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Submitted by , posted on 19 May 2003
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Image Description, by
Welcome to sechsta sinn's »Die verbotene Welt« (The forbidden World), a real time strategy game project.
Earth was the arena of a interplanetary war and became uninhabitable. The planet was quarantined, and all life was evacuated. All? Not all. A forgotten group of men barricaded in subterranean bunkers. Sickened by the aftermath of the war, a new kind of mankind was bred: the Bunkermenschen. Hundrets of years later, a troup transport of the KPB (Konföderierter Plantenbund, confederate alliance of planets) is on course near planet Earth and encounters technical problems. The ship has to go down on the devastated surface. Not knowing how to deal with each other, the encounter of the two parties ends in a terrible armed conflict. Who will prevail? The technologically highly advanced KPB, or the hard-bitten, steeled Bunkermenschen?
We are a team of amateur game developers, mainly based in and around Cologne, Germany. Our main goal is not to create a state-of-the-art game, but to finish a complex project. Die verbotene Welt is developed in our spare time since two years and has been rewritten from scratch twice in the early development stages. Most of the team members meet up every two or three months for a weekend, which is very important for an ongoing motivation.
Both parties have discovered the advantages of ruin defilate on the upmost screenshot. Unfortunately, noone wants to avoid. KPB attack with a hovercraft tank, a heavy "Panzerknacker" mech and several light Gladiator cyborgs. The Bunkermenschen try to defend themselfes with one light and two heavy battle tanks and soldiers armed with riffles and anti tank missiles. There's also a paramedic right of the big tree. The left screenshot in the second row shows a small KPB resource facility in the desert scenario. Some Gladiator cyborgs and two anti-aircraft rocket towers are protecting the scrap store (left) and the melting furnace (right). The shot to the right shows a Bunkermenschen base with two generators, housing, barracks, and a melting furnace. The construction vehicle (center) is used to build a new generator. The red outline indicates that construction is not possible at this place. The bottom left screenshot shows a ingame event cutscene from our first demo mission. A Bunkermenschen ballon destroys a KPB interim base that was hidden in the forrest. A female Bunkermenschen reporter explains the situation to the player in a video. The bottom right shot shows a scene from an outdated demo mission. The player has to guide a convoy to take over a abandoned base, but the KPB interfere with a devastating bomber attack.
Both parties feature different user interfaces. The rusty Bunkermenschen interface is an always on top design, while the silver KPB interface can be rolled in and out. Both interfaces consist of low level unit controls (behaviour and walkie-talkie-mode, special modes like guard, patrol or berserk), energy displays, a customizable minimap, and build controls.
The game is developed with Visual C++, graphics are rendered with Cinema 4D. It features fully scriptable AI and mission handling using Lua as the scripting language. Everything in the game can be controlled from within the scripts. The API is fully documented on currently 40+ pages. AI control on any level (unit-based, group-based, player-based) allows both generic and very specific mission design. Eight types of influence maps can be evaluated for AI decisions. An ingame console is available for debugging purposes. The whole GUI system is scriptable.
Also have a look at MissEd, the DVW mission editor suite at http://www.games-net.de/hosted/mgall/devsuite-huge.jpg (huge image, ~500kb).
Read more about sechsta sinn and our projects at http://www.sechsta-sinn.com
Feel free to write any comments via email or flipcode forum. We appreciate any commendation and criticism.
Cheers,
Matthias Gall
lead programmer
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