Iron Strike at the Independent Games Festival

[WILL]

Hey everyone!

This is just to give everybody an little update as to the current status of Iron Strike. The game was finally completed and packaged about an hour ago. Dirk hard to the grind stone trying to peice it all together. I aswell was working last minute to get the tutorial completed in time.

All in all, we are both quite proud of this release. Dirk is now going to get his well earned 1 and a half hours of sleep. Hence why *I* am the one posting this announcement.

For those that are not familiar with the original release of the game, prevously known as 'TANX', this is a revision of the same game released in the 2006 PGD Annual Competition (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/competitions.php?p=details&c=1) which ran for about 4 months. 'TANX' won first place and earned the sponsorship to the Independant Game Festival from PGD and Savage Software Solutions.

After the competition I spoke with Dirk Nordhusen aka Huehnerschaender, the game's creator and he liked some of my ideas so he took me on as the story writter and mission designer. I then created the Iron Strike story and adapted a chapter for the game. The game was then renamed to 'Iron Strike' and 'Iron Strike: Stormfront' was to be released for the IGF competition.

Also, Reid Blanco of the AIR Team that entered the game 'BLOCKED' into the PGD Annual competition chipped in to help along with Alex Rosendal aka Traveler, who is a popular Staff Member of PGD, both contributed with some great 3D models and background graphics.

Unfortunately the PGD member 'Chebmaster' never told us his real name so we cannot thank him properly. He helped a lot of the geography and historical economic data used to add realizim to the game maps.


We worked under a very tight schedule, even back before the PGD Annual's finish, but I think overall that all of that has paid off. As of now, we'll have to wait for the judges at the IGF to release their results next year(2007). And then we shall see how the public feels about the game.

Pending a response from the IGF, we will see if we are allowed to release a copy to the public ourselves here on PGD. If we are given the 'ok' then hope to see it posted sometime in the next few days. We are anxious to share it with everyone.

[Robert Kosek]

Awesome work everyone, I look forwards to hearing how well Iron Strike, and pascal itself, ranks within the competition! :D

[WILL]

For all those who can use Flash in their browser you can check out how the previous IGF competition finalists won at this link: 2006 IGF Award Video (http://www.igf.com/video/)

[Huehnerschaender]

Hi, it's me :)

I think noone can forbid us to show screenshots of our entry, so I'll post some here. This way the community can get an impression of what we did the last weeks.

The engine changed A LOT since PGD entry TANX. We had so many ideas... we were able to add many of them, some ideas needed to be left for post IGF times.

Friendly units fight at your side. A scripted dialog system lets the player get the feeling the units are talking to him. Also cinematic like cutscenes are possible. A lot of game switches were added, which let units create ingame (eg for ambush scenes), destroy specific units on command and much much more. WILL needed this stuff to create his mission design, and he did very well! I had never been able to make such missions with my own editor *lol* He is very creative! We had only so few objects and buildings, but he managed to let every mission has it's own feeling and look. Great work WILL!

Here are some examples of ingame scenes:

http://upload4.postimage.org/1088589/screen1.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1088589/photo_hosting.html)
- 3 friendly units help you taking over the radar pole in mission 1 -

http://upload4.postimage.org/1088619/screen2.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1088619/photo_hosting.html)
Misisons partially take place in desert. I made some new graphics for this task.

http://upload4.postimage.org/1088631/screen3.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1088631/photo_hosting.html)
- Taking out air bases can be fun, especially when you have to shoot much planes and helos -

http://upload4.postimage.org/1088641/screen4.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1088641/photo_hosting.html)
- the new "smoke engine" in action: here after taking out some planes in an air base -

http://upload4.postimage.org/1088657/screen5.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1088657/photo_hosting.html)
- one of the new features: gain air support points and drop colored smoke flares for specific support types. In this screen you ordered a friendly tank which is just "arriving" - A parachute will bring it safe to the ground -

Ok, thats it for now.

Greetings,
Dirk

[Traveler]

Hi Dirk,

A huge weight must have lifted from your shoulders now, eh :)
Anyway, my hat off to you for this great accomplishment!

I can't wait to see the endresults, to see what the judges have to say about your entry (although I'm afraid it's going to be a while before results are released). In the meantime, I hope they do allow us to play your game, as I'm equally looking forward to that as well.

Again, great job, and go take some rest now. You've earned it :)


PS. you do realize you need a webite, for people to get more info, right?

[Huehnerschaender]

Indeed... I feel a little relieved now... I know there are still some bugs in the engine, hopefully we have the chance to patch later on. But all in all, having a working game now with all those features is a great start for post IGF complete game with much more levels, objects, features etc, no matter what comes out in the end of IGF. I never thought I could win something there.... there are too much too good entrys I think (I saw 150 upload directorys when I uploaded this morning).

Being part of it is a great thing I think. Many people will at least notice the game.

Webpage? :)

I am no webdesigner... I already thought of a webpage... but I need some holidays first... next wednesday I am flying to Gran Canaria for two weeks. After that I am "open again" for new things :)

And Alex, thank you very much again for your help with the briefing screen!

Greetings,
Dirk

[NecroDOME]

Screenshots look implessive!! Nice work!

[savage]

Looks great guys! Keep up the excellent work!

[technomage]

Looks good , great wook guys. Good luck :D

[jdarling]

Congrats Dirk. Show em what Pascal is made of and take some awards. Seariously I think that you have a chance at some. Can't wait to see the final game, and it would be really cool if WILL could come up with a T-Shirt that had Iron Strike and PGD on it for IGF. Re-sale them on the site to help offset some of the costs associated (if you all are going there in person that is).

BTW: Why isn't this an announcement on the front page?

[WILL]

It's likely that only 'My Projects' topics can be posted on the front page. Dom would know more about this than I.

I'd be glad to organize the making of T-Shirts for Iron Strike. But you should know that even though I am a major contributor to the game, it is owned by Dirk. So in my efforts here, I'm really working for him in *his* dev team. ;)

..and he'd have to ok his brand being used for PGD's benifit. But it's a cool idea. Though, I'd think that Dirk should benifit from that too if it where to be done.

I'm actaully in error above. I said we'd find something out next year, but instead the rules state that we will find out if the game is choosen by the judges as a 'finalist'. This is what most teams strive for because even if you don't win. You get recodnized amoung other promotional and exposure benifits.

I don't know if anyone looked at the 2006 IGF video yet, but it's pretty cool (2 game industry big-wigs where announcing the awards on a stage--get to see the whole thing) and how they present the finalists on the big screen. :lol: It's like being at the Oscars, but for indie game developers.

[cairnswm]

Well done guys, and good luck!

[tanffn]

Its been said many time, but there is always room for one more :)
Great job guys!
Looking forward to find it on the shelves :wink: or at least play it.

[savage]

All 141 Entries can now be viewed @ http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2007.php.
Should be an interesting year for indie games.

[WILL]

Thanks guys! :)

There unfortunately was a major issue with the 3rd Mission that I believe will cripple us greatly.

BUT when Dirk gets back from vacation, I'm sure that we will be able to fix it and post the fixed version and possibly have some crack at being nominated for the peoples choice award.

Well thats *IF* it goes the way I think it might. If not then oh well :? we tried.

afaik though, we *might* be able to run an even newer completed version of the game (not Stormfront, but a newer engine, story and missions) next year...


EDIT: I have a copy myself and I'd post it here on PGD, but Dom would kill me as it is about 50-60 MB *and* it would kill the site's bandwidth bill I think. :?

[Robert Kosek]

I can host it if you wish. No bandwidth limitation at all. :) Just let me know and I'll give you ftp information.

[jdarling]

I can also mirror the file if you want. That would give two people with unlimited bandwidth and should provide a good DL setup :)

[JSoftware]

I can also host with unlimited bandwidth

[Robert Kosek]

Mine technically isn't unlimited, but I don't think you can hold a candle to 200gb/month. ;)

I'll setup anonymous ftp access to my site, and put a download script in place. That way you can have everything accessed easily. And since I swapped hosts I have never gone down, which I'm enthusiastic about (my previous 2 were horrid).

So let me know if you want it! :P

[savage]

WILL, I know you are busy, but if you have a spare couple of hours, throw together some screen shots and a new gameplay movie and we can post it on GameDev and a few of the other sites to get the word out and to get valuable feedback.

[WILL]

Wow, I'm truely grateful for all the interest in hosting the game. Thanks a lot guys! :D

I have made up a video (XviD encoded) of the game's intro sequence. It even features the new PGD themed 'Worlds' logo. :thumbup:

Thing is... it's still almost 10 MB big. So... if you want, I can email it to you guys and you can host it for us...? The other option is YouTube.com, but I'm not so sure about that. Especially if we want to update it later on. ;)

As for the game bugs/issues, I'm going to see if I cannot fix a few things myself before I upload it just yet. But if I have your FTP/email info I can easily upload/send once I have done what I can. Just PM me and once I can I will...

[WILL]

Robert has just sent me his FTP information. If Jeremy and JSoftware wish to be mirrors aswell please either give me an EMail address or an FTP address aswell. (Had a few issues with connecting to Robert's FTP server though, it's possible that I may only be able to connect via Passive Mode so email might be nicer...?)

The game release is going to have to wait until around Monday though. I'm going to tinker with Mission 3 a bit and try to fix major errors with it before I try to release it. It's a rather annoying problem and I think that it'd be nicer for you all to try it right through to Mission 4 or 5. (The game as said by Dirk is rather short in gameplay time...)

[WILL]

Well I've finally managed to get it to Robert and he has kindly mirrored it here: Iron Strike:Stormfront Intro Video (http://thewickedflea.com/download.php?f=IronStrikeIntro.rar) (9.36 MB RAR File)

Please tell me what you guys think of it...

[czar]

Over all I thought it was good. The pgd logo looked great.

The storyline is good but the way it is presented has a couple of problems.

1. The reader has to be able to read very quickly. Only the centre of the screen is opaque which means you have a small window to read the material.

2. The format works well with short bits of text but this went on for a quite a while.

3. The font also doesn't help. I found it hard to keep track of where I was reading.

The question is...

Is the full story important to the game? If not I would suggest editing it to be much much shorter. The full text could be shown as a mission background during a briefing or whatever.

I have to say I was expecting to see some in game action. Reading a black screen for two minutes was a bit of a let down. Only after watching and re-reading your post did I click that it was the intro to the game.

Why not make a an inaction movie then use that as a background to the mission briefing. You could fade out the centre of the screen where the text appears so it is still readable.

[savage]

My only critisisms of the video are that the text jumps up the screen a few times, which made me lose my place. It really needs to be a very smooth scroll. Also it needs an audio track accompanying the scrolling text for those who are too illiterate to read.

WILL can you PM me the transcript and I will put on my best English authoritarian accent and record the voice over.

[WILL]

Yeah, this is all true.

The intent was to eventually have montage of 'mock' video clips and news reports of these major events taking place from the current 'War On Terror' to WWIII to the end of the Alliance-Coalition coldwar.

The thing that I think killed us the most was lack of time to work with the material. Dirk was fighting to keep bugs out as he added all this new stuff and I was trying to manage all the material ALL in a very short period of time. Which all lead to an unfortunately poor performance at IGF. :?

Things that I'd like to see done to Iron Strike, post-IGF... (This was both me and Dirk's montra the whole time we worked :lol:)

Intro-wise:

1) Slow down the scroll speed (much slower intro)
2) Add the mock montage of the progression from current day to the story
3) Rescore the whole game... intro, main menu, missions, boss fights, ending
4) Possibly try to shorten or abbreviate the 'rolling text' somewhat (maybe a few visuals will substitute some of the text?)
5) Add a narrator (Possibly putting Dom in the acting business w/ him being in a music video too and all ;))

In-game-wise:

6) FIX missing dialogs, pause action durring important story moments (will fix a lot of problems)
7) Get real world satellite images for the menu(weren't able to get this done in time)
8) FIX my ultra cool boss fight in Mission 5. :P (It was a really cool idea. We just had too many engine issues to make it work.)
9) All kinds of tiny perks that remained due to a missing beta testing period. :lol: (This poor thing litterially went right from the developer's table straight into the judges folder.)


I'm not sure where, but I'm also thinking of adding a cutscene/trailer somewhere where you see a silhouetted Russian General talking(giving a speech to a friend or to taping it as propaganda). The idea is that you don't see his face or anything, but hear the 'power' in his voice and sort of fear this man's conviction. A nice story build-up scene. Where we'll find someone that has that kind of voice (and is Russian or can pull off the accent perfectly) is to be seen. :)

Either way, other games have done comebacks to the IGF so it seems that maybe we can do it too. But like I told Dirk before, we'll need to enlist the help of more than just the 4 people that did work on this one. :P