What Can My Game Already Do

An article by Nick Gravelyn over on his blog inspired me to think about what I have done.  Theirs shows a screen shot of what a team of three achieved on their game engine in 6 months.

I've been working on mine for over two years on my own and I'm pleased to say my game can already do a lot, in fact code wise there can't be much more to add.  I hope!

This list of features is a reminder to me of what I have achieved:

• Walk round a 3D world
• - Jump
• - Spectate
• First person controls
• Over the shoulder view of yourself (more fiddly than it sounds)
• Animated
• - Blend animations
• - Merge in arm movement to follow which way the player is looking
• - Hold attachments that move with whatever they are attached to
• - Shared animation files (and a way to get them in to the pipeline.)
• Collide with characters and structures
• Terrain and game editor
• - Change heights
• - Change textures
• Add and remove:
• - models
• - triggers
• - particle effects
• - goals
• - trigger goal success
• - trigger add a new goal
• - trigger spawn player
• - trigger spawn non-players
• - trigger particle effects
• - Waypoints for AI pathfinding
• - Spawnpoints
• Lighting
• Shadows (not a trivial task, many many months spent on this)
• Full menu system
• - Select which map to play
• - Customise the player character with hats etc.
• - Load and save character choices
• - Change music and effect volumes
• - In game pause menu, resume or exit
• - Display goals outstanding and completed
• Select weapons
• Shoot weapons
• Bullet trails
• Bullet impact decals (instanced)
• Bullet impact effect, debris and smoke
• Muzzle flash
• Most things have sound effects
• Drop weapons
• Pickup weapons
• Pickup ammunition
• Head Up Display (HUD)
• - Weapon sights
• - Sniper sights
• - Zoom in
• - Display ammo as used
• - Compass
• - Radar showing friend and enemy positions if close
• Non-Player AI
• - Pathfinding
• - Select a target if in range
• - Follow a player (target)
• and I'm sure there's more...

All the in game stuff runs on the Xbox with a development version running on the PC as well.

In addition to all that I had to write a Python script for Blender to be able to export models from Blender to XNA and as a short distraction I am currently trying to unify that with the built in FBX exported in Blender so that in future one exporter works with everything!

I'm still a long way from finishing the game though.  That is because most of the above use placeholder graphics and so I am now working to create the finished 3D models to go in the game.  Then I will post a video to really show off :-)

I'd like to thank all those people on various forums that have helped along the way.