zaphod

finished texturing it tonight, here are some shots from the engine: and here is the flat texture since there are no exhaust tubes to animate or anything, I am going to make the antennas wiggle around as an idle animation

working on a new kart to fit the whole space theme, it's inspired by this toy: I've got it modeled and UV mapped with a starter ambient occlusion base texture. Will do the fun part and texture it next. here is what the UV map looks like

they look like halo shields

whats a Zorb ball?

looks dope!

you should post this on CGTalk when you are finished!

I had to make a quick new hat for people to choose from for this new space stage:

real quick post, we just got our new level up and running for the next game mode we are building for the next video. Wanted to post a quick screenshot.

been working on 3 items lately for our next video, along with a new gameplay mode. Here is a little teaser for the items:

ahhh we are reading through the API and drooling. I left Jason Holtman a voicemail hoping to get in touch about becoming a steamworks partner, we have already sent him a few emails with no reply so I fear we might be considered too much of a small fish to become a partner until our game is more complete. We will see

As you might have noticed in our last video, we have started putting particles in our game. For the non-developers out there, particles are how we create effects such as explosions, weather, dust or any situation where we need to animate some kind of graphical effect using many graphics moving together in a certain way. We are using an excellent particle library called Particle Universe which allows you to create these effects in a script type format. Here are a couple of effects I have been working on lately using this system. Here is a snippet of the script of the second explosion effect, detailing how the system should animate the fireball part of the explosion: // --------------- fireball --------------- technique { use_alias $defaultBillboardRenderer material fireball default_particle_width 25 default_particle_height 25 visual_particle_quota 500 emitter Point { emission_rate 1 force_emission true velocity 0 time_to_live 1 } // expand almost instantly then slower affector Scale { xyz_scale dyn_curved_linear { control_point 0 1 control_point 0.1 4500 control_point 0.3 500 } } affector Colour { colour_aff_time_colour 0 1 1 1 colour_aff_time_colour 0.1 1 1 1 colour_aff_time_colour 0.3 .8 .6 .6 colour_aff_time_colour 0.45 .2 .2 .2 colour_aff_time_colour 0.65 0 0 0 } }

we are working on some items for our next video, as well as a new gameplay mode - here is a little sneak peek

yea, I am kind of embarrassed looking at that first model

something like that, is the plan at least.

thats exactly the kinds of stuff we hope people try out on their own by opening up the gameplay through lua, since we obviously don't have time to implement all the interesting ideas out there to be tried.

New Video! Basic Gameplay tag-test In this video we are using a “Tag” type game mode as an intitial test of our gameplay scripting system. Using the experience from this we will design bigger and more exciting gameplay! In this mode, players compete for the longest amount of time being "IT". The longer you are "IT" the more points you rack up. There is also a 3 second immunity after you have become "IT". For this level, we also made points accumulate faster the closer you are to the middle, to encourage people to duke it out in the middle ring. The test was a lot of fun, and gave us a lot of ideas and feedback for how we are going to implement more gameplay features in the near future!

we have recently been working on testing out our first test of some gameplay rules. In order to get a better grip on how our rules system is going to be layed out we are doing a quick game of tag, where the person who is "it" the longest wins, and whenever you run into the person who is it you become it. We are about halfway done with the mode, and have already happened upon some important fixes and tweaks in the process that will help us once we start on a racing mode. Here is a screenshot of the level I made in the last few days to play tag in. This weekend we are having another lan party in which we are going to test out the game mode with around 8 people hopefully. I will be capturing footage to make into another video.

I am designing the menu for what I would like to have for our first playable demo for the IGF, which probably won't have the ability to have different profiles. Ideally - we would like to have steam integrated which would also take care of knowing who was logging in and what character was theirs. As far as there being a start game, or start race - we are planning to have a very TF2-esque client server model for playing, which means that you will have to find a server to play on - similar to HL games or other racing games like Trackmania. Maybe for the final game we will have a set of menu options that will launch a server - but for this first demo all we really need to be able to do if have somewhere you can enter an IP.

spent a little bit of time making some mock-ups thinking about how a few menus might work. The idea for the main menu is that the elements fly in from the edges of the screen, and a model of your character / kart on a stand screws into place from the bottom off screen. The customization menu will be able to handle all your kart and character customization or tuning. The left of the screen is where you will pick which element you are changing, and you can browse through your options on the right side, as well and pull it out further like a drawer with the red arrow to view more options at one time. The bottom of the screen is where your customizable color swatch options will appear for the item you have selected.

there is actually a lot more to the room than what is just in the screenshot because I built it to be able to look all around so there are details in all directions.

ok, I finally finished up most of the garage and got it into the engine - here is a screen shot. It's all a fully modeled little environment so that there is something to look at in all directions as you will be able to freely rotate and zoom in around your kart & character.

the actual view will be much closer, and it will pivot around the kart, leaving not much in view except immediately around the kart most of the time. That said I have not even started filling in details yet, (still WIP!) I spent yesterday building the walls and windows and stuff.

another quick shot, still very WIP

lol, don't be so apologetic, sometimes the nitpicks are useful, sometimes they aren't but it is always good to hear them anyway. I think the barrels are going to be in the background, but I do have a higher res texture base texture still and it would be very easy to smooth it out if it looks funky where I put it in the final composition.