Blog for Stephan (viKKing) Bondier at GarageGames.com

Atmospheres... free skies :)

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-10-06T19:43:25+00:00

Here is another free pack for the week-end...

I have been working on this one for months and never achieved the perfection I wanted, so I release it for free.
Though, as you may notice, I have integrated a "Donate" button (hint, hint, hint...) ;)

As written previously in the free texture blog post (earlier today), here is the EULA:
EULA: free to use in any project commercial or not, including your own sold creations (buildings, objects, etc.), as long as you are mentionning my name in the credits and not claiming ownership of the textures.

This is a drag and drop pack. Copy existing files into matching directories and voila.
21 skies with in general 2 versions (with or without rendered suns or moons), lensflares and missions with appropriate sun, sky and fog settings.

Ready to use, yes! :)

(Damnit, the system don't like accented characters, the blog has been eaten... :P)

Samples:

Homepage is here

Free, as in F.R.E.E :)

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-10-06T14:38:36+00:00

Because of my comments onto N.R. and Gareth works - which were much more encouragements than anything else -, I thought I should give a hand to the TGE (A) community.

Many of you are living in a country that lacks a bit true middle-aged architecture and references. Even my own house is older than your country! No offense intended, just a matter of fact. :)

So, I decided to jump out until days are sunny enough and grabbed our digital camera.
I'm glad to propose today the first part of the work I'm expecting to achieve at a later stage.

Old stones (and a few other things) seamless textures (512 and 256 pixels format) - a few samples:

The complete collection and page is HERE

EULA: free to use in any project commercial or not, including your own sold creations (buildings, objects, etc.), as long as you are mentionning my name in the credits and not claiming ownership of the textures.

Darkwind, development keeps going on

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-03-29T12:35:16+00:00

If you ever kept an eye on Darkwind: War on Wheels development, maybe you noticed we went in closed beta, hence every public activity has stopped.
It has been a period of decisions, like for example, selecting a pricing structure and model, reviewing the planning and scheduling of some features, or even modifying the entire storyline date and time.
We also introduced a few new bugs *ahem*, features I mean ;-), well nothing we won't be able to manage.
Sam has made outstanding progress on the code side compared to the little free time he had.

The Squad system is fully working and you can either select to fight AI or players, on the surroundings of towns. You are no able to loot opponents equipments and to propose it for trading in Marketplaces.
You are no more limited to the racing tracks, and it is time to elaborate new combat tactics.

On my side, a few things came in to slow me down seriously. I've been spending time on things I should have not too.
I also thought Sam would be longer on the coding side... damn it.

The world in Darkwind is expanding with the wilderness, an unfriendly place, you'll have to deal with, when travelling from town to town. You will certainly meet road pirates one day, or become on of them and ambush traders.
A reputation and fame system has been integrated to cover such things; attacking traders will reduce your reputation. Are you already feeling the darkside of the force?

Travels are going to be the next beta phase - as soon as I done enough maps and towns - and are handled through a very nice scrolling map, you can control from your web browser.
As a reminder, the game is managed through a web browser and the game client (TGE + TLK).

This blog was mainly intended to post screenshots...
Special thanks to Tim Aste for inspiring me on the overpass.

There is more in these screenshots than outdoor and terrain, can't you see the invisible AI nodes?

Highway to Hell

Interstate Mythos

Lost Oasis (edit: yes it is there! in the background, you can guess it)

Road to Elmsfield

Road to Somerset

Scattered Grounds

Edit: fixed wrong url tags
Edit2: added pics for Highway to Hell, Insterstate Mythos and Scattered Grounds.

The Community Magazine

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-03-27T15:07:36+00:00

Just to keep you updated.

The project is not dead.

Chip has been busy like hell, and should be trapped in the baby warp-time singularity for a while ;-) but we agreed on collaborating and I'll help on the making process and a few fields for which I'm not an ignorant; like -hummm- making coffee? (Chip where is the Coffee Machine switch?).

So, don't lose hope, Torque Magazine should come up someday, maybe in a lighter version than expected, but it will show up.

Thanks for the reading.

Some recent art for Darkwind: War on Wheels

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-02-15T13:29:52+00:00

I just wanted to present some art I've been doing for Darkwind: War on Wheels recently.

We have set up a badge system to reward players in their participation, or for winning leagues. It's a racing based game after all...
I thought it might be interesting in presenting the way I work. I haven't worked so seriously for a game for nearly 10 years, and I feel a bit rusty.
Regarding my past - and long background - in the prepress industry, I have been used to work with Illustrator and Photoshop. Those programs have largely improved since the beginning, and I think some of the operations I'm doing in Photoshop, could be done at once in Illustrator. But like old monkeys ;-), I have bad habits.

I generally start working and designing elements in Illustrator, in a vector format, with a large use of beziers curves.
Such curves are very handy once you are used to.

Here are the 3 badges that have been done so far:
Marshal badge, for users contributing in helping new players.

Final touch in Photoshop.

veteran badge, for users achieving a given number of races.

After some Photoshop work:

Somerset's League Race Champion badge Illustrator.

Photoshop modifications...

All these badges are also scaled done to 50x50 pixels and are automatically added has a signature in the forum.

Another creation session has been done on the barriers.
It wasn't really needed, but after been playing hours on the tracks, I couldn't bear the default barriers, nor the black and yellow stripes.
It was time for me to come up with something new. Though, it was evident, the new barrier needed to keep exact size of the original one, to avoid placement issues. I was also looking to save some frame per seconds and to have a second model to act as a LOD.
No need to mention this was my first attempt in using QuArk.

Here is a view from the start pit of the Somerset Junkyard track #1:

You will notice some Urban Pack elements, as well as Todd Picken's house model.

During the barrier making process, I've been struck by their size. It's more evident as my stripped zone is larger, and when you have a car nearby.

You can see we are sometime using many barriers at once. Combined with the 18 cars rendered in the race and particle effects, saving fps is not an option.
My second (low poly) model is a standard 6 faces cube as seen here.

Closer look, same shape (3 datablocks though) with 3 textures.

Digged out, the complete barriers:

edit: fixed image problem.

Darkwind: War on Wheels, January progress report

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-01-22T09:09:53+00:00

It seemed changes that were put into Darkwind: War on Wheels since last month, were a good opportunity to promote our game again on gaming sites.
Such promotion has always a small but significant impact on players and registrations.
We are still looking for more permanent players, but we are also aware more will join once wilderness code will be integrated. Racing on looping tracks is quite fun at the moment - I personally regret I can't play more often -, but it may also be boring some people.

This is where my role as a track designer is important. I need to keep exploring new ideas, tricks and design to add variety and challenge. On the other hand, new players are requiring more simple and forgiving race tracks, until they acquire enough experience.

We are also looking to limit size of the graphical package, and have been considering using a unique terrain with different track configurations. So was born the Junkyard, a single terrain on which we set up 2 race tracks, an combat arena and a driving school. We could certainly have come with more, but we also need to limit ourselves, and keep ideas for next tracks!

The Junkyard is using 3 different environment lightings: clear time, dusk and thunder. You have not only 3 tracks, but also 3 atmospheres! Though, this may change soon, with dynamic weather integration.
Thunder is in real time and is really looking good. It is currently stock TGE 1.4.

Testers experienced many problems during the lighting phase with the new tracks and new lights - we are still looking to let low end machines running the game (ones with 32 megs of VRAM), and to avoid this, instead of distributing mission files and have the client processing the lighting phase, server is sending pre-lighted missions (.ml). It has fixed some issues and are happy with that solution, especially as there are no extra bandwith requirements.
Next step is to speed up the FPS by better using LOD. It sounds always weird to speak of FPS in a turn based game, but it's true: camera moves in real time!

As I wrote, above, I'm regretting not being able to play more often the game. Hopefully, I have the possibility to run my own events on the server to test tracks and behaviour of the AI.
Latest changes in the graphics are always looking new to my eyes, and I can't stop watching them. Game Extract's Fx Pack has really added so much to the game I can't resist posting a few images from one of the latest Junkyard's track in beta.
And we know you are all looking for pictures, aren't you? ;-)

By the time pictures were taken, some sceneries (objects) were missing.
Flame particles providing lighting will also be real time to avoid the blocky look they have here.

And to finish this blog, our talented community members came out with a new blazing story fitting the universe.
I'm expecting to illustrate it with some ingame footage at a later time.

Hold your breath, you are aboard a car racing in a deathrace!

Quote:

Deathrace
By Matthew A DeBarth

As the car whipped around the tight corner, Kevin Taylor held the wheel tightly and hit the gas. The rear end got a bit loose - the tires skidded sideways before they finally gripped - and then the car shot forward again.

"They were right behind us when we went in to that turn, so be ready for them!" Taylor shouted to his gunner over the screaming engine.

Taylor shifted and started getting ready for the next couple of turns, which could be taken at high speed with the right line and could knock them out of the race with any one of a thousand wrong lines.

"Here they come!" the gunner, 'Joy' Hicks, shouted back. He said something else, but it was lost in a sudden burst of fire from the rear-facing machine gun. The car filled with the stench of gunpowder and hot metal. Taylor stole a quick glance in the cracked rear view and saw two Marleys come around the corner, with a Alpha flying through the air above them. He looked back at the track ahead of him before he could see if the Alpha was going to recover or not. He couldn't afford to be looking back now, or else he'd end up hitting one of the sucker jumps along the edge of the cliffs too.

A series of bullet impacts moved across the dirt off to the right of them, coming directly for the car. The shill scream of bullets passing through metal filled the car, and their own gun fell silent. Taylor glanced over and saw Hicks slumped against the passenger side door, not moving.

He swore and reached back over his shoulder to return fire. The hood of the car behind him sparked as bullets bounced off the thick slab of armour, and the driver stopped shooting and juked to avoid taking any more fire. Laughing, Taylor turned back to the track again...and swore loudly.

He was way off his line - far too tight on the inside wall. He tried to correct, but it was already too late. He hit the little ridge of rock that reached out into the track and jumped off it badly. The car tilted as it it flew through the air, landed hard on the passenger's side on just two tires, then rolled twice before slamming into the outside wall and coming to a rest on its roof at the edge of the track.

Taylor shook his head and looked around quickly. He already knew he was out of the race, but now he was worried about whether he was going to get out of this alive. He looked over and saw that there was a large pool of blood rapidly under the dangling body of 'Joy' Hicks - not a good sign.

The cars that had been following his rear bumper all race now trained their forward guns on him as they passed, and each one put a quick burst into his wrecked car before going back to shooting at each other again. Taylor used the muscles he'd built up by hours of sit-ups to pull his head and chest up into the protective body of the upside down car, and grabbed for the release on his seatbelt. Just five or ten seconds, and he could get out of the car and make a run for it. Until then, he curled up as small as he could as guns tore the car apart around him.

He glanced down through his armpit and watched as one of Joy's arms was tore off be gunfire. Joy didn't respond. Another bullet punched a gaping hole in Joy's skull, and Taylor looked away.

The pounding hail of heavy fire eased up and stopped, and Taylor pulled the release on his belt and fell to the ceiling in a heap. He looked through the jagged holes in the back armour and saw the recently airborne Alpha on the ground, out of control, and coming directly for him.

"Oh, shi--"

edit: fixed image tags...

Why indies should translate their games?

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2007-01-09T23:44:56+00:00

Why indies should translate their games?
Yes, will you ask, why?

The most important and obvious point: many customers are not english speakers.
What seems to me a somewhat important part of your market sales, is unable to understand your game.

Following analysis is based on French population, and may be slightly different in other countries.
1) First category: People over 60 years old, if they were not in an international business oriented company, they wouldn't figure one would need another language than their own.
2) Second category: people mostly over 30 years old, with average education. They don't speak anything else than their primary language.
3) Third category: same age with a higher education level, but they have chosen a different second language in learning: i.e.: German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, etc.
4) Fourth category: young boys and girls around 7 years old, once they are mastering reading and (nearly) writing. Yes they are able to read, but they don't understand.

I don't mean here, this is wrong to put someone in front of a computer, in a language he doesn't understand, and that he won't make significant progress in that language... no I won't, this is how I acquired some German bases in both German and computer science (may Windows NT4 be praised). And I'm still voiceless when I watch my nearly 4 years old son, handling TGE inteface and how easily he acquired "Quit" as a visual element (and also memorized "Apple+Q").

Many indie games are in my opinion suitable for for kids. Much more than Quake 3, anyway.
I would be ready, to buy much more games available through GG's store, for example, if they were available in our own language, for only one reason: I can't spend all the day aside my kids, explaining them what to do in that cool looking game, unfortunately written in a foreign language.
My older daughter 7 years old, is a fan of Venture Africa, but she can't play the game alone - at least not completely -, because she needs my help in undestanding what has to be done. And there are several examples that could be easily given: Rocketbowl, Minigolf, etc.

If parents don't buy a game for themselves, they would buy it for their kids, if they can handle it.

So, indie developpers, if you don't plan to translate your games for the parents, do it for the kids!

On a side note: if you are interested in getting you game translated in French (my German is definitively too poor), drop me an email. I'm certainly offering the best solution for indies.

Darkwind & me, evolution

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2006-11-27T17:29:11+00:00

I'm now a member of the development team of Darkwind. I'm very happy with this situation, as I have a strong faith in this project. I came at wargames first - there was no personal computers by that time - then came Role Playing Games (a strange kind of games, somewhat common in US for a decade) and have been quickly addicted. I missing it, in fact. Mostly the human contact side, as I've always been a computer player, and there are many games to be played out there. And Darkwind, is very close to hyper-detailed wargames, in which lot of parameters must be kept in sight.

I updated my previous blog related to Darkwind HERE but did not figure it wouldn't be popped up back... Check it, as I won't repost what has been added.

We are happy to offer the Garage Games community some wallpapers that are located here: wallpapers. These are the small ones. Larger ones are under the way and will be due shortly.

Here are thumbnails:

The Darkwind Chronicles Newspaper has also been updated with a 3 pages issue (here, in which you will appreciate the very nice particle effect of the flamethrowers...

That's a tough game. We would be happy to welcome you. 8-)>

Darkwind Chronicles

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2006-11-20T12:52:09+00:00

I would like to start this blog by thanking everyone who spent time visiting Darkwind Chronicles website.
This has been a major success - compared to my previous internet experiences - and I'm very happy. You made my days people! 8-)

I would like also thanks Sam Redfern to authorize me to take part in background development of Darkwind (check also development update here).

It appeared that Darkwind's universe could be transposed to the comic strip. Maybe this is because Darkwind is a turn based game; and thus action is interrupted and not permanent - this is precisely what a strip is: picture of an instant - neither to mention all the great physics being applied to the vehicles nor the damages and crash impacts that are very eye candy.

Darkwind's universe will expand further and certainly beyond hopes of Sam ;-) I've decided to have a weekly edition of the chronicles in a shorter form. It is called the Newspaper. You will probably guess why.
Players are encouraged to send me screenshots of their races with a small text, so we can keep the community very active.

Chronicles can be accessed through their main site: Darkwind Chronicles.

No blog without a picture: here is the very first issue of the newspaper:

[edit]fixed image link tags[/edit]

fxGrassReplicator TGE 1.4

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier — 2006-04-30T22:10:13+00:00

I found several instances for fxGrassReplicator on the site but none pointed me out to a recent version. The zip file I downloaded contained instruction dated of 2002, so it quickly became evident it wasn't up to date with TGE 1.4.

I supposed some people would be interested in getting an updated version of the installation instructions, so here they are:

- install both .c and .h files in Torque SDK/engine/game/Fx folder.

- Put the function in /example/creator/editor/ObjectBuilderGui.gui [around line 462] ...

function ObjectBuilderGui::buildfxGrassReplicator(%this)

	{

		%this.className = "fxGrassReplicator";

		%this.process();

	}

- Put this in /example/creator/editor/EditorGui.cs in [function Creator::init( %this ) - line 1136]

%Environment_Item[12] = "fxGrassReplicator";

(or use the next number in the sequence [line 1246])

- Put this in /example/common/client/missionDownload.cs in [function clientCmdMissionStartPhase3(%seq,%missionName)] (around line 65)

after codeline 'onPhase2Complete();'.

StartGrassReplication();

- Put this in /engine/console/simBase.h (around line 1266) somewhere in the 'nameSpace Sim' block (put it as the last xxxxSet entry)

DeclareNamedSet(fxGrassSet)  <-- ADD THIS (Note no semi-colon).

- Put this in /engine/console/simBase.cc (around line 19) somewhere in the 'nameSpace Sim' block (put it as the last xxxxSet entry)

ImplementNamedSet(fxGrassSet)  <-- ADD THIS (Note no semi-colon).

- Put this in /engine/console/simManager.cc [function void init()] (around line 341) (put it as the last xxxSet entry)

InstantiateNamedSet(fxGrassSet);  <-- ADD THIS (Note the semi-colon).

I will provide a complete .zip file with all the original files as well as about 8 new grass textures to play with, within a day or two.

I'm very happy to have been able to do that, this is my very first look at Torque and my very first program compiling ever (even if it was only a little hack)!
Gonna pay myself a beer - 1 confidence point earned today. ;-)

Stephan, STef, viKKing, all the same.