MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

DHM that is really, really, really impressive!

I have some one incomplete/never to be complete rm2k3 projects. I will tell you about them it and you will tell me whether or not I should take the effort to release them it on release something day IN ADDITION to Mage Duel. HOKAY?

Wait, I only have one that really has any gameplay at all..

Anyway, it's a SHADOWRUN fan game. If you're thinking about the stupid XBOX-360 half-life clone, SHAME ON YOU. It's a fan-game in equal parts of the Shadowrun pen-and-paper RPG and the classic early 90s' SNES RPG. The latter is obviously based on the former.

Basically Shadowrun equals William Gibson + J.R.R. Tolkien executed in a way that is MUCH, MUCH BETTER than that combination looks at a glance.

The project was called Shadowrun: Missions, and the idea was it would have an episodic structure, where each game/episode would be a new mission, with a new story. The hope was that if it became popular at all, then other people could make their own missions. The game's features included the ability to choose and hire up to three out of nine VERY DIFFERENT Shadowrunners (read: mercenaries) with very different skillsets and capabilities, inside of combat and also OUTSIDE OF COMBAT. Outside of combat abilities could be as simple as picking locks, as complex as an in-depth matrix-hacking minigame, or as unorthodox as casting a spell to make your party invisible, hence avoiding encounters/security. Depending on the shadowrunners you choose, you can go about doing the mission in dozens of different ways, including stealth, combat, hacking, magic, and infiltration; and generally you can mix and match and combine these approaches, and even in those five broad categories there were going to be a lot of options.

IN fact....TOO MANY options. So many that the game was never even close to completed. The only piece of the gameplay that is done, besides the sexy intro, is the hiring/outfitting/planning sequence, which is ludicrously in depth. None of the actual shadowrunning, i.e. the meat of the gameplay, is complete at all. Perhaps the first 5% of each of 3/10 possible approaches is complete, and hasn't been balanced/polished. Basically, the "demo" would "end" after you hired shadowrunners, but you could keep playing and mess around with the game's loose ends after that. Maybe if for some reason there was a SUDDEN OUTPOURING OF INTEREST I might actually finish the game, or maybe someone else who's a Shadowrun fan might want to pick up the ball where I dropped it, since there is a lot of work done in the project, even if it never got very far gameplay wise. Anyway, if this kind of thing interests for you for any reason, MAKE YOURSELVES HEARD EN MASSE and maybe I'll be moved to slap it in a box for release something day.

If not, I won't be surprised. No one has heard of Shadowrun anyway.

I never do any "paper-planning". I do pre-plan, of course, but 100% of it is in my head. Basically, the key to my current game development process is skipping around between different things so I don't get bored. For instance, on my brand new project, which I just started two days ago, I have already done all the following, in roughly this order:

*Imported some resources
*Made one map
*Imported more resources
*Made another map
*Imported more resources
*Made the main characters in the database.
*Created, scripted and playtested a few custom skills
*Made the hero's starting equipment
*Made another map
*Made the title screen
*Made the items in the database
*Imported more resources
*Created the heros' starting skills in the database.
*Created an enemy.
*Created another custom skill, and playtested.

And now I plan on making some maps.

You get the idea. In generally, I skip around as much as possible to keep myself interested. It worked fine for mage duel, only problem is...I skipped right onto another project, which is another thing I do way too often. (Besides Mage Duel and new mystery project, I have....say, at least four high profile game projects that have been advertised, demo-released, and never completed, and another four unfinished games that have never been released in any form. Some of them are canceled, some are canceled by default, and some are just in development limbo because I lost interest. And that's just counting projects I started in the last four years.)

So my development process we have determined is clearly somewhat scatterbrained.

Oh, and as a final note...my LEAST favorite part of game development is mapping, although I'm no longer terrible about it. SOOOO tedious. I would love to hook up with a partner to do all the mapping one day.

WIP wins this topic. Crystalis is such an awesome and totally forgotten game.

PROJECT: NOTMAGEDUEL: