Introduction

It certainly has been a long time between drinks so to speak. Version 1.0 of the Skeleton Pack was launched in July 2006. I promised an upgrade around August / September 2006, but here I am now presenting it in May 2007. Garage Games will make the official release shortly. In the meantime, here's a post-mortem on what happened.

Well our new born daughter appeared on the scene, that took up a lot of my time. Also I collaborated with a Max animator so the release was hinging on delivery of that product and mine. However in the end the release was waiting on me.

To cut a long story short, the trick to releasing updates, it to do smaller ones, more regularly. So without further ado, here's what's in the pack now and what didn't make it.

What's in.

Static skeleton poses, so you can strew them about the place. Some corrections were made to the skeleton that makes fireballs. I enhanced some of it's animations, and cleaned up a few scripts. I also added a climb up animation which you will see in the game. Oh yes, I created a fully playable level to show you how to use the skeleton pack to make a game. The level has four spawn points so it can be played multiplayer or co-op.

I changed the texturing so you can now skin the skeleton. Currently there is a default bone-yellow skin and a white-bone skin. The climb-out animation required some script changes to stage the animation so you could use that to have the skeletons lying flat on the floor (or in one of the static poses I have provided) and as the player walks past they spring to life.

I added triggers for all the animations so sound effects were invoked. There are some nifty particle effects, one for a generator effect and a ground churning effect as the skeletons climb out of the ground. Speaking of which, I create a mission staging script. It allows you place an off-screen spawn, for all your enemies to wait, and an on-screen spawn where you want them to appear just at the right moment. I've also implemented generators so one spawn point, can spawn many skeletons over time. The skeletons are staged so you have to kill one wave before the next wave will spawn.

There is a colour key / gate systems. The keys are textured using a skinning method. After killing all skeletons in an area, the last one drops a keys - illuminated like gold, which will open the gate to the next section. The whole map is designed to use very little space, to direct the player through a confined area in an attempt to show you how to make a challenging compelling level which keeps the play fun, and the player busy.

I've included a few objects from my, never-to-be-released graveyard pack, such as some trees, rocks, pillars, crypts and headstones. There's some environment effects, rain, lightning and a moon. I've implemented a lighting system which allows you to place lights as normal, but also has a special torchlight object which makes a randomly flickering light perfect for fire. I've rendered a new sky-box to represent night time.

There is a boss at the end which is really tough - don't worry there's plenty of ammo and health - and a large health bar to show the bosses health when he appears.

I've added a medic pack from my collection. I've also included skeleton parts, and an exploding skeleton debris effect so all the skeletons shatter into bits. There are some trees and grasses as well.

I've added some non-specific tutorials for Lightwave users on weight mapping which you can grab here.

There's whole pile of tuts here, so grab these to add to your existing Skeleton Pack videos.

I recommend using XVid codec and Media Player Classic to watch - sound is noisy so you may need head phones.

Unwrapping
Shows how to unwrap using endomorphs - better control over unwrap process.
Unwrapping. 90 meg ~21mins

Skelegon creation, weight mapping, bones, animation and export to Torque
Shows how to add skelegons, weight map, then rigg and animate quickly for Torque.
Skelegons Pt 1. 13 meg ~3.5 mins
Skelegons Pt 2. 33 meg ~9 mins
Skelegons Pt 3. 27 meg ~7 mins

What's out.

I had some issues with all of the following and so they will appear in subsequent releases - to be announced. The Max animations aren't ready to ship. I am waiting on my Max animator for those - so sorry to the Max crowd - but as soon as they're ready I'll let you know. I wanted to include Blender source, but that won't happen for a while. The Skeleton Liche King didn't make because of issues I had with cloth dynamics, that will come in the future. There were also catacombs to go in at the end as prefabs, but I'm redesigning them for a standalone pack. However I hope you can appreciate that all these things take time, and that the upgrade is a large addition to the existing pack , and at no extra cost to existing customers. Please enjoy.

Coming soon.

- TGE 1.5.1 test confirmation
- TGEA upgrade
- RagDoll / Torque Motion compatibility test

Screenshots...