CS 591: Topics in Game Development
Group Project Page
Welcome to my CS 591 group project webpage! CS 491/591 is a technical elective at UNM in game development and is taught by three instructors: Professor Ed Angel from Computer Science, Professor Tom Caudell from Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Carolyn Miller, author of Digital Storytelling (Focal Press). This class covers everything that goes into developing a game, with lessons in storytelling, graphics, and artificial intelligence. We use an indie license 3-D game engine called Torque to develop our semester-long project, a full-fledged 3-D game that we will present at the end of the semester. I am a member of a four-person group who is developing a game called Mailrunner, and that's what this page is about.
| Project/Game Title | Mailrunner
 |
| Premise | Stonehenge has been destroyed, and as a result, an evil spirit has been unleashed into the world. The fate of all mankind is thrust into your hands when you realize that the plain, gray stone you found in a package is a piece of Stonehenge. But you are just a mere mailman, and you need to continue to do your job. Can you save the world whilst making your daily deliveries? |
| Group Members | Justin Becker- scripter
Lena Lopez- level designer
Jerry Martinez- character designer
Martha Perez-Arriaga- model designer |
| Tools Used | Torque Game Engine http://www.garagegames.com
Blender http://www.blender.org
Milkshape 3D http://www.milkshape3d.com
Tortoise SVN http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org |
| Other Credits | Kator Legaz http://www.katorlegaz.com |
Mailrunner is a light-hearted, 3-D game that puts the player as a character named Hermes Levis who is a parcel delivery man. The goal is to ride around city streets on a bicycle and deposit mail into the appropriate boxes. The challenge comes from the fact that the player is constantly moving forward and cannot stop or go backward. The player must aim and throw mail into the boxes. Obstacles and adverserial characters getting in the player's way also pose challenges.
Our ultimate goal is to produce at least one playable level of Mailrunner by the end of the semester. This level will be fully rendered with environmental effects, props, and characters, as well as the path of the player and a full working set of the player's abilities to move, toss mail, and pick up objects.
Timeline
February 2007
We formed our group and decided on the concept of our game, Mailrunner. We wanted to base it on Jerry's individual game idea, Stonehenge, and Paper Boy, a popular 2-D arcade game in the 1980s. The main character, Hermes Levis, is a normal man who becomes a hero through unusual circumstances- namely that he must put Stonehenge back together while still keeping up his deliveries. We also decided to have meetings three times each week in order to work together on the project. Justin volunteered to do most of the scripting and camera work, I decided to build the level layout and put all of the models in it, and Jerry and Martha agreed to create and work on the character and object models. We also started hashing out our game proposal, which was to be presented in mid-March.
March 2007
We finished our proposal, and it can be found here: . All of the details of our game are in this document. We also started work on the actual game itself. Justin figured out how to fix the camera in third-person mode, as Torque's default is first-person. Jerry and Martha have come up with some 3-D models such as stones, newspapers, and mailboxes to put into the level. I am currently designing the level, painting the terrain with grass, roads, and sidewalks, and placing houses and buildings so that it looks like an urban neighborhood. The level also contains a park and a forest lake.
UNDER DEVELOPMENT
April 2007
Problems and Bugs
In the beginning, we had no idea what kinds of obstacles we would have to overcome in order to develop this game. Having to learn Torque because none of us had experience working with it was just the tip of the iceberg. Torque does not allow one to create and manipulate models, so we had to use external programs like Blender and Milkshape 3D, which had functionality to convert from .blend and .ms3d files to .dts Torque model files. We realized that converting back and forth through the different formats was not so straightforward however, as Torque did not preserve textures from Blender format very well, and some shapes were even just un-renderable in Torque even if they were in Milkshape or Blender. We do not have time this semester on top of the development of our game to learn advanced 3-D modeling techniques and programs like Maya, so we mostly had to rely on free 3-D model repositories found on the internet to make our game look good.