The Longest Snow Day - Treehouse Turret

[legacy-Pezman]

Quality Concept!

My feedback:

1) I would add a few iceicles to the edges of the roof.
2) It would be a plus if the iceicles would fall if hit, make the map seem much more immersive.
3) I would ensure that your branches / fence allow for the player to jump up onto the roof/top of tree. This would make for an easy learning curve so that more advanced players can really dominate if they use the mesh to their advantage.
4) Ladders are always a bottleneck to gameplay, as you sacrifice being able to shoot while climbing. To counter act this I would suggest adding a few "boards" to the tree trunk so a player can "climb" up the back of the tree and get into the turret, it would provide for easier access from either side and add to the element of surprise if you were firing the turret and someone snuck up on you from behind!
5) No clubhouse is complete without a sign! Have something cute, mispelled or backwards letters. "No girls allowed!" or something to that affect.

Overall I like what you have here and hope to see the mod entered into the Make Something Unreal Contest.

[legacy-TooDaMCrazy]

I love this..I cant wait for it to come mout...I will host it on my server. And if you seen what he said...you will go to the base of the tree and hit "use" and you will be in the tree house behind the baseball pitcher....I do like your ideas tho..would be better to be more involved with the trees/tree houses

[legacy-Prophet1969]

Originally posted by MattRyan
Actually we're not kids, but thanks for making us feel young. Everyone on my team (with one exception) works all day and mods at night. I think that the youngest on our team is 24 yrs old and I'm almost 26.

lol.....ok I am not sure if that makes me feel better or worse....I think I would be alright if I could find a group that really had the mind to put in the time, unfortunately most of the guys I know who have any talent can't be bothered to make the sacrafice of time to create somethin as large scale as this.....

But I do say again great work guys, I hope to see the mod out there for download soon, and if you ever need a helping hand with anything.......

[legacy-MikeDulany]

Originally posted by MattRyan
Actually we're not kids, but thanks for making us feel young. Everyone on my team (with one exception) works all day and mods at night. I think that the youngest on our team is 24 yrs old and I'm almost 26.

Hey Matt, I know I'm wise for my age, but the answer is 23 yrs

[legacy-MattRyan]

Originally posted by Pezman

5) No clubhouse is complete without a sign! Have something cute, mispelled or backwards letters. "No girls allowed!" or something to that affect.

Actually, since we'll be including girls as playable characters I think that we'll have something like "no n00bz alowd" or something like that. And concerning ice falling and such, we thought that having every static-mesh be able to loose some of it's snow when it's collided with (i.e. parked cars, fences, mailboxes, etc.) I'll make sure that that happens to ensure a more complete feeling of immersion in our little cartoony world

Thanks for the C&C on my team's work Pezman.

[legacy-StudMuffin]

Great concept! Just last week I was looking for a non-violent game like UT. This looks perfect.

I'm the father of 1 and 3 year-olds, uncle to 4 and 7 year-olds and of course know lots of other parents with kids of various ages. I was looking for a game as good as UT but non-violent. I was also looking for a way to get "into" programming for kids (say 13 years old).

The 13-year old wants to be a game developer. Right now he just plays console games and doesn't really have any way to get his feet wet actually programming for those game. UED seems better than anything else because it is free (with the game) and powerful enough to do fun stuff. However, the game premise in UT ~ UT2k4 probably isn't age appropriate.

Your game (mod) looks like it is non-violent enough for "Everyone" to play. Perhaps as a follow-on you could release a tutorial with textures and meshes so older kids could make their own maps?

[legacy-MattRyan]

It's funny that you mention that Studmuffin

At our website we plan on writing tutorials on how we do what we do. Most of the material online either deals with Max and not Maya PLE [comes free w/ the game] or the tut's use Maya PLE on the old UT and not 2k3. We also plan on conducting interviews w/ eachother to find out what kind of person it takes to do what we do (i.e. "So, Mike Dulany, what did you study in college to be the programmer for the mod team you're working on?")

Thanks for the nice comments!

[legacy-Ironhide]

good job on developing a mod that isnt

1)SUPER EXCESSIVE COOL LOOKING WEAPONS

2)WW2

3)WW2

4)VIETNAMWAR

5)WW2

6)UNREAL:RETURN TO HOT KARL

7)WW2

8)TACTICAL REALISTIC TERRORIST SHOOTER

9)REALISTIC TACTICAL SHOOTER TERRORIST

10)port of [insert movie/game name here]
:up:

[legacy->X<]

cool... that is all i have to say

[legacy-FOZZI]

Very cool, the concept kinda reminds me of that first south park game.. with the snowballs, dodgeball and all. :up:

[legacy-Walker Boh]

Nice! Looks like something out of Calvin and Hobbes!

[legacy-blot21]

Originally posted by MattRyan
We're designing the treehouses to be like the turrets in UT2k4. Up in the treehouse will be a baseball pitcher machine that has its hopper filled with snowballs. The character walks up to the base of the treehouse, clicks use, and is in the treehouse, behind a snowball-pitcher These will be placed at key points throughout our maps that have the new gametype that we are currently working on

The turrets in UT2k4 can turn 360 on the horizontal plane. From the screenshots you've posted, it looks as though these turrets will be more limited. I assume you will be able to fire the snowball machine out of the two windows on the sides of the treehouse and possibly out of the front door. My concern is that since this is a turret that you just jump into, you won't be able to move from window to window to door. How is this being handled? It seems to me that the turret would have a position for each window.

[legacy-MattRyan]

Originally posted by blot21
My concern is that since this is a turret that you just jump into, you won't be able to move from window to window to door. How is this being handled? It seems to me that the turret would have a position for each window.

We'll probably modify the treehouse to have the snowball-pitcher on the deck of the treehouse. The deck will face out from the corner or side of the neighborhood block that the team has captured Our new game type is a little bit like Onslaught in that for victory, one team of kids must take over/control more neighborhood blocks than the other kids to win.

We've yet to test this game type, so it's all theory right now. For now, we're just trying to get all our static-meshes, maps, models, animations, and other various art to work correctly in the game.

[legacy-ctzn99]

Instead of Ladder?

Instead of a ladder running up the front how about a spiral ramp or set of boards that start at the back of the tree and twist out, around and up to the front.

Kudos, looks great so far.

[legacy-MattRyan]

Re: Instead of Ladder?

Originally posted by ctzn99
Instead of a ladder running up the front how about a spiral ramp or set of boards that start at the back of the tree and twist out, around and up to the front.

Kudos, looks great so far.

The ladder is only for show. I think that in the end it will be 1)Simpler to just make the treehouse something "enter-able" by using the "Use" key, rather than making the user climb he ladder 2) Gameplay will go much faster when the player only needs to be touching the treehouse to enter it.

We're treating the entire treehouse (ladder and all) as a "turret" so once someone is touching the treehouse, if it is there teams treehouse, then they may hit the use key and immediately be behind the snowball-pitcher.