the Hammer - Tutorials
Creating a
3D Action Game
by Diederik Groesbeek & Pieter Albers of Xform

In this series of five tutorials we will show you how to create a third person action game in Virtools Dev. The game you’ll create, 2 Minutes of Mayhem, is a simplified version of the webgame “the Hammer” (www.hammer-thegame.com). The gameplay is pretty straightforward; the player needs to eliminate all enemies in the level within a certain timeframe. We will take you from importing and controlling your character to setting up simple AI and exporting your game. Although some advanced functionality of the original game (for example multiple weapons, items and enemies) has been left out to keep things clear, you’ll end up with a working, publishable webgame.

The tutorials take quite some time to do (about 4-5 hours each). They also become more difficult; keep that in mind if you don’t start with the first one! They are made for people who have already experimented with Virtools Dev a little. It may be a good idea for beginners to take a look at the included Virtools Dev sample material first and to try some of the basic tutorials. It is important that you are familiar with the Virtools Dev interface and viewport tools, the principles of importing and controlling resources and have learned basic scripting skills for the schematic view. This means we won’t describe how to drag and drop a building block (BB) into your script and we’ll assume that you have knowledge of programming elements like variables (parameters), conditions and other basic (game) logics. Knowledge of modeling and animation is also an advantage. If you don’t know the difference between a material and a texture or an object and its mesh you might want to read up on those things. Although all required 3D material is provided (created in 3dsmax), you are free to implement your own characters and levels from any 3D package that is supported. If you get stuck at any part of a tutorial you can always take a look at the finished .CMO file of each tutorial to determine where things went wrong. Alternatively, you can continue with the next tutorial.

Click on the links below to take a look at the finished game, begin a tutorial or to download the resource material needed to finish the tutorials.