Designed some enemies today and wrote some boring code.
I think this one turned out pretty interesting… not sure if it will be in the game, but I kind of like it 
Rigging and animating it will be some good practice…
I worked with the gunscript (the weapon scripting stuff) today.
Quick rundown on the rules of gun / utility system:
(This means that if you shoot all the time, your gun will get weaker and weaker)
(These abilites can be boosted with upgradeable devices)
I think this kind of system adds to the strategy of using your weapons and utilities wisely.
…not really. Nothing wrong with this Monday. Juho presented me some of his plans about the player weapons and devices that you can fit to the ships. There will be quite a lot of different gadgets and interesting weaponry to use, if I can (and find the time) to fit all Juhos designs to the game.
Also, Jani sent me a fantastic piece of music just a few minutes ago. He got it right the first time, and I was instantly blown away! The music is perfect for the menus and intro-screen(s).
Also I got the texturing for one of the player ships done… might still change, but I’m pretty happy with it… for now
So… all in all quite a good day for a Monday.
Because there seems to be some people reading this blog, I will now try to update it more often. This means I’ll try to tell about everything from the boring code bits to other stuff that happens in my everyday life. So I guess I’ll try to turn this blog more into a diary type of thingy…
So here goes - First chapter of Bouncer’s diary - Sunday 21.1.07
Terrible hangover today. Last night me and a few of my friends had a normal Saturday night in a local nightclub. In Finland this normally means pretty heavy drinking. So every sunday I’m usually pretty tired to do anything except lay on the coutch watching telly.
But now I’m actually trying to texture a new player ship, while watching Southpark with the other eye. The current plan is to make 3 different ships for the game that have different amount of gun and utility slots and they also have difference in weight, armour and engine.
Completed:
* All basic editor functionality
* Boned animation support + Object datastructure changes
* Data structures for the singleplayer campaign(s)
Next:
* Object properties / mission properties and constraint controls for the editor.
* Basic A.I structures and editor support for A.I controls
Dev videos:
Boned animation testing (1mb .wmv)
Basic editor functionality (4.5mb .wmv)
Great news is that an old friend of mine - Jani - is going to do music tracks for nano. He’s a real talent, so expect some great tunes for the game. Also our game designer Juho has come up with some real good designs for the game. So it seems we have a small team now! I hope we are able to create something real good together.
The development has gotten a great start this year. Me and Juho have been working on the SP campaign design. I’ve been modelling and texturing some new objects and continued working on the editor. Game graphics are going to get much better than they were before, mostly because I’ve been practicing modelling, and also I have found a very good pipeline which suits my needs:
I use Silo (www.nevercenter.com) for modelling. Excellent and simple to use modelling tool for a bargain price.
From silo I export to .obj format and use Ultimate Unwrap 3D (www.unwrap3d.com) for UV-mapping, which is an excellent piece of software for all your UV-mapping needs.
From there I export to .b3d (which is the format I now use for the gamemodels) and use Fragmotion (www.fragmosoft.com) for possible animation needs. Fragmotion is the latest software purchase I made, and I’m also very happy with it. It’s simple but effective for my needs and a real bargain at the price of about 15€.
This is one of the player ships. Simple lowpoly ship with only 196 tris. Made using the above tools in a few hours.
In between of coding the editor and being a lazy sob, I’ve been thinking about a new style for the object gfx. I have spent some time admiring and learning the amazing art of H.R. Giger and trying to think how I could unify the organic and fleshy look with hitech and non-organic elements. As I’m no artist, and I especially suck at traditional drawing, my concept ‘art’ is just small doodles that try to capture some of the style I’m aiming for…. I think the hardest part is to actually have a clear vision and finding a coherent style. And constantly learning new things about modelling and texturing at the same time doesn’t help 
… well… I’m getting better at it…. baby steps…
As for other progress… Work on the editor has been progressing fine, quite a bit of work to make a total rewrite though, but it’s a dream compared to the old one. Should be ready soon… after that I will finalize the support for boned animations…
After a little over a week of fulltime development I have noticed why it’s so hard to work at home
1. There’s lots of distractions for example friends calling me because they know I’m home.
2. Easy to get sidetracked. There seems always to be something interesting to check out on the web, or something to do around the house.
3. No-one forcing my workpace or hours. This is nice, but hard to keep focus.
But I’m just getting used to this and seem to be catching speed. It’s also hard to get back to coding on a big project. It takes a while to get in the ‘zone’.
What I got so far is some game design and a good start for the new editor. Totally rewritten to be integrated with the game…
Here’s a small WIP picture….
Excuse the untextured objects, but the gfx and model pipeline are going thru a total overhaul…
Now back to coding…
The arena editor, which is currently a separate program, will cease to exist. It will be totally re-written and integrated straight in to the game! Meaning that you can access it easily from the games mainmenu, and the loadtime will be zero. You can edit your arenas and play-test them instantly. This will be a little more work for me at this point, but saves me a lot of hassle when me and Juho start to work on the singleplayer missions, as balancing and play-testing them will hopefully be a breeze using the shiny new editor…. fingers crossed
Picture of the old editor. Hopefully the new one will be a little more userfriendly…
As for the A.I. implementation I came up with a weird idea last night in bed and had to wake up to write some design in the middle of the night, as usual. Let me first tell about the problem. A.I. creatures (enemies) have to be able to mostly attack player when they see it and collect some stuff. They can also attack each other… but more about that later. They can patrol around a little, but are basically waiting to someone to come to their field of vision. But I wanted something that would give me more control on the patrolling paths or areas. I originally designed that I could use the editor to draw ‘patrol paths’ and assign certain enemies to use paths, so that they would move along this ‘rail’ until they saw something interesting, like a player in need of some punishment Nothing wrong with this idea, but it would make the whole arena editing very messy and not very user friendly as you would have tens of paths circling around the arena. Also it’s not very interesting.
What I want is to mix random/flocking type animal behaviour with some control over it. So I’m designing to use a kind of invisible virtual breadcrumbs, which the A.I.’s like. They come in different ‘colours’ and you can place them around the arena. Creatures like the breadcrumbs so much, that unless they have something important to do (fighting or fleeing), they wander towards a breadcrumb they can see. But they also get bored easily, and when they have visited a certain crumb, their interest towards that particular crumb gets low for a while, and they try to spot another crumb nearby to visit. With this system you can build an arena of which certain parts attract more enemy attention than others. You can also specify which colour breadcrumbs certain enemies follow if they do at all. This is all just a theory right now… I’ll have to see how this might or might not work….
Just wanted to thank the people that participated to the development of ‘nano multiplayer beta’ by providing great ideas and content in the form of Gunpack and Arenas on our old discussion forums. We will open new official forum when the second incarnation of the game is closer to completion. I hope you are still around then!
Very big thanks to you all.
