Not My Base

Don’t worry, you haven’t accidentally broken some security barrier to see this; “Top Secret” is the name of the project and has nothing to do with its level of security.

The Competition

A couple of years ago, producers of Trackmania, 2moons and other titles, announced the “Top Secret” competition, where amateur games developers were to work together and create a game based on the specifications from the design team (at the same time, the designers were also in a competition for best input etc. The prize was to become director of the project). The winning team gets an instant $100,000 and any production costs up to $1million are paid off. Acclaim will then publish the game, and the developers get revenue and more money based on revenue and time spent supporting the game once it’s released.

The Game

The game is an MMO (online) racer, but we aren’t talking cars. The player trades, cross-breeds and races all sorts of beasts, taking their pride out onto the track, navigating obstacle-ridden tracks while using spells to hinder their opponent’s progress or boosting their own.

The Team

Everyone in the Devhat IRC network had been going on how we needed to do a project together and how awesome it’d be to do so. When I first saw the competition, I immediately saw this as an opportunity to not only finally get a community project on the go, but also as a head start in life, even if we didn’t win, I’d still have a big thing in my CV. I spread the word around the community looking for people to join in. And some people did, and in my opinion, the few that joined were the best I could hope for. Pieter Vos is a professional programmer, so he had the right kind of experience for working in a team; he’s working on the server. Carlos Wilkes didn’t join the team initially, except for giving a few ideas, but he eventually took over Luke Aaron, who dropped out after meeting the love of his life, as client programmer. He’s a very passionate coder, while still an amateur, enters competitions and lives off the prizes. He’s literally won every competition he’s entered, and he’s entered a fair amount. This was a good omen. Eoin Jenkins naturally assumed a leadership position,  (though we all agree its actually because he’s secretly an appalling programmer), but he [pretends to] run his own business, so he has his leadership qualities, like the whole wanting everything to be done yesterday, not caring how it’s done as long as it’s done properly, and in his own words “…making important decisions that will change again, tomorrow”. Grant Clark is a veteran, old enough to have witnessed (and profited hugely from) the computer boom in the 80’s. He’s working on visuals and audio, and again has a huge reputation for mastering his field.

The Devhat community is primarily programmers, so we had to hire 3D modellers from outside, one modeller in particular has helped us a lot, but I’ve only ever known him as “Ceo Bohga”…

Chimera, one of the creatures of Top Secret

My Involvement

I’m the leads tools guy, I created the town, tracks and NPC (computer characters) editors, while helping in some other areas too. With the editors, the team could then put together the tracks etc for the game. I’ve been quite inactive in the project for the best part of a year now, due to university work starting to actually take effort, having a job this year, and I was sort of expecting us to be finished by now. I keep promising I’ll finish off my work at some point, but the team look like they’re getting on fine without me (they’ve adapted to my constant absence), and I still cheer the team on.

My NPC Editor, demonstratingthe conversation tree editor. This is just a testing screenshot, don't expect the NPC's in-game to sound so... hip.

The Contest

Eleven teams entered, but as far as I’m aware, theres only two teams remaining, including ourselves. The other team is Merciless, “[who] are actually very nice people and have a relaxed”. And while they may actually have a functioning website, well, that’s because we’ve actually been working on the game, and Eoin who is in charge of the site (as a website guru) is too busy bossing everyone around and getting things done

Links:

• Competition Website
• Competition Community Spotlight: An interview with Eoin.
• My project journal on the team’s website.