User:Tom/Games

BattleMaster isn't the only game I have ever made. Here is a more-or-less complete list of other game projects.

Computer Games

I've written several single-player computer games of which you almost certainly never heard. None of them were ever published to the general public.

My first public game was called "Mystic Arena". It was a play-by-email game of gladiator combat, with a game engine handling the actual combat and a mailing list for the roleplaying. It was the roleplaying that made the game really exciting. Already spotting a pattern?

I have participated in a few failed game developments, some my own and some team efforts. After doing lots of levels, etc. for some FPS games (Quake, Counterstrike, True Combat, Tribes and Tribes II, etc.) I went into actual 3D games, initially with the Torque Engine, then in late 2007 I moved from Torque to Unity 3D, and Unity rocks. Here are some of the things I've done with Unity:

• http://web.lemuria.org/~tom/unity/Cubethrow.html -- a very simple game, my "build one to throw away" project
• http://web.lemuria.org/~tom/unity/Labyrinth.html -- a proof-of-concept for a possible iPhone game
• http://web.lemuria.org/~tom/unity/Space.Webplayer.html -- another test of spaceship controls and effects (shield, weapons, etc.)
• http://web.lemuria.org/~tom/unity/Viper.Webplayer.html -- a space-race game (well, early alpha, only the first level kind of works), with realistic physics controls

Online Games

After Arena (and it's never-finished successor Arena III) I created SpellMaster. Again, some code did some not-so-important number crunching stuff, but it was 95% an e-mail roleplaying game. It played on some of the same continents as BattleMaster - East Island, Colonies (called West Island in SpellMaster) and South Island.

SpellMaster II was a failure, unfortunately (spot another pattern here?). But I don't give up that easily. Another attempt was started in late 2005, SpellMaster 2. It also failed. Oh well, there will be another attempt, once I found a new way to express "two". :-)

BattleMaster, however, was born out of SpellMaster. It was originally intended as a small, easy and very lighweight strategy game to add some background to SpellMaster - instead of writing about realm A going to war with realm B, you could actually play them doing it.

Well, it's grown a little...

Roleplaying Games

I've written two pen-and-paper roleplaying games (actually about a dozen, but two were finished). Both were "published" in two-digit numbers mostly to friends.

I've also written adventures, and other stuff for a lot of RPGs.

Tabletop, Card and Board Games

Made a board game once, well almost. Never got it quite finished.

SpellMaster actually started out as a cardgame in its original conception, but the card game was never finished. If you look closely, you can still see the basic idea in the first SpellMaster game, with the tradeable spell "cards".

I've played several tabletop games, such as Warhammer Fantasy or Necromunda. I was also coordinator of a few Blood Bowl leagues back when it was the hype.

Computer Games again

In addition to writing some, I've also played lots, and I mean lots of computer games. I've been beta tester for half a dozen or so commercial titles, including AAA titles such as Tribes II.

I've also made maps and levels for several games, mostly shooters (Doom, Q3 mods, etc.)