DARKWATER ENTERTAINMENT

Release Date: 2019 (Closed 2021)

Platforms: PC | MAC

Team Size: 3 (majority solo)

Time Spent On Project: 2 years

Role: Founder, Developer, Game Designer, Graphic Designer, Community Manager

Responsibilities: Game Design, Game Development, Playtest Organization, Release Scheduling, Outsource Management, Game-Mastering, Supervising & Assigning Duties, Financial Management

Skills: Lua, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, Game Design, Project Management, Leadership, Community Management

Engine & Tools: GitHub, Visual Studio Code, Adobe Suite, Google Suite, Discord

WHAT WAS DARKWATER ENTERTAINMENT?

Darkwater Entertainment was a game-related company and community. As the parent company of Darkwater Development and Darkwater Gaming, we provided various services, from safe and entertaining game servers to developing products for external communities and individuals. As a company, we always wanted to grow and help others achieve higher-quality products. Darkwater Entertainment oversaw the subsidiaries closely to ensure that they followed our guidelines carefully and to make sure that they represented the Darkwater brand professionally.

Some of our services included:

Garry's Mod Fallout Roleplay

Garry's Mod Star Wars Roleplay

Unturned Server

Minecraft Server

External Clients in Garry's Mod and Minecraft

SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS

I was the Founder, Game Designer, Developer, Graphic Designer, and Community Manager, among many other roles, for Darkwater Entertainment.

I inherited my first game server after having helped with development during previous iterations run by other developers and designers since 2016. As such, I inherited the responsibility for game design, development, community management, and any other role as needed.

I started by creating Darkwater Gaming, a project solely for one game server: Fallout roleplay in Garry's Mod.

I inherited the responsibility for supervising and assigning duties to the overall team for the game server, creating new project management solutions, and directing milestones, playtests, and server direction.

I organized teams of community moderators, taught people how to code to help with the project, outsourced work, designed ways to sustain the product, and designed a website to handle transactions linked to the game servers.

I expanded the network by recruiting new server owners and actively participated in freelance development for other communities.

These opportunities led to the creation of subdivisions of Darkwater to help separate our many different hats, thus creating the umbrella of Darkwater Entertainment.

I closed the project in 2021 as it was too much for me to manage in tandem with college and work, despite still maintaining an active playerbase of over 300 players.

READ ON FOR MORE DETAIL

Read on if you'd like to:

See officially released mods
See videos from our most popular project

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DARKWATER

OFFICIALLY RELEASED MODS

FALLOUT MELEE WEAPONS

Workshop Page

The Gun Runners' Arsenal mod took pre-existing ported models from the Fallout series already on the Workshop and plugged them into a more advanced melee system.

The mod achieved its design goal of creating melee combat scenarios with greater depth by including shoving, blocking, charging, and standard attacks.

I developed the code to work with a pre-existing melee system to be more compatible with other systems already in the Workshop. The damage values, attack speeds, and animations, among other things, are accurate to the Fallout series. The complete addon is available for free on the Steam Workshop.

BOTTLECAP PRESS

Workshop Page

The Bottlecap Press was among the first things I paid for when updating the game server. I paid a modeler to rip the asset and put my development skills to the test.

The Press achieved its design goal of encouraging diverse player interaction without breaking the economy.

I developed the code from scratch to work with the DarkRP money system. The code is still proprietary and on a request-only basis (I give it out for free). Several game servers still use this code, and many have requested specific updates to it beyond its life in Darkwater.

AMBIENT MUSIC

Workshop Page

Ambient music is a simple quality-of-life addon I developed for the Garry's Mod Fallout game server, adding ambient audio from the Fallout series.

The mod achieved its design goal of creating additional tension during combat scenarios and filling quiet hours on the server with some sound.

I developed the code to work with an ambient system to simulate combat and non-combat scenarios. The whole addon is available for free on the Steam Workshop.

UNRELEASED MODS

Many other mods were not officially released to the Workshop because they were not setup-friendly. Some of these mods may be found in current game servers, as I offer them to server owners who inquire about the Bottlecap Press.

Some of these mods include:

Hunger & Thirst System
Food Mod
Chem Mod
Chem-Crafting Mod (x2)

Alongside these mods, general scripting was necessary to implement the vision.

VIDEOS FROM FALLOUTRP

Game Server Gameplay by TheLastRoyalPhoenix
NOTE: Actions/beliefs of players do not reflect the beliefs of Darkwater Entertainment