GrantTheAnt
First time out of the vault
Greetings fellow Rangers.
I've kept somewhat quiet on this project for the last few years, because I desperately wanted to avoid falling into the dreaded Wasteland remake project trap where the projects gets announced, a few emails are exchange, and the project is never heard of again. Even in the time I've been plugging away at this, I reckon I've seen 4 or 5 attempts come and go! Hopefully the idea itself is not cursed.
But yes, in my extremely limited spare time in the last 5 or 6 years I've been developing a Wasteland engine. I feel as though it's sufficiently advanced to show it to people now, or at least a few fellow Rangers. The milestone I wanted to achieve before unveiling it was to get it to the point where other people could edit it and move it forward without heavy intervention from me - that way if/when I run out of spare time again, the project won't stall as long as there is sufficient interest from others.
Broadly speaking, it is built on the XNA framework - so it works on Windows, XBOX 360, and Windows phone out of the box. But XNA is reasonably portable these days, so it could probably go on almost any device in the future - even iPhone/iPad. Although the low level engine/renderer is built on XNA, the entire game logic is in LUA script. I designed it this way so that anyone could edit the game logic, and so that it retains a high degree of platform independence. LUA script was created with non-programmers in mind, so it's very easy to read and write. So the maps are created in a 3rd party tile editor, and the logic/scripting is done in LUA. This means anyone can jump in and start building areas of the game without much technical knowledge - all you really need is an interest in the project.
A picture's worth a thousand words and all that, so I've created a couple of videos. The first one is a goofy little 60 second trailer I made just for fun:
http://youtu.be/coaoa2smr8Y
The second one may be of greater interest - it's a walkthrough of where the project is at. I tried to skip parts but it still runs for more than 20 minutes of me rambling on, so fair warning!:
http://youtu.be/1jc6sPGNoIc
Although my first aim of the engine is to remake Wasteland, the engine can be used just as easily to make a spin-off game in the same world.
What I'm looking for now is expressions of interest from Rangers who want to be involved in this ridiculous, ahem I mean worthwhile, project. You can mosey on over to the blog at:
http://wastelandforever.blogspot.com
And introduce yourself in the forums at:
http://wastelandforever.freeforums.org
You can be involved in this project in a number of ways so don't feel like you don't have the skills to be involved. If you want to be involved, there will be scope for it! I'm looking for folks who want to help build the areas (map editing and light LUA scripting), maybe some folks with more programming experience to help with some of the heavier lifting if necessary, people who have an in-depth knowledge of the original to compare skill check formulas, combat formulas, etc. (especially if you were involved in hacking the original game data files!), and well, basically if you have any interest in the project.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you all back in the Wasteland!
Best regards,
GrantTheAnt.
I've kept somewhat quiet on this project for the last few years, because I desperately wanted to avoid falling into the dreaded Wasteland remake project trap where the projects gets announced, a few emails are exchange, and the project is never heard of again. Even in the time I've been plugging away at this, I reckon I've seen 4 or 5 attempts come and go! Hopefully the idea itself is not cursed.
But yes, in my extremely limited spare time in the last 5 or 6 years I've been developing a Wasteland engine. I feel as though it's sufficiently advanced to show it to people now, or at least a few fellow Rangers. The milestone I wanted to achieve before unveiling it was to get it to the point where other people could edit it and move it forward without heavy intervention from me - that way if/when I run out of spare time again, the project won't stall as long as there is sufficient interest from others.
Broadly speaking, it is built on the XNA framework - so it works on Windows, XBOX 360, and Windows phone out of the box. But XNA is reasonably portable these days, so it could probably go on almost any device in the future - even iPhone/iPad. Although the low level engine/renderer is built on XNA, the entire game logic is in LUA script. I designed it this way so that anyone could edit the game logic, and so that it retains a high degree of platform independence. LUA script was created with non-programmers in mind, so it's very easy to read and write. So the maps are created in a 3rd party tile editor, and the logic/scripting is done in LUA. This means anyone can jump in and start building areas of the game without much technical knowledge - all you really need is an interest in the project.
A picture's worth a thousand words and all that, so I've created a couple of videos. The first one is a goofy little 60 second trailer I made just for fun:
http://youtu.be/coaoa2smr8Y
The second one may be of greater interest - it's a walkthrough of where the project is at. I tried to skip parts but it still runs for more than 20 minutes of me rambling on, so fair warning!:
http://youtu.be/1jc6sPGNoIc
Although my first aim of the engine is to remake Wasteland, the engine can be used just as easily to make a spin-off game in the same world.
What I'm looking for now is expressions of interest from Rangers who want to be involved in this ridiculous, ahem I mean worthwhile, project. You can mosey on over to the blog at:
http://wastelandforever.blogspot.com
And introduce yourself in the forums at:
http://wastelandforever.freeforums.org
You can be involved in this project in a number of ways so don't feel like you don't have the skills to be involved. If you want to be involved, there will be scope for it! I'm looking for folks who want to help build the areas (map editing and light LUA scripting), maybe some folks with more programming experience to help with some of the heavier lifting if necessary, people who have an in-depth knowledge of the original to compare skill check formulas, combat formulas, etc. (especially if you were involved in hacking the original game data files!), and well, basically if you have any interest in the project.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you all back in the Wasteland!
Best regards,
GrantTheAnt.
