No screenshots in this update. Just the build notes and details from today's Alpha patch:

0.0.4.3 Build Notes
--------------------------

This patch introduces the first wave of our revamped combat and skills system, brings many additions to the Military and Engagement system, revamps the boss mob system, improves AI, adds Voice Chat support, introduces the achievement and titles system, integrates zone events, adds in a new options menu, and completely redesigns Plymouth for good measure. In addition to this there is a lot of code cleanup and refactoring going on. Xerves has been a madman in this area recently, bringing some things up to the kit standards, improving some ugly bits of code, and fixing little problems that have existed for some time. Many changes have also been made to make things more easily adjustable at a later point. Previously many numbers which were hard coded are now represented as more easily adjusted baseline figures. This will allow for better balancing through the course of beta testing.

Our previous skills system had been built on top of the original MOM system, tweaking it as necessary to allow for skills management and give a reasonable approximation of balance in the process. This system did not scale very well though, and we had various pieces of code that weren't really necessary, either adding unnecessary complexity or throwing balance out of whack in certain cases. Xerves has developed a new formula for skills and a slew of new changes to make Combat more interesting and allow for more tactics, and easier balance modification. This patch introduces the first wave of changes, with the skills system being significantly overhauled.

The tick rate has been nearly doubled, from 6 ticks per second to 10 per second. This allows us to speed up the speed of combat and to make everything more responsive. Combat skills can now have skills based bonuses that work with diminishing returns. The generic Offense, Defense and Armor values have been replaced with Physical Absorption, Physical Absorption Percentage, Block Percentage, Dodge, Evasion, Parry, Counter, and Accuracy. Ranged offense is now determined by the weapon's accuracy and then adjusted by the character's skill levels. There are now five types of armor: Ultra Light, Light, Medium, Heavy, and Ultra Heavy.

Characters will now receive medals and achievements as a result of the engagements if they performed in exemplary fashion and were lucky enough to catch the attention of their commanding officers. These achievements and medals will each offer a small but permanent skill boost to certain skills when they are acquired. This works very similar to how Exploration points works. For example someone who earns a Commendation Medal might see their Leadership and Defensive Tactics skills increased slightly, they've gained the respect of the men. Certain medals will also offer titles.

Titles allow your character to add both a Prefix and a Suffix to their Character name in-game. The prefixes and suffixes become available based on the characters achievements. All starting characters will automatically earn the suffix "of Plymouth" or "of Freedomtown" and the prefix "Private", depending on their starting location. By default these titles does not display, but you can turn them on through your Achievements Tab. So for example you if your name were Erasmus Hurt you could be entitled, "Private Erasmus Hurt of Plymouth" if you so choose. As you gain military rank the Private would be replaced by options of your current ranking, and as you earn medals, explore locations or earn achievements you will receive new suffixes. There will also be non-military prefixes in the future, for things such as guild or political titles.

We have integrated Green-Ear for voice chat capabilities, and in preparation for this we turned audio back on in the client. There's some mobs missing audio, and steaming audio is still not working properly, but basic audio is functional again.

Our Options Menu has been upgraded signifcantly. There are now sliders for adjusting how quickly to fade your detail levels for interiors and other shapes, for adjusting maximum view distance, at which range to display objects at all, adjusting precipitation density, and for adjusting the amount of groundcover to display, as well as the radius to display it in. There are also on/off toggles to allow players to disable Cubemapping, Normal Mapping,.Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, and Specular Highlighting. There are on/off options to display player or NPC names over their heads or not, as well as being able to toggle Player Lights on or off. And finally there are options to tweak the quality of your Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. Last but not least, there are now some quick auto-configuration options that will set your default settings based on the speed of your system.

We revamped our boss mob system in this update significantly. Our bosses are still split into tiers and support bosses targeted at solo players, small groups and raids. Bosses are assigned from a number of tiers which determine the special abilities they can have. In our former iimplementation though each boss could have access to all of the special abilities on that tier. The new system allows us to choose how many special abilities each boss mob has at their disposal, as well as selecting a tier of those abilities for them. Rather than having the full compliment of special abilities at their disposal they will randomly choose that number of abilities from the total pool. They are chosen from a pool of 127 abilities across 7 tiers and include a wide variety of different effects. This should allow our generated bosses to be challenging, but to allow players to adopt strategies during the course of a battle based on what that particular boss can do.

Finally, Plymouth has been redesigned. We felt the old Plymouth zone was not homely enough for the first zone that most players will be introduced to. The new zone is the first to take advantage of us doubling the number of textures per terrain, and also the first to take advantage of some multiple detail texturing code. Beyond the technical improvements though, this is a completely new zone. The previous zone was dry and barren. We wanted for the pinnacle of humanity on Plymouth to be a bit more extravagant so it is now a lush green zone in the middle of some mountains, featuring a pond, lush foliage, cliffs and overhangs. It also features oingoing battles from Lesoo invaders. It also is the first zone to support time swapped changes to lighting and materials. At various times of day, different lights and signs will be turned on or off across town. We can also change the sound effects, to give certain areas night or day time only sounds. We hope that this adds some more realism and variety to the world.

Along with this redesign we have added in zone events. These are similar to, and part of the Battle system. The difference is that these events take place within a random time period and will repeat. Players who participate in these zone wide events will be rewarded with military experience, and a chance at loot or medals. This system works very similar to our Engagement system, except that it is not instanced. None of these events are solo events, they are aimed at one or more groups of players.

We now have a short list of things that we want to have improved before the re-opening of testing, and will be relaunching a web site with beta application forms some time in the near future. We are currently looking for artists. We have some UI work which needs to be done (2d art) and we need various bits of 3d art completed, primarily some new character and monster models, but also including some environment and building work. If you are an artist who is interested in working on The Repopulation, please send an email to erasmushurt2002@yahoo.com and we'll be in touch.

General

- The worlddocs and encyclopedia code has seen many modifications
- We have added the ability to turn lights on or off, and to swap materials or sound effects based on the time of day.
- Players may now only ran on a maximum 45 degree angle.
- Adjusted the military experience and rank curve. You now gain military experience easier, but the progression curve as you gain rank is steeper.
- The switch target code has been adjusted so that it will only select monsters within your line of sight. The exception to this rule is if a monster is within 4 meters, in which case it will be given priority on selection.

Audio

- Audio was disabled after the 1.7 port due to some issues. It is now functional again. Some things do not yet have sound effects, but we'll fill them up as it goes.

Character

- Gladiator wins and losses are now tracked on your character.
- You will no longer be able to advance past military rank 10.
- There is a new flag for each Character which is meant to track Achievements. Achievements can come in the form of Military Medals or other quest rewarded items.
- Characters can now earn both prefix and suffix titles through achieving various things in game. They can then select from a title to be displayed next to their name by using a drop down Menu on their Achievements Tab in the Character Window. This is explained above in the patch notes.

Combat

- The tickrate has been increased from 6 times per second to 10 times per second.
- Removed the influence of Presence from combat actions.
- The stock weapon rate has been increased from once per 3.5 seconds to once per 2 seconds.
- Added a new damage and resistance type: Energy
- Energy Shields have been introduced. When energy shields are active you will see a shield be created whenever when attacked by ranged physical damage. These shields can absorb damage, but will eat up up some of the shields energy. This will replenish over time, but the lower your shields energy the less effective it will be at stopping attacks.
- There is now a check to ensure that players can only attack monsters that they are facing.

Engagements

- Fixed an issue that was causing mobs in the Base Invasion engagement to be non-aggro.
- Engagements now track participants performance and use that in a calculation to determine medals. We have integrated several ribbons for use in this system.
- When completing an engagement the winning team will now receive a chance at items based on their contributions. This is automatically determined and assigned. The item rewards vary from Skill Cards to unique Engagement Items.
- Fixed a bug that was causing characters to not receive Military Experience after completing an engagement.
- Added two new waves of monsters to the Base Invasion engagements.
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to hang while loading after completing or failing an Engagement.
- The invitation into an engagement will now cancel after one minute.
- Players who perform extremely well in an engagement could earn one of several medals. These medals are permanent character flags and can be displayed under your achievements tab once it is created. Each medal earned gives a permanent boost to a particular skill as you have earned the respect of your peers.
- Engagement Item rewards are now auto assigned after a match.
- Modified the reward code so that only players who were active participants in an Engagement or Event will have a chance at rewards. This should help alleviate zone AFKers from soaking up rewards or military experience.
- When gaining a military rank, players will now be informed of the rank they have attained.
- Gave engagement bosses random special abilities.

Immortal Comands

- Added a few new immortal commands, which are documented below. These commands are i place to test Engagement functionality.
- Immortals can now do an /imm engagementgen to automatically generate a new engagement, bypassing any queue.
- Immortals can now do an /imm militarylevel command to increase their military rank
- Immortals can now do an /imm givemedal medaltype command to reward themselves with a particular medal
- Added the immortal commands /imm suffix suffix and /imm prefix prefix commands. These commands allow you to assign your character a unique suffix or prefix.
- Added the immortal command /imm eventstart to automatically restart a zone event.

Graphics

- Our Atlas terrains now support 8 textures, instead of 4. You should see a bit more variation on our maps as a result of this. This comes to us thanks to the work of Matt Kronyak.
- Added over 15 new building types.
- Added a wide variety of new trees, bushes and other assorted plant-life.
- Added a number of new cave models.
- During early alpha testing we had Selectrons working, but there were networking issues with them which caused us to turn them off. These issues have been corrected and selectrons are again available. There are numerous different selectron options.
- Adjusted numerous monster textures, adding DDS mipmap chains.
- Added new normal and specular maps to a good number of objects
- Reducing the visible distance now properly clips the objects out of view.
- Fixed an issue that was causing distance fog to display incorrectly at times.
- Added new animated billboards to Plymouth.
- Modified the day/night code to multiply the sun color before other lights are applied, rather than after.
- Plymouth has been largely redone. The wall has been removed. Lights and billboards have been added. Textures have been replaced and materials improved.
- Player light sources are now functioning properly. The lighting is no longer overbright, and now affects interiors as well.
- Fixed a problem with our water in previous versions.
- Added in new vehicle models and textures.
- You can now choose to only draw billboard grass with the groudcover or to use actual shapes. This is a user option toggle. Shapes look better but are harder on your video card.
- Groundcover radius may now be scaled through the options. By maxing this radius you can see groundcover a good range into the distance, and by minimizing it you can set it to display only when it is right up on yhou.
- In addition to the two options that were added to groundcover we have adjusted some of the math for groundcover. The number of billboards is adjusted per grid point now, and the grid point is adjustable via options. This should allow for a more even and more customizable performance ratio.
- The default graphics options have been adjusted.
- Fixed a bug that was causing animated materials to not animate properly
- The return of multiple detail textures. Those in early alpha may recall that we implemented multiple detail textures earlier this year, but this was removed due to some graphical glitches resulting in the detail texture needing to be moved extremely near the player to avoid nasty popping. We have reimplemented multiple details, without the graphical issues and in a more efficient manner. This is a completely different approach than before and we are happy with the results.
- Added in an energy shield effect which displays any time that an energy shield is activated.
- Added in an additional Robotic model

Vehicles

- Added new graphics for our vehicles. There are currently three different vehicles available for purchase.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Hypercross Runner Vehicle to use the data from the Hypercross Skimmer unintentionally.

World

- Plymouth has been completely redesigned, this is Plymouth v3.0. This should be the final revision of Plymouth. The zone was redesigned to make it more visually pleasing and homely to new players. Where the original Plymouth was set in a desert area where water processors pumped the soil for water, the new Plymouth is in a lush green mountain range that includes a small lake and other water pouches. All spawns and NPCs have been adjusted and added to this new area.
- Fixed a bug that was causing mob that spawned based on certain areas being triggered to not work. As a result the Baroe Pup and Lurker Menace quests in Plymouth are again completable.
- Military recruiters and bounty hunters have been moved out of the city and into military bases. Plymouth features two such bases on opposite sides of the zone.
- A Lesoo battlefield event has been added to Plymouth. Periodically Lesoo will stage an assault. Players can participate in this event to earn Military Experience and a chance at loot.
- Modified the Battle code so that there could be zone wide battles and all players who participated could be rewarded.
- Each zone can now have specific events attached to it. These events will happen randomly over time and are typically larger scale battle events. Anyone who participates in these events will gain military experience and have a chance at loot.
- Bosses have been populated across Plymouth and we have adjusted our tiered boss system.
- Granted random special abilities to the generated instance bosses.

NPC

- NPCs with ranged weapons will now attack from effective range.
- NPCs should no longer crowd the player to the extent that they are right up on top of them.
- Fixed a bug in the new canAttack NPC code.
- Made significant changes to mob stat calculations to make them scale in a more balanced
- Mobs can now be flagged to grant military experience. This is set on a per mob basis. OWON and FPR military targets should all reward military experience, and other mobs will, as well.fashion.
- Fixed a bug that was causing monsters to not reward faction upon death.
- There is now a military vendor in Plymouth. This vendor will sell military perks. These perks each require a player to be of a certain level in order to purchase.
- Adjusted our boss mob system so that random bosses will select a number of random special abilities from their tier and use those abilities in combat. The special abiltiies vary in power by the boss and are randomly generated when they are spawned. They are chosen from a pool of 127 abilities across 7 tiers and include a wide variety of different effects. In addition to the generated effects bosses can also have unique effects of their own.

Items

- Weapons now have a variable accuracy setting. Previously we handled accuracy through effects, but this system allows us to scale better with skill level.
- OWON and FPR military members will now drop insignias which can be turned into bounty collectors for faction and military experience.
- Many weapons have had their attack rate tweaked.
- Added a variety of new military gear. Each of these items has a minimum military rank required to purchase. In general a comparable military rank item will be cheaper to purchase than a civilian would be able to spend for a similar quality piece of equipment.
- Added in Energy Tanks. These items are used as power sources for energy shields and weapons. These items are equipped in their own slot.

Robotics

- Added various new robotics to military vendors. These robots all require a specific military rank to purchase.

Stats, Skills and Abilities

- As mentioned previously we have made numerous changes to the internal calculations for skills and abilities. As a result of this a good number of abilities have seen modification.
- Your characters stats will now be Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Reflex, Intelligences, and Charisma. Wisdom and Intelligence have been merged and Agility has been renamed as Reflex.
- Optimized the skills display screen.
- Stats and skills now cap much lower but are gained slower than before. This provides us better room for expansion and requires less data changes.
- We have replaced min/max reuse time with a single reuse time since there is no leveling curve to scale these up with.
- There is no longer a level options for abilities. This was a remnant from MOM. It has been replaced by a flag to indicate if this is a player spell or not.
- Made numerous internal changes which will only affect modders/scripters but which makes editing a bit easier.
- Removed a number of vestigal areas of code.
- Most of our internal calculations for things such as health, energy, attack rate, etc have been modified to offer more balanced scaling for players and monsters as their skills increase.
- Removed skill based cast range reduction.
- Fixed an issue with numerous spells that were intended to affect the entire group, but were only affecting the caster.
- Added a variety of new abilities which are available as Military Perks. These are documented below
- Added the Hold Tight ability. This ability will grant your entire group an armor bonus, but it will also reduce their movement speed for a short time. It requires a Military Rank of Sergeant (Rank 3), as well as some skill in Defensive Tactics.
- Artillery Strike is available at Lieutenant (Rank 5), and also requires a decent amout of Leadership skill. It allows players to call in an artillery strike at the target location.
- Evacuate requires a hefty amount of Defensive Tactics skill and Rank 6 (Major). It allows you to teleport your entire group to a safe location, but has a slow use time and a long reuse time.
- Air strike allows you to radio in for an Air strike at your target location. It requires a rank of Colonel (Rank 8) and a large amount of Leadership skill.
- Emergency Evacuation is similar to Evacuate except that it requires Brigadier General status (Rank 9) and a very high amount of Defensive Tactics. It has a faster usage time than Evacuate, but still has a long reuse.
- Ranged defense is now derived from Reflexes.

Quests

- Added a flag to allow certain npcs or monsters to never be involved in any generated quests.
- Added collection five collection NPCs to Plymouth. This includes FPR Insignia, Rare Nickel, Hofkig Armor, Brute Hide Armor and Setlang Armor collections. It should be noted that the Hokfig and Brute Armor NPC slot is shared and only one will be up at any given time.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing NPC activated static quests from functioning.
- OWON and FPR military members will now drop insignias which can be turned into bounty collectors for faction and military experience

UI

- Multiple Information windows are once again functional. You can still get a tooltip just by mousing over an item, but right clicking the item will now open up separate information windows.
- Added a new line to the QuestHelper which will display the objectives of an engagement if you are in one.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the damage numbers to sometimes not appear over monsters heads.
- Significantly upgraded the options system. There are now sliders and on/off switches for a wide variety of different options. Most of these options had been available previously by tweaking your prefs.cs file manually, but now they are available in a much more user friendly manner.
- The options menu now has 5 different baseline graphics configurations: Very Low, Low, Medium, High and Very High. These are a good starting point for any graphics customization.
- Player lights can now be toggled on or off
- A new status bar has been created. Health, Energy and Energy Tank bars can be seen here. This area is transparent but draggable.
- The tomeGUI can now be closed if players so desire.
- Added an Achievements Tab to the Character Window. This tab will display things that your character has accomplished in their career. This includes medals earned, and things accomplished.
- Characters can now select prefix and suffix to be displayed under their name by using a drop down menu on the Achievements Tab of their Character Window.

Unfortunately, my Christmas/New Years vacation was a bit too busy to get much done on the project so...

Gunship-X is plodding along. Progress has been steady but slow -- mainly because I'm working on it alone and because I'm relying on a significant amount of "iterative design" to ensure the game is at worst not un-fun to play. It does get kind of frustrating sometimes re-doing a particular gameplay mechanic (especially one of your favourites) every which way until you find something that works, but I guess that's half the fun of it all.

So anyway... Here's the obligatory (admittedly short, but much higher quality) gameplay video.

[YouTube=N7Y3tdAwL-E width=1290 height=720]

The link of which apparently has issues with GarageGames markup code because it includes a hyphen, so... Please click the picture below to be taken to the appropriate movie.




This video shows off the newly remodelled Strike SLAVE and one of its three special-purpose munitions, the Cluster SPEAR. The Strike, though more fragile and slightly slower than the Assault (the one in previous blogs), features stealth systems and super-heavy weaponry that allow it to sneak into position and then destroy groups of enemies and/or fixed defences from a distance.

The Cluster SPEAR itself is basically a heavy torpedo-like weapon that on proximity to a damagable entity or on collision with a solid surface, detonates, generating a cluster of sub-munitions which shoot out and explode, inflicting not insubstantial damage to anything nearby. The cluster effect itself makes heavy use of the SalvoProjectile code I talked about in my previous blog and is very inexpensive to use (both in terms of CPU usage and in bandwidth).

The torpedo launch system was one of the gameplay mechanics that just took a while to get right. My initial idea was for the torpedoes to be mounted externally on the SLAVE itself. Though this looked good and was easily supported by my attachment code, it added unecessary complexity to the scripts (not to mention the much higher polygon count). It did look good, however. Especially when the torpedoes first "lit up" their engines before rocketing off at a target.

That nice-looking little delay while the torpedoes ignited was very annoying however. With the quick pace of the game it made accurately aiming an unguided torpedo at a target nigh impossible -- unless you were prepared to hold a straight line on the target till the projectile eventually got released.

After trying several different variations on the idea I eventually came to the conclusion that the ignition sequence and exterior mounting was destined for the scrap bin -- which is why this version of the game has torpedo launchers mounted on the sides of the SLAVE and no appreciable delay between firing and the torpedoes being launched.

Also of note in the video is the fact that the various explosions used throughout my game are now properly exported with additive or subtractive blending where appropriate. It turns out the default Maya2DTS exporter just doesn't support the capability to set either flag and export it to the final DTS. It took all of twenty minutes sifting through Maya documentation, Torque tool code, and a couple of Maya scripts to rectify the problem. All up it wasn't that difficult to add a couple of fields to a material which allow the player to specify the type of blending to use and then export the appropriate flags to the DTS. I'm kind of surprised no-one's done it before now...

Oh, and the higher quality video means that you can actually see the projectiles displayed on the LADAR if you go fullscreen and look real close. Wonder of wonders...

I love my tamagotchies because they're my vurtil pet. I play games with them, feed them as weel as buy items for them and amost they celebrate my birthday on the day. They tell time and I play with them alot as they grow, they have heaps of games to win gotchi points. You can connect them with other tamagotchies as weel as bring them to school. And marry them with the matchmaker or another tamagotchi connects it to your on, only if it's an adult. You can pause it too!

My tamagotchi version 5 can allow you to only connect to version 5 tamagotchies because it has specail equiptments such as: it has specail hiden codes for specail items, when it calls and has a bubble with music notes you must give them any of the three items there is and what ever you buy stays there for generations andeven if they die! This tamagotchi also can marry on the spot as weel as pausing fun and you can bring it to PC.

My version 4.5 tamagotchi can connect from version 1 to version 4 and 4.5 and you can bring ti to school and read it's mail as well as pause them and bring it to PC and make them happy when they cry.

You can nurse them up as well as have fun getting points for them.

From,
Maeiy

No videos in this one, sorry. Seems that Vimeo is taking my videos down for being what they are. Ah well. I would have used YouTube, but Vimeo is higher resolution, and my email address is already tied to my personal account (and we don't need bot looting spilling over into ferret videos). But here's some MMO progress for you, nonetheless:

1) I have a semi-functional minimap in-game that displays your coordinates, date/time, and pans/aligns with your character as he/she moves. I'm getting a bit stuck on coding the limited-dragging akin to what you can do with the minimap in WoW, where you can drag the map a little bit to see just a bit further ahead- it's a coordinate system thing, trying to line it up with the player's position and get the dragging right, but it should be knocked down in the next day or so. And after that features and getting compass headings integrated, I'll have me a fully featured minimap. Or half-featured, considering that I have a "Round Two" list of features to add later on. For those wondering, I'm using Ben Garney's Commander Map resource as a starting point. The TSE conversion in the comments and other posts worked wonders to get it to 90% of where I needed it to be before I started to wade into the code and muck things up ;)

2) Swimming was "fixed" in TGEA with a little help from the forums. Now when the lake freezes over, I have to swim to the mouth of the river to get out from under the ice. Not that good a thing if I was running out of breath ;) I also got some water currents working with triggers for interesting effects. Needless to say, water isn't going to be a passive medium in my game (come to think of it, neither will any other environment).

3) Inventory got a bit of an upgrade as I started hitting a couple of its Round Two features, such as size attributes, encumbrance, and the equipped item slots. Basically, inventory will be limited by weight, slowing you down as you carry more until you can be run down and looted by random six-year-olds with slingshots. That is combined with a size attribute that allows you to both equip multiple items in multiple slots (think Mr T's use of necklaces), and to prevent you from using your back pocket to carry the engine-block for an 18-wheeler (you know who you are!). There's going to be a host of other features going into this for automation of tasks usually done by the player now and reduced to automatic tasks, or single-click utilities. The goal is to make inventory management as light as possible- except for those who like that sort of thing, which is where the advanced functions come in. Loot's not my thing, but hey, some people like it, so far be it from me to not provide :)

4) Combat, Crafting, Chat, and AI are all frozen right now while I get the minimap working. It irks me that I have this whole AIAE system done up and have to wait for other pieces before putting it into play for testing, but them's the breaks, right? Crafting will probably be next up after the minimap, with some environmental features mixed in for me to keep my sanity.

5) Tools and Procedural Content: These will probably get addressed next month at the earliest. All kinds of stuff from name generators to NPC generation (backstory, knowledge and conversation capacity based on backstory/location/profession), and "situation generation" for missions to admin GUI's for creating conversation snippets, spells, actions, items, and everything else.

Content scares me more than features. Not to toot my own horn, but I don't see the features I'm planning as especially hard to implement. But making procedural content fun will indeed be difficult. And making it both fun and consistent with the game even moreso. But I'm trying to go the extra mile and make it fun, consistent, and adaptable to the player's/group's abilities, which means months of work and playtesting.

Epic Frontiers isn't meant to be a perfectly balanced, "just so" type of game like 99% of MMOs have been up to this point. But at the same time, Epic Frontiers is not going in the direction of Second Life: a semi-chaotic shot at sandbox play with little consistency due to user-created content. Or, quoting a lyric that sums up a lot of what I like to do when confronted with choices such as those:

I came to a fork in the road and went straight...

So I've been tasked as an artist to code a Tycoon style game using TGB. Thankfully there are many people out there who've supplied code and resources that simpliby TGB, and there are people who are willing to help (Thank you Patrick (Roller Jesus))

Now with what I know of TGB I'm glad to say that I've made some good progress with lots of help along the way, and I've got to have a nice demo by next week!

No problem since it is merely a demo that I need to provide.

As things go I would like to put what I've learned towards the community since I know there are other newbies of TGB like me who always appreciate a boost in their studies of Torque Code.

My plan is a simple game where one is given both a Time and a Budget to spend upon the development of a product.

Simply enough it takes research to develop a product and it takes more research to remove any problems (troubleshooting).

Happily enough I've been able to get these nice little bits working in the game via babysteps.

So hopefully with the final game I can put up the code in the hopes that others may learn from what I've learned.

Hoping to keep you all up to date!

Creating Animated Sprite Sheets from 3D Models
Here's a little side project that I put together over the holiday break, while Torque X 3.0 is in testing. SpriteWorks is a flexible application that takes 3D models in .X, .FBX, .XSI, and of course .DTS and turns them into 2D sprite textures. This can be used to produce very realistic sprites from well lit and normal mapped 3D models. You can also select any animation sequence attached to a DTS shape to create an animated sprite sheet.



SpriteWorks is based on XNA and, of course a running instance of the Torque X Engine - yet another tribute to the flexability of the engine. However, the images that are produced are translucent .png files that will work with any 2D graphics engine, including Torque X 2D and TGB. The sample sprite sheet here is a web-friendly, but non-transucent .jpg file. In the video above, SpriteWorks is used to take the Boombot sample DTS model that comes with Torque X, select an animation (in this case "run"), generate the animated sprite sheet, then import it into Torque X Builder 2D. But it will work with just about any DTS file, from Kork the sample player to the many buildings and vehicles sold as content packs. And with support for .X and .FBX, you can even look to resources, including TurboSquid.com for even more models that can become textures for your 2D game... and some of them are free ;)

SpriteWorks also features complete camera control so you can get the camera angle you want. It also has an auto-aiming feature that always points the camera to the model, regardless of the camera's position. You can also pick from a list of preset camera positions or define your own for quick and consistent rendering. The whole goal is to balance flexibility with ease of use. If you're planning an isometric game, or any 2D game that would benefit from some 3D graphics, this might be useful. Even though Torque X 2D supports 3D shapes within a 2D scene (with the help of the T2DShape3D), a sprite sheet is likely to take much less memory and have less performance impact on your game.

It's pretty close to completion, I just need to finish off a few core features. A few of the features that are not likely to make it for the initial release include surface shadowing, pathed camera, and custom lighting - but they probably wont be too much later. I'm really hoping to get this in some sort of beta version within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, please check out the video and let me know what kind of suggestions or ideas for improvement you might have.

Best Regards,

John K.

Creating Animated Sprite Sheets from 3D Models
Here's a little side project that I put together over the holiday break, while Torque X 3.0 is in testing. SpriteWorks is a flexible application that takes 3D models in .X, .FBX, .XSI, and of course .DTS and turns them into 2D sprite textures. This can be used to produce very realistic sprites from well lit and normal mapped 3D models. You can also select any animation sequence attached to a DTS shape to create an animated sprite sheet.



SpriteWorks is based on XNA and, of course a running instance of the Torque X Engine - yet another tribute to the flexability of the engine. However, the images that are produced are translucent .png files that will work with any 2D graphics engine, including Torque X 2D and TGB. The sample sprite sheet here is a web-friendly, but non-transucent .jpg file. In the video above, SpriteWorks is used to take the Boombot sample DTS model that comes with Torque X, select an animation (in this case "run"), generate the animated sprite sheet, then import it into Torque X Builder 2D. But it will work with just about any DTS file, from Kork the sample player to the many buildings and vehicles sold as content packs. And with support for .X and .FBX, you can even look to resources, including TurboSquid.com for even more models that can become textures for your 2D game... and some of them are free ;)

SpriteWorks also features complete camera control so you can get the camera angle you want. It also has an auto-aiming feature that always points the camera to the model, regardless of the camera's position. You can also pick from a list of preset camera positions or define your own for quick and consistent rendering. The whole goal is to balance flexibility with ease of use. If you're planning an isometric game, or any 2D game that would benefit from some 3D graphics, this might be useful. Even though Torque X 2D supports 3D shapes within a 2D scene (with the help of the T2DShape3D), a sprite sheet is likely to take much less memory and have less performance impact on your game.

It's pretty close to completion, I just need to finish off a few core features. A few of the features that are not likely to make it for the initial release include surface shadowing, pathed camera, and custom lighting - but they probably wont be too much later. I'm really hoping to get this in some sort of beta version within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, please check out the video and let me know what kind of suggestions or ideas for improvement you might have.

Best Regards,

John K.

The next Venture has begun...

Dinosauria is in development. Here's the official announcement.



Dinosaurs live in our collective imagination as the end of things - the crumbling bone, the violently deceased. We imagine flesh ripped from scales and meteors scarring the earth. Through dinosaurs we imagine our own extinction - grey, dusty, lifeless.

If you were to look to the sky a year before the meteor came hurtling from the sky, what would you see?

If you were to peer through the foliage, would you notice the teeming life in the valley beyond?

Venture Dinosauria is about the chaos and color of life on Earth in the first days of flowers, in the last days of lizards.

We're working hard, follow our progress on the blog...
You can also subscribe to get instant updates...
Or you can discuss in the Dinosauria forum...

The next Venture has begun...

Dinosauria is in development. Here's the official announcement.



Dinosaurs live in our collective imagination as the end of things - the crumbling bone, the violently deceased. We imagine flesh ripped from scales and meteors scarring the earth. Through dinosaurs we imagine our own extinction - grey, dusty, lifeless.

If you were to look to the sky a year before the meteor came hurtling from the sky, what would you see?

If you were to peer through the foliage, would you notice the teeming life in the valley beyond?

Venture Dinosauria is about the chaos and color of life on Earth in the first days of flowers, in the last days of lizards.

We're working hard, follow our progress on the blog...
You can also subscribe to get instant updates...
Or you can discuss in the Dinosauria forum...

Hey everyone, I revently posted the spetnaz rifleman, who I can now proudly say is fully modled and textured. However, he has yet to be animated, scripted, and given sound. Pickled Studios is looking for a animator, sound artist, and scripter. The pay would be 1/4 of the money made from the game. Additionally, the rifleman' AN-94 is complete, and the vest of the rifleman has been made bulkier. I will post the picture later this week. Email me at Klahage@aol.com or post here if you are interested.
///edit/// Below is the finished Spetnaz Rifleman and his AN-94. I still have to make my own texture for the gun.

Hi Everyone!

I know that some of you think once again that I've fallen off the face of the planet, but really I haven't. And I know some of you were anticipating a mid December release of the SciFi Interiors Pack....at the time so was I.

Things were moving along nicely until I managed to overwrite the "Aged" texture version of the models - all of them - with the standard version. It's not as bad as it sounds, since it gave me a bit of time to reflect on the fact that I hadn't really liked those textures anyways and needed an excuse to revise them.

Then I got the flu. Then my entire family got the flu. Then I got the flu again. Then we passed it around for a while. Then I really got the flu. Then I go better. All this time I was looking and working here and there on the Pack, realizing that it just wasn't exactly what I wanted. It looked good, but it looked plain to me, and I know for content work generic is probably more acceptable than too unique, but I still didn't like it. So I started reworking the pack.

During this process I began to think of things that I would have liked to have had four years ago when I was just starting out, things like a working triggered elevator script, fully functioning door scripts, teleporters, animated fans, etc.. And then I said to myself, why not? You have all of these things in various builds of either Code Name: Monster Island or Mech Combat: Swords of Avalon why not yank them out, clean them up, lean them down and package them up with the model work to produce a very robust solution?

So that's what I decided to do. I also have not been happy with the documentation that I've included in the past. The demo levels to some degree speak for themselves, but I decided to include a "Construction Manual" that looks like some kind of OEM Planetary Schematic Diagram Catalog of the various pre-formed corridor and room pieces designated with the exact model name:









Here is a sampling of some of the reworked interiors:









































I've counted up about 120 various objects, with approximately 50+ of them being corridor/interior pieces or variations, 4-6 doors/door frames/vertical doors, storage containers, ducting, piping, electrical lights, conduits, vents, and just a lot of little odds and ends.

The best ETA I can offer is that I really want to finish it this month...with a rough estimate now at mid month since the reworked models are done again, now it has to be tested and exported again through Constructor so that they won't have any re-sizing issues.

Really appreciate everyones patience on this, but I think that it will definitely pay off with a whole lot of really really good things in the end...=)

Alan

.

Well, the holidays came and went for me, so I wasn't expecting any more gifts. That was before I read the Front Line Award announcements on Gamasutra this morning.

TGEA 1.7.1 is the Front Line Award Game Engine of 2008!


Are we AAA tech? Gaming industry veterans seem to think so, since they voted us as the winner of this year's Game Engine Front Line Award. Check out our features list and decide for yourself.

This is a tremendous honor. For the past three years, the Unreal Engine has dominated this category. Torque Game Builder was a finalist in 2006, but we were unable to fight our way into the top spot. However, this year, we were able to beat the CryEngine, Gamebryo, Source, and others in order to be the final victor.

So how excited are we about TGEA?


I have been seen jumping out from my cardboard fortress to w00t it up.


Matt Fairfax gives it his two thumbs up of approval. He heard about the final decision during a Torque 3D dev meeting (how appropriate!).


Michael Perry literally started climbing the walls and we had to get him down with a ladder.


Davey Jackson has been popping around corners and screaming our success at the office all day.


Matt Langley immediately picked up his Nerf arsenal and began honing his targeting skills for the next release of the engine.


Comrade Ken welcomes the news, since Torque is a community-driven engine.


Steven is...I'm not sure, but he was sure bugging Mich with his unrestricted excitement.

Thanks again for everyone in our community who voted for TGEA 1.7.1. I noticed that Drew posted it before we could write a blog about it; our community members are everywhere! It's your great games and love for this engine that makes these kind of awards possible.

Here's looking to a great 2009 start with Torque 3D!

Well, the holidays came and went for me, so I wasn't expecting any more gifts. That was before I read the Front Line Award announcements on Gamasutra this morning.

TGEA 1.7.1 is the Front Line Award Game Engine of 2008!


Are we AAA tech? Gaming industry veterans seem to think so, since they voted us as the winner of this year's Game Engine Front Line Award. Check out our features list and decide for yourself.

This is a tremendous honor. For the past three years, the Unreal Engine has dominated this category. Torque Game Builder was a finalist in 2006, but we were unable to fight our way into the top spot. However, this year, we were able to beat the CryEngine, Gamebryo, Source, and others in order to be the final victor.

So how excited are we about TGEA?


I have been seen jumping out from my cardboard fortress to w00t it up.


Matt Fairfax gives it his two thumbs up of approval. He heard about the final decision during a Torque 3D dev meeting (how appropriate!).


Michael Perry literally started climbing the walls and we had to get him down with a ladder.


Davey Jackson has been popping around corners and screaming our success at the office all day.


Matt Langley immediately picked up his Nerf arsenal and began honing his targeting skills for the next release of the engine.


Comrade Ken welcomes the news, since Torque is a community-driven engine.


Steven is...I'm not sure, but he was sure bugging Mich with his unrestricted excitement.

Thanks again for everyone in our community who voted for TGEA 1.7.1. I noticed that Drew posted it before we could write a blog about it; our community members are everywhere! It's your great games and love for this engine that makes these kind of awards possible.

Here's looking to a great 2009 start with Torque 3D!

hello friends,

Can anyone help me to make city and vehicles movements around the cities, as per now we implemented a AIwheeledvehicle to make a vehicle move in a path. so now i need to make different vehicles and many vehicles to move in different paths. so it should look like a traffic in the streets.

waiting for your reply!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to keep this plan short as the subject is quite simple: I've decided to jump aboard and become a GG employee! Even better, GG has decided to accept me. ;)

For me, the future holds no more wasted time travelling an awful long distance to work but instead, getting out of bed, grabbing a brew and powering up the computer. I'll be able to dedicate my energy to programming rather than fighting humanity on the roads.

More specifically the Torque Game Builder, which has only had small snippets of love from me because of ever decreasing spare time away from the family, is going to get some serious attention and that's going to really help that product fly. This'll also have direct consequences on TGB owners as I'll be able to address issues and fulfill requests for features that are long overdue.

It's hard for me to convey how excited I am by this change but now I can focus on a single task and devote all my energy into it: the results are going to be beautiful.




See you on the forums everyone!

- Melv.
TGB Bio

I'm going to keep this plan short as the subject is quite simple: I've decided to jump aboard and become a GG employee! Even better, GG has decided to accept me. ;)

For me, the future holds no more wasted time travelling an awful long distance to work but instead, getting out of bed, grabbing a brew and powering up the computer. I'll be able to dedicate my energy to programming rather than fighting humanity on the roads.

More specifically the Torque Game Builder, which has only had small snippets of love from me because of ever decreasing spare time away from the family, is going to get some serious attention and that's going to really help that product fly. This'll also have direct consequences on TGB owners as I'll be able to address issues and fulfill requests for features that are long overdue.

It's hard for me to convey how excited I am by this change but now I can focus on a single task and devote all my energy into it: the results are going to be beautiful.




See you on the forums everyone!

- Melv.
TGB Bio

This is my personal blog from Riverplay Games towards this fantastic community that I am been apart of since 2004. Since the time of StarCave Studios a few years ago which supported and worked with Staridia, Cellien Studios, Single Cell Games and the many independent others across the world, I have had the pleasure of working with the some of the best artists and programmers of the GarageGames community.

As a few will know and many here that will know, that if you want to make a great game, scale back, look at what inspired your first thoughts in "Hey I can do better!" and then realise that you got a concept to aim for to complete. As for game developers to work with publishers, can you really finish a game with massive pressure, can your team mates maintain the continued milestones without falling to the side .. It is hard to just even get 4 to 5 people you can work on the same level all the way but the best part of an Indie games developer is you are in control of your content, to when you want to show it off, to when you want to release it, to your surprise that many game developers here have done what you are only just beginning to do that not matter how small your project is, that there really is no better community to be involved with.

So many times have I seem some of the best games here, simply fallen away but as long as you have the passion and the drive to live your dreams, you can do a GarageGames success with GarageGames. I have to give a very well congrats to: www.Frogames.com one of the best Indie Game Developers in the world.

Plus Andy Schatz for his detailed blogs at www.pocketwatchgames.com/category/blog

Last but not least, Jeff Tunnell at : www.makeitbigingames.com , be Inspired, be brave :)

Thanks for reading!

Keith,
CEO - Riverplay Games

A Bridge Media Ltd. Company (Ireland)
Online Software & PC / Console Games Development

It has been a very long time since the last post for Terra: Formations.

Screenshots:








I can 100% say that Terra: Formations is returning to the Torque game engines, not only as a demo but as complete game. Be Inspired, as in only two people in 2004/5 brought this amazing concept here to the community.

Happy New Year!

A massive hello and inspiration to Matt and Blake .. Original creators of Terra: Formations.

I have implemented most of the resources in TGE 1.3 and 1.5. Now it is time to do it again, (and add new resources) in TGEA 1.8.0.

With each new release of the game engine I find the resources again and port the code. Script resources are much more portable than the game engine modifications.

I've kept several text files (that list all the resources links I've used) over the past few years and I keep losing them. So I'm posting links here to keep track of them. The most recent resource posts are on top. (NOTE: This is a work in progress so check back for the complete list, should be finished in about a week)

-----------------------
-- GG Resources
-----------------------
Teams
--------------------------
Team Based Character Selection (Seems to be partially implemented in the T3D demo of the TGEA 1.8.0 example)
Torque Team Id - Red vs Green
Team implementation


Set Skin
--------------------------
TGEA Color Tinting Shadergen Addition
Set Skin Problems in TGEA Forum post
TGEA Dynamic Skins & Material Swapping
easier setSkinName 12853
Multiple textures on player
Set Skin 4051
Setting object skins from the scripts


Game Types
-------------------------
BF2 Style Capture the Flag II
BF2 Style Capture the Flag
The Original CTF
Mission Type Objects


AI
--------------------------
Flexible A* Pathfinding System
Path Finding Resource Update: Dijkstra, A Star and Best First pathfinding solution
A* path finding made lightning-fast by pre-compiling
Advanced AI for TGE 1.4
AI Player Extensions

Inventory Systems
-----------------------------
Weapon Cycling in Torque
Torque Inventory Gui Tutorial
Inventory Manager Tutorial

Weapons
---------------------------
Grenades
Continuous Laser
Flamethrower
Shotgun
Bullet Tracers
Torque Laser Beams
Weapon and Ammo Drop


Physics
---------------------------
Physical Zones
Air Control
Impulses and Explosions

Mission Area
---------------------------
Mission Area Force Field for Flying Vehicles
Adding Reactive Mission Regions
Mission Area Forcefield V2
Mission Area Force Field


Shaders
---------------------------
Enable In Game Editing of TSE Water

Audio
---------------------------
Voice Comm using PortAudio, Speex and OpenAL
VMPlayer - Add advanced music playing capabilities

Misc
---------------------------
Icons
Footpuff and vehicle dust fix for TGEA 1.7.1
Plastic Gem #20: Dynamic Creation
Plastic Gem #8: Auto Naming Marker
Plastic Gem #7: Marker Shape
FIFO Queue
OOP in Torque Script
Subscription based message router

Tutorials
---------------------------
Happy Fun Squiggle Ball

The problem with porting the old game code from one version of torque to another is; its 90 times easier to implement a nice single resource than it is to implement 20 of them at the same time. I can't easily separate one resource cleanly from another. I have to compile and test each one. So every time I upgrade the engine I spend at least a week digging up all the old resources.

First things first: Best Wishes to everyone for 2009!

I managed to get quite a bit done on the DTS merger (see Custom light maps for DTS files and More custom light maps for DTS files) over the Xmas break, so if all goes to plan this will be packaged up with some documentation and made available as a resource in the next few days. The main changes since I last posted are:

Standard TGEA materials are now supported. This means it no longer relies on a custom shader to work, which should hopefully make it a lot more user friendly. Custom materials and custom shaders are still supported as well.

TGE is now supported (it turned out that the engine already supports multiple UV channels in TSMesh, even though the DTS format doesn't use it).

There is now a GUI front end, again should make it a lot easier to use.

Anyway a picture is worth a thousand words so here here are plenty of screen shots (very image intensive):

This is the original courtyard model textured and lit in Max:



This is the model exported as DTS with diffuse textures, in ShowPro:



This is the model exported again as DTS, with lightmap texture, completely different UV channel to the first export, in ShowPro:



Then run the two models through the DTS merger:



And load into a TGEA mission:



or a TGE mission (note that Kork is very tactfully not standing on the model in this shot as it doesn't have a collision hull yet and polysoup collision isn't supported in stock TGE):



and finally, for TGEA only, edit the material script and put some bump maps and specular power on everything:



Many thanks to everyone who has given feedback on this or helped out with some testing.