The Ship

The E3-trailer looked rather dull, but I do like the style of this mod.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

Orpheus said:
I love to see people go to school but.. I have two friends who call themselves "Career Students"

They never plan on not going to school. They get grant after grant after grant and... Have yet to get a job and support themselves.

Its sad to see people in their 30's and 40's still living with mommy and daddy.

You can make it work, but in this case, sounds like theyre just mooching.
Dont dis the academic life, thats what I want to do :smile: Work in research or something, teach some courses, get paid to bum around university, it sounds pretty sweet.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Never mind the fact I wasn't here for getting onto a year.

Smilies can never express me rolling my eyes at length.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>・quoting Crono</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>

5 year reunion, what the hell?

What can you do in five years after high school? Nothing, that's what.

</DIV></DIV>

ReNo's doing something! :smile:

But yeah, I wasn't saying I expected to have achieved my dream job 5 years out of high school (still don't know what it is, for one) but that's why I was day dreaming about it. It's kinda fun to think about what it would be like to say I made videogames. Specifically, I was wondering how many of my high school buddies would have been surprised, and how many would be like: "figures."

@ReNo: That's really good to hear. You're living the dream! As for your salary, I wasn't interested in the total sum, just wondering if it was enough to make your dream job economically feasible, in addition to being just pure awesome.

well my "big plan" is to move out to Montana and build a house. Then turn that house into a artist (aka hippy) commune. Maybe then I'll get into the game industry, if I can get programmers to move out into the middle of no-where with a bunch of freaks...

I'd like to take a serious crack at making a MOD in a few years, if that goes well I'll try for the industry.

-
I think that if people are happy living with their folks, then its not so bad. I for one have been back with my parents for 2 weeks and think they are making me go crazy...

I meant no offence Gwil. I was just asking a question out of curiousity because I remember you having your picture and other stuff in your profile before.

Ok Spartan, no worries. Sorry for being reactionary toward you.

There was a reason I removed the picture, I don't recall what it is. As
for the info, I should probably put something up. There was never much
there when I had some and it seemed a little pointless :razz:

As for finishing a map, that's a different saga entirely.

It's probably not a dream job. I bet the job security sucks.

Absolutely. I've been in the industry for 6 years now and found there are massive peaks and troughs.

Game devs go bust all the time, many don't last more than a few years or don't ever release more than one game, so as you suggest the job security can indeed suck. Also, game devs are few and far between; it's hardly like being a mechanic or something and having several garages down the road to work for. Losing your job at a game dev often means moving house. Allied to this, you can also be working on a p.o.s. game and then it just becomes a "regular job", just turning up and going through the motions to pay the mortgage at the end of the day.

On the flipside, the peaks can be quite awesome; doing a hobby as your day job and getting paid for it, and actually preferring to be at work!

How're you finding things so far, ReNo?

I'm finding it great so far :smile: Its quite surreal getting paid for doing this, it doesn't feel like I'm earning it, if you know what I mean! If I wasn't working on The Ship, I'd be doing the same thing for free for a mod. Getting paid is just like a bonus I'm getting for doing what I'd be doing with my time anyway, and at Outerlight I also get to work with a bunch of great people in a nice laid back environment (even when we are so close to launch!).

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Where can I get the HL1 version.
Btw, I like cheese nuggets.

DrGlass said:
well my "big plan" is to move out to Montana and build a house. ...

You ever checked out Montana?

I'd never dream of dissuading you. Its gorgeous. However you need to consider:

The winters are brutal.
The taxes are more so.
The isolation more still.

On the flip side, if none of those situations discourage you is, you get to see some of the best countryside anyplace in the world.. Assuming you move to the west side of the state. The east side is yukky.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

DrGlass said:
well my "big plan" is to move out to Montana and build a house. ...

You ever checked out Montana?

I'd never dream of dissuading you. Its gorgeous. However you need to consider:

The winters are brutal.
The taxes are more so.
The isolation more still.

On the flip side, if none of those situations discourage you is, you
get to see some of the best countryside anyplace in the world..
Assuming you move to the west side of the state. The east side is yukky.

Hmm... I don't know if Montana is any different than Finland...

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

you get to see some of the best countryside anyplace in the world..

Montana doesn't have particularly beautiful countryside? Or so Google Images show me.

DrGlass said:
well my "big plan" is to move out to Montana and build a house. ...

You ever checked out Montana?
I'd never dream of dissuading you. Its gorgeous. However you need to consider:
The winters are brutal.
The taxes are more so.
The isolation more still.
On the flip side, if none of those situations discourage you is, you get to see some of the best countryside anyplace in the world.. Assuming you move to the west side of the state. The east side is yukky.

Well montana was the original idea, but I'm sure anywhere in the mid west would be great. near the Rockies would be preferable and that range covers a lot of ground.

also, one more day till Ship, I hope it was worth that $15... if its anything like the hl1 demo though, heck yeah.

Ships out! and no one to play with :sad:

I probably won't buy, until I get my free weekend to test it out.

Whens the first one?

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

Nobody to play with? I couldn't get a space in any of the damn servers! Was good fun once I eventually did, however :smile: Everybody seemed to be having a good time and though one or two bugs cropped up that we had thought fixed, everything seemed to be working smoothly. Well, I say smoothly - there was a fair bit of lag hurting the game, but that seemed to subside later in the game and unlike fast action games, it isn't necessarily all that disasterous to the gameplay.

Hope any of you guys that decided to give it a shot have enjoyed it so far :smile:

Dark: No date has been set for any open days or weekends or whatever as of yet. I'll let you know when I can :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Exciting times! Congrats ReNo! Did they make you buy a copy of the game?

Anyone else had a chance to play it?

No no, I got a freebie copy :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

ReNo said:
No no, I got a freebie copy :smile:

Haha good good, I was gonna say, what's the point of working for as a game dev if you can't score free loot?

I got to play it, and I figure it was my connection here that made me think no one was around. After a while all I could find were full servers. I think the big problem with lag was that most of these servers weren't dedicated.

I'll be moving into a new house soon so maybe then I'll get to play it lagg-free-ish.

I played with bots, and while they arn't any good, I did have fun. I love the style of the game and trying to out wit some real people should be fun.

? quoting ReNoNo no, I got a freebie copy :smile:
Haha good good, I was gonna say, what's the point of working for as a game dev if you can't score free loot?

heh, yeah that definately is one of the perks. :smile: Tomorrow I'll be getting a free copy of Prey for the Xbox 360 - saves me ?50 since I was going to buy it anyway. Also over the last month I've been given GTA: Liberty City (PS2) and Rockstar Table Tennis for free too. :biggrin:

I'm jealous keved. Who do you work for?

Rockstar Leeds (who do all the GTA PSP games.)

Ah sweet! Nice to know.

Now that I think about it, there are quite a few of you guys who work in the industry now.

No no, I got a freebie copy :smile:

Anyway I can get a freebie copy reno? :smile:

Rockstar Leeds (who do all the GTA PSP games.)

Shame Rockstar Vienna closed it's doors. :sad:

The Ship got a side by side comparison with Prey in a recent NYTimes.com article:

The reporter preffered the Ship. WOooOO Outerlight + ReNo!

Full article:

<DIV class=timestamp>July 27, 2006</DIV>
<DIV class=kicker>Game Theory</DIV>
Virtual Murder and Mayhem of One Kind or Another
<DIV class=byline>By CHARLES HEROLD</DIV>
<DIV id=articleBody>
THE first thing I do when I arrive in my cabin is search the closets. I take a hat, a pair of glasses and a straight razor, which I put in my pocket. Then I walk out into the luxury cruise ship?s corridor, where men and women elegantly dressed in 1920?s garb walk past Art Deco fixtures, eyeing me suspiciously. I grab a fire ax off the wall and put it under my jacket.

I receive a message with my quarry?s name and most recent location. She?s one deck below me in the bar, so I hurry down the stairs, carefully looking at each passer-by. A woman in a ball gown pulls out a flare gun and is about to fire it at a man in a top hat when a ship security officer grabs her. The top-hatted man, realizing the woman knows his face and will be back, takes off his hat and puts on a new suit and an eye patch.

My quarry has left the bar, but a new message says she?s out on deck. I hurry outside. Is that her? I move closer. It is her. I walk forward, trying to give the impression that I?m looking elsewhere so she doesn?t run, but as I?m about to pull out my ax, a man pulls out a steak knife and, before I can even react, stabs me to death.

That?s how it goes in Outerlight?s ingenious multiplayer game The Ship, in which each player is both hunter and hunted.

The Ship is essentially a virtual version of real-life games like Assassin, popular with college students, in which you have a week to hunt down people and spray them with water. In The Ship, though, you have only a few minutes to take down your prey.

Murder is made more difficult by the presence of security cameras, requiring that your weapons be hidden, and survival is made more difficult by the necessity to attend to basic bodily needs like sleeping, eating and showering. At these times you are completely vulnerable, and it is quite disconcerting to be stabbed to death while sitting on the toilet.

The Ship doesn?t explain why a boatload of fashionable men and women would try to kill each other, but if you accept that odd premise, the game makes perfect sense.

Human Head Studios? new first-person shooter, Prey, is another matter; it is a game almost entirely comprised of unlikely oddities.

As Prey begins, aliens have abducted a hot-headed modern-day Cherokee named Tommy from a reservation tavern, along with his grandfather and girlfriend. Escaping his shackles with the help of a mysterious person, Tommy grabs a slimy alien weapon and heads out to save his loved ones.

The alien ship is a bizarre and entertaining place with mucilaginous corridors and stinging tentacles growing from the floors and ceilings. Odd crab-like creatures skittering across the ground can be picked up and used as grenades, while a missile launcher contains an alien embryo wriggling in the barrel.

The alien technology in the game is remarkable. Crates contain portals to other locations and gravity walkways let you go up walls. Individual rooms can have their gravity changed by shooting sensors, allowing Tommy to drop to the ceiling.

The ship is a deadly place where Tommy must battle aliens, dinosaurlike creatures and demon ghost children. His only chance to survive is to regain the spiritual powers of his ancestors. He soon acquires a falcon spirit guide and learns the ancient Cherokee ability to become a shadow walker who can pass through force fields and kill foes with arrows made of the spirits of fallen enemies.

If you?re wondering whether such a m?lange of disparate elements can be tied into a neat, consistent universe, the answer is, well, not really. There is no apparent necessity for rooms with changeable gravity, nor is it clear why aliens need ghost children. While good science fiction creates coherent, convincing futuristic technology and explores its ramifications, Prey is simply built around a bunch of neat ideas like wall walking and invisibility. This makes Prey very bad science fiction, but the game works wonderfully as a surreal nightmare.

Prey doesn?t simply rely on its trippiness to entertain the player; the game?s fast action and the clever design of the game levels keep things fun even after the wacky tricks are exhausted. Combat is exciting, as are the occasional sequences in which you must pilot an alien shuttle craft, although the game does begin to feel a bit repetitive toward the end.

One of Prey?s most unusual features is that after a certain point it becomes impossible to die. When Tommy is killed, he is transported to a spirit realm where he heals himself by shooting magical birds. He is then returned to the ship, where all the enemies he killed or wounded are in the same state he left them in. This means it is impossible to get stuck in the game, and you never have to replay sections. I love this, but those who prefer their games to be grindingly difficult will be displeased.

In terms of story, Prey follows the same pattern as the Half-Life series, with mysterious characters just out of reach, brief snippets of story interspersed throughout the action and moments when you come out of cramped halls into vast, stunning spaces. The action is broken up by simple puzzles, many involving changing a room?s gravity to get to an otherwise unreachable location. There are interesting moments, as when you find alien receivers monitoring a talk show from Earth or suddenly hear the rock music that had been playing in the bar you were abducted from.

Unfortunately, mediocre voice acting and a lack of character development work against the game?s story; one moment that is intended to be wrenchingly tragic comes across as just sort of sad. And as with everything else in the game, there?s little attempt to create convincing motivation for the characters, particular Tommy?s final opponent, whose plan, when revealed, seems as flawed as the alien ship?s architecture.

Besides the rather short single-player mission, which speedy players report finishing in seven hours (although it took me twice that), Prey has the requisite online multiplayer mode. The best multiplayer levels take advantage of the game?s eccentricities, as in one where each room has a different gravitational orientation, allowing you to lob grenades at an opponent standing on what to him is a floor and to you is a ceiling. But for the most part, Prey?s multiplayer levels play just like those of dozens of similar games.

I?ve spent more than enough time running around alien ships indiscriminately firing rocket launchers. Now I just want to put on a tuxedo, grab a golf club and enjoy a civilized, seafaring afternoon of murder in cold blood.

E-mail:herold@nytimes.com

</DIV>

Heh, good to see such a report. :smile:

But uhhm, a Singleplayer Ship, is that somewhere on your companies planning, ReNo? :wink:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Oooh thanks for that AtM, we hadn't seen that here in the office :smile:

A single player "story mode" is being worked on right now actually - will be part of the retail release in September, and also released on Steam as a seperate additional purchase. We'd love to give it away to people who bought the online version but sadly we can't due to commitments to our publisher. It should be only $10 or less to buy the single player, so the total of it and the multiplayer component won't cost any more than the retail version. Two new multiplayer ships are going into the retail version as well, but those will be made available to people who got the multiplayer release for free.

For those of you who were waiting on some more major reviews, we have now been reviewed by Gamespot (83/100) and 1UP (6.5/10). Metacritic have a few other reviews listed too.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

This game sounds awesome, unfortunately I dont have a credit card so I'll have to wait for September (realistically, October, since I know I shouldnt start a game until after exams :razz: ) Definitely something to look forward to.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

ReNo said:
Oooh thanks for that AtM, we hadn't seen that here in the office :smile:

Hey, no problem. I always read the tech articles in the NYTimes and it was a pleasant surprise to see your studio's game getting featured, quite positively in fact :smile:

Bodes well for your future, methinks :smile:

Must be quite a thrill to read all the reviews of a game you actually worked on. Especially if they are good! ^^

It is a thrill, but its kind of empty feeling at the moment given that none of my content is in the current release. Once the retail version is out, with my levels in it (freely downloadable for purchasers of the online version, before anybody starts whining!), thats when I'll REALLY be scouring the reviews :smile: It's stressful work I can tell you - trying to impress your co-workers and trying to impress the buyers of your game can build up your nerves quite a bit! What makes it even worse is that deadlines dictate you have to say "its done" at some point, which is almost invariably earlier than you would have said "its done" were you releasing the level under normal "community" circumstances. I'm proud of what I've made, but there are so many things about it that I know I can do better with. I guess patches will give me the opportunity :smile:

Oh, but yeah, good reviews = good times. There's a good vibe in the office after positive reviews, and given that our worst so far is 1UP's 6.5/10 (hardly a "bad" review as such), we've been having quite a few good vibes. I hope next months reviews in PC Gamer and PC Zone don't buck the trend :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net