PC/CD Gamer UK 28/PCGAMER28.bin/dos/abuse/gamedev.txt

Text File | 1995-09-12 | 9KB | 216 lines

              JOIN THE ABUSE GAME DEVELOPER PROGRAM
  AND MAKE MONEY CREATING EXCITING NEW WORLDS WITH THE ABUSE ENGINE!

Crack dot Com's Abuse Game Developer Program has made it a piece of cake
to earn money doing game design using the Abuse engine.  If you enjoy
making interesting levels or new games using the Abuse engine, send them
to us by November 1, 1995 so that they can be considered for the
Thanksgiving Abuse Data Pack.  If the submission is approved, we will
send you profits from the sales based on the quality of your work!  If
you have missed this deadline, give us a call at 512 306 1835 or e-mail
[e-mail].  We may release more than one data pack!

Guidelines for submission:

First off, do not call our 1 800 number about this.  They won't have a
clue about this.

Make sure that your level or game is playable fresh out of the archive
you sent it in, or we'll get the nasty first impression that you don't
care about appearances.  How large or complete does it have to be?  Use
the Abuse levels as a guideline.  Try to fill roughly the same area (or
more) and get a similar amount (or more) of gameplay in there.  If
you're doing game design on a Pzillion with 64Mb RAM, watch yourself, or
your level may not turn out well-suited to mortal machines.  The levels
should also be decorated nicely with lighting and textures applied.

If your level is of an inadequate size, duration, or needs any other
form of polish, we will help you with suggestions.  Just make a
submission as specified below and we'll send you back design comments.

If you're using zip file(s), make sure that you zip starting in the
abuse directory and recursively get the entire directory hierarchy.
When it is ready for us to check out, you can send your data as follows:

  By FTP / E-mail (preferred) :

    1. Put your data in a .zip, .tar.gz or .tar.Z archive.
    2. FTP to crack.com and store in /pub/incoming
    or
    2. Uuencode the archive & E-mail it to us at [e-mail].

    3. E-mail another letter with your name, phone number, e-mail address,
       where you want checks delivered, who you want them made out to,
       your social security number, and a short description of your
       submitted data to [e-mail].

  By US Mail :

    1. Put your data in a .zip or .tgz archive and get it on a 3.5" floppy,
       zip disk (using MSDOS or ext2 filesystem), or CDROM with iso-9660
       filesystem.
    2. Mail it to: Crack dot Com, c/o: Game Dev., PO Box 163025,
           Austin, TX 78716-3025
    3. Include a letter with your name, phone number, where you want
       checks delivered, who you want them made out to, your social
       security number, and a short description of your submitted data
       to [e-mail].

Now to get some ugly legal stuff out of the way:

Any original artwork, sound effects, or LISP code that you do FROM
SCRATCH, you maintain the complete copyright to.  However, levels
(contained in our .spe file format) contain specific data that we
maintain the copyright on, even if you think you're doing them from
scratch.  We reserve the right to control distribution of level data as
well as any artwork, sound, and LISP code from our shareware or
registered versions of the game.  Our guidelines on how level data may
be distributed:

  1. You may distribute level data if you do not collect
     any compensation for it.  For instance, you can upload it to an
     ftp site or BBS or online service public download area, as long
     as you aren't receiving compensation for it.
  2. You may submit it to us so that we may consider distributing it
     for you.  We will pay you profits directly based on the quality
     of the work you submit.  We will have an answer for you within
     five business days of the submission date.
  3. If we turn down your data for distribution, you may then either
     seek a third party distributor, if you wish to seek compensation
     for the data, or you may of course choose to release it for free.

The exception to the above three rules:

     You may not publicly distribute any modified or original levels
     from the REGISTERED VERSION.  You may not distribute any modified
     or original artwork, sound, or LISP code from the REGISTERED
     VERSION.  This includes everything in the REGISTER subdirectory
     and levels 5 through 18 under the LEVELS subdirectory.  You may
     submit modified versions of the above to us to consider
     publishing.  However, you may not have it published through a
     third party if we refuse.

That's the end of the evil ugly legal stuff.

Questions?

If you have questions about anything in this file or how the
distribution program works, you may also call us at 512 306 1835 or
e-mail [e-mail].

Good luck, and we look forward to working with you!

-Dave Taylor
 Partner
 Crack dot Com





More detailed info on how to sumbit your data
--------------------------------------------------------------

  If your level(s) do not contain any new artwork, sound effects, or
lisp code, you can just use pkzip to package them into one file and
compress them.  Then uploaded to crack.com.  Be sure to include the
above information to expedite our processing of your level and so we
know how to get in touch with you.

  To compress, first go to the directory where your files are, then :
  **NOTE : replace joesmith with your name **

  DOS users :
    pkzip joesmith.zip level*.spe

  UNIX user :
    tar cvf - level*.spe | gzip -9 -c > joesmith.tgz

  Upload to
     ftp://crack.com/pub/incoming

  Or mail on a 1.44 disk to :
     Crack dot Com, c/o: Game Dev., PO Box 163025,
               Austin, TX 78716-3025



  Complex levels :

  If you've made your own artwork and/or characters, you need to create
a package that we can easily install and play.  To do this you should
make your own LISP startup file which loads your artwork from a
seperate directory and then calls the original abuse.lsp startup file.
Read the file addon/example/example.lsp on how to do this.  Look at
the example game "pong" in addon/pong/pong.lsp to see how to add on
whole new games.



Jonathan's Rules of Thumb for Level Design
------------------------------------------

1. Fill in the level nicely.  Take your time and pick out
   textures that fit/look well together.  Use lighting to
   enhance these.  Don't just hit 't' for flood fill, and
   don't just use the default light setting.  You must combine
   lighting, textures, and ambient sounds to create
   the atmosphere needed to keep the player immersed.

2. Avoid sharp edges in textures and lighting.  Do not
   use half-lights in the middle of a room.

3. Avoid using teleporters unless you have to.
   The player can easily get lost with doors and teleporters
   jumping all over the place.

4. Keep rooms seperated.  Don't let the player see another
   part of the level he/she cannot get to yet.  If enough
   space is not given between areas the play will feel like
   a mouse in a maze, and not immersed in the game.

5. Let the player kill everything.  People want to kill.
   Avoid puzzles where the only solution is to run away.

6. Pace the action.  Don't keep the player running forever.
   Give them resting points.  On the other hand don't let them
   run down long hallways with nothing to do.

7. Surpise the player.  They dig that.

8. Don't make it too easy, nor too hard.  The level should
   be barely passable by experts on extreme and passable by
   good players on hard.  If a player makes it through the
   whole level the first time, then it is too easy.

9. Don't be repetitive.  Each problem the player encounters
   should be different.

10. Lead the player, but don't let them know you are leading
   them.  Make the level mostly-linear so the player does
   not have much chance of getting lost (and frustrated),
   but use tricks to make it seem less linear, like
   back-tracking over the same area with different puzzles
   appearing the second time.

11. Avoid using a lot of ladders.  They are slow and drag down
   the action.

12. When using doors, do not let the new area the door takes
   you to loop back. When you go through a door, you are going
   into a new area, and it disorienting when you come across the
   door you just went through.

13. Stock the player with ammo according to the task.  Don't
   be to stingy, and don't give them so much the level becomes
   too easy.

14. Avoid over-using the ANT_CRACK.  Sure it's easy to put one down
   and have tons of aliens pour out of a wall, but if used too often
   it loses it's excitement.

15. Avoid jumping puzzles.  Jumping from one platform to another
    platform gets old real fast.