11 replies to this topic

[thorlak]

Hi everyone!

I am pleased to anounce that I've recently finished a master degree in videogame development and this is the game I've been working at.

Dash and the Stolen Treasure is a platform game inspired in Jak and Daxter's series, Mario and Crash Bandicoot. A cartoonish game set in a pirates world, plenty of loony creatures.

It has been developed from scratch by a group of 5 students, 3 programmers (me being one of them :P) and 2 artists.

You can download the game (for free of course! :D) at it's official web site: Dash and the Stolen Treasure




Take control of Dash, the world's most most famous pirate, who is also ironically afraid of water, he is just a kid and he possesses almost every treasure that has ever existed... until one day he is stolen by the band of Blind Shark Pirates! Get your treasures back! Get your revenge and recover all your coins and gems, oh and save some baby sea urchins on the way, they will be grateful to you!

Jump, explore, run over the water, get your treasures back and play baseball with the octopuses!





























Trailer: Dash and the Stolen Treasure: Trailer

Facebook Group Page: Project: The Last Pirate

Any feedback is welcome! ^_^

[Edited by - thorlak on November 7, 2010 6:35:02 AM]

[Noggs]

Wow very impressive stuff - congratulations! Can you give us some details on the technology used to create this title?

[thorlak]

Thank you Noggs!! :D

Sure I can tell you how was the game built ;)

The game engine has been coded from scratch and it has been implemented using the following libraries:

-collisions: Solid 3.5
-graphics: DirectX9 SDK (August 2009 version)
-animation: Cal3D 0.11.0 (modified to support skinning via GPU)
-sound: FMOD 4.3
-scripting: Lua 5.0 in conjunction with luabind
-XML parsing: TinyXML
-Ingame variable tweaking: AntTweakBar (only during development)

Artists used 3D Studio Max for modelling and animation, photoshop for creating textures and mudbox for generating normalmaps for the characters.

We also developed our own exporters using 3ds MaxScript: mesh exporter (binary format), material exporter (XML), item positions (XML), triggers (XML), and son on. For characters and animations we used the provided Cal3D exporters for 3D studio max.

Oh and we also had developed our own mini-tool particle editor using the same particle rendering implemented in our engine, so the artists could create their particles and see directly how would be the result in the game engine.

Creating a game from scratch has been a big challenge. Now that the game is finished we are really happy with the result :D (although it has some bugs! >_<)

If you have any other questions feel free to ask! I'll be happy to answer them :)

[Evil Infant]

Very professional game, I can tell some time was put into its development. I'll definitely play it.

[Edited by - Evil Infant on November 4, 2010 9:08:51 PM]

[thorlak]

Thank you Evil Infant, if you try it could you give me some feedback about what do you think about the game? What could be improved, what did you like or not like? :)

Thank you!!

[PrintFDebugger]

Absolutely loved it, very reminiscent of the Zelda64 games. Pro voice acting :).

If you're after improvements, you have a typo in the intro movie (thing), and the fixed camera can get a little annoying when you're jumping around the lake.

[harryballs]

The Game looks very unique and fun. Why are you giving it away? You are leaving money on the table. Sign up with a commerce provider like Plimus or BMT and set a price of $19.95. Let people play the trial for 15 or 30 minutes and then ask them to buy the game when the time expires. Listen to the feedback from the other people on this forum. You did a fantastic job with the game.

[Evil Infant]

Quote:

Original post by harryballs The Game looks very unique and fun. Why are you giving it away? You are leaving money on the table. Sign up with a commerce provider like Plimus or BMT and set a price of $19.95. Let people play the trial for 15 or 30 minutes and then ask them to buy the game when the time expires. Listen to the feedback from the other people on this forum. You did a fantastic job with the game.

QFT

Definitely has console potential.

[AAA]

This game looks awesome. I love everything about it.

But I feel like I don't need to play it cause I watched the 2 walkthrough videos and now I feel like I won't experience anything new if I played it myself. You should remove those links :)

[thorlak]

Quote:

Original post by PrintFDebugger Absolutely loved it, very reminiscent of the Zelda64 games. Pro voice acting :). If you're after improvements, you have a typo in the intro movie (thing), and the fixed camera can get a little annoying when you're jumping around the lake.

Thanks for the feedback! We will take a look into that :), and yeah it's inspired in Zelda games too :D

Quote:

Original post by harryballs The Game looks very unique and fun. Why are you giving it away? You are leaving money on the table. Sign up with a commerce provider like Plimus or BMT and set a price of $19.95. Let people play the trial for 15 or 30 minutes and then ask them to buy the game when the time expires. Listen to the feedback from the other people on this forum. You did a fantastic job with the game.

Thanks harryballs! We are giving for free because we believe this is the best way to have feedback about the game. The game itself has about 20 minutes of gameplay at it's most, maybe 25 or 30 if you want to unlock and explore everything. The purpose of the master's degree where we developed the game is also to have a playable demo/game as something to attach to our CV so we can find a job in the industry!! :D

Quote:

Original post by Evil Infant QFT Definitely has console potential.

Wow thanks Evil Infant!! :D

[thorlak]

Quote:

Original post by AAA This game looks awesome. I love everything about it. But I feel like I don't need to play it cause I watched the 2 walkthrough videos and now I feel like I won't experience anything new if I played it myself. You should remove those links :)

Ouch!! Okay, now that's interesting! I'll remove the links :P
What we really look for is people to play the game hehe.
Thanks AAA!

[Dawisch]

WOW! The this game is has stunning visuals and awesome gameplay! I hope I can program games this good some day :D