Plan for John Vanderbeck

Show Tool Reloaded, Contracts, Day Job, Torque Real-Time Physics Editor, and Mayhem 2090.

Oh boy have a lot of things happened since my last .plan. So much that this might actually rival a Davis .plan (tm)!

First off is the new Show Tool. For those of you who didn't catch the thread, i'm involved in a total re-write of the Show Tool to bring it more in-line with what it needs to be. The above linked thread has more details and some screenshots. Progress of this has been painfully slow however, and i've wasted a crapload of time trying to implement some form of camera with collision on the scrpit side for the last few days. I'm now temporarily giving up on that to move on to some other aspects of the tool. I'm slated for an initial alpha release by tomorrow so I can't stay hung up on the collision. I really, really, want to have the basics of the plugin system working for this first release. Essentially this system will allow the tool to be easily expanded for modifications to the engine/resources. For example let's say you applied the Stencil Shadows resource. A plugin could be created which would integrate control over those shadows into the tool. The plugin system will allow a plugin script to add its own interface buttons to the tool, which would run its code. It will be really basic but should work nice.

Picked up two contracts this month. One for pay and one for trade. The one for trade is with Shay Casey and the NWX project. This is a snowboarding/sports type game. Shay is doing desperatly needed concept art for Mayhem 2090 and i'm doing some Torque programming for NWX. The other contract, for pay thankfully, is an automated testing system for another game.

Unfortunately 2 contracts in one month, and none last month, doesn't put enough food on the table, so I was forced to pick up a crappy day job :( As of earlier this week i'm now working as a salesperson in Sear's Home Electronics.

Torque Real-Time Physics Editor. What the heck is that? It is a project that we had messed around with internally when we first got Torque then shelved mainly due to my lack of understanding with the engine at the time. Recently i've pulled that back out and started to look at it as a viable tool again. It really didn't work and was a piece of crap but now that I understand the engine again i'm going to tackle this tool again. In a nutshell its similiar to a beefed up Show Tool that provides a very easy tool for loading a player or vehicle, testing the physics, and modifying the physics all in real-time so you can tweak the settings and immediately see the results.

Mayhem 2090 is really starting to rock and roll now. With the concept art coming in, the models being built, i'm getting really excited. In less than a month w'lll probably be actually playing a very initial alpha! YAY!

In fact, i'm so excited about the way things are moving on Mayhem 2090 that right here, right now, i'm going to release the very first sneak peak of any Mayhem 2090 content ever so far! What you see below is a Ritak Mobile Assault Vehicle. This thing is huge (like 8 meterss tall) and if you see one, you might consider running the other way.

Enjoy!


Concept art of the Ritak Mobile Assault Vehicle by Shay Casey