After lots of deliberation and hard thought, ive decided to ditch the space levels because they dont frankly work as they should, maybe they will later, then i will make that type of game, so i had to decide whether to wait or to change dropzones structure to make a proper playable game. So i made a start all the player ship levels have gone and now have been replaced buy new player dropships and space stations, each player dropship gets upgrades e.g crew/pets as per Level = Level 50 for the first with access to the next system with 4 planets and a station plus the ability to go back, and finally Earths system with 3 planets and stations. What i have found by doing it this way is that the FPS across all levels has increased and the loading times have lessened alot. so although im a little disappointed the actual outcome has made a better game (lesson learned) anyway i will be putting up a vid of all the new levels,ships etc shortly, but for now i recon i need a beer lol N.B some early pics of Genisis Station Alpha

Genesis Station Alpha and first contact with the Druidasian's, Humans which left Earth and settled on one of this systems planets in deep forests and have a pale green skin, these humanoids have evolved into masters of stealth and camouflage and animal control. The Station has the usual shops, medical facilities, and of course the Bar/Nightclub entertainment areas.(lol and the vid had to rub it in by showing the only two models stuck in the ground, this has been corrected)

Finally ive built Earths Station, few bits left to do include some life in the corridors, set up shops, and a couple of little sub quests and make a new mix for the Bar/Club but its built and has a massive docked shuttle which you can board (bit hard to see when i did this as it was night time, it also has random spacecraft that fly past the station from time to time, and quite a few custom characters. Here's a quick peek

Great stuff. Love the night club. You've mastered the fuse to gg character conversion. Well done.

Thank Isagabe, some of those characters you meet throughout the maps in each area and now actually join you on your ship and help upgrade it , in 3 stages so its goods fun building atm especially since ive changed the structure of the game the FPS ect has increased a lot.
I still need to work on multiple animations but have conversations working well on them, some models i have to do twice to get them to do different things as per map, think i have done 42 working characters so far

3 new character types in Dropzone from left to right ... The Volcori Warrior, The Blizaris Guard and The Druidasian Soldier, there is also males, females of various flavors for each race and all fit according to which planet they hail from e.g Druidasia, Volcori and Blizaris im currently making the Asania

It's a shame about the outside the ship mode. While limited, I think it reminded me of Starpoint Gemini and provided a real tangible difference between your offerings and others. You might want to circle back to that in a few months.

I have comments and critiques if you want, but I will not post them here unless you absolutely do not mind. I can be unintentionally harsh at times or overtly blunt so it's up to you if you would like that input or not. Bear in mind if you do accept the review I will happily do my best to provide you the tools you need to make your offering look (at least by my standards) better.

Side note: The custom models are a nice touch to really differentiate your offering.

Lol you go for your life m8 if you knew my missis you'd know its water of a ducks back m8 (she gives me endless grief...why does that model look fit lol) erm? i read it learn from it and move on. The reason i have put the space levels on hold isnt that they arn't a good idea its that with collision not working it kinda makes it very hard to get things to do what you want them to especially when everything just fly's through everything lol but for dropzone it wasn't the original idea anyway i just wandered off.
What ive done is saved those levels maybe to make something else later when things get implemented dropzone now has 3 areas each stemming from your dropship which gets upgraded both ship and crew, from your flight panel you get the choice of 6 areas/planets to go to and now ive done it this way its actually speeded up both loading times and the game itself.
Its pretty hard to show the game in its entirity as it takes me along time to just run it to test the later levels in the standalone this coupled with other issues e.g 502 errors amongst others as theres no real error reporting in the standalones.
Theres also around 60 custom characters ive added now so things change daily, but any input is always very welcome m8 both positive and negative

I always ask because there are plenty of people who get offended when I offer them advice; so I make a point to ask first.

So overall there's a lot of good here, but the game reads like a very early prototype needing much refinement. The level design is pretty locked in (corridor/room location and shape) and the entities that are custom are large in number/spread. This is good because you obviously have a clear idea of what you want and how you want to do it. I know I personally struggle with that.

So what's off? Basically there's the lack of detail, for starters, but what's killing it is the scale of the buildings involved. Specifically you can tell you resized the walls/corridors are resized versions of the sci-fi DLC pack; which would be fine except the sense of scale makes you look like you're a mouse running around a giant maze due to the design and placement of the windows in the walls. I'd resize them height-wise down or at least swap them in for ones that don't use windows (the windows really add to the element of feeling 'off' since there's really no value to windows of that nature being 3 feet above your head).

lastly is the colors used for lighting. I am happy to see lighting used; however there's this great book this reminds me of. It's part of John Ringo's Posleen Aldenata Saga. There's a part where the aliens bring humans onboard their ships and deliberately calibrate all the lighting to be uncomfortable for humans.

That's what this reminds me of, unfortunately. So basically it's the combination of a harsh green with a banana yellow that's really hurting my eyes.
What I'd recommend is something more like this color tone for your interior 'green':

Now to get that look in game-guru you're going to want to use this color for your lighting:
color code: 8cfadc
Will give you this look:


Please note the use of the 'white' model vs any others. This is to ensure maximum receptivity with the color chosen. If you use grey or black (infected) you will have to modify the lighting colors to accommodate. The idea here is you want to stay in normal light ranges that humans use with just a TINNNNNY bit of tint towards the color you are drawing towards. Use a combination of light and dark furniture to really set the mood, like in the example picture.

If you are looking for a sense of scale without losing your 'perspective' and seeming small, etc - try to modify your walkways from what you have to something more like this:

Basically I doubled the width and raised the height of the corridor section to be in line with the height of the first room. It's a minor increase in height (~15%) and a doubling in width that creates a false sense of size without paying too much penalty to perspective.

Lastly don't forget your detail elements - screens, monitors, lightbars, pipes, etc.

I feel your project has a lot of promise, just keep banging away on it.

Thanks m8 i totally agree with the lighting tbh im concentrating on actually getting to the end game atm so lighting will be refined when it all works correctly, scale ...ok i had to scale things up as otherwise it didn't seem like a space station or a mothership and seemed a little claustrophobic. I do totally get where your pic are coming from but you have to respect i am 1 bloke with kids a missis and a fat dog lol so its all down to me. i do now have it working kinda from end to end with 18 levels which are all open world and repeatable as in you can return to your ship and choose where to go next. Its a hard slog m8 tbh and ive had to deal with dodgy scripts , models etc etc and no real error reporting as GG is not complete in itself. But! i like the engine the community and the devs as they genuinely seem to want this to work. and so i will follow. and it will get better, im not far off a testing stage so if you like i'll send you a copy and you can do a proper review when its working as it really is a big game

I totally understand; living under similar situations. If the opinions are helpful and advise works, use it, otherwise discard and continue.

No m8 your advice is welcomed thing with the station sizing (yes the windows are high) this is because i couldn't get go_indoors working without crashing so i couldn't give it the nice view out the windows, you do still get a view of the spacecraft flying past (which is kinda cool) but again something to work on once the base mechanics are working correctly. I have noted down that color code for use when i get round to the lighting again looks real nice so ty for that tip although all lighting seems to have some odd effects using the day/night system (maybe i'll ditch that on the ships) i'll have to play around with it abit.

I don't have the day night script personally. I'd probably ditch that on the ships since the ships would probably have ship lighting.





Try that for disabling floor and water; it's almost identical to the goindoors script but it doesn't use the activateifused or whatever it is.. so just put it on a trigger zone and put it where the player spawns. Boom, no more water or terrain.

Righty will give that a bash m8 thx, weird i also find the go_indoors script knocks out sound files as well :/. I've just done a Drop zone standalone test on my other P.C and its running better than on the i5 lol = dual core vs quad core and the old bus is running it really fast although the monitor is alittle short and blocks off the bottom right menu abit Positive note: i can now access all levels and back, weapons are saving over correctly as with the rpg inventory/cash so really pleased with that. Here's a peek at the last dropship upgrade you have an extra room for conferencing and 3 new crew members Billy the Earth service droid ( as he didnt have a name i called him that after Billy Wizz shame he doesn't have the antenna on his head lol, Nimune (heh Earth Mother) the Druidasian both found on Genesis Alpha Station and Jan the medic (found on the Marine Mothership) who sells medipacks, boosts etc and you even getyour own holo dancer lol love that im thinking of maybe a pet droid or animal but will do that later, now its all working i can start work on the lighting which brings the question baked or dynamic i know Lee says bake and this debate has gone on a while for and against i did bake the Mothership lights today and actually got nice results! ideas?

It's a huge improvement, for sure. Still too green for my tastes.

Not sure why it's coming across like that. That said, it's definitely a step in the right direction. Perhaps bring down the ambient levels a bit, make sure items are set as static and not dynamic and rebake to get shadows looking more appropriate?

Like take for example my WIP which this is an abandoned ship:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213699

You can see the evolution of my design. I wanted a blue hue to the level so it's similar to your setup in the respect of wanting an overarching color. You can get a feel for what I mean by incrementing changes towards an end goal. Just keep working towards your vision dude, and keep it coming

Agreed way too green, ive since edited out all the green lights and just changed them over to white and its improved the look 10 fold especially GA station which is run buy a druidic race and have green skin, what ive noticed is the green light didn't actually enhance the green tint of the druidasians but made them white? odd but true, buy using white light they now look as they should and the dancer now doesnt have bobbly skin which made her look like the had the plague i'll post a pic of them after i edit Earths station

Im now starting work on the lighting and have just about done System 1 Hunting grounds here it is and some new Pterodactyl's flying about.

looks a lot better
Sounds are a bit loud but good.

Yeah m8 bit of work still needed on the volume but that i can do at least there and then in the standalone, ive pretty much changed all the lighting and fog now lighting is white on ships as the effect turned out better, all planet landmasses are now matching the planet type e.g desert, ice etc etc, ive lost the weather effects for now as go_inside.lua is too twichy and doesn't work half the time, ive pretty much got the game as it should be from end to end and back and all works as it should. Ive increased the FPS +5-10 on all levels and loading times apart from 1 level are under 60 seconds. So im pretty pleased with it now and its totally playable and good fun even after a billion hours testing it lol. So a bit more work on sounds and the overall visual effects and some more work on titles and its good to go then i have to find some way to get it out there lol and then back to "A Tall Story" and start work on the new idea

My first attempt at a trailer and am wondering whether to leave the sounds as is or use the titles track?



2 extra clips added



and finally with the Titles Track

If I were you I'd try to record the trailer on a faster PC. The low frame rate is very noticeable, and not ideal if you're trying to showcase your product. Otherwise, looks good. I'd go with the Titles track, but that's just my opinion.

Looking good Honkey, i'm still not overly keen on the lighting for the outside areas though. It looks to me like you have the balance between surface level and ambient out of balance. The ground seems to be very bright, but everything else is really dark, and on some models it looks way too dark, almost like they have pure black textures, try knocking the surface level down a bit until the grass doesn't glow, and then increase the ambience level a tad until you can see the colours in the textures of all your models.

Thanks Guys
@ Gtox yeah i can maybe try it on the Other P.C when im down at the other gaff as it has a better card, otherwise m8 thats it im afraid as this is an USFF box so im limited as to what will fit in it :/ but im tweaking the performance, lighting, fog etc atm so i maybe able to speed it up alittle
@ Belidos yeah m8 agreed weird in the editor its brighter in the standalone seem to be darker but yes m8 will have to play about with that (havent baked the lighting yet), maybe even sort it out in the movie maker. TBH i normally have custom graphics set up so the ground doesn't glow like that but had a long day :/
But thanks for the pointers

Its nearly there Dropzone 2150 Game Trailer



Mod Edit: What follows are the videos from other threads Honkeyboy has made. chronologically.

12th Mar 2016

Ok while I'm waiting for the standalone to be fixed I thought i'd get on with phase 2 of dropzone2150 and put my fantasy game on the back burner, so whats phase 2? well that's the part where you get your second ship and go exploring other galaxies so heres a teaser of that in play...enjoy ive meseed up the planet trigger abit so you bump into it lol and it should be lower but i'll sort that, same with annoying spider sounds that come in and no xp on centurion= didn't show the inventory menu :/ or the hunger/thirst/fatigue :/ that maybe a 15 min vid but its all there



18th Mar 2016

after gaining enough experience to get promoted to 2nd lieutenant you now gain access to your new ship ( scout class ) and have been assigned to space station Genesis Alpha, a new adventure awaits space and pirates! (scripts by smallg) stations are dockable, battleship is dockable and planets are dockable



New base lights and land speeder test thx smallg for the help oh and quick look at the new planets







15th Jun 2016

Well im back on updating Dropzone 2150 sorting out some errors and tweaking performance and working on Battleship/Cruiser encounters heres a quick peek



Dropzone 2150 space revamp, player ship textures upgraded, landable planets per level reduced to two to increase space size, cloaked pirate ships working but need distance checks increasing as they just stay still not chase and fight. Next im revamping the other ship textures and tweaking the player ship speed etc and also adding more video cutscenes



Aye m8 just the way it is atm, ive just edited the space level and made civvie ships green so you can differentiate between good guys and bad guys (bit of a garish green till i re edit the texture), ive also speeded up the player ship x300 and added some story. check it out. took a while to get it working tbh as it was last saved at 1.0.0.1 but its getting there have 3 space areas now each with 2 planets and lots of dockable stations. and a new story is finding your way back home to earth. tbh tho i kinda like the way you can look around in your ship makes it real, do need to add more sounds e.g shields depleting etc but working on it. this was all done with windows movie maker as the other ones i was using we're bombing you with adverts...worth a looksee guys its free with 7 and 10 but yeah Belidos i need to freeze the player for the bikes = too hard otherwise



I now have the first two landable planets working again after the first seven beginner levels (space area 1) on your way to try and get back to earth and have been playing around with the story, heres a quick vid of contact between you and the marine mothership (needs the lives editing out) but its looking pretty ok



New Earth station, finally you get home to earth only to find you've been gone 300 years :/ here's a quick glimpse at one of the Earth stations. Its modular and the turrets, doors etc animate 4 hangers each with 4 turrets. its a bit small atm and will increase it to take up to 3 craft per hanger



OK after finishing work this morning i've just spent 8 hours getting this right :/ as in from start to the finish level (without playing them = just running them), its had its issues mainly when you finish the first 7 beginner levels you enter space systems which dont have winzones they have warpzones on gates which proved difficult to get going but finally i have managed to go all the way to Earth. so far there is 7 beginner levels then you are enlisted to help the marines( atlevel 30-50 not decided yet) to find their way home = 3 systems each with 2 landable planets and numerous dockable stations and downed ships. Here's a quick glimpse at one of the last systems planets before home



Ive just been revamping the Marine Mothership as it was kinda redundant and didnt look quite right with the shops/bar on triggers so ive now made them a proper part of the ship. I've included 2 new shops (ammo can only be bought on these ships for the newer sci-fi weapons) a barracks/rest area, and a ship bar/club which has a shop/bounty remover and music the tracks number 3 so far which im going to attempt half hour, that way the player can go grab a drink etc and leave music playing



Finally the last system (home) Earth and Earth's moon, the moon is now a planetary racetrack (Mykes roads) and earth after years of conflict with the mutants and aliens has now been confined to Dropzones protected by interplanetary oxygen generators, the 3 areas shown are the landing zone, the command zone and the entertainment zone, im kinda edging on a fun system with lots of mini games and clubs etc, its pretty much owned by Myke, reliquia and Wolfie's in there alot so im gonna have some fun with these two levels and will be including all those that have helped build it in the about section in the menus. Thanks to all of you that gave these out in the free section anyways here it is Earth 2150 ish for now its not complete but im sure you get the idea



Dropzone 2150's Mothership now has a new dance trio



28th Jul 2016

I got fed up of scrolling down the new hope post to watch this so thought i'd start a fresh one as I'm about done fiddling with the trailer, i do still need to tweak it a little to make it smoother, but wanted to get it done today as I'm off to Skegvegas with my daughter tomorrow to let her loose on the fair until she's sick lol and eat lots of seafood and chips (yummy) anyways here it is i hope you enjoy it

Hi all, well ive really been hard at it for the last few weeks to try to get this game finished. Reason being i intend to release it on steam greenlight and also intend to donate a percentage to the Macmillan trust = Cancer research as they helped me and my family when my father was dying , so this is kinda for him. Now im not asking for any donations or anything really just a little help getting it finished = maybe testing and telling me whats needed and if anyone knows how to set up direct donations to the said charity. Im completely new to the greenlight thing and am just going to pay the fee and try to work it out, but im still a little stuck on the packing ....e.g encrypting scripts etc so any advice i'd truly be grateful of.
In the last few weeks ive completely redesigned all of the levels with low fps and can now say even with my crappy card i get a decent level =20-60 depending, and its actually quite good fun to play anyway if i can get a few testers i'll stick it up for you to have a go and evaluate. and when it goes up finally it'll be cheap so buy it as these nurses are voluntary and deserve some help. suppose that's enough said.

@Honkeyboy,

I'm sorry about your father.

A few years ago, my mom passed away victimized by this terrible disease.

In regard to donations, the most easy way to set up donations, in my opinion, is to create a PayPal account; if you have not an account yet, and get a 'Donate' button with a link. Sorry, I cannot help you about Greenlight procedures.

Good luck!
-Northern

Thanks Northern, so i can do it maybe via the paypal account, will check that out yes Its a very horrible disease. These guys do their work for free to help people who are suffering with it and their families, so a very just cause i think

I worked for a few years with Fulcrum Pharma, which was at the time one of the leading pharmaceutical companies researching cancer. In that time I saw the best and the worst of cancer, and my grandfather passed a couple of months ago with a spinal tumour.

Any research into cancer is a good cause.

Unfortunately though, most research into cancer is never going to find a cure, because what doctors don't tell you is that unless we learn how to rewrite dna we will never find the cure for cancer, it's a genetic abnormality that can only be fixed at the genetic level, and with stem cell research being illegal in most countries, and clamp downs on things like cell cloning research we wont be able to develop the tools we need to combat it, the best we can hope for are drugs that work efficiently to supress it.

Aye Belidos something us all as a race need to study correctly to actually defeat methinks! Been quite a day today i kinda had an idea and tried to implement it and it soo didnt work so i had to drop into every level and redo it :/ Grr. I do now have however build 1.0 which actually works very well and as i stripped it back to increase the fps has left room to add stuff if i need to which is cool. (if i could tear myself away from level one which has me hooked ) = proper funny and also added an extra level and a mini game level accessed from Earths Station = a racetrack on the moon Im pleased with it now as the fps is right and it seems the gameplay is pretty quick so you guys with decent cards it'll fly. Its is essentially your traditional FPS but with the addition of you can choose where you go e.g if you dont like the level content you dont have to do it, just do the levels you like they are all different. It has RPG exp, survival elements some planets have no oxygen or are cold, hot etc so you need to take a field base kit to survive and food, water etc bought from vendors on each planet, stations etc which also sell exclusive ammo, weapons etc and of course if you need a break, Nightclubs and rest areas. I now have 19 levels 37 custom characters and of course the GG characters so its a busy game lol im testing it at 10-15x exp atm to run it and it takes around 2 hours to get to the 3rd system so maybe when i reset the exp i would estimate 15-20 hours plus of gameplay, so a few more tests and a bit of tweaking and its going up

Oh and also a big thank you to all of you that donate your models and scripts for free atm i will probably use the about page for that but @ Lee can we have a credits link in there m8 please so we can say ty

Your game is taking shape very well.
It has lots of interesting parts to it. The speech engine you have sound clean. That makes so much difference when the speech is good.
Looking forward to seeing it in steam.

Thanks Mortt shouldn't be too long now, ive added 400 + more foliage entities to the maps over the last few days and have the pirate system in place and working so if you want to be a bad space pirate you now can, but you will be hunted on every station i've also been tweaking it quite hard so that it will play on lower end machines and i tested it on my older dual core the other day and had a decent working fps of about 15-20 so lots of balancing going on at the moment, the game itself is complete and working. Now i have the job of finishing the titles and packing it up for steam and then the steam process lol all fun here

You've certainly put a lot of work into this. Unfortunately, I have some bad news.

You have a lot more to do.

That's not a statement meant to hurt either; I can really appreciate the level of commitment you've demonstrated and you've made very appreciable changes. I'm sure, for you, it feels like the final mile. And it is, sort of. It has that 'pre-alpha' look to it still, which unfortunately requires a lot of hours tinkering to get rid of.

You're reaching the point of 'the last 10 % takes as much work as the first 90%'. Your phases of design will probably run along the line of:

Finishing all remaining level prototyping, playtesting
Finalizing clutter
Optimizing lights/shadows
Optimizing framerate (this is probably the most difficult one)
Playtesting
More playtesting
Adjustments...
Release
More adjustments (Bug fixes, reported errors, etc).
Re-release

So ... just don't get trapped into that line of thought of being 'almost done'. You're doing great so far, just take a breath and dig back in. I wish I could commit the kind of time you clearly have to your project to my own. Good luck!

All of the above apart from the last 3 i have been doing in the last few weeks m8 ive pretty much gone through every level and have changed everything

Prototyping, playtesting = ive done soo much of this my eyes have turned square
Clutter = pretty much zero
Optimizing lights/shadows = ive changed a lot of these to suit the levels and taken most of the greens out for other colors (lots of tinkering here)
Optimizing framerate = i now have a decent framerate on all levels even with my card and my older machine so it should run fine on low, mid and high end machines.
Playtesting = ive done enough of this to inflict pain onto my greymatter
Release = Guess im at this point although i have a Save bug holding this part back but am working on it :/

Im in no way under the impression that im finished with these games and when its released i intend to do regular updates and even add new systems/planets and some new space parts maybe as free updates
After i have this bug fixed i intend to release it and see where it goes as i have my second game "A tall Story" to start work on again this one has been the more difficult of the two by far as i dont think GG was quite ready for a non linear, sci fi, RPG, FPS of this type but saying that its working so +1 for GG
I also i have a third in the pipelines, but this one will have smaller more detailed maps and a lot more story based.

In all honesty m8 i could stand on these for the rest of my days but Dropzone is at a nice playable state and i really have had to do alot of balancing to get nice visuals v's frame rate and of course game play plus the added extras to make it a little more than just a FPS and i think i've managed to achieve that
I do need to do another trailer as alot of the last one has gone/changed.
But dont take my word for it lol, help promote it when its up and buy and play it, im going to donate some of the sales to the Macmillan trust so if nothing else its going to be helping a good cause
Thanks for the feedback tho m8

Earths Station to Earths Moon shuttle service

Quick observation: If that thing is going from the moon to earth? : We don't have these colourful nebulas in our solar system

Hey Honkeyboy, looking good so far, many improvements. but from those videos it still doesn't feel quite there yet though.

One thing you really need to do is get rid of those text panels, all of them, and the default hud. Add some sprite backgrounds to your inventory and other pieces of text that use panels, as well as add your own HUD using sprites, it will make a huge difference. If you need some help you have me on steam we can get together and talk through some ideas sometime.

@ Wolf yes m8 thanks i'll have to change that

@Belidos sure m8 will give you a shout thx

How about something like this? With the lives in the circle, the health in the bottom box and the day/night info in the top box?

yeah will give any a try m8 see what they look like

Here's what the script I gave you looks like, you can modify the images how you like, and all the positions/sizes are in the _init

HI Honkeyboy, you could use inkscape which is free to download and use to build a sci-fi hud sprite for your game.
Just like in the svg attached below and can be loaded in firefox to show the example.

The attached example took about five minutes in inkscape and is vectored by default. That way you can expand and shrink as needed with out it degrading until your happy with what you have. Then just export as a png to use as a sprite in you game.

Inkscape: Draw Freely

File attached in svg format.

The colour is RGB 0,156,252 - 009cfc and 009cfc64 RGBA at 100 for the alpha channel.

gd - Ed

Thanks gd will have a look at it

Re your efforts to raise donations for a worthy cause, just to help you out with this. It is illegal to raise money through your own accounts using any charitable organizations name without express permission and/or involvement. You should contact the organization and inform them of your intentions they will likely have a donation code link for you to install on your web page or whatever. Any monies must be collected directly by them, you can't collect this yourself with the intention of giving it to them using their name in any way. If you use a paypal button it should be for an account set up by the organization themselves, not set up by an individual. Not trying to rain on this but I have done charity work myself and know the ins and outs of keeping it legal, just a friendly heads up.

Your game looks great but if you hold off on release there will be a new feature hopefully in v1.14 which will take this type of game design to a whole new level including some new media suited to it as well

Thanks rolfy for that, yeah i did know that i couldn't collect directly as my brother does some charity stuff, hence me asking and intended to contact them first, just was unsure how to go about it via steam Thanks for the info on 1.4 i'll put it on hold till then and see what goes, it'll give me time to sort out the nitty gritties and do some work on the others

As Rolfy said, to officially collect donations for any charity you have to have what is known as a letter of subordination, this is a letter giving you authority to collect and manage donations on behalf of the charity.

However, In your case i'm not sure that applies, in your case you are not actually collecting donations, you are selling a product and promising to pay a percentage of your profit to a charity, that as far as I know does not require a letter of subordination.

However, it is better for your to contact your charity of choice, and check with them first, it shouldn't be too hard to get the correct permission.

Yeah Belidos m8 have emailed them to see what is the best way to go about this, if nothing else i'll maybe be able to put a link on the website etc and just donate myself without any ads or promotional parts. Would be nice if steam included this sort of thing so you could just have a percentage just taken straight out and forwarded to the named charity but i'll wait to see what their team say and ways to go about that