Plan for L Foster

Lore makes IGF 2005 Finals, a sneak peak of what's to come with Lore Gold, an update on Realm Wars and other cool stuff from the mind of an artist.

2004 has definately been an interesting year to say the least. In it I and the guys from Max Gaming managed to put out the first release of Dark Horizons - Lore, a game that was supposed to be small but ballooned into something great and glorious to say the least (more of which I will get to in a bit).

Dark Horizons - Lore

If you haven't heard the news yet, Dark Horizons - Lore is the first game using Torque, and one of the first from this community, to ever make the IGF finals. If you don't know about the IGF it's essentially the biggest and most important festival on the planet regarding the promotion of the best indie developed games. So being choosen from a large list of entries was a really positive thing to have happen and IMHO is quite honestly the culmination of all the hard work that everyone has put into this project.

So on top of the work that we were all doing to get this final update of Lore out of the way, we are now working even harder to ensure that its all prepped and ready to go for the IGF (who wants an updated build for judging no later than January 7th). So much work to do and so little time :)

With that said, we here at Max Gaming would like to pass along some holiday cheer, as such you can get $5 off of Dark Horizons - Lore just by entering the coupon "Lore2004" when you purchase it here at GarageGames... just don't let Jay know that I told you where to get it ;)

Now that that has been all said and done I bet you are wondering what exactly is going to be so special in this next release of Dark Horizons - Lore? Well there is a ton of ways that I could answer this, but here are my personal favorite additions and enhancements:
- All new MAV textures: Everything is bigger, meaner and more meanacing than before. No more big blue Michelin-MAVs.
- Weapon geometry: Its just cool seeing heavy firepower on your MAV as it chews aparts your opponents and spits them out like milk gone bad.
- Bots: More challenge in a multi-player setting.
- Macintosh Optimizations: I don't technicly own or use a MAC but I know that Torques performance with them has been the pits for quite some time. But thanks to GG and Josh Williams giving us some advanced Torque code from TGE 1.5 we have some killer speed optimizations for all you Mac users out there to enjoy.
- Lighting Pack: John Kabus' hard work is now being shown in full glorly with Lore as well and the enhancements that it gives is incredible to say the least.
- Windows and Linux optimizations: Everyone deserves faster game performance.

Here are some previews of the updated MAVs with weapon geometry (as displayed in Dave Wyand TST Pro):





Realm Wars

Realm Wars has been slowly making progress behind the scenes and recently we held a small dev team play test to check out all our recent changes that we have done to the game.



Needless to say things have been going really well here and I think everyone is enjoying the pace thus far that we are moving at. Doug Barker has done some great work getting some camera changes as well as height falling and drowning damage in. Markus Neuble has been working hard at getting a really cool sheild blocking system in place for both hand to hand and projectile based weapons. He and Adrian have also updated RW to the latest TGE which is beneficial too. Adrian has added in some special bonus items that I cannot publicly mention yet as well as the killer MGT IRC system for a more integrated and optimized method of finding games and other RW players. Tim Downs is working on some great new environment and concept art. I on the other hand am building missions, developing various art items and creating updated animations for the project.

There is a lot more to come in the future so keep your ear to the ground.

Grav Rally

The 21-6 guys are still busting their asses off on this project and I am still fortunate enough to continue working with them on this as a technical guy getting all their art ready for the project, animating the bikes and from time to time contributing some artwork too (like a bike or some FX for the bikes). Grav Rally is really coming along nicely so be on the lookout for it!

Content Packs

After Lore wraps up I am going to begin work on two content packs that I tentatively call the "Doodad" packs. Essentially these are smaller items that will help flush out and give those missing final touches to scenes. The two packs that I have planned at the moment are the "Office Doodads Pack" (office equipment, computers, electronics and other cool things you would find in an office) and the "Seating Pack" (various chairs and waiting area art). Here is a shot of some of the work from the office pack in action:



TST Pro - Beta Testing

During this past year I have been involved or working behind the scenes on a few other things. One of these was being invited as a beta tester for TST Pro by Dave Wyand. To be honest I was pretty skeptical of what one could get from a better version of a show tool, especially considering all the 'pie in the sky' wishes some people promised or wanted to do that I felt were wasteful and pointless. But after a few minutes with TST Pro, Dave Wyand had really delivered a solid and usable product that not only gave me everything I wanted and needed from the basic Showtool but enhanced it with a lot of features, functionality and ease of use I would want as an artist. The best part too was that Dave really wanted us to throw stuff at TST Pro as he was building it to make certain that it covered all the bases, which I think it does.

As such I really want to thank Dave Wyand for creating and delivering on a product that really does move the envelope ahead and point out his excellent work as an example that any other application developer for Torque should shoot towards, dont just come close to the bar or meet it, surpass it and raise it at the same time.



Well that's about all that I can talk about right now (yes there is honestly more that I could say, but all in due time), so I just want to take this last little bit to wish everyone a happy Holiday and to all my friends in the community have a great time, we will get back to the world domination stuff after we are stuffed full of food.