What's this about?
Hello everyone at Quake3World!
I'm the lead programmer on an upcoming game called OpenKatana. What is OpenKatana? OpenKatana is an upcoming single-player and multi-player Quake-based first-person game with a huge emphasis on characters, story and action, and we're hoping to not only create a great game but to also offer a platform to other future developers that may be interested in the Quake engine due to its wide support of various platforms and because of this we are working on a library of high-quality documentation and examples that users can use for either inspiration or insight.
That's great but what exactly is it?
The game itself is based around the infamous Daikatana but with many twists. Firstly OpenKatana is based upon the original vision of Daikatana back when it was intended to be created using the Quake engine, to assist us with this task we have access to every single map from the games development and all of the documentation created to lay out the design of the game. Along with this we have made various changes that we feel are necessary to enhance the experience and make things more "complete", and we are also heavily revising levels so that they are much more eye pleasing.
Is this a modification for Daikatana? A modification for Quake?
The game is completely standalone and just about all the content featured in the game has been created purposely for the game along with a brand new higher-resolution texture set. We're also working on our own soundtrack and have also worked with people such as Skaven who contributed music for Unreal Tournament's soundtrack.
So what engine are you guys using?
OpenKatana uses our own modified version of the popular FitzQuake engine which has been named Katana and supports a large range of new features to make development easier and more manageable. Unlike Quake we support full-colour lighting within levels and without the need for external files, reduced file sizes for levels, MD2 model support, a heavily revised lighting system for models, revised particle system including support for external textures, completely rewritten game-logic, an advanced weapon/item system, an all new advanced GUI system, 32-bit textures without any palette restraints and plenty more! We will also be supporting both Windows and Linux.
So how can I help?
We're currently looking for someone familiar with primarily creating single-player maps for Quake but is capable of working with unfinished tech and also capable of providing reasonable/helpful feedback on tools, engine and documentation. Whether or not you think you can contribute good work is of no interest to us, if you feel interested enough and think you're capable of contributing then we encourage you to throw yourself at this opportunity.
Currently we're mainly working with the editor called Worldcraft however we also offer tools for GTKRadiant for those that prefer it.
As we've rewritten the game-logic in C, an understanding of C would be a plus but is not a requirement. It would simply mean that you would not need to wait on us to implement or tweak features, and that said the code is fairly well documented and easy to understand if you feel like diving in. There are various guidelines that surround the code so it would be advised to follow those if you decide to but we'll get into that if you're interested in the position.
We hope you're interested and look forward to hearing from you, if you'd like any other information then please do contact me with the email below and I'll answer any questions you may have.
So where do I start?
Send an email with an example of your work to either hogsy@oldtimes-software.com or eukos@oldtimes-software.com and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. If you have any questions then feel free to ask
Links!
OldTimes Software Blog
hogsy's Blog
GitHub
IndieDB
