Plan for David Blake

Die Happy and Cache Minds are complete. Development continues on Onslaught, though I'm thinking of changing some key elements.

Die Happy and Cache Minds are officially finished, and Cache Minds has been accepted for showing at the New York Independent Video and Film Festival. We're pretty stoked since there were thousands of films submitted, and 250 chosen. And we were among those chosen. I'll be posting up Die Happy when I get it rendered out in a websafe size. I learned a lot from it and hope to learn as much on my next short.

Onslaught is going through growing pains right now. I have the camera working correctly (and have for some time), but right now I'm putting a lot of enemies on screen (still using the orc at reduced LOD). I've been thinking of a way to implement a 2D interface for the Smash-TV segments and gove VERY excited when I saw Melv's 2D Torque and discovered that Phil is also working on 2DT as well.

I've moved my workflow back to LightWave 8 since I know that I won't be working in the frame of mind that I would need to work in to make a GameSpace contest entry. Plus, I've been itching to hook up my Mac back up and learn DVD Studio Pro 3 now that Cache and Die Happy are finished. Here's my current workflow (note that I've never dealt with LOD in modeling before). I adopted it from the way Monolithsoft worked on Xenosaga.

1. Create the high-poly model. This is the one that is used for cut-scenes and in-engine scripted sequences requiring close-ups and detail. The UV map is scaled down to the low level models.

2. Create the low-level model and use the scaled UV map from the high-poly model to make it look as detailed as possible. This is for the top-down segments during the actual gameplay. Since the goal is to shoot everything that moves, the models don't have to be overly complex. They are extremely odd, though. I haven't tried getting my six-legged gunner demons into the game yet. Actually, I haven't moved any models into the game yet. I'm still using the orc, but am really tired of blowing it up.

The work that Melv and Phil are doing in 2D is exactly what I was thinking of attempting with this, though, since 3D seems like overkill for the project. Especially boning the demon's VERY odd movements. I'd rather use sprite states. But since I've only dealt with the 3D aspects of Torque (well, I've dealt with billboarding and the GUI, but on a more limited scale than on other parts of the engine), I had no idea how to approach it so it seemed that there was little hope for a 2D move.

My favorite thing about the idea of a 2D move is that I can use the high-poly models, move the camera, and render the sprites and their animations. No worries about the LW DTS exporter or working with non-bipedal animations within the engine, etc. You know, the things that make me pull my hair out more than trying to get my six-legged (actually armed) demons to grab the turrets coming out of their stomachs (they crab-walk) and shoot at the player. Though I would definitely have more control over the movement of the characters in 3D for things like turret tracking while the demon's body remains in the same orientation. But then, I'm not even sure how this would work since it's the first "real" enemy I'm working on and several of the demon grunts are based off of it (rocket grunt with a rocket launcher instead of a machine gun turret, regular grunt which crab-walks on six legs towards you, attempting to slash at you with their nasty skinned human hands, etc).

I guess I should explain what the concept art for the grunt is (I'm on my work computer and my laptop with Alias Sketchbook Pro is at home...I may post the concept art up because it will make much more sense than my babbling about it). The grunt is a demon that is composed of spare human parts. Much of it has muscle and tendons showing, but some parts have flesh or clothing on them. They are six legged creatures...or more appropriately, the have six arms that they use to crabwalk around the world. They have heads at either end of their bodies. Imagine cutting two people in half and then sewing them together at the waist and adding arms at the stitch line. That's kind of the idea. The thing is, some of them have extra attachments. Like a machine gun turret attached to their stomachs. This allows them to bend up on either side and fire the gun in all directions while their other four hands crab-walk around after the player.

Here's the initial concept piece:


I have no idea how it will work within Torque, but that's what I get to find out.

I'm also thinking of making it a full-on top-down shooter since as I reviewed the design document, I realized that the only segments I had for rail-shooter-esque stuff were for boss battles...and those could easily be converted to top-down battles. Plus, the 2D conversion would be much less jarring if I decide on that direction. So, I'll be watching Melv and Phil's progress to see if that path is the right path for me on this project. It very well may be. After all, it started as a 2D shooter with SDL and I decided that moving it to Torque would be a great idea since it's a much more consistently tested and used codebase than my homegrown SDL...

But first, here's my goal sheet:
1. Finish the high poly model for the turret grunt (note that when I say high-poly, I mean in game terms not CG rendering terms).
2. Bone the hell out of it to adjust for the fact that it can use either end of it's body to gun the turret.
3. Make the basic animations: scanning the area, walk, utilizing the turret from either side, turning the turret around so that the other side can use it, death throes.
4. Make the low-poly model and bone it using the same techniques as above. This way I've done it once and can optimize the bones for the smaller model.
5. Export and try to get it to work in Torque.
6. Use the orc to kill hundreds of them to see how performance is affected having lots of them on the screen at once.

That's pretty much my projection list for Onslaught currently. Now that things have calmed down some, I should have more time to devote to this!