Blog for Dave Young at GarageGames.com

Ingame User Content: Photo Uploading

Dave Young — 2008-07-25T19:54:49+00:00

I continue working on Cubekind here and there and it's been kind of my innovation proving ground. I keep thinking up things which are technological hurdles, and then brainstorming ways to solve them.

Sign up for our Test Drive

One of the achievements since my last blog was the ability to import a photo from anywhere on the user's system, detect its dimensions, and offer a little photo processing/captioning. The ability to use those gigantic pics that come out of digital cameras is really cool when they are resized properly, but not all users are savvy enough to do it themselves.

I also made drag and drop item creation bars which work two ways: drag and drop an item from the creation pallette into the world, or drag a photo onto a special item to create it as a picture frame with the photo already skinned onto it. These continue to be enormously useful creation tools to let a user customize their environment.

Anyway, we will be doing a signup drive for affiliates soon. The affiliate program lets coders and artists create things for sale in the Cubekind ingame store.

It's a short blog, but I came with links to some fuzzy but cool videos of the customization tech in action.
Check it out

I've also been working hard on the RPG library of functions and technology while finishing up some RPG Series TorqueSchool courses in the interest of whipping it more into shape for a TGEA release sometime this fall. It's been previously known as Titas, MMOKIT, Gryphon. The more I work with TGEA the more I love it. I would have loved to be doing Cubekind in TGEA, but potentially need Mac compatibility.

Anyway, that's it for now!

Cubekind: Dawning Soon!

Dave Young — 2008-07-09T19:20:26+00:00

Warning: Picture Heavy!

It's been awhile since I posted a blog of what I've been up to. I have a few projects I've been working on this year; a pretty sweet client project which I'm sure will debut soon, and a pet project that started last year: Cubekind.

Sign up for the Test Drive

Cubekind began as an experiment in 3d world customization and grew organically to become a really cool bundle of technology which is destined to plant a foothold in the next generation of online interaction. The concept of begins with a virtual world model in which people can play games and customize their entire environment, and add features to make it more fun to use.

There's a whole generation of creative user out there who is fond of using easy drag and drop tools to express themselves. They jump on social networking sites, they use software like Weebly to whip up personal web pages, they post pictures in galleries. Partly to keep others informed as to their doings yes, but also to express themselves, design, and create. Cubekind feeds that need, your Cube is your world.

3D Virtual Worlds are nothing new, neither are 3D Chat programs. Cubekind has several features which are pretty unique in the arena and make it very different from current offerings.

Avatar Customization
Of course we have lots of ways to customize your avatar:

Complete Customization
Cubekind makes use of an easy to learn drag and drop interface to customize your world. You can open up your material library and drag and drop textures onto walls, ceilings, floors, and objects to obtain a unique look.

You can drag and drop objects from your object library into the scene, move them around, and rotate them.

The level of customization goes deep. You can click on any interactive object to see all its textures, and drag and drop to swap them out.

You can add your own custom photos inside the Photo Cube and to your avatar.

You can have pets, feed and train them

You can setup a Music Cube to let people listen to your music, or let people listen to an internet radio station inside your cube.

Other cool features:
* You can add special effects and behaviors to items by dragging and dropping them from the Behaviors library. Add cool fire effects, spinning, sound effects, etc.
* Add links to your favorite websites
* Keep a calendar of events
* Add links to other people's cubes, creating networks of cubes within the system.
* Network-wide Search feature to find friends and cubes with content you're interested in

Games
You can install and host games in your Cube, where friends can join in and compete for high scores.
Cubekind will release with several playable minigames, and tons more are planned.
Some in the pipeline now:
* Pet games
* Multiple mazes
* Card games
* Shooting Gallery
* RPG Battle game and PvP

The gaming subsytem we are using is designed to allow for third parties to create games compatible with Cubekind, and be downloaded as premium content. The Cube owner installs games into their Cube, and people who join can play the games you have installed, with the rules and preferences you have configured.

Affiliate Program
Cubekind will offer an affiliate program, which allows content and game developers the ability to create premium content and have it sold in Cubekind. Everything from avatars, accessories, props, furniture, entire Cube texture themes, and minigames. Any style of game is valid as a minigame. With some heavy interest by large scale distribution partners, commissions on premium items could be very nice!
More info here.

Other Uses
Cubekind is pretty open ended, and has many foreseeable uses, including:
Meeting places for guilds or communities
3d virtual storefront
Online learning centers
Online 3D art or music portfolio

Cubekind will launch its Test Drive on August 18th. It is *free* to join Cubekind, and we offer a premium membership called the Grid which allows members to actually vote on new content to be added, helping to steer the development of Cubekind. There are other membership advantages, read more here.

See the Full Tour

So... keep an eye on the fun, more info will be forthcoming as we approach the Test Drive date!

Combat Starter Kit goes to GarageGames QA!

Dave Young — 2008-06-04T19:52:05+00:00

Shattered Glass
Many a shot has rung out from the weary speakers of our CSK development team since we released the Combat Starter Kit. Many a shard o' broken glass still litter neighbors' driveways and lawns as exploding jeeps, helis, tanks and HGT's fill our ears and eyes with the evidences of combat.

Courage
It takes a strong soldier to stand up against our own Ashtara's sniping skills on the demo server, honed by years of working with Milkshape and Elite Ninja training. Only a ground covered in C4 explosives has proven effective in catching her unawares.

Original Release Announcement

Announcement of 1.01 Patch

Combat Starter Kit has finally gone to the GarageGames QA team for testing prior to release in the GG store.

It's been out for about 4 months now, and the team will be looking to add another few features, like per-weapon stat tracking and improved Vista support. The TGEA port is underway as well but will be a ways longer still. The stability of the product has been solid and we've seen some pretty sweet projects underway with teams who are using CSK as a development base.

Other features, like team and class selection and base capture, have been used in other projects to make fantasy style CTF games, and some amazing integrations with ArcaneFX have taken place on other projects using CSK. If you need a starter kit to save you months of time on your next FPS style project, or just want it just for the vehicles and models, it's a tremendous deal.

Until the Combat Starter Kit is rereleased through GarageGames, we are continuing to offer it for purchase on our website:
Combat Starter Kit

You must be a registered owner of TGE to purchase the kit.

In this blog I wanted to also make some mention of how the kit was developed, as some folks had questions about where certain features came from or what went into the process of making fully integrated kit like this one.

When going about making a kit, and trying to make it as complete as possible, it's only natural that you will do some due diligence and see what's out there. It took the team who worked on this project almost a year to square it away to the point of being releasable, and the codebase was overhauled a few times during those times. It began on a TGE 1.5 codebase, got the CG overhaul at one point in time, went to TGE 1.5.2, had various things tried and removed and modified, etc. During this time with some of the many coders on the project, someone would plug in part or whole of a resource to see how it worked overall. Sometimes the resource was reverted, and our general rule of thumb is to not use a resource blindly when making a sellable product. That being said, sometimes one slips into a codebase without going through the proper channels, and things that were meant to be experimental or temporary make it through the end of the development cycle and into a release product. Some of the trickiest things to get in and feeling right were commander map and helicopter control for example. Those began as amalgamations of resources or forum code and very heavily modified/started from scratch until the functionality was what was needed. No less than 4 separate coders had a go at getting the commander map working right, and I'm sure looked at everything from all available commander maps here, to stuff in the RTS kit, to completely custom solutions. When a feature is needed, of course the first course of action is to see what's available as resources, what functionality it offers, what kind of forum discussion for a feature is around, etc. Then some files are pulled, experimented with, integrated, made to work in a larger system

One developers implementation is also not everyone's ideal implementation, so though someone's resource may have inspired or resemble a feature present in the CSK, it isn't a matter of fact that the person's resource was simply grabbed and inserted into a codebase or is present in any way. I personally have contributed several resources on GG, as have Duncan Grey and Erik Madison, who were some of the lead coders on this project. We each delight when our resources are helpful to someone, and all resource contributors sign the same agreement when they submit a resource, which releases all rights to the resource. That being said however, it is always courteous to give credit where credit is due. So we've gone through the codebase and made sure that if there was a resource used in part or even used in the research process, that indirect contribution will be noted on the CSK credits screen in our next build.

Gameplay video here

Try the demo
We have released a demo of the CSK so you can see the kit in action, and are also running a game server for you to blow something up.
Get it here.

Some eye candy:

Here is a master feature list of specific changes and additions.
Vehicles
All vehicles created from scratch
Helicopter (New Object Class)
Tank Vehicle (New Object Class)
Transport Helicopter with source art
Heavy Ground Transport with source art
Attack helicopter with source art
HumVee with source art
Tank with source art
Vehicle Repair Pads,
Vehicle Refit Pads
Vehicle Lockon and Lockon Warning System
Helicopters with multiple mountpoints and turrets
Gauge Controls (Velocimeter, Altimeter, Compass)
Customized GUI swapping depending on vehicle, weapon
Vehicle Location-based damage system
Steering Decay
Upright Camera
Weapon Camera (Barrel Cam)
Vehicle Throttle
Multiple Gear Transmission, Configurable RPMs, Engine Pitch
Tread/Track Thickness (Position Offset)
Rigid Body forces on vehicle
EngineOn/Off
Engine sounds for flying vehicles
Sample Classes
Engineer (Repair Tool)
Medic (Medikit)
Sniper (Sniper Rifle)
Support (Ammopacks)
Heavy Assault (Rocket launcher, C4, Detonator, grenades)
Assault
Commander Map
Supply drop
Vehicle and Place Icons
Target Area Set
Spawn Points
Custom IconType set on Shape Level
Optional spawn sweep cam (camera slowly moves in and focuses on player)
Other Additions
Turrets
Parachuting
Teams
Group Targets
Team Targets
Custom Player Positions (Swimming, Prone, Kneeling, Parachute)
Update Bounds Box, and optional Bounds Box Update to include weapon extent
Climbing: Buildings and Objects
Sliding Doors
Encrypted Zip support
Equipment Mounting and Reskinning
Mounted Object Fine Tuning (pass in a transform)
Individual Gravity
Flag capture mechanics
Team scoring
Base command console destruction
Radar destruction
New Art
Icons
22 New Interiors
2 New Player Models
Assault Rifle
M60
Shotgun
Sniper Rifle
Submachine Gun
Grenades
Knife
Weapons
Multiple Weapon Recoils
Exclude Built-in Hands Rendering of models
Sticky Bombs (C4): note: these do not follow when vehicles move
Bullet Line Tracers
Autoload when empty
Weapon swapping
Multiple firing modes
Switch to alternate weapon on noAmmo
Rocket launchers with lock-on
Head shot notification
Chainguns with spin-up
Configurable Directional Weapon Recoil
Ammo and Clip GUI
Custom Crosshair based on weapon
General
Allow multiple copies to run on same machine
SQLite Database Integration
New Gui Controls
CommanderMap
Generic Progress Bar
Vehicle Gauges
Vehicle HUDs
Drawing
dglDrawBitmapRotated
Animated UV support for mesh materials (variable speed directional animation)
Turrets
Allow multiplayer client control of vehicle mounted turret
Added max Pitch and Yaw to turrets for a configurable field of fire
Added configurable max pitch and yaw speed, to allow variable turret speed
Crosshair Hud
Per weapon crosshair
Weapon Range
Render Object Range
Optional Frame
Configurable Offset
Fill Colors, Frame Color
Lock-on Cabability
Change Name color based on team
Mapmaking/Level Editing
Object builder additions: add preconfigured clusters of objects (landing pad with lights)
Custom light objects

The price for all of this is only $99. Documentation and support included.
Combat Starter Kit

An Easter reminder

Dave Young — 2008-03-23T11:13:08+00:00

OK, I'm lucky enough to welcome many of the community as my family, but I admit I've been lapse with pics and personal things. While transferring pics from my camera yesterday I stumbled into this one of my wife and daughter at a wedding we went to last weekend. She is 4 months old now. The look on my daughter Olivia's face instantly struck me as pure, uncompromised joy. On a scale of 1 to 10, she's at a 10. There isn't anything she could do more to demonstrate how completely filled up with joy she is at this moment. Look!

It struck me in several ways. First how much of an incredible miracle she really is for us, though I complain sometimes about the inconvenience. Second, that she, like each of us are before God, is a blessed child. If I can feel this way about my one little girl, how much more would my Heavenly Father as the source of all love, feel about me as His blessed child? How much more can he look upon me... anxious to stop at nothing to give me the chance to have that same heart filled with joy. And giving the ultimate sacrifice which speaks for itself time and time again that he will stop at nothing to wash me clean of sin and see that I can live my life unhindered.

I am relatively new to understanding all this, and very much still a child who needs to be washed clean. One thing is for certain. Today we honor the resurrection of a man so famous, we remember him 2000 years later, number our days by his birth, and have symbolic elements representing his life and death in every area of life. Incredible story of an event so shrouded in mystery and glory, and one worth looking into even thousands of years later. The Easter bunny's story is rather more shallow.

It took me 30 years to come to the truth, and I'm glad I did. When I look back at all the years fighting against the battles of my own attempts at steering my life it pains me deeply. I once mocked and shouted loudly that God wasn't real, didn't exist. I can't even imagine how much it would hurt me to be standing right behind my daughter, calling gently to her, and having her ignore me for so many years pretending I didn't exist when in her heart she could feel it wasn't right. I am eternally glad the creator of the universe didn't give up on me and kept giving me a chance to finally look into the truth of it all.

Anyway, enough ranting, I'm just grateful and glad to be alive.

Happy Easter!

Combat Starter Kit Update 1.01

Dave Young — 2008-03-19T01:15:09+00:00

Since our launch in January, the Combat Starter Kit team has been busy.

Gameplay video here

We've added all kinds of cool things to our own copies of CSK and have found the real benefits of having this kit handy. You can build a new map, copy in red base/blue base and have a team CTF map lickety split. Adding new weapons is a breeze, and changing out the player model works just like stock does. We've seen some neat projects being built with database and RPG elements too, AI addons, singleplayer projects, it's always flattering to see your product used in such a wide variety.

This first update, marked 1.01, includes some serious additions to the Combat Starter Kit.

The flagship addition of course being the Heavy Ground Transport(HGT)

Built to scale with love and massive attention to detail. Full source art included.

Comes in 4 LODS
Hatch animations
Interior Damage Readout Screen, which is an IFL animation that plays during damage taken to the vehicle. It is somewhat a timed countdown to destruction. The frames move from a clear computer screen--Damage--Danger--GETOUT!

It comes fully documented, laying out the settings and suspension mechanics of a similar vehicle in a depth and clarity never before seen in this community.

And of course it holds the right kind of cargo :)

The rear hatch is left open slightly to let the seated players watch the wartorn scenery tear by. It's an awesome effect.

Also in this update is the brand new M1A1 Tank, built with one thing in mind, and believe me when I say that it's not plowing snow.

Also added in this update:
*AntiPersonnel and AntiVehicle Mines
(They actually rise out of the ground a little to show you where they are if youre a friendly)

*Claymore Mines
*Laser activated, settable to blow up only for other team

Full feature list

It's still $99, come grab it in our shop today. If you're an existing customer, grab the update in your client download area.

RPG Series: Character Creation for AFX/AFXA

Dave Young — 2008-03-05T03:46:27+00:00

We have finished porting over the course into the ArcaneFX for TGE product, and have created a single course containing information needed for both AFX and AFXA. Easier that way, if you upgrade your tech in the future.

The AFX solution includes new functionality for maintaining server-side material lists, quite indispensible in keeping track of material changes on multi-textured models.

Here is a preview for the course: RPG Series: Character Creation in Arcane FX. It is a preview consisting of a PDF of the first week's materials (no source code files or art assets included). We worked hard on this course and will be supplementing it with an advanced course on multimesh functionality. Hopefully this preview document gives the taste of what goes into one of our TorqueSchool courses, and why they are a tremendous value.

It covers the creation of the first step in the character creation process, which is the avatar/player selection screen, and many tips on working with GUIs. The full course is taken entirely from the comfort of your home at your own pace. A suggested learning plan is included and the instructor will take any and all questions. The full course is almost 200 pages, with full working examples, source code and art assets.

Download it here: Size: 52 pages, 5MB.

Enjoy!

The next class in the RPG Series: Databases and Persistence, is about a week away from beginning registrations. Covering both MySQL and SQLite implementations of database functionality, it should be a staple in your game bulding arsenal! Price will be $50.

A moment of silence for Gary Gygax

Dave Young — 2008-03-04T22:09:43+00:00

This is some of the saddest news I've ever heard:

Gary Gygax dies at 69

When D&D 3rd Edition came out, I stood at GenCon and approached him in his booth at a time when no one was there just to have an extra minute with the man who really did change my life.

When I look back pretty much to age 4 or 5 when I played D&D in the back of a station wagon with a handful of borrowed 6 siders from Monopoly and some loose leaf paper, battling troglodytes and kobolds and lizardmen because I had seen my big brother play with my friends, to the RPG Series Course I am writing, this man has touched my life deeply.

If it wasn't for his contribution and pioneering in role playing games and stirring the pot, crusading for free thinking and one of the greatest recreational past times the world has ever seen, I would probably not be a coder today. I've sat behind thousands of hours of gaming sessions with that raw spirit of adventure and wonderment he instilled in me, and strived to manifest it to my players as a Game Master.

In having discussions with parents as to why D&D was OK for their sons to play, in using it as a therapy tool to walk friends through difficult times, to exploring relationships and building lifelong friendships. I don't think the guy knew how big a ripple in the pond he made.

I really can't understate the impact the man has had on me personally and on our industry. Some of the first computer games were role playing games, in the days when we went down to our local IBM shop to pick up floppy disks of Mines Of Moria and Gorp...

So back to that moment when he gave me a few (forgotten...) words of DM inspiration and signed a book I will now treasure more than ever..

Rest in Peace Gary, you're about to begin the big Monty Haul campaign now. Save a seat at the table for me.

RPG Series: Char Creation Course Preview

Dave Young — 2008-02-23T17:29:05+00:00

We've had a lot of inquiries for a course preview for the newly launched RPG Series: Character Creation in AFXA course, so we're posting a preview consisting of a PDF of the first week's materials(no source code files or art assets included). A version of the course for AFX for TGE is almost complete as well. Hopefully this gives the taste of what goes into one of our TorqueSchool courses, and why they are a tremendous value.

It covers the creation of the first step in the character creation process, which is the avatar/player selection screen, and many tips on working with GUIs. The course is taken entirely from the comfort of your home at your own pace. The full course is almost 200 pages, with full working examples, source code and art assets.

Download it here: Size: 52 pages, 5MB.

Enjoy!

The next class in the RPG Series: Databases and Persistence, is almost ready to begin registrations. This is a powerful class indeed and has been a blast to create, covering both MySQL and SQLite implementations.

Combat Starter Kit 1.0 Released

Dave Young — 2008-02-14T07:00:44+00:00

No one's on the bridge. Using the trees and larger rocks as cover, you weave through the foothills until you reach the foot of the bridge. Looking around, it's clear but once you're on the bridge there is no cover. You'll need a good 60 seconds to capture the flag.

You make a sprint for it, HEART pounding. As you reach the flag your brain registers what your ears have been hinting at... an Assault Chopper bearing down on your position too quickly... too late. You drop to prone and try to melt into the unyielding bridge. The flag crawls up the pole as the concrete around you erupts in near misses, debris flying wildly as the chainguns do their dirty work. Enough is enough. You unsling your rocket launcher and turn around as the heli pilot repositions for a final assault. You flip open the monitor and wait the 3 seconds it takes to lock on to the heli's heat signature. *Launch*

You can almost see the look on the pilot's face through the windshield as the rocket finds its target.

We are proud to announce the release and availability of the Combat Starter Kit on our website:
Combat Starter Kit

You must be a registered owner of TGE to purchase the kit, this is a GG sanctioned product.

The CSK team worked for the better part of 2007 to bring you this new entry into the Starter Kit market.

Here is the result of their hard work:

Gameplay video here

Here is a master feature list of specific changes and additions.

Vehicles
Helicopter (New Object Class)
Tank Vehicle (New Object Class)
Transport Helicopter with source art
Attack helicopter with source art
HumVee with source art
Tank with source art
Vehicle Repair Pads,
Vehicle Refit Pads
Vehicle Lockon and Lockon Warning System
Helicopters with multiple mountpoints and turrets
Gauge Controls (Velocimeter, Altimeter, Compass)
Customized GUI swapping depending on vehicle, weapon
Vehicle Location-based damage system
Steering Decay
Upright Camera
Weapon Camera (Barrel Cam)
Vehicle Throttle
Multiple Gear Transmission, Configurable RPMs, Engine Pitch
Tread/Track Thickness (Position Offset)
Rigid Body forces on vehicle
EngineOn/Off
Engine sounds for flying vehicles

Sample Classes
Engineer (Repair Tool)
Medic (Medikit)
Sniper (Sniper Rifle)
Support (Ammopacks)
Heavy Assault (Rocket launcher, C4, Detonator, grenades)
Assault

Commander Map
Supply drop
Vehicle and Place Icons
Target Area Set
Spawn Points
Custom IconType set on Shape Level
Optional spawn sweep cam (camera slowly moves in and focuses on player)

Other Additions
Turrets
Parachuting
Teams
Group Targets
Team Targets
Custom Player Positions (Swimming, Prone, Kneeling, Parachute)
Update Bounds Box, and optional Bounds Box Update to include weapon extent
Climbing: Buildings and Objects
Sliding Doors
Encrypted Zip support
Equipment Mounting and Reskinning
Mounted Object Fine Tuning (pass in a transform)
Individual Gravity
Flag capture mechanics
Team scoring
Base command console destruction
Radar destruction

New Art
Icons
22 New Interiors
2 New Player Models
Assault Rifle
M60
Shotgun
Sniper Rifle
Submachine Gun
Grenades
Knife

Weapons
Multiple Weapon Recoils
Exclude Built-in Hands Rendering of models
Sticky Bombs (C4): note: these do not follow when vehicles move
Bullet Line Tracers
Autoload when empty
Weapon swapping
Multiple firing modes
Switch to alternate weapon on noAmmo
Rocket launchers with lock-on
Head shot notification
Chainguns with spin-up
Configurable Directional Weapon Recoil
Ammo and Clip GUI
Custom Crosshair based on weapon

General
Allow multiple copies to run on same machine
SQLite Database Integration

New Gui Controls
CommanderMap
Generic Progress Bar
Vehicle Gauges
Vehicle HUDs

Drawing
dglDrawBitmapRotated
Animated UV support for mesh materials (variable speed directional animation)

Turrets
Allow multiplayer client control of vehicle mounted turret
Added max Pitch and Yaw to turrets for a configurable field of fire
Added configurable max pitch and yaw speed, to allow variable turret speed

Crosshair Hud
Per weapon crosshair
Weapon Range
Render Object Range
Optional Frame
Configurable Offset
Fill Colors, Frame Color
Lock-on Cabability
Change Name color based on team

Mapmaking/Level Editing
Object builder additions: add preconfigured clusters of objects (landing pad with lights)
Custom light objects

The price for all of this is only $99. Documentation and forum support included.
Combat Starter Kit

RPG Series: 160pg Character Creation Course

Dave Young — 2008-02-08T21:27:00+00:00

RPG Series: Character Creation for AFXA

Quote:
The heroes of the world desperately await to enter your game and become the world-saving, maiden-rescuing and villain-smashing characters they were born to be!

Yet you can't let them in... you don't have a character creation and appearance customization system!

Through hard won victories and the dusty ever changing Dusts of Change we bring you this first course in a new series:
RPG Series: Character Creation for AFXA
Course Cost: $50
Course Length: 160+ pages (Roughly 4 weeks)
Included: Complete Source code, GUI screens, Engine Code, Scripts, and assets (excluding character models)
Course Start Date: February 21st, 2008
Table of Contents Link

About the RPG Series
This series, when complete, will chronicle the full development of an online RPG and will provide you with the skills necessary to add major RPG features to your game. Each course comes with fully documented working code, engine code, GUIs, necessary art assets, and examples. Pick and choose the functionality you want, and learn the skills necessary to customize and build your own modifications by following each module's evolution from design to finished work.

About the Course
This introductory course, Character Creation for AFXA covers novice and expert level coding, and is designed to teach you everything you need to know to get together a complete character creation and avatar appearance system for use in your game. From selecting an avatar to customizing appearance attributes down to skin color, hair style and color, facial hair, clothing textures and geometry, all the steps in character creation are meticulously explained. The course also includes an example of a player stat system, skills/talents, name generation, and starting location selection. It's over 160 pages of education and documentation, designed to launch you into getting the most out of your project and game making career.

This Internet-based course will run about 4 weeks, though the full materials will continue to be available to you. Attendance at weekly IRC sessions is not taken; you take the lessons at your own pace online, and there is an instructor dedicated to helping you through the materials. There is a dedicated forum and a weekly IRC session to talk live to the instructor. Students who successfully complete the course will receive a course completion certificate, along with their newfound power!

Not only do you get the tips, best practices, technical detail and design principles that go into such a system, but it is given from an editorial perspective which chronicles every moment along the way for you. Engine code has been enhanced to overcome problems and offer new functionality. Learn how to use straight GUI to make your system, or use a local mission to do a full character creation scene. Included are many new GUI Profiles. Learn the differences and benefits of techniques like skinning VS mesh hiding and object mounting, and when to use each one. Many different techniques for building complex GUIs and achieving specific looks are covered in depth. Most of the design issues and technology issues translate to other game engines, though of course syntax will vary from the Torque platform.

The Platform
Most of the RPG Series will be written specifically for ArcaneFX for TGEA, to take advantage of this premier product's additions, making it the perfect platform to begin an RPG on, and demonstrate the glitz and glory of advanced graphics.

The very first of its kind, you get full working source code and full documentation for all of it! This is not a tutorial, it's a glorious manifesto of a course which you will walk away from with a bag full of tricks and skills.

Features:
*Full Character Creation Framework
*Fully functional GuiObjectView for TGEA with Mesh Hiding, Material Swapping, Camera Positioning
*Fully functional appearance customization GUIs and Script
*Fully functional Player Stats GUIs and Script
*All GUI Assets as pictured
*Many New GUI Control Profiles
*New GUIControl: Skinned Popup (Dropdown) Control
*New GUIControl functionality: render background image
*New GUIControl functionality: change bitmapbutton font state
*New GUIControl functionality: left, right, top, bottom align
*Fully functional server code to display appearance customizations
*Server side character validation
*Network Optimized Multiple Material Swapping
*Network Optimized Multiple Mesh Hiding/Showing
*Local Mission/Optimized Server for Character Creation
*Naming Convention Use
*Bitmap Arrays explained in depth

Here are some of the screens (included) you will learn to build from scratch:

Step 1: Heritage/Race Selection

Step 2: Appearance Customization

Step 3: Profession and Attributes Selection

Step 4: Talents/Skills Selection

Step 5: Name and Starting Location

Scene Based Step 1: Heritage/Race Selection

Scene Based Step 2: Appearance Customization

Notes: This course is built upon the incredible framework provided by the REQUIRED ArcaneFX: CoreTech for TGEA product, found here. A version of the course ported to AFX for TGE will follow.

Many examples in the course are built using the art provided in the Frogames' CS: Warriors and Commoners Pack, found here. The pack is not included or required but is recommended, if you already have it you will be using it in wonderful new ways :)

This course is *free* to previously licensed MMOKIT or TITAS owners, products originally sold through www.mydreamrpg.com which are no longer available. Signups for those people are available on the mydreamrpg forums, here.

Class begins February 21st, sign up now!