Another Week Already in the Books

So I started the week with two models basically done with being blocked out.  From there I decided if I worked on one model, it may get to completion faster than working on both at once like I normally do.  While working on the one, which I have called Scorpio, I have though of one other design which I have yet to block out.  None of these models are in any condition to be shown yet.  With any luck, the first concept will be up about middle of next month, for reasons I will discuss shortly.  For my first demo, I am hoping to have four tanks available to chose from, so this is a priority.

Now, for what is going to delay my tank modeling process: a contest.  I think my skill is decent, though nowhere near where I would like it to be, but I never have any deadlines.  Should I say something and the date passes like it always does, I move on to the next item on my to do list.  I am hoping entering the contest will give me a little more of a push to get stuff done.  The post after I submit my entry, I will put it on display. I am hoping it turns out as good as I have envisioned.

Just a final note, I have made some minor changes to the log's layout.  Biggest of these includes a list of tanks and their current stage of development.  I am hoping that keeps me motivated.  Until next time,
~gunnah

Friday Posts Delayed

I am not sure if I mentioned it in passing, but I was studying fore and passed a test back in November.  That was the easy one since it was the one for my major.  Unfortunately, I need to take another test which is more of an overview including a subject I have not taken in a decade and a subject I have never taken.  This means I will be devoting quite a bit of time until the test in early March to studying those holes in my knowledge.  But with all of this time newly devoted to studying and still needing to work, I am going to have nearly no time left to do any modeling work during the week.  Because of this, I am going to stop posting Friday nights/Saturday mornings.  It is not like I have been making Friday posts regularly for some time and the ones I do are mostly excuses about overtime or something came up, et c.  I am hoping to get some modeling done over the coming weekends while taking a break from studying, but as fate would dictate, most of my overtime is now over the weekends.  I am going to continue chugging along slowly but surely and hope that things come together real soon.

Hopefully with a focused post one night a week, I can get this project back on tracks.  I am going to add a list of projects for the game as well as side projects I am doing to the page eventually, just to keep track of what I am doing for everyone else.  Until next post,

~gunnah

Work in Progress: Armored Train Car (Part I)

First off, I complete missed Fridays post since I was out late Friday night and was too tired when I got in to make the post.  With that said, I would have little to post today if I had made that post since I did not get much done with the game.  To the left is the current state of my armored train model, a total of 3345 faces.  Creating the UV layouts is about half done, though the turrets may require quite a bit of work compared to the rest of the model and they are not done yet.  Once the UV layout is complete, I can start texturing which will make the image look a lot more interesting.  Not sure how much work I am going to be able to get done on this over the week, but I am hoping to get most of the UV layout finished.  Accompanying this model I am probably going to need three pieces of track, but those should go together quickly once this model is pretty much done - only one piece per section.  I have been contemplating the best way to get the gravel effect and I am hoping that a bump map will work since I do not want to budget that many faces for a detail likely overlooked.

On another note, I have a dozen or so 3D tutorials that I am looking to do in varying degrees of completion - some are just modeling while others go all the way to texturing.  Most are high-polygon count, which will be a nice change from what I have been doing.  When I get around to these projects, I will be sure to post images.  Also slightly unrelated, I am working on getting a Gallery section to show how far varying pieces of 3D art have come.  While that is not a priority, I would like to get that working in the near future.  Until next Friday, hopefully,

~gunnah

Some direction

Well it may be a little while before I get much else done.  Hopefully I can start making small progress in various minor aspects of the game, but that depends more on how life decides to play and it does not always play fair.  Probably the quickest topic I want to discuss is my progress with the Source engine.  In short, not much.  They way the tutorials for the engine recommend setting it up involves setting up the source control early on and I just have not had time to sit through and set up all of the preliminary work (I have been looking to check the engines as quick as possible and this may take a little more time than I was hoping).  So in short I have not done much, but I have read through how to set up the engine and when I get some time I may get around to actually going through and getting it up and running.

Another quick note is that I have added a new column on the 3D art page for small items I want to make.  Some of them were described in the previous post, like the garbage and recycling cans.  I have been looking around and have a few other ides, but I am not sure when I will get around to making a long list of things which should get done (There will never be such a thing as a complete list, but there are numerous things which I would eventually like to make for the suburbia map).

Finally when I was describing the levels I would like to make (I will save you the work of looking, it is in this post) I talked about different maps.  I know I have had tunnel vision on the Suburbia map but that is because at the moment it is the most detailed of the map and the one with which I would like to make the demo.  After a bit of thinking I have thought of the fourth map I wanted but could not think of at that time, a Top-Secret Base. The uniqueness of this map is the overall layout.  The cargo hold I am thinking will be entirely exposed.  The suburbs will be mostly exposed except for a few exceptions (Parking Deck and Mall in the middle of the map). The castle will also be mostly exposed but have a little more enclosure (I am thinking it might be fun to have a map with a different scaling, so on this map the tanks would be scaled models and the castle extend out as though it were the size of a large town).  The Top-Secret Base on the other hand I am thinking will be about half enclosed with a large subterranean area including the central point.

That about covers everything I wanted to get out there, hopefully Friday I have something more to show.
~gunnah

New Labels

So I added a label or two to each of the previous posts based on the material included.  Unfortunately that is all I finished.  Life has kept me very preoccupied, and while I would loved to have done more, by the time I can play on my computer, I am very tired.  With any luck I may find a little time to figure out where that XML went wrong this week, but another possibility is I will not really have any free time until sometime next week.

Now for a brief description of each label.
* 3D art: Any of the 3D images I made, game related or not.  This was the easiest to add since if the post included an image I pretty much added this label.
* Game Layout: Any post related to a discussion on how the various layouts will work is included under this label.
* Log Layout: These are posts dealing with how I present information in this log.
* Modules: Posts related to the various in-game items I plan to include.
* Planning: A generic label for future additions to the game.
* Tangent: Posts which deal with things related to the game but not really the game itself.
* Tutorials: Any posts which related the working through of a tutorial.

Hopefully the next post has a little more substance than this post.
~gunnah

Recovery

So I spent most of the weekend recovering from the cold I had last week.  This means I did not get much done with anything.  My 3D modeling got distracted by a small part of a small part of my big project and I just did not get much else done.  That said, this gave me time to update my Progress page which I will describe below. Other additions for the near future may be an images page where I put all of the images throughout the blog into a single section, though I may hold off for a little while and split it in three sections.  3D modeling tutorials would cover images I have done for the different tutorials and modeling work which is unrelated to the game.  Concept art would include any Ogre screenshots, original 3D modeling for the game, and anything else I think should be set aside in this page.  The final page would be a game preview page which would include images from any project which will be built into the game as well as models which will be used in the game.

Okay now for the changes to the Progress page.  Tutorial completion is set properly.  A note about getting the numbers wrong has been removed since the completion has been correct for about two weeks.  Artis tutorials have been removed.  Though I did not do any tutorials this weekend, I did go through o see what was remaining.  After actually going into the Artis tutorials, I found mot were only tables of contents to be added later.  A new section has been added for small projects not handled under the tutorials.  The tank movement demonstration has been described in an earlier post and I am not going to go over that again.  Also note I moved the start date from early to mid November.  While the two technical demonstrations will become part of the game, actual work on the full game will not begin until later.  So while much of what I do in early November will be foundations for the game, I am not considering the work on the game to begin before the two projects are finished.

Now to go over what I want the Proof of Concept to entail.  Upon opening the executable, the game should initialize and then open up the log-in screen.  For the concept the log-in screen will just have a button to move on to the actual game if the right username is put in, else it displays a failed log-in screen much like I want the actual game to do.  Once in the game, I want to be able to go to at least two of the menu screens and have the bring actual information up, the rest should say under construction.  Hitting the escape key should bring up a menu after passing the log-in screen.  Here I hope to set up a few working options, put mostly this is a place holder for the future menus.  Also in the menus is am option to exit the game which should be the only way to terminate the program.  I do not want to make it impossible to leave but I also do not want it to be possible to exit the game accidentally.  The final aspect I want to add to this is when one goes to where the game should start, it brings up the aforementioned tank movement demonstration.
~gunnah