expand this into a variety of creatures with different capabilities. Navigation AI is in, utilising a mix of navmesh and pathnodes where appropriate. Monsters will also dynamically avoid structures placed by players and attempt to break through them if they can't navigate around them. Monsters will prefer to attack the ship, but will engage players if they're close by and in easy reach.
Weapons:
The mechanics for the weapons are in, and a placeholder pistol, shotgun, machine gun, flamethrower and sniper rifle are functional which have spread and recoil affected by whether the player is using iron sights and/or crouching. The base mechanics for a modular weapon attachment system is also in, allowing the player to customise their weapon a la Crysis. Placeholder sniper scope and flashlight attachments are in and functional, and either or both can be attached to any weapon being currently held.
Also in are mines, grenades (Q for quick throw), C4 (right click to throw, left to detonate), and a welder which can be used to repair structures.
Structures:
Players can currently spawn a machine gun turret and a flamethrower turret which will engage the enemy when in range and hold their fire if a friendly target or the escape craft gets in the way. Players can also spawn a barrier.
Other:
- A basic HUD is in, displaying vital info including the state of the ship. This will be replaced with a proper ScaleForm HUD later on.
- I've added a night-vision ability as an experiment in post process effects, but whether I keep it is another matter.
- Sprinting is in, with a stamina meter that depletes when sprinting and refills when not.
- A quick melee attack which knocks enemies over is in. Enemies will momentarily go into ragdoll mode, then get back up once they finish falling and bouncing. Enemies can now be harmed or killed from being slammed into walls or off ledges of sufficient height.
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