New Site and New Game

Hello All.

I have not posted in a while because I have been busy doing two things. The first is that I have a new site: www.stressedgamer.com and blog. The second is that I have been working on a new project for the last two weeks and it is now done. Head over to the new blog to find out more.

-tom

Level 1 Continued...

Well I did not get everything done I wanted too on this level. It is much nicer however:



Still need to add lighting to the level, several particle effects are missing or placeholder, all decoration still needs to be done, the enemy weapons need to be modeled, and the portal still looks like a blue sphere, not to mention the text… Hopefully I can get all that done this weekend so I can get started on the intro and space mode.

-tom

Level 1 Mockup.

Well I just finished mocking up the first action level of Warriors of the Shining Star. Right now just about everything in it is test art. And yes health pellets are attacking me near the end of the movie (I needed a small test mesh for a monster…):

This next week’s task will be to make that look nice and to get it balanced. To get an idea of the art assets I have left to make for it:

Map Tiles:

• Base Hall
• Base Hall Three Way
• Base Room Corner
• Base Room Corner Entrance1
• Base Room Corner Entrance2
• Base Room Floor
• Base Room Wall
• Exterior Wall
• Landing Pad Floor
• Landing Pad Corner
• Landing Pad Edge
• Landing Pad Inner Corner
• Landing Pad Door
• Landing Pad Wall
• Landing Pad Wall End1
• Landing Pad Wall End2
• Black4x4
• Moon Surface 4x4

Character Meshes:

• Miner
• Miner Boss
• Possessed Miner
• Possessed Fire Miner
• Demon Portal
• Little Demon
• Sergeant Salter
• Militia Fighter

Weapon Meshes:

• Mining Laser
• Flame Thrower

Effect Meshes:

• Mining Bolt blue
• Mining Bolt Red
• Fire bolt

Decoration: (probably need more here…)

• Transport Ship
• Moon Buggy
• Misc. Debris1
• Misc. Debris2
• Misc. Debris3
• Misc. Debris4
• Crate (yes I’m having crates, I like crates)

Hmm this could take me a while, but at least I will get some practice with the art tools…

-tom

The dancing AI.

I’ve been working on AI tonight and I decided place down a bunch of AIs that hate each other, comedy ensues:

I made a couple different AI types tonight. The one seen in the video above is the strafe shooter AI. It is one tough bastard to actually hit because it deliberately doges your aim. The video makes it clear I need object to object physics in soon so they collide with one another to give me a chance. I already catch the collisions; I just don’t do anything yet.

This thing is actually starting to look kind of like a game, probably my favorite part of development.

-Tom

It's about character.

Character modeling has never been a skill I really possessed. It is the part that has killed almost every personal project I have worked on. I wanted Warriors of the Shining Star, the name of the game I’m working on, to be semi realistic. Due to the aforementioned inability to create characters that is impossible.

So I’m going to go with something simpler and within my limited abilities. For anyone that knows me this will come as no surprise. I have decided to go with spheres (and other simple shapes) for all of my characters. While it is not the look I wanted it is a look that will provide a certain amount of characterand style to the game. Here is a sort of sample of what I’m talking about, the Warrior class:

Let there be light!

I got a little side tracked this week. I planned to work on gameplay but instead worked on graphics.... In this case I did a first pass at a lighting modle for the game. I decided to keep it simple, no normal maps, no displacement maps, etc. I have done these effects before but find that I don't have the time to make art that uses them.

A nice side effect to doing this was that I now have full shader support in my game. This will give me much more flexability in what I can render over the BasicEffect that comes with XNA.

Here is a little sample movie to demonstrate:



-tom

Rolla Station Test.

This is a quick test of the station tile set I've been working on. Also shows the player activating a conversation (ok an old style one sided conversation)...