Warscale 42 - A day of good luck

Good day to all of you!

I guess everybody has got one of those days when everything goes wrong. I can say Im quite used to those days around me. But today I want to talk about one day when everything goes fine. Granted, this is an extremely strange occurrence like a full planetary alignment but now I know it can happen.

All started with my son getting well after he got a virus which had him with a high fever for a week. After a very nasty week he just woke up fine, smiling, hungry and playful (even while weak). Fine.

After that I conected to my job network to monitor a task which I was running and found my optimizations were running so well that I had cut the processing time from 80 hours to about 60. Good.

We noticed some small spots all over his skin but a quick visit to the doctor told us it wasnt chickenpox, smallpox or others. So he was fine and I was happy. Great.

So he was so well behaved in the doctors waiting room that we decided to get him a video and in the store they just had Kung Fu Panda on half price. Not only that but Dr House seasons 2 and 3 which were in other store at AUD$50 each season we got them at less than half hat price. I also got Terminator (the original Ill be back) for a ridiculous price so I got happier. Amazing.

Then I went to a video games store and was browsing some DS games when my wife came to fetch me and took me to a bookstore to see this amazing book:
http://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Visual-History-Fighting-Man/dp/075663203X

They had it new for about 30% less than that price you see in Amazon. Fantastic.

Finally during the night some friends came home to visit my son and brought this excellent Shiraz 2003 and we all saw Kung Fu Panda and I went to sleep with one of those really really marked smiles. As Po says... pure awesomeness.

So now I can testify that 'those days' (the bad ones) have an counterpart but I guess they are so rare that nobody has given them a name yet.

And what this has to do with Warscale? In case you were expecting otherwise I bought that Warriors book and its an amazing compendium of images and names for all the weapons and armors used by all the warriors in all the cultures during history. Not only that but there are so many details pictured like Koran passages engraved in some swords, ceremonial blades, other implements which were also part of the equipment, the life of those warriors inside their barracks, tactics. Now I can get a model from any 3D model pack and give it an appropiate name. So instead of naming a dagger like 'curved blade +1' I can call it Kriss +1. Or name the samurai helmet as Kabuto. So if you read names like kopis, umuthsha, Star scale Armor, Seax, Missericordia, Macana, Tanto, or any other strange name instead of just longsword or shortword its because I did my homework.

And of course, its use as source for textures for the game will be priceless.

What was planned
AFX missile hits target only
A small adjustment with the aid of Jeff faust allowed me to create a missile able to hit onl the designated target. Any other target in the way will be ignored.

More than 7 Armor and 7 Weapon
I hope you will be pleased to hear the first weapons and armor batch is finished. Its 14 weapons and 7 armor combined all with their own animations and effects. May not me the best texture quality but gets the job done for the first batch.

Here is a video with all the weapons and armors.

What wasnt planned
Weapon skins
All the models I used were using simple texture names like sword1.jpg, helmet.jpg aor others. But I needed to switch the texture on the equipment in order to be able reuse any mesh. So I had to edit the materials in the models to use names like base.falchion.jpg, bronze.falchion.jpg etc. I also had to adjust some scripts to handle the skin changes for the weapons.

Weapon templates
The process of creating a weapon involves setting all the game properties (like 50) but also create an appropiate ShapeBase Datablock so it can be mounted in the player. I started the naive way coppying a datablock from a previous source but then I realized that that was terrible for mainteinance purposes. So I decided to create a template datablock for each weapon type (swords, crossbow, shurikens, etc) and each template with all default animations appropiate for that weapon. That way when I want to create a new sword I just have to copy from that template and just change the dts filename. Easy.

Base weapon costs
I had to do some analysis on weapon costs related to the damage. So a dagger will cost less than a than a two handed sword as you may expect. Also those prices are modified by the range the weapon so the longer the range, the higher the cost. In fact a throwing dagger may cost more than a broadsword depending on the firing range.

Screenshots!
Here are some shots of the avatar with different weapons in the game.

The plan for this week
Weapons level 2 and 3
Up now the armor and weapons are quite simple but as weapon level increases, there comes more interesting effects.
There are about 9 level 2 weapons and 8 level 3 weapons in the list. This will force me not only to switch skins but also start including some magical abilities, maybe a fire dagger, a frost sword which reduces the opponent movement, things like that. And of course I will have to add some inmunities to the mix. THis just starts getting interesting!

T3D or not T3D?
I was plannig to stick to TGE but after seeing what people is doing with T3D is hard not to be tempted to buy the engine and move all the T3D (or at least to TGEA). Still thinking about it.

Call for contributions
I usually call for this but rarely get an answer but will try again. Right now I need someone able to create environments. I need environment full of life, bright colors, greens reds, blues should be good to the eye. Think about a Warcraft 3 map. The game doesnt require a large map as everything happens in a small location but that location should look good. TGE 1.5.2

Also, I would love if an artist can make me a fantastic grid for the ground instead of that dummy I have right now.

And of course anyone interested in contributing with props, weapons, models, animations, characters, music, 2d background or other just send me your quotes to guimo at spritekin dot com.

Luck!
Guimo