Development History
See how the game evolved, from prototype to final.
Early Concept
Sep. 2002: Marc got the basic idea for Orblitz the day he arrived in Redmond to study at DigiPen. The game was still purely 2D at the time. Later, when Josh came up with the concept of using simple cubes, spheres and materials for the game, Marc eventually thought about adapting the concept to 3D, and added a multiplayer aspect (junior games at DigiPen need to be networked).
Engine-Proof
End of Oct. 2004: The characters are from Scavenger Hunt, another DigiPen Game. They come from Marc's CS460 project (Advanced Animation and Modeling), and each have 10 times as many polygons as the entire level! They are also animated using skin and bones, which is completely invisible at this scale anyway. On the positive side, it took Marc a day to integrate them into the project, allowing Josh to start working on character A.I. quite early.
Most of the graphics are already done (including Shadow Volumes).
Pre-Prototype
Nov 26. 2004: The collision system took us forever to do, but is working well now. Also showing off a Spherical Ring HUD that ended up being replaced because it was annoying to use.
Pre-Alpha
Feb 6. 2005: A lot of stuff is working now. Some pictures of the characters.
Alpha
Mar 5. 2005: Screenshots of the paint! It was done a while back but was never shown. A movie shows it off better.
Beta
Mar 20. 2005: Multiblocks are in! Thanks to Josh and Marc working every night while attending GDC! (Well, Marc was falling asleep the whole time, so the credit mostly goes to Josh)
Final
Apr 30. 2005. Single player is in, as well as so many other things.
