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In House Character Development

Name:	BrokeAss Games
Date Posted:	Oct 29, 2006
Rating:	Not Rated
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Comments:	YES
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Blog post

Wow, seems like forever since I've posted anything.
My little team of newbs is growing up.
2 of my team members and I have been working on some new characters for Ruin Online (www.brokeassgames.com).

Here is a rough video of some of the work.
Triangle Count: Around 4K.
The work is nearly complete and yes, those fingers are animating. :)

We have 35 finished animations (standard Torque Orc anims plus a couple for eye candy) and more are being made everyday.
The skeleton is a custom BVH compatible rig w/ 8 mount points, skis, cam and all the goodies.
We're adding jaw bones later this week for speech.
Biped is a great format but we felt BVH needed a chance for games too, and 3DSMax was beyond our budget.
The Cubix characters have carried us a long way and are a great asset to any team lacking a character dev team.
We are still using Cubix characters in our live online demo.
The new characters will be patched into Ruin Online Nov. 15th.
It just goes to show, decent game characters can be made on a small budget if you're willing to put in some elbow grease.

Ari (Lead Developer @ BrokeAss Games)

*Special Thanks:
Jondo
Moe
Ashtara
Mr. Bones
Rex (Your work was a valuable learning aid.)

Recent Blog Posts

List:	11/07/08 - Poser to Torque Workflow Resource 11/06/08 - Return of the M.A.C.K. 07/23/08 - M.A.C.K. Released! 02/10/08 - Ruin Online - BETA5 - New Vid and patch notes 06/28/07 - Plan: Ruin Online (Rant of a Savant Dev) 02/11/07 - Stand and deliver! 02/06/07 - Ruin Online Combat Example 11/19/06 - Genesis Human Character Pack (Early Adopter)

Submit your own resources!

BrokeAss Games (Oct 29, 2006 at 12:42 GMT)

Oh yeah, most tests were done in the Torque Demo and some of the content packs available here at GG.
We tried to keep everything as "stock" as possible (except the skeleton) during character development.

Ari
Edited on Oct 29, 2006 12:47 GMT

T Squared (Thanhda Tie) (Oct 29, 2006 at 17:42 GMT)

Awesome. i love the animation breakdance. was that motion captured? or manually done? and the vehicles look great too

Jeppie (Oct 29, 2006 at 19:10 GMT)

It looks good, I like your animation. The character needs something to wear other than his "diaper" though, hehe. Also the crossbow thing is a bit comical, being so enormous and the way he twirls that around with one hand.

Anton Bursch (Oct 29, 2006 at 21:39 GMT)

hey, it's Hugh Jackman in The Fountain.

you'll get that joke in a couple months.

BrokeAss Games (Oct 30, 2006 at 11:22 GMT)

@T Squared: Some of the anims are done by hand, some are mocap. The kata is totally mocap.

Rex (Oct 30, 2006 at 14:24 GMT)

You are welcome, Ari. I'm glad that I could be of some help with anything I've published in my discoveries DTS/DSQ & various modelling programs. For me, just the 'learning process' of accomplishing something undone before; is pretty much reward enough, credits of any kind are a nice bonus, ;).

Thanks.

PS: I didn't realize you are a 'neighbor' of sorts; Willits[if we're talking the same city] isn't that far away from the Bay Area...We visit Ft. Bragg/Noyo Harbor quite often and use the route 20 from Willits sometimes.

BrokeAss Games (Oct 30, 2006 at 14:46 GMT)

@Rex:
Yeah, credit was due. :)
Woah, hey neighbor!
I was born where you visit.
At one time or another our entire team has lived/worked in the bay area too.
Maybe we'll meet up for a roast some day.

Jonathon Stevens (Oct 30, 2006 at 16:42 GMT)

Good work Ari as usual. Just one note, GET SOME CLOTHING ON THAT GUY! ;)

J Sears (Oct 30, 2006 at 17:58 GMT)

Project looks very nice so far, checked out a lot of the screenshots. I would say it gives me hope that I could one day make a succesfull indie project if it wasn't for the fact I read the part where you said you were pretty much all professional programmers ;-).
I do have one kind of off topic question, just for my own knowledge of the idie world, I was looking at your list of updates on your site and it seemed like a pretty good amount almost daily for a long stretch there and it made me wonder do you all still have other jobs or have you found a way to fund your indie project so you can focus on it?

Jonathon Stevens (Oct 30, 2006 at 18:10 GMT)

@J Sears - Ari is a vampire and doesn't require sleep.

J Sears (Oct 30, 2006 at 22:05 GMT)

man wish I'd thought of being a vampire would make things easier

BrokeAss Games (Oct 31, 2006 at 21:58 GMT)

@Jonathon: There's no such thing as vampires. It's just a co-incidence that nobody sees me till the sun goes down.
@J Sears: I'm a network admin, and I work from home alot.
@All: Thx for the feedback. :)

Here's some more screenies of work in progress:

*Screenshots were taken in MilkShape.
**The weapons are from third party packs.
Edited on Oct 31, 2006 22:21 GMT

BrokeAss Games (Oct 31, 2006 at 22:09 GMT)

We are releasing the male and female as a Torque character pack w/ source art soon.
Edited on Oct 31, 2006 22:14 GMT

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