Latest changes include tying up the HUD to code functions, and experimenting with some temple assets. Behold!

Standing before a large temple

Player Jumps on to climing vines

Updated Treasure art

First thing to notice is the new Play HUD. You have Treasure, Ammo, and Health counters to the bottom right, and an expandable mini-map to the top left. The map will be hand painted for each level, and rather than using fancy dynamic GPS positioning, you’re going to have to use landmarks to pinpoint your location. This is roughing it adventure in Bear Country, pal, not finding the post office in a new town.

You might also notice a freaking MP3 player. Check it out, the character even puts on his ear-buds! Found the music player code while digging deep inside the T3D file system, and customized it to work with some new custom GUI, 3D art, and a specific Music folder. Just drop in your favorite tunes, and you can customize your own play-track. (This is both really cool interactivity for you as a player, and cheaper for me since I won’t have to pick up a ton of new music licenses)

Also, scope out that sweet Treasure Chest Action. Some are collision based and give generic prizes (or nothing if empty/already claimed), and some are trigger based and can dish out anything I tell them to. Pretty awesome, eh?

I’ve put One 12 scripting on hold for a bit to work on art and allow Garage Games to release T3D 1.1 and Ubiq Visuals to update the 3DAAK nice and proper. (Less bugs I create doing merges, the better.) Reports say next Friday will have all of the updates I need to get back to game building. I have a number of ideas on paper that I’m really eager to put to code, mini games, items, collectables, and more! The part that really excites me is how simply I will be able to go from concept to working prototypes, now that I have a broader understanding of Torque Script.

Next on my to-do list is a new video tutorial. I’m going to be making a 3D weapon, prepping it for collada export, importing it into T3D, and making it fire!

Lots of experimental art this month. Most of it’s pretty ugly, just me looking to see if something would work or not, but here’s a mug-in-progress you’re going to learn to hate one day:

Free Download for Windows.

Mitch over at Garage Games did a live “lets make a game!” session, and I did my best to follow along, making thematic changes and creating new music and sound. Took less than 8 hours all told, and I learned some more Torque Script tricks that I can use on One12, so not a bad weekend at all.

Ai too hard? Too Easy? Open up AiPaddle.cs and look at line 15 for how to tweak the Ai’s IQ. I left it at 4, not too easy, but not insanely difficult.

Lets take a look at the features and assets we already have, shall we?

Most of these are isolated in a stock “AI and Weapons” build. It is a clean and efficient way to build and test these features. Keeping it separate from the 3DAAK build allows me to test at a base level, and make them bug free from a standard level. (If it breaks in 3DAAK, I know it’s the kit, and have a better idea on where to start fixing)

Weapons

1. Sword that belongs in a museum.
2. Old-Timer’s Machine Gun (M1A1)
3. Bond’s Pistol (WP99 inspired)
4. Sniper Rifle (WW2 era Eastern European inspired)
5. TNT (Basically works like a grenade)

Non Weapons

1. Glow Sticks (Needs a re-factor, currently works like a grenade)
2. Wooden Torch
3. Flashlight

Player and AI

1. Player Concept Art and Modeled Helmet
2. Bear Programmer Art and “Bear Claw” weapon. Fully Operational

Yes, the bear has a sword on his head.

World

1. Arrow Traps. (Think Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider arrows that launch when you touch the “light” or pressure plate)

Now lets break from features for a moment (all out!) and discuss the art direction! 99% hand painted! One might ask, “Why go this direction when you have a top of the line next-gen differed rendering engine? Isn’t that just silly? Shouldn’t you strive to make Crysis look old school? You’re going to need more brown, yo!”

Very good points, but ultimately invalid in the face of 1) I have a very limited production time frame 2) Photo-Real has limited shelf-life and finally 3) The less fun the game looks, the less fun the game will feel.

Also, Torque3D is (not) surprisingly well adapt at rendering painted textures! Take a look for yourself:

Character Teaser.

As you can see, I’ve been painting and modeling like mad this month, trying to get back up to speed. I have the beginnings of a nice temple feature testing grounds in the 3DAAK side. Given another month of feature building and integration, I’ll be in a really solid spot to start in earnest with the world building. After that will come the first public Alpha release, and If things go well, this should happen on month 6 or 7.

Would-Be-Nice Features

Items

1. Jetpack – Allows you to hover briefly to more or less “long jump”
2. Grapple Hook – Just like Link’s hook-shot.
3. Remote Controlled Car (bomb? spying? Cool Racing mode? Because I can!?)

Ultra Low Poly NDS Specs, FTW!

Multiplayer

1. Capture the Relic
2. Co-Op Dungeon/Temple Crawling
3. Overworld Bear Survival Challenge (Lots of bears here, better drink my own pee!)

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll be back with some footage in a week or two, too excited to test drive the new T3D 1.1 Final to be bothered with the capturing and uploading process this week!

• Absolutely nothing that I can show visually at this time. Not home to work but one weekend this month Sorry!
• Re-factoring of basic gameplay mechanics to include following timers:
• Hunger – Ticks down until you feed. – Player becomes super weak sauce on starvation (basically health drops to 1hp so you die in one hit or misstep) [X] DONE + Working Food Items! Yeah!
• Thirst – Ticks down until you drink/enter water. – Player will die or some other feedback enhanced badness after so many seconds of dehydration. [  ] NOT DONE
• Exposure – Ticks down when exposed to sunlight – Slowed or reversed slightly by eating or drinking. – Reset after so many seconds in the shade or after dark. – Player will slowly go blind before dying of over exposure. [  ] NOT DONE

The idea is that these new mechanics will promote exploration beyond mere treasure hunting or dungeon diving, and give players a sense that the world itself is alive and potentially fatal. Just staying alive can be a fight against the world, and beating the game means beating the world. How’s that for epic win? This will also make players think or plan more carefully before entering potentially large caves/dungeons.

Scattered about the landscape will be oasis zones (varying in size and style) with plenty of life sustaining resources. Their proximity to caves and dungeons will be tweaked based on feedback, as well as respawn rate of food items. The timers will start fairly slow, I don’t want to anybody to rage-quit if they simply cannot find or reach a timer-reset item or area — within reason.

Once this new scripting is in place, I will switch gears to art once again and build a library of dungeon and cave set pieces that I can quickly snap together much the same way as such elements in Elder Scrolls Oblivion was handled. I was hesitant of this approach at first because it does lean on the side of lazy, but with the limited time I have to create, I feel extreme focus on a few elements is better than sparse focus on many elements. Given time, the nature of this construction method lends itself well to quick swapping of art for area uniquification. Further thoughts ahead for the interested or brave.

I’ve regressed back to a stock build to implement the new timers, and to slowly add in the 3DAAK elements bit-by-bit in an effort to find a nice sweet spot for AI purposes. Once the basics are back in, and aiming works, I will release an alpha build to the public and start taking feedback. I really-really hope this can happen for month 5 or 6!

• AI featuring Universal AI Starter Kit by Twisted Jenius
  • Gonna need some super customizing tho.
  • I try to keep them restricted to guns, but this one time…

• C++ Player::MeleeAttack in thanks to Justin over at ubiqvisuals.com
  • But did I break the animations? Ha!
• 360 Controller in working order
• Designed out world 1-1 on paper.
• Bears. Mother FLIPPING BEARS!
  • Just the head, actually. Serious WIP.
  • Wife is furious I stopped to do code.
• New Intuos 4, and with it better art software.
  • No more Photoshop Ancient Edition.

Alright, now for why you’re really here: Screenshots.

Please note the awesome main character concept art by the amazingly talented Mike @ Piratewhale dot com. Took my vague description of an adventurous kiddo in over his head,  the guts to go the distance, and a heart of gold.  He’s open for commissions if you’re looking for character concepts. Any style.

TOTAL ASIDE: A good Machinima community pal of mine, Friedrich Kirschner, has been working on a new software set for a few years that looks really awesome, but it needs our help to get to the next step!

Thanks for checking in, see you again next month with more!

• Integration to 3DAAK
• Character art and animation pipeline tests
• New environment art
• Working Health GUI
• Demo-Mode GUI
• New Work Space!

Right before the integration I brought in a new wheeled vehicle to test out the fun factor. Totally fun, and worked great in multiplayer with my support group (lovely wife). With the new camera and player system that the 3DAAK brings, I have discovered that while control is passed to the vehicles, the camera and player model are not. Makes for an interesting RC experience, but when unmounting full camera control is never regained. I had thought about leaving in a car level as a sort of easteregg, but now I fear they will be dropped completely. Time is not on my side, and unless the bug is found in a more necessary feature, I don’t have time to squash it. Sad face.

Lots of new outdoor environment art this month, and I even made a video tutorial on how I make grass. Built this small camp set and solidified my decision to go all hand painted. Then just a few weeks later my wacom tablet draws its last stroke. One of life’s lessons learned the hard way: when involved with toddlers, keep your good stuff up high.

Warning, graphic images to follow.

Wacom CTE-430, killed in action after 5+ years in battle.

Slain by the “if you leave it in reach, I will destroy it” Gwendolyn pictured here:

SCREEN SHOTS!

My brother has picked up his own copy of T3D (thanks to reduced pricing) and has expressed an interest in joining the One 12 cause! Epic wootage!

Functional Features:

• Glow Sticks
• Flash Light
• TNT
• Baseball Bat
• Torch
• Pistol
• Machine Gun
• Shotgun
• Can Spawn a dumb Gideon AI to kill.
• Test Missions for various assets. (Ammo, Caves, etc.)
• Test assets like, cave entrances, torch holders, and the like.
• Particle effects for the guns that don’t totally suck.
• Some really cool looking grassy ground coverage.

Truth be told there should have been a lot more done this month, but the day job became something of a day, night, and weekend gig these past couple of weeks. Still, excuses aside, I do feel quite accomplished and stoked about my chances at completion!

What’s coming up for February? I’m going to begin migrating away from stock environment and start into character movement and interaction, integrating all the work done thus far into the 3DAAK environment. This is where the real magic begins, so I’m pretty eager to get started! The plan is to setup the game to run primarily via a joypad controller. (I’ll be using the 360 controller as my base) The thinking here is to continue the traditional method of input for this style of game from the ground up. Of course, the mouse and keyboard should be solid too, and the game should certainly not feel ported.

March should see the beginnings of environment work, and some functional baddies. Even if it’s just a few oddly colored blocks and default models chasing me around. Still trying to decide on an overall art style. My gut is leaning me down the hand-painted path, but my schedule is  nudging me to photo sourcing…