Mecha- first engine tests

It's been a pain... I mean- after about a year since I've touched Torque I managed to forget almost everything I knew. Finaly I've managed to get back into it but it was by no means easy.

"Chicken" walker got into engine with all animations, mount points etc. I'd say it looks quite good although now, after compairing this with HL2 I've been working with last 2 years I just have to buy TSE- I mean: ok, I can fake a lot- I can burn shadow maps, per vertex colour, use env mapping etc (plus with large areas- let's be honest- the only thing that player will be able to see more or less exactly is his own vechicle but still difference between two version is just too big. Simple as that.



Now comes painfull part- finding a programmer and convincing him to replacing standard player with my model. I think I'll first try using dirty tricks like replacing model and playing with config files- after all structure of model does not differ to much- mount points are mount points, animation names can match. Only real problem I can see is getting separate model of cockpit interior, visible and rendered only in first person mode but it's really way too early to worry about it.

Plan for today is to get this "chicken" actually working as player model, then playing around with weapon effects. In simple words- I want to have fully implemented, functional model in gaming environment, capable of performing all actions necessary for a shooter. Only if that will work then I can start thinking about gameplay- I do not want to come up with briliant story, characters, designs, levels only to discover that I am not capable of making it work. Let's see...