In a week from now, the next major Ogre powered game will finally be released. We had the chance to get some up-front information and material that we are happy to share here. So what are we talking about?
Garshasp: The Monster Slayer
“This game is based on ancient Persian mythology bringing to life the epic battles of the mythological hero, Garshasp, in the ancient lands against the evil monsters. You play as Garshasp himself, the strongest man in Persian Mythology, in a journey to revenge and reclaim the legendary mace of his ancestors which is stolen by the Deevs. A journey which proves to unlock more significant hidden mysteries. The main mechanics of the game revolve around melee combat, platforming and exploration.”
The game was developed and published by the studio “DeadMage“, with a core team of nine people: 3 programmers, one concept artist, an 3D modeler, 2 game designers, one sound guy and an animator. Overall 30 people were ultimately involved in the process. Together they worked on it for 3 years, albeit most of the time part time, since the team members had to make a living or study at the same time.
The also used quite a range of different libarries to get the game done, most notably: OGRE3D 1.6.2, ParticleUniverse, PhysX 2.7.2 (via NxOgre 0.9), Hikari, Boost (Serialization, Threading), CG shaders SM 2.x, OpenAL, FreeSL, OgreVideo and Theora. The CG shaders were used to achieve per pixel lighting, normal/specular mapping, HDR, shadows, vegetation/flag subtle movements, water and hardware skinning.
As for their overall development tools they used Visual Studio 2008, PIX, 3D Max for character design, environment design and animation along with Photoshop, Crazybump and ZBrush. The 3D content was exported by the use of oFusion and OgreMax.
To arrange the assets and create the scenes, they built their own level editor using native C++ and WxWidgets which proved to be a good decision in the long run. They also came up with an own scripting language for their game designers.
So if you are into that kind of game, you should definetly give it a try. You can grab it via Steam or GamersGate.
For more information or news, have a look at the game’s website.
PS: Linux port is in development and they are even considering porting it over to XBLA.
Here are the summarized most notable events of the last two weeks:
Open Beta of the Ogre powered game Dynastica announced, including a new trailer
iPhone/iPad app called Mini Countryman published in the Apple App Store
Oogst announced that Proun is almost finished and published some proof screenshots
a nice little 3D version of Check called Checkers was released
new release of Gorilla, the a 2D and 3D Overlay replacement system by betajaen, with new shader based materials to increase compatibility with iOS and other graphics API
Vertigo, a new fast paced arcade game has been released to the public
Regarding Google Summer of Code 2011: Ogre has been accepted as a participating organization and the submission period has ended. We are now internally reviewing the applications and will we decide which proposed student projects we can mentor and support. Expect to hear more on this soon.
Finally our very own Betajaen has released his new project: “AmiOgre” a port of Ogre to the Amiga computer.
Google Summer of Code for Ogre is still progressing with some promising proposals. Feel free to add yours, or if you have something small which you want to add to or fix in Ogre now – submit a papercut.
Here are the most notable news from the last two weeks:
Three new versions of Ogre Meshy have been released, so we are now at v1.1
Space Hulk inspired game named Arachnophobia released
First preview of Waveit Webplayer, a web player able to run the Ogre demos inside
First screenshots of Snoogre – an Ogre Snooker game were shown
And one very good news item, fresh of the presses: We just heard that Ogre has been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2011! The discussions on the possible projects have already started here. If you have any ideas or comments, feel free to join us there.
We are also preparing the application for this years Google Summer of Code and actively discussing some good ideas for student projects. More information can be found in the respective forum section. Please join us in there if you have any ideas or comments on the proposals!
