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Australian Defence Forces - Sneak Peek

Name:	Tim Heldna
Date Posted:	Mar 31, 2006
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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Hi,

I'm currently busy with many things at the moment. Study, work, girlfriend, designing and getting my website up and running.

Something this community may be interested in is a game myself and Frank Sklilton are producing with TLK1.4.

It's called Australian Defence Forces, though the title may change, and is a fps game based upon the Australian Army. If you've ever played Americas Army you'll find the game play very similar. Working on functionality first, as always, so only really have stand in models and levels, however the game is already quite functional and playable.

When finished, aiming for late this year, it will be available for download free. Our website will be up in a matter of weeks and a downloadable, playable demo will follow shortly thereafter.

There is a small possiblity that we may release it as an unofficial starter.fps kit. Thus far the game has been designed with this idea in mind, but I can't make any promises on whether or not this will be a reality.

Here's some screens...

Recent Blog Posts

List:	11/14/07 - BCS Street props 06/20/07 - Character Pack - Vince 06/06/07 - Recent Artwork 03/11/07 - Progress of our Weapon Pack 03/31/06 - Australian Defence Forces - Sneak Peek

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Surge (Mar 31, 2006 at 14:55 GMT)

That zoom is awesome.
Good work.

Alan H (Mar 31, 2006 at 16:27 GMT)

I love the night vision goggles!

Hokuto (Mar 31, 2006 at 16:39 GMT)

nice

Treb Connell (formerlyMasterTreb (Apr 01, 2006 at 01:12 GMT)

hand animations are nice that is a pain to get going in torque!

Ian Roach (Apr 01, 2006 at 02:08 GMT)

Great pics for a great army :)

hopefully u get a steyer going.

Blake Lowry (Apr 01, 2006 at 03:51 GMT)

Looks cool... lol, knew I'd see Ian post on this :)

Tim Heldna (Apr 01, 2006 at 04:41 GMT)

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Quote:

hand animations are nice that is a pain to get going in torque!

My oath they are, finally got it sorted though!

Quote:

hopefully u get a steyer going

Funny you should say that, we already have a steyr. As well as a working, exploding, throwable grenade and also a woking medkit to heal yourself or other players! (screenshots have been updated)

Night vision goggles are a combination of a dml animation (giving a fuzzy, computerised effect), two screen filters, one to saturate light and one for the green effect, and a static bitmap for the goggle outline. Add a couple of sounds and it's quite convincing. The screenshot does it no justice.

Ian Roach (Apr 01, 2006 at 09:52 GMT)

Damn blake howd u guess :)

Good stuff tim, let me know if ya ever need a tester :)

Vashner (Apr 01, 2006 at 23:45 GMT)

I like it...

Mike Rowley (Apr 04, 2006 at 19:55 GMT)

That looks like its going to be a real fun game. The screenshots are super.

Charles Andrew (May 01, 2006 at 11:36 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

wow amazing, talk about an AA rip though, looks awesome, love to see the site!

Tim Heldna (May 01, 2006 at 16:34 GMT)

Lol, we don't deny it's an AA rip off! If you look closely at the above screens you'll notice the welcome message even says "Welcome to a complete rip off of AA". We love that game, haven't played it in a while though. It's a free game and all ideas are stolen from somewhere, aren't they...? Having said that, we have revamped the "bridge crossing" mission so it now looks nothing like AA's map, also game play elements are quite unique.

Download's not available yet but we hope to be able to get a 'beta' version available within the next fortnight.

We have a rough (unfinished) web site and also some forums if you want to chat...
http://www.sentinelgames.com

Charles Andrew (May 12, 2006 at 20:05 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

cool site, how did u manage to get those hand animations in? looks absolutely awesome, what 3d program did you use? and the aniper zoom is amazing

you really should put it as a non official starter pack for FPS that would be amazing, i would get it instantly looks so much better than the official FPS starter kit, you really should do that, you could even sell it....

Tim Heldna (May 13, 2006 at 06:07 GMT)

Hand animations were a pain in the ass, but it was basically a matter of using these two resources:

First/Third Person Different Weapon Models

Setting an ImageState manually

The second listed resource is not entirely necessary, but helped with our 'auto reload' function.

Here's a video of it in action if you haven't already seen it
AIAW Sniper Rifle Video (2.3mb)

We use a combination of 3dsMax 6 and milkshape for modelling. Max for anything that's animated or highly detailed (player, weapons etc) milkshape for the smaller stuff cos it's just so much easier to export from milkshape.

The sniper zoom in that screenshot and video is way old, the scope bitmap was just being used as a stand in. All weapons have some form of zoom, as well as recoil and multiple firing modes, single / burst etc.

I don't think we would ever sell it, we plan on giving it away for free so others can learn from it.
Edited on May 13, 2006 06:07 GMT

Charles Andrew (May 14, 2006 at 07:21 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

why do u se the imagestate resource, i dont get what it does... and that video is awesome nice reloading wish i could something like that in my project! and how did u get that muzzle flash in?? and if you do give the starter away please could i have it? it would be soo useful for my project!
Edited on May 14, 2006 07:24 GMT

Tim Heldna (May 14, 2006 at 13:14 GMT)

Weapons in Torque work on a state system - take a look at the crossbow script to see what I mean. You will notice a ready state, fire state, reload state etc. What the resource does is allow you to jump straight to any given state at your command. Why would you want to do this? To trigger animations. Some people call the reload state by tricking the engine by forcing ammo to 0 which pushes the reload state, using the resource gives you a lot more control over when states are called.

The flash is done within the model, it's done by using a visibility channel on the fire animation. It's just a plate shaped model at the end of the gun with the appropriate texture applied that flashes on and off whilst in the fire animation.

The only problem about giving it away is the head code changes. There's a lot of head code changes required if you want Torque to behave like a proper fps game.

Charles Andrew (May 15, 2006 at 06:05 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

wow sounds cool, will have to try all of this thanks.

and what about the headcode changes could you send me them id love to get my FPS looking more like yours and realistic?

Tim Heldna (May 15, 2006 at 06:23 GMT)

Quote:

and what about the headcode changes could you send me them

Lol, no. There's too many & I haven't the time to rip it all out as yet. One step at a time tiger.

Charles Andrew (May 15, 2006 at 16:19 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

well when you have sorted the code out send it im desperate for something decent like this

Charles Andrew (May 21, 2006 at 11:40 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

im having trouble converting my model to torque, ive used the resource to make the first/thirf person different models, but when i export my model i dont know how to set the LOD for the shape... and what nodes do i have to add, only for the FPS model? i cant seem to find any help for doing this

Chris \"C2\" Byars (Jul 27, 2006 at 23:25 GMT)

^This is why Google was created.

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