Blog for Jesse (Midhir) Liles at GarageGames.com

I like art

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2006-07-28T01:19:20+00:00

Hey, I just finished (for the most part) my new main menu backdrop, I thought I'd share it with you guys =)

If anybody wants to make me a seamless skybox based on it, I would be willing to pay upwards of $50 USD.
Also, I'll then release the skybox into the public domain.

Here is the picture:
crossbones.us/images/cityscape.jpg

The image is free for whatever use you feel like making for it, as well. If anybody wants them I have the layered .psd and a .png of the same image. This was made entirely with the GIMP.

I've got hands. And I've got pinball.

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2006-06-18T07:43:33+00:00

I've been wanting for some time now to get a decent digital camera to get some good reference photos for my FPS game Shadows. Too much work (I make/deliver pizza) and I find myself drained and useless and I just haven't done it. I have a hard time finding any kind of work so I feel grateful to have my job but still, it's draining. I did make some progress at least with the visual appeal of the game. I purchased a pack from Max Thomas with a Glock and a Mac10, which both got added to the game. The cool thing is they both include hand models for first-person so I've used the hand models with the rest of the arsenal in my game as well
(many of them from the Modern Weapons Pack)

crossbones.us/images/unzoomed.png
crossbones.us/images/zoomed.png

Anyway, the announcement of the price change on TGB spurred me into actually buying it some weeks ago.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to work with. I've got a rough but playable pinball
game working:

crossbones.us/images/pinball.jpg

It was relatively simple to make a border, a ball, some flippers, and a bit on the bottom to move your ball back to the shooting thingy. No, I've never designed a pinball game. I've played quite a bit of pinball in my younger years and I've always had fun with it. While searching I found an excellent resource for
pinball collectors, or in my case, people interested in seeing real photos of LOTS of old and new pinball games
for reference.

www.ipdb.org/

Internet Pinball Database is awesome. Definitely gives me some material to look at for ideas =)

Score! Back to work!

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2006-05-19T20:12:26+00:00

Renting a room from some friends, I've got a place now to do some development. The network here sucks (We're sharing a wireless expander between three computers) so I'm not able to do any alpha releases from here. I've switched my game over to TSE which has broken many features, no visible projectiles, shell casings or bullet decals, dynamic lights, shadows, etc. I'll just wait patiently for the full release of TSE to fix these minor issues with my bling. I've made some remarks in the forums about a scoreboard that keeps track of deaths and kills as well as score. I did indeed finish and post this resource although it has yet to be approved by the overworked GG crew. In the meantime, here's a link to it. Sorry, I don't have any good screenshots up yet, but I will have some eye candy for you all in the near future.

Moving out.

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2006-01-30T10:51:45+00:00

Well, this is it, I've got to be moved out of my ex-girlfriend's house before February. To make matters much worse, I don't have a new place to move to. I'm going to be staying in a waterlogged old trailer in the woods until such time as I can afford to move into a clean, dry place capable of sustaining my development PC and server. This means I will not be able to work on my game (I'm going to lose my mind, I'm quite certain). As it is, my PC is the last thing left to be packed, and I'm having a tough time turning it off, so I thought I'd let you all know what was going on, lest you worry at what will most likely be a lengthy hiatus from the GG community.

Hopefully I will return sooner rather than later, but I _will_ return sooner or later. Thank you all for being an awesome community! (And, wish me luck, I could use some.)

Project reaches alpha!

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2006-01-19T08:37:35+00:00

I know that reaching alpha doesn't sound like very much, but let me explain; I've been working on various ideas using TGE for quite a long time now, buying content packs when I can afford to and generally teaching myself how this all works together. I have been working primarily on one game, called simply: Shadows. The game now has about 75% of the features I have planned for it, minus the magic system which is going to be the last major milestone before beta. Beta is going to be spent polishing and balancing everything, adding maps, effects, and other content, and trying to squash as many bugs as possible before release. I am only one person, so this might be a long time as I have other things going on in life that need attention.

Let me get to the point...

I have succeeded in bringing my game to a point where I think it is playable (even in online multiplayer AFAIK) and I would like to take the opportunity to give back to the community for all the awesome content packs and other resources that have even made the game possible in the first place. I also have the selfish goal of getting some useful feedback from everybody regarding ideas, bugs, compliments, and any other criticism or flaming that is felt appropriate.

My website is at: http://crossbones.us

Feel free to go and download the Shadows alpha and try it out. I do ask one thing, and that is that if you like the game please register on my forums and post your thoughts about it.

Friday Dec 2 4:22

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2005-12-02T04:22:29+00:00

More weapons! SQLite user persistence, and a much nicer Testing Town!

I've made some good progress since my last .plan. For starters, here's some pics of the new weapon models I added!

As to the codebase, 1.4 came and landed in my greedy little hands, so I quickly converted everything over to the new engine. I must say it's a much nicer environment to work in. The mission editor has never looked better and the whole shebang is just much smoother in general. In the past two days I just implemented a loadout/team/race selection dialog and SQLite user persistance! You just throw your username and password into your player options, and the server will remember you when you select your loadout. It will be a matter of time before I have it saving player scores. Then I'll add a top-ten list. This is all based on each server (somewhat like Freelancer's multiplayer) and requires no intervention by the admin to get working.

It's coming together now. =)

Tuesday Nov 15 13:17

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2005-11-15T13:17:53+00:00

I was tired of the flat terrain in "The Testing Town". After all, what good are buildings to hide in if the buildings are on an infinite flat surface? So I built a street layout using some prefabs I made from one of the street packs from www.3d-diggers.de and some good ol' fashioned elbow grease. I used Cartography Shop 4.2 and the Torque Pipeline. (And obviously the Torque Mission Editor =)

Playtesting a tactical/action FPS is alot easier when you have something to hide behind.

Tuesday Nov 8 12:35

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2005-11-08T12:35:29+00:00

Shooting at things is fun, but not without something to hide in, on, behind, under, etc. So I busted open CShop and made a couple of shops, a factory, and an office building. They aren't terrifically cool, but they are mine. They need a whole lot of detail work before they're done but they work as cover for now. The glass is a DTS with a transparent material.

I also found a free glock 17 model on TurboSquid (http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/204360). I turned it into a useable Torque weapon but I'm a bit fuzzy as to where the muzzlepoint, mountpoint, and ejectpoint need to be attached to work properly I might just have my .cfg file fubared. I even made the gun semi-auto, I was very proud of myself. Maybe a little too proud. You can see here how the soldier thought he was so incredibly cool with his new Glock that he could catch a bullet with his bare hand:

I really do need to learn how to get multiple root/look animations in for different weapon types.

I've found a glitch I'm not sure whether it's a bug, a feature, operator error, or some combination thereof:
This is the lighting pack 1.3.5 engine modifications/additions without the use of the light editor due to being implemented in a 1.4rc2 build, in a building using standard omni_lights placed in Cartography Shop+Torque Pipeline. As you can see the soldier is well below the shelf above him but his shadow is rendered onto the top of it. Odd.

Thursday Oct 6 12:35

Jesse (Midhir) Liles — 2005-10-06T12:35:39+00:00

I've been toiling away, trying to fix up the soldier pack animations for my game, and as this is my first real attempt at animating anything, I thought I'd share some screenshots =)

The real focus of this was to get the soldier to crouch and lay down prone, and of course be able to crawl or crouch-walk. While I was creating these animations I decided that while I was in here fiddling about with the soldier's animations I might as well see what could be done about the absolutely shameful way the soldier was carrying his rifle. And so...without further ado....

Screenshots! =)

Standing up...

Crouching...

Prone...

:::::EDIT:::::

Just switched over to Photobucket.com so the images should be fine now, thanks =)