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The Great Clash Dash! | Posted by: Brad, 3rd Apr 2010 |
Now, you're gonna pretty much gape with your mouth open when I say TF2 mod. Unfortunately for you, however, its not. It is rather a very clever bunch of maps, combined with ingenious coding and scripting, designed to test your reactions and quick thinking skills. It turns the game into a single-player diverse and fun experience, as-well as an intuitive and thrilling Side-Scroller.
I managed to get an interview with the Author, Dylan.
I managed to get an interview with the Author, Dylan.
QUOTE
Brad: You mentioned [on the ModDB page] that you came up with the Great Class Dash while you were competing in a mapping competition,
but what inspiration(s) did you have?
Dylan: well the theme of the contest was side-scroller, so that immediately gave me something to focus on. Originally I was going to try to do multiplayer, or at least have some enemies, but there were too many restrictions with the scripting to do that. I tried to think of simple games I'd played before, and Canabalt came to mind, so I decided to try to expand on that game. And class switching was inspired by a ton of games, trine being the one most people pick up on
Brad: Ah, so when you were creating the The Clash Dash then, did you run into any difficulties on the implementation of some of the features that you wanted to try?
Dylan: Haha, yeah, pretty much every feature had at least some problem with implementation. Sorry, thats not very helpful I guess
Brad: You want to throw an example out there?
Dylan: The menus are a good example I guess. My plan was to just have them infront of the spectator cam you see through when you first join a server. I thought it would be incredibly simple, just having enter toggle a fade along with the next menu coming in... but something I learned is that when you spawn after that, your map basically resets, which messes up the game, because the fades keep going in and out, and the camera jumps all around. So I had to replace a lot of the basic entities with triggers that activate once youve spawned to prevent that. Things like that always seemed to pop up and cause problems
Brad: Sounds like it took you a lot of work. You're quite the dedicated person. Tell us, do you have a feature that you're particularly proud of?
Dylan: The level design definitely, its probably what I'm best at. I think at least the levels look nice, so thats good.
Brad: Hehe, but which feature caused you the most greif?
Dylan: class switching... because I still haven't fixed it. You get stuck a lot which is something I'm really sorry for. I try pretty hard never to release with bugs, but so far I can't think of a good solution to fix it so I had to just try to ignore it for now
Brad: Yes, but despite that, your creation has quickly earned a lot of recognition. Did you ever expect it to be this popular?
Dylan: Haha, no, not even a little. I submitted the first youtube video when the contest ended, and it got about 100 views or so, and I kind of forgot about it. Then I guess someone from the site submitted it to kotaku, and the first I found out was logging into my email, and seeing about 30 new comments posted, which I thought was kind of odd and then it just kind of picked up from there. Definitely nice, none of my maps have ever gotten much attention, so it feels good to do something popular
Brad: It must've taken a long time to create the project, but how long did it take you to figure out the necessary coding/scripting required?
Dylan: Well I kind of did the scripting as it came up... so the menus and scoreboard and stuff were done last. The one exception is the class switching, which I worked on a few days in just a simple room, along with a huge pad of paper beside my computer drawing out the scripting to see if it would be possible, but the first version used 9 different bots for each of the players, so it was way more complicated... After I started on the second level, I decided that using the third-person camera option was a lot easier, and it made that scripting a lot easier so yeah, most of it was just done on the go.
Brad: Well, its been great chatting with you, but before we end it, could you tell us of any future plans you might have for the Grat Class Dash? Or do you believe it to be time to move to the next project?
Dylan: I think that its come about as far as it can go. I might come back to it later, but in the mean time I'm pretty excited about some other projects I've got on the go.
but what inspiration(s) did you have?
Dylan: well the theme of the contest was side-scroller, so that immediately gave me something to focus on. Originally I was going to try to do multiplayer, or at least have some enemies, but there were too many restrictions with the scripting to do that. I tried to think of simple games I'd played before, and Canabalt came to mind, so I decided to try to expand on that game. And class switching was inspired by a ton of games, trine being the one most people pick up on
Brad: Ah, so when you were creating the The Clash Dash then, did you run into any difficulties on the implementation of some of the features that you wanted to try?
Dylan: Haha, yeah, pretty much every feature had at least some problem with implementation. Sorry, thats not very helpful I guess
Brad: You want to throw an example out there?
Dylan: The menus are a good example I guess. My plan was to just have them infront of the spectator cam you see through when you first join a server. I thought it would be incredibly simple, just having enter toggle a fade along with the next menu coming in... but something I learned is that when you spawn after that, your map basically resets, which messes up the game, because the fades keep going in and out, and the camera jumps all around. So I had to replace a lot of the basic entities with triggers that activate once youve spawned to prevent that. Things like that always seemed to pop up and cause problems
Brad: Sounds like it took you a lot of work. You're quite the dedicated person. Tell us, do you have a feature that you're particularly proud of?
Dylan: The level design definitely, its probably what I'm best at. I think at least the levels look nice, so thats good.
Brad: Hehe, but which feature caused you the most greif?
Dylan: class switching... because I still haven't fixed it. You get stuck a lot which is something I'm really sorry for. I try pretty hard never to release with bugs, but so far I can't think of a good solution to fix it so I had to just try to ignore it for now
Brad: Yes, but despite that, your creation has quickly earned a lot of recognition. Did you ever expect it to be this popular?
Dylan: Haha, no, not even a little. I submitted the first youtube video when the contest ended, and it got about 100 views or so, and I kind of forgot about it. Then I guess someone from the site submitted it to kotaku, and the first I found out was logging into my email, and seeing about 30 new comments posted, which I thought was kind of odd and then it just kind of picked up from there. Definitely nice, none of my maps have ever gotten much attention, so it feels good to do something popular
Brad: It must've taken a long time to create the project, but how long did it take you to figure out the necessary coding/scripting required?
Dylan: Well I kind of did the scripting as it came up... so the menus and scoreboard and stuff were done last. The one exception is the class switching, which I worked on a few days in just a simple room, along with a huge pad of paper beside my computer drawing out the scripting to see if it would be possible, but the first version used 9 different bots for each of the players, so it was way more complicated... After I started on the second level, I decided that using the third-person camera option was a lot easier, and it made that scripting a lot easier so yeah, most of it was just done on the go.
Brad: Well, its been great chatting with you, but before we end it, could you tell us of any future plans you might have for the Grat Class Dash? Or do you believe it to be time to move to the next project?
Dylan: I think that its come about as far as it can go. I might come back to it later, but in the mean time I'm pretty excited about some other projects I've got on the go.
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