Ground Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic RPG
polycounter lvl 17
Hi there, close to a year ago I posted about a project I'm heading up. Ground Zero is a character-driven, post-apocalyptic RPG being developed as a total conversion for Doom 3. We're still moving along and could use a hand (or 10) if anyone is interested in collaberating on this (link: www.groundzeromod.net)
The premise is fairly standard PA material: by 2050, tensions over fossil fuel and freshwater shortages catalyze a scattered global war. At first it's conventional, but soon degrades into genocidal infighting accentuated by several terrorist nukes in Europe and the Middle East. The struggle culminates over the next two decades in a bloody battle between China and isolationist United States, concluded by a nuclear exchange which wipes out most of the worlds remaining infrastructure. Disease, famine, and mass murder in the years that follow nearly exterminate what is left of humanity.
Now thirty years later, the dust has somewhat settled and small pockets of civilization are appearing in the ruins of old cities. In central former United States, three political factions are attempted to re-build society according to their own philosophies. While all have benevolent and rational intentions, and even see eye-to-eye on some issues, irreconcilable ideological differences force them into conflict. Somewhere in one of the independent cities, the player character enters the world to make his mark (queue grand music).
The game architecture is however more unique. We are basically building the RPG within the framework of a world building/strategy game. The faction war and city interaction are handled through a transparent 4X-style game played out in a series of turns between computer controlled players. This system handles the creation and movement of armies, growth and development of cities, bidding and shipping of trade goods, political negotiation, and so forth. These events can appear to the player as quests, and as the character grows in power, he/she can have a great impact on how the world is shaped. The game "ends" when one faction dominates the wasteland.
Thanks to Doom 3's capabilities of doing virtually everything on the fly, these high level interactions can actually determine the appearance of the player's 3D environment. In our last public release we demonstrate the use of "constructors," an addition to the engine by our lead programmer. These allow us to conditionally spawn groups of entities (buildings, characters, props, foliage, lights, speakers) into the map at load time according to whatever parameters we want, such as technology level (pre-war ruins and shacks to newly fabricated high rises), population (number of dwellings and manufacturing facilities, controlling faction (who rebuild in different images), political status (martial law, under siege, holiday), etc. Since this is obviously a huge undertaking, we are building the world with a tileset approach akin to old-school isometric games, providing a highly mutable library of limited art assets.
More images: http://www.groundzeromod.net/gallery.html
We have an established production pipeline, forums, chatroom meetings, and have laid out production over a series of milestones into 2007. If you've read this far and are still interested, we are seeking new team members to work with in building up this world. This is a side project for everyone so we do not expect a large time commitment, only a consistent one. Looking for:
Concept Artists to assist in designing architecture, map objects, and props; create landscapes and inspirational imagery for various gameworld locations
Environment Artists who can work with existing concepts and references to model and texture structural tilesets, mapobjects, and usable items
Character modeller/animator to implement a range of body types and interchangable costume parts (MMO style), as well as develop combat and non-combat animations
And although this perhaps isn't the place, we would like at least one more programmer to help develop several major game systems and external toolsets.
-Jonathan Lamb
Ground Zero Project Lead
The premise is fairly standard PA material: by 2050, tensions over fossil fuel and freshwater shortages catalyze a scattered global war. At first it's conventional, but soon degrades into genocidal infighting accentuated by several terrorist nukes in Europe and the Middle East. The struggle culminates over the next two decades in a bloody battle between China and isolationist United States, concluded by a nuclear exchange which wipes out most of the worlds remaining infrastructure. Disease, famine, and mass murder in the years that follow nearly exterminate what is left of humanity.
Now thirty years later, the dust has somewhat settled and small pockets of civilization are appearing in the ruins of old cities. In central former United States, three political factions are attempted to re-build society according to their own philosophies. While all have benevolent and rational intentions, and even see eye-to-eye on some issues, irreconcilable ideological differences force them into conflict. Somewhere in one of the independent cities, the player character enters the world to make his mark (queue grand music).
The game architecture is however more unique. We are basically building the RPG within the framework of a world building/strategy game. The faction war and city interaction are handled through a transparent 4X-style game played out in a series of turns between computer controlled players. This system handles the creation and movement of armies, growth and development of cities, bidding and shipping of trade goods, political negotiation, and so forth. These events can appear to the player as quests, and as the character grows in power, he/she can have a great impact on how the world is shaped. The game "ends" when one faction dominates the wasteland.
Thanks to Doom 3's capabilities of doing virtually everything on the fly, these high level interactions can actually determine the appearance of the player's 3D environment. In our last public release we demonstrate the use of "constructors," an addition to the engine by our lead programmer. These allow us to conditionally spawn groups of entities (buildings, characters, props, foliage, lights, speakers) into the map at load time according to whatever parameters we want, such as technology level (pre-war ruins and shacks to newly fabricated high rises), population (number of dwellings and manufacturing facilities, controlling faction (who rebuild in different images), political status (martial law, under siege, holiday), etc. Since this is obviously a huge undertaking, we are building the world with a tileset approach akin to old-school isometric games, providing a highly mutable library of limited art assets.
More images: http://www.groundzeromod.net/gallery.html
We have an established production pipeline, forums, chatroom meetings, and have laid out production over a series of milestones into 2007. If you've read this far and are still interested, we are seeking new team members to work with in building up this world. This is a side project for everyone so we do not expect a large time commitment, only a consistent one. Looking for:
Concept Artists to assist in designing architecture, map objects, and props; create landscapes and inspirational imagery for various gameworld locations
Environment Artists who can work with existing concepts and references to model and texture structural tilesets, mapobjects, and usable items
Character modeller/animator to implement a range of body types and interchangable costume parts (MMO style), as well as develop combat and non-combat animations
And although this perhaps isn't the place, we would like at least one more programmer to help develop several major game systems and external toolsets.
-Jonathan Lamb
Ground Zero Project Lead
Replies
starting to look good.
hehe i made those barrels wheels and burnt out cars hehe.
Now, of course I could be wrong, and you all might be committed enough to put in a few years of work, but Im just mildly frustrated that talented teams such as yours almost always seems to get caught up in these huge projects rather than working on making a really good, yet simple game that could be made within a year.
Best of luck to you!
The architecture of this project actually isn't that complex. We're basically building several simple game systems on top of each other that function in a more complex way. One of the most questionable/challenging parts is already accomplished (the "constructors" described above), while the others are prototyped on paper and ready to go into software prototypes.
The core team (myself, lead programmer, and lead concept artist) are completely dedicated to this project and have made steady progress since we officially launched it this last winter. I think we're being pretty realistic with our production schedule, gradually building up assets and functionality with each 2-3 month milestone (accompanied by public releases) which have so far been pretty much right on. We fully expect the Big Picture to start taking form sometime in 2007.
At the very least, this has been a good portfolio building source for contributors even if it doesn't go anywhere
P.S. Shepeiro, not bad, not bad