Welcome to the Manhattan Strain WebsiteThe Latest NewsInstallation and Gameplay GuideJuly 3rd, 2009Ciaran Culleton, a programmer on The Manhattan Strain for Infection Vector, has posted a guide on how to install and run The Manhattan Strain. He has also posted a guide explaining the various elements within the game. Visit his site here Infection Vector New TrailerAugust 1st, 2008We have just released our new trailer, which you can see can view here, we hope you enjoy it. The music for this trailer was made by Mook, whose site can be found at www.mooksite.co.uk. It's a great site, where you can even listen to the full version of the music used in our trailer, we recommend you check it out. Thanks for the great music Mook!! You may also have noticed that we have re-designed The Manhattan Strain logo, which you can now view at the top of this page. We think it's a big improvement over the previous design and hope you like it. As always, leave us any feedback on the game on our blog and Vote for us! Gameplay trailer coming next week!! Infection Vector Progress UpdateJuly 18th, 2008So what’s been happening with The Manhattan Strain, eh? Well we wanted to have a playable version of the game available to people for testing by today (in fact we had planned to have it out by last week, but decided to hold off to add more feedback into the game), however that’s not going to happen I’m afraid. With our current path finding system, implementing roadblocks into the game won’t function correctly. So this means we have to re-write our path finding code which Eoghan has already started. But it’s not all doom and gloom, re-writing the path-finding shouldn’t take too long, and it will be more efficient and just better overall when it is done, therefore making the game better, so it’s not a major setback. So our new deadline for the playable version is Tuesday next week. We are a little bit behind on schedule, but nothing that a few late nights can’t fix :) So what have we been doing? Chris has been texturing like a mad man, and will be finished that today!! Ben has been working on adding the sounds and music into the game, and is working on the game’s 3d sound atm. David has been fixing little problems that appeared on the information boxes and game menu system after we added a custom cursor to the game. Oh yeah, we have a custom cursor!!! Eoghan has been working on the path finding, the cell shading effect, adding cops and biologists into the game and the custom cursor. Ciaran has been working on the roadblocks (as has Eoghan), placing icons over the buildings in the 3d world and also doing a bit of work on the camera. Some of the things in the current version:
 Infection Vector Two more VideosJuly 10th, 2008Two more videos of The Manhattan Strain can be seen here. These show the Day/Night cycle within the game and also the cel-shaded look of city (untextured). Leave us any feedback on the game on our blog and Vote for us! Infection Vector Virus Spreading tech demoJuly 3rd, 2008We have just released our virus spreading tech demo which you can view here. This shows the virus spreading along a street in the city. The civilians in green are infected. Infection Vector Progress UpdateJuly 2nd, 2008Hey all, just giving you a quick update on our progress. Our aim is to have a playable version of the game by the end of this week. And at the moment, we are on course to meet that milestone. Last week was a tough week, the toughest so far. We ran into a number of problems that we just did not forsee. One of these problems concerned the information boxes which are built using the .Net framework forms. The problem occurs when the game is running in full-screen mode, the forms are always displayed behind the main game screen. So to view the forms you would have to click on the taskbar or alt+tab. Of course, considering the main bulk of the game's information is displayed through these forms, that is a major problem. However we got through it, and have overcome most of the problems we encountered last week. So at the moment, we are just working hard to get a playable version for friday. We have most of the gameplay elements in and are adding more everyday, so we are on target for friday. Until then, enjoy these renders of the city. Infection Vector
Rush Hour tech demoJune 20th, 2008We have just released our rush hour tech demo which you can view here. If you are having trouble viewing the video, you can also find it on our blog and on YouTube, though these are lower quality. Tech demo of the virus spreading coming soon, so watch this space. Infection Vector The Story So farJune 20th, 2008Well, we have been updating our blog on a regular basis but haven't gotten around to doing the same thing here I'm afraid. Anyway, below this post there is lots of reading to do about our progress in Dare so far. We're lazy so have just copied and pasted the posts from our blog. We hope to update this site more often, but making a game is hard work, who would have thought it, eh? Oh and remember, vote for us every week on our blog!! Infection Vector. What a day!!June 20th, 2008Yesterday was a long day, but a productive one. We had Tony Kelly from DemonWare in to talk to us. We showed him our progress so far and how we are working together. It was interesting and great to hear him talk about his previous projects, giving us suggestions on what we should do, project management wise. He also looked at our prototype interface and gave us great feedback on that. He pointed out things that we just didn't realise. So David has been working hard to change our design based on his feedback, and we must admit it’s looking better already. We also had Peter McNally, technical artist from Havok. He has been great, coming in for 2 hours after he has finished work. He showed us the process they went through while making a technical demo in real time for an engine, the different techniques for modelling and texturing. He then showed us some cool tools to use for texturing and also numerous mapping techniques. It was fantastic to see him at work. He taught us so many things we were afraid we would forget it. It was like we learned an entire semester’s worth of information in like 2 hours. It was brilliant. So once again, thanks very much to Peter and Tony, and also all the other mentors we have had, too many to name!! You have all been fantastic and very helpful. So besides from learning loads, yesterday Eoghan began work on the virus and has a workable version now. David began re-designing the information boxes, Chris continued modelling, Ciaran began working on the roadblock functionality and Ben worked on the ambient sounds for the game. We should have our tech demo up by the end of the day, so watch this space. Until then, have a good weekend. Infection Vector. We're Getting thereJune 20th, 2008Today was a good day in terms of work completed, otherwise it was terrible as it rained all day!!! Eoghan continued working on the character behaviour and now has thousands of characters moving city, going to work and to their homes. He also has this working with the game time, so at 7 am you will begin to see civilians leaving their homes and going to work. By 8am, rush hour will occur with hundreds, maybe even thousands of characters leaving their homes and rushing to work. None of this is pre-determined, it happens on the fly, some characters will make it to work early, and others will be late. The same thing happens at 5pm and 6pm when characters start heading back home. Later, the functionality will be added to have characters going to recreational areas as well. Eoghan also worked on proximity detection. This will be used for the virus spreading and panic spreading throughout the city. David continued work on the Information boxes, finding a better way to customise the form and solving a number of issues encountered yesterday. He also made a tab system to have multiple tabs on the one form. He is halfway through the final information box that needs to be done, so that should be completed either tonight or tomorrow, with all things going well. Chris did what he does best, modelling. He has only 4 more buildings to go before the game world is modelled in detail. Once that is done, he will move on textures, then modelling low-poly versions of the buildings. Ben was working on audio and the HUD and Game Menu System classes. He also spent time on researching the game’s music and other audio aspects. Ciaran completed the mini-map and map overview today. Functionality for these features is now complete for user interaction. We are getting closer to this week’s milestone!!! Oh, and here is a wireframe render of the city so far. Why you ask? Cause it's cool!  Progress TodayJune 20th, 2008Today Eoghan got the buildings set up within XNA and got characters to move between them. So at the moment, characters spawn at a residential building exit point and go to a commercial building entrance. Once a few small minor bugs are sorted, we should have a tech demo of this up this week, so watch this space!!! David continued working on the information boxes within XNA. This is proving to be a bit more difficult than expected. Eoghan also worked on this today as well. At the moment, we have a character information box complete, showing the correct values for the character, updated in dynamically to display up-to-date information and is also moveable. Chris finished modelling the skyscraper and landmark buildings and began modelling the apartment buildings. He also began work on concepts of characters, and learned a thing or two from the animator mentor we had today, Christian McGilloway. Ciaran was working on the mini-map and overview map for the game and should have that completed by tomorrow. Ben continued work on the game’s interface and also went to the streets of Dublin to record ambient sounds. Our milestone for this week is to have all the buildings modelled, characters moving as they should be, virus spreading, mini-map complete, information boxes complete, HUD integrated and ambient sounds recorded. We should meet this milestone, and might even get more done!!! So far, so good. Day 08 in the Dare to be Digital competitionJune 20th, 2008Well the weekend is over and we are all back to work and staying in a different place from last week, which by the way we might be changing again!!! Oh, we must mention that Metal Gear Solid 4 kicks ass!!! I forgot to mention in our first post that we are making the game in XNA, in case you were wondering. So what did we get done today, eh? Over the weekend David worked on file input and output as well as a random name generator. This morning he cleaned it up a bit and added it to the main game code. So what does this mean? Well at the moment we can save players scores and high scores using the file input and output code. This code is general enough to save any type of information, so we will be using this to allow the player to save and load the game, once we actually have a game to save and load. The random name generator is used to create a name for every character in the game. At the moment there is the possibility of over 3500 unique names, but we made it so that the player can add their own names to the game by simply editing a text file. David is now working on the information boxes within XNA, getting them to look like the prototype version already made. Eoghan spent the day first of all getting the adjustable game time working. This will track the passage of minutes, hours and days. This will be used to help determine the behaviour of the citizenry, they’ll go to work in the morning, go to bars at night, take it easy at the weekend and the like. He also worked on tying in the Path Finding to the map of city so the people will be able to get to their jobs and homes instead of wandering aimlessly about the city :) Ciaran worked on input handling, so that we can capture user input. This will allow us to get the player’s name, allow them to specify the name of a saved game and numerous other stuff. Ben continued working on the HUD, adjusting the look and feel of it more. The UI in the game is very important and so it’s important that we spent allot of time working on it and getting it right. Chris continued to model away, using Google Maps as a guide for a number of landmark buildings that will appear in the game. And attached you should find rendered images of some of these buildings. So until the next post, Good Luck!!      Week one ProgressJune 20th, 2008So we have been working for just under a week now, and have gotten off to a good start. We spent all day Monday meeting our mentors and project managers, informing them about our game, planning what we need to, even planning our project plan!! It was a great for gathering information and realizing the size of this project, however it also answered some of our questions and solved some problems we knew we would encounter down the line while developing the game. Tuesday was the first day we actually sat down and began programming (Eoghan and Ciaran), designing the layout of the city and building a basic version of it (Chris) and began prototyping the user interface design and layout (Ben and David). On Wednesday allot of programming was done!!!David loaded the basic version of the city into XNA while coding began on the AI by Eoghan and camera for the game by Ciaran, with the camera basically finished by the end of the day. Chris worked on the scale of the city should be, the layout of the buildings and what type of building each one was, while also deciding on what landmark buildings would make the game. Work on the user interface continued, with Ben working on the HUD and myself working on the layout of the information boxes that will appear in the game. We also made our first video blog for Dare, but are having issues trying to upload it to the Dare team (have spent about 2 days trying to solve the problem). On Thursday Ciaran refined the camera for the game, and began forming a technical document, which took quite a long time due to the size of our game!! Eoghan continued to work on the AI and began testing it. Yes, we had characters moving about the city!!! Ben and David continued working on the UI, with a prototype design for the character and building information made by David and agreed upon by the team. Ben began to code the HUD design into the game in XNA. Chris began modelling buildings within the city and the models for roadblocks. We hope to have a technical demo of the characters moving about the city sometime next week here on our blog. So far today, Eoghan, Ciaran and David spent most of the morning forming a complete project plan for the game after we had a group meeting. Chris has continued to work on modelling the game city buildings, while Ben has formed a list of what sounds are needed and how they will be recorded. So as I type this, Eoghan is back working on his AI, Chris is modelling away, Ciaran is back working on the camera, just refining it more, while also watching some comedy show on YouTube (gotta love dual monitors) and sounding like motley when he laughs. Ben is working is coding the HUD and David.. Well I’m typing this!! Well this post turned our longer than I expected!! Next week we will post more frequently and so they should be shorter. So all in all we are very happy with the about of work we have gotten done so far. We have our camera nearly complete, a basic version of the city loaded into the game, characters moving about the city (a few problems still need fixing with this though), a prototype version of our UI done and coding began on the HUD. And finally, modelling on the city has started. Roll on next week!!! David Reilly, Infection Vector Business Manager. Dare to be Digital BeginsJune 12th, 2008Dare to be Digital began this Monday (June 9th) and so work on The Manhattan Strain has offically begun. It's been a busy week so far, meeting numerous industry professionals about various aspects of game development including project management, programming, audio and modelling. We are very pleased with the amount of work we have done this week and remain confident that we can complete the game within 10 weeks, with the help or a number of late nights and working weekends!! We are working in a computing lab in Trinity College who have provided us with excellent facilities, including dual monitors, XPS machines, 5.1 audio, graphics tablet and the software that we need. We also have our own blog as well on the Dare to be Digital website!! Visit our section on the site and VOTE FOR US!!! The Manhattan Strain Gets Through to Dare!! After our initial application was accepted, we then had to compete against 4 other teams from the Republic of Ireland in the interview stages. Only one team could get through from the Republic of Ireland, and we were up against some tough competition (2 of the other teams were from our same class!!). However, we were chosen to go through to the development stage which takes place over ten weeks in Trinity College Dublin. After the ten weeks and once our game is complete (hopefully!!), we will then go to Scotland to demo our game to the Dare to be Digital judges and public. Dare to be Digital is an internationally renowned proving ground for talented computer science and art students to design their own original video game. The Manhattan Strain AnnouncedA deadly virus has broken out in the island of Manhattan and it’s up to you to manage the crisis.
Quarantine buildings, Set up road blocks. Use the police and Centre of Disease Control biologists to execute your commands. If necessary, use air strikes to kill your own civilians and save the uninfected. In a dynamic 3D city every choice you make will have many unforeseen consequences and the circumstances are never the same. The clock is ticking, how many people can you save? Contain, Control, Cure. It’s all up to you. |
