Plan for Jerane Alleyne

I missed doing a plan last month due to so many things going on with our game, Event Alpha...I'm only now really able to sit down and write a plan before another month goes by.....


General Progress
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After nearly 3 years of overpriced, underwhelming service, our contract with our web host has ended. I wanted to wait until our time was over before moving on to another host...one that updated their software and wasn't so expensive. Right now I'm caught between Globat and PhP webhosting. Both seem pretty good and well-priced, so I'm gonna think about it for a bit. Our site will be offline til the end of the month or so, as I have to clear up some issue with our previous webhost before getting it on with another...I've spent enough money already >( When the site goes back up, we should have a good loadout of new material to show off :) Just in the case of anyone needing to reach me in the meantime, I'm using my temp email address, majin_psyduck@yahoo.com...don't ask :)


On a bit more of a brighter side, things are starting to pick up again, as our motley crew has started to come back from their respective vacations and getting resettled in their assignments. We've set a date for an internal demo tentatively in June, and a public one to follow shortly afterwards. The internal demo will concentrate on our final player class construction and all established areas concerning the player in particular. The following demo will concentrate on more gameplay aspects and expanded areas of the base player class.


Creative Progress
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We've got a new artist on board to work on one of the races we need completed for the internal demo. They have their own unique look and will no doubt be nice to look at in the game. I'll probably put up a screenshot here of the models and concepts of our artists have completed, til the site is back up and running.

I think I've finally got a skeleton for the animation that is trouble-free. One of the main problems was an issue we had with sidestepping. In the first person view, the player model would rotate improperly, trying to align the BIP_Spine node (in a Biped skeleton in 3DS Max) to a forward view. All that was required was to rename the nodes so that the code didn't see Bip_Spine. Much thanks to Joe Maruschak for pointing that out :) Other things that were added were dummy nodes for certain events, like emitting smoke or fire when damaged, jet thrust when jumping, and a source for lights. Also, just to be safe, I added a dummy for a possible rear camera, in the case of using the current cameras (eye & cam) wouldn't be prudent. When we start working on aircraft, we'll have a Bomb view camera as well. There are yet still more animations that need to be added...seems like for every new idea, it requires 5 new sequences :)

It looks like we'll be having a new level designer joining us soon. For our demos, we won't need more than 2 basic maps, but during that time, we'll probably be putting him through the ringer getting him caught up on what we will be doing once the full campaign maps begin. Additionally, we got some great music samples from a great musician that fit perfectly with the vision for the game. As it stands, we'll probably have a few tracks from different artists to cover each of the races...thats the idea anyway :P


Programming Progress
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After updating our code to the current Torque version (last month :)), its time to get out hands dirty with the fun stuff...

Now that our lead coder is back on, we're running full steam ahead. In getting damage location (from the resource that was provided here on the GG site) to work, there appeared to be a problem with it working for..apparently having to do with the size of our players...as they are much larger than the default player used in the Torque demo. He eventually wrote his own code for damage location, and it works fine, with accompanied gui damage bitmaps to show specific damage to areas. He also managed to knock out the bugs in our earlier homing missile code...although it was interesting to see what it was doing before that :)

There is yet still more work to be done...Gui bitmap controls for energy, "components" for the player units to control their various attributes, triggered events that occur when a certain amount of damage is received, and weapons(!). We're making it a priority to finish the player class first, and then work our way down. We're saving things such as graphical enhancements for later stages, as this is the most important area to tackle now.


Well, that's about it for now. If I've forgotten anything, its just because I'm tired. With all the work we're doing, we're gonna make it a priority to get to IGC this year and show our asses off :)

Later...