An Oasis in a Void

Shockingly, I actually have a bit to talk about this post. I will start out with my modeling plans for the base in the near future.  My early goal is to get a tile set of roadways together.  Left is an example of the one roadway I have made which I happen to be fairly proud of.  Besides this straight piece, I need to make a t-intersection, a bend section and an elbow.  Some other pieces may follow, but with those four most of the basement area of the base can be completed just to get an idea of what the map will feel like.  Once I finish the roadway, I will probably move onto the side-walls since the sidewalls will have a similar set to the roadways: A straight piece, an inner and outer bend, an inner and outer elbow, a straight and two bent pieces for the t-intersection.  So that is three more roadway and 8 sidewalls.

Now, onto something more fun, over the week I got around to buying my first computer art hardware: a USB tablet (not one of those over-sized phones, but the things which were originally called tablets).  I had wanted one of these for a long time, though never really had much use for it since I did not do much in terms of drawing on the computer over the last decade.  With the amount of texturing I am hoping to get done over the next year or so, the ability to draw on detail will improve my workflow, I hope.  It is not an overly elaborate model or anything, just something for me to play with, if I made it into an actual game art position or something along those lines I would probably upgrade but for a project that has not made me anything, this is a fun investment.

Finally, after much consideration and deliberation, I think I am going to use the UDK engine.  I just like the overall feel of the editor, though I do wish there was a little more control over source code.  I probably will not get the actual license until around the beginning of May, but that is partially because I will not really have much to demonstrate before then.  I am hoping by the to have a decent amount of the base's underground set finished and to possibly start moving into some of the more elaborate underground pieces.

Not sure how much I will get done for the next three post, but after that my work shift will be different which may accommodate a little more work on getting this demo made.
~gunnah

A very rough Weekend

I wish I had something to show for last weekend, but it went very poorly.  Hopefully I will have something for next time, perhaps just showing each of the base models for the tanks or something like that.  Hope life gets better,
~gunnah

Sorry

I apologize, life has been really hectic of late.  I really want to do things for this game, I just do not really have the time.  I am know I have said in a few of the previous posts, I am hoping that life calms down in a bit so that I can begin making progress once more.  For the meanwhile, I am just making small little projects (not getting very far with most of them) just to keep practicing with 3D modeling.  Of course, I find it a great stress reliever also.

Since I have made so little progress, I will share one of my little projects I have been working on.  It is still very far from being anywhere near where I want it to be, but I feel bad I am not making any progress for what seems like forever.  Right now I am calling it "The Church."  I am not really working off any image or floor plan, so I am not completely sure where this is going to go.  It started with just wanting to make an arch.  With the arch done, I decided to put it on a pillar.  I began to duplicate them and realized it looked kind of like the side of a church.  So I decided to duplicate the one side and add some pews in the middle.  That is where it stands now, hopefully it will look cool when I finish.  Also, I am hoping by next time to have one or two of the models for the military base map started.

Have a nice weekend and again, sorry this is late,
~gunnah.

When Life attacks

Well I warned everyone about Friday, but did not see missing Suinday's post.  Was just too tired to write anything.  On top of my trip, Friday and Saturday, I needed to handle something Sunday so I literally have nothing done over the last weekend.  I have a few odd pieces I get the models half done and then move onto the next, but nothing really worth showing off.  Hopefully by next weekend, or at least during next weekend, I have something to show off related to the game.

Just making this little post to let everyone know I am not dead, hopefully next post will have more,

~gunnah

What I need to make a demo

Well, first off, sorry I missed Friday's post; I know, I am a terrible person.  Secondly, next Friday, I am not sure if  there will be a real early post or if I am going to miss that one also.  I am busy Friday night and most of Saturday, no where near my computer, so it is likely I will miss that one unless I got quite a bit done a feel it is enough to warrant the early post.  Now, with that out of  the way, I will start talking about the game and how I am hoping it will move along.  Currently I am finishing up the four base models from Tanarus: the chameleon, lightning, mag rider and devastator/vanguard (the models are near identical looking beyond the texturing).  I am hoping to turn each model into two versions, much more detailed than the basic model.  One tank, probably the mag rider or chameleon whichever is more intricate, will need only one model since I am planning seven tanks at release, each with slightly varied stats.

So with the vehicles discussed, we need a level to use the vehicles on: and I am thinking the one which will go together the quickest will be the military base.  Because a majority of the base will be segments of hallway underneath the surface, I am hoping to get away with two dozen of so varying pieces underground.  Once those are finished, I will probably make three or four pipe sets to add a little variation into the halls and finish the underground section with a few chambers.  Above ground will be fairly sparse.  I am planning outside of the base for each team, six entrance ports which will lead to reconnaissance points as well as a fairly large central building leading to the central reconnaissance point.  Beyond that, I am thinking that there will be four installations (north, south, east and west on the map).  East and west will be shorter sides and hold only two reconnaissance points.  North and south will be larger installations and hold three reconnaissance points.  Note the map will be rectangular with twenty-one total reconnaissance points.

Now the only thing left to do is go over the opening screen again, but since I feel that I already have described it previously in enough detail.  That covers everything I need to do for the demo.  Since I am probably going to try to get the demo out with the least amount of coding, I may ignore the opening screens as well as the multiplayer functionality, just letting users go around and blow up pre-spawned or re-spawning enemy tanks.  How long will it take me to finish all of this?  That is a good question, my guess would be several months, mostly because I am finding it hard to get time to work on this project on top of school and work.

Now, on to my 3D art which I have ignored thus far into the post.  I made an ArmaLite AR-15 assault rifle over the weekend.  I could have worked on some of the previous projects or started to think about how to move forward, but I wanted to do something I would get some enjoyment out of and which would be done quickly.  Each picture is just a re-skin of the others and all of them use the built in materials provided by the 3D modeling program.  I would really love to see this in a demo since each og the paints is metallic, even though it is hard to see from these pictures, and the way the light catches them, particularly off of the gold plating, would be fun to look at - I had to settle for rotating the gun and then redrawing the scene.

Well, sorry for the long post, but I think this is the first time in a long while I had some kind of direction as to what I need to do to get something playable released.  Well, until next time, again I will only post early Friday if I have done something useful, not a filler post,
~~gunnah

A little inspiration

So I did not get much done this weekend.  I am not really sure how to proceed with the detail work on the garbage bin and I have not gotten around to putting together the houses I have already sketched out.  I have a decent amount of backlogged material which I could move onto which I have not bothered with and some unrelated projects I would like to make.  So like many of the last few posts, the question is more what did I do then what did I leave for when I get my life straight.  I have most of my base models for the tanks finished.  I am going to wait until I have all of them to show them off, of course they will not look like much since they are only between 50 and 75 polygons and not textured.  That obviously did not take me all that long to complete, I did the three done so far Saturday.

Sunday I spent learning.  I played four or so hours on a 3D game released last year to see how they handled the whole texture vs. polygon count.  Now it was on the PS3 and a game I wanted to play, meaning I did have other motives for playing it.  What I came across is even in a top release, AAA title, what you want to call it, there are many shortcuts taken.  For example, they only have five or six boys, an equal number of girls, and likewise for their male counterparts, except for key characters.  That does not seem bad except when you think the number of people who walked through the bar and did not notice the same model was used four times in various ways.  I have been observing how to use tricks, like lighting, to conceal these shortcuts and not ruin the immersion of the story because you keep passing the same set of NPCs.  This will not have so much to bare for this game, but is good for my game design learning in general.

Until next time (note this has been edited, I made a mistake in which Friday I am busy),
~gunnah

An interesting detail

No, I do not have much new to say.  No I have not done any programming.  No I have no models to show off.  Life has been busy but hopefully it will slow down.  With all of what I have not done yet out of the way, I will move onto an observation I have made.  As I mentioned early on in this project, I am recreating a game from my childhood in my own idealized image of how the game worked.  It will not use their models, their code or much of what they did, I am using their game Tanarus as a stepping stone.  But I also believe in not reinventing the wheel, so I have made a few concept 3D models from pictured from the original game.  What I have noticed is that the original models gained most of their from texturing, which is fairly evident from the way the models look.  Texturing can add detail but only to a certain extent, then an increase in the polygon count is needed to add detail.What is not so obvious is that most of their models were about fifty polygons.  This means suing these models as a base will give me great flexibility since that is only about ten percent of my polygon allotment for my finished model.

I was actually going to talk about the limits of texturing and I may go into more detail later, but I reached another of texturing's limits.  While working on the trash bin, I was trying to add some rust to the one side to make it  a little more interesting to look at and an item weathered outside its entire existence would be expected to have some rust.My problem is that adding the detail makes the flat color of the base coat look a little off since it seems like there is so much contrast between the area of what seems like high detail and the majority which almost seems like no detail.  Obviously once I figure out how to make it look decent, you will probably see it.

Just a heads up, no post next Friday.  I doubt I will have much done before it so there is little use in posting early and I will get nothing done since I will be busy all day Saturday making the next possible post the already existing Sunday evening post.  Until next time,
~gunnah