Plan for Jerane Alleyne
by Jerane Alleyne · 06/26/2002 (12:50 pm) · 0 comments
Damn its hot....
If its not me falling asleep, its our lead programmer having power outages. I usually don't function in this type of environment, but I can't let passing out prevent me from treading on...
General Progress
=======================
I've been talking to a few new artists jumping on board for the past week or so, getting them situated, going over info, etc. All of our new members come on with a trial period, to see if they work out well, test availability and all that. They're very talented, so they should work out well. I'm trying to get essentially 2 sets of artists: one set working closly with the concept artists working on the more environmental design, and the other set working directly from he design direction outline of our main player races, with an artist working on each one exclusively. Right now, our new guys will be on with the concept artists.
We're still in the market for 1 or 2 more programmers, and a level designer or two :).
We are looking to get out a press release in a few weeks, so I need to take some time out to go over possible sources to send them to. It would be nice to get it in a couple of other languages as well.
I haven't put up any new screenshots on our site since the last set I put up after making a post in the screenshot gallery here. I'll put up some more on our site after I skin some of our new players...
Creative Progress
========================
Well, I finished 3 new player models that represent each size type for our battle armor players. I thought I could share some of the blended sequences between them, but the size difference and other proportions ended up being too great, so I ended up making a base set for each size type, which is for the best I guess. What is odd now, is that once I couldn't get env mapping to work on a model to save my life...and now it works all the time, even when I don't intend it to. The new models aren't even skinned, and its still on...go figure....
One of our concept artists has put together some nice environmental designs for some of the levels that we will be putting together later on. We're going to try and get as much of these concepts done so we can just drive it home when its time to start on levels full steam. I will have to inquire about damage level for shapebase objects, as we want to have destructable buildings, as well as show their level of damage both physically and through the textures. Hopefully when the more pressing stuff is done, I can look into this in a few weeks.
Although I already have some early weapons in the game, they still need to be redesigned...I found that using a particle sprite for muzzle flash is not really reliable in our case, so I'll just do it in the model iteslf, and maybe add some other little animations here and there.
Programming Progress
===========================
We just had the latest build of our demo uploaded, and we go ta few new goodies working, care of our programming crew. Honestly, I don't know whats more entertaining...getting a new build working, or listening to our lead coder curse his head of trying to get CVS to merge properly. Either way, its worth the price of admission :)
We've got a preliminary profile system working, which allows you to put in a name, and select a race and skill (Command, sniper, heavy weapons, special operations) type. Selecting a skill type allows you to use a specific player model with its loadout of weapons currently. Eventually, it will work so that we can select a loadout for weapons and equipment from an inventory, which will be filtered by your skill type.
Homing projectiles have also been added this time around, along with muzzle lights during firing. We'll need to set up some parameters for the homing missiles, and more for the muzzle light. I wold like to get lasers working next...
We are developing components for controling attributes of the players, like speed, armor, etc. Right now we have an engine component, which controls a player's top speed and the acceleration value in runforce. The problem is that, when setting the runforce value on acceleration too low, saw 10-15, the player "jiggles"...this is noticeable on bots, and when you switch to an external camera. I asked one of our programmers to track down why this happens. Its fine when you play normally, but if we're using bots that have this value in runforce low, it won't be too cool.
Alright...time to cool off with a quick Jedi Knight Duel, make dinner, do a document update, an dprepare for tonight's meeting, roughly in that order.
If its not me falling asleep, its our lead programmer having power outages. I usually don't function in this type of environment, but I can't let passing out prevent me from treading on...
General Progress
=======================
I've been talking to a few new artists jumping on board for the past week or so, getting them situated, going over info, etc. All of our new members come on with a trial period, to see if they work out well, test availability and all that. They're very talented, so they should work out well. I'm trying to get essentially 2 sets of artists: one set working closly with the concept artists working on the more environmental design, and the other set working directly from he design direction outline of our main player races, with an artist working on each one exclusively. Right now, our new guys will be on with the concept artists.
We're still in the market for 1 or 2 more programmers, and a level designer or two :).
We are looking to get out a press release in a few weeks, so I need to take some time out to go over possible sources to send them to. It would be nice to get it in a couple of other languages as well.
I haven't put up any new screenshots on our site since the last set I put up after making a post in the screenshot gallery here. I'll put up some more on our site after I skin some of our new players...
Creative Progress
========================
Well, I finished 3 new player models that represent each size type for our battle armor players. I thought I could share some of the blended sequences between them, but the size difference and other proportions ended up being too great, so I ended up making a base set for each size type, which is for the best I guess. What is odd now, is that once I couldn't get env mapping to work on a model to save my life...and now it works all the time, even when I don't intend it to. The new models aren't even skinned, and its still on...go figure....
One of our concept artists has put together some nice environmental designs for some of the levels that we will be putting together later on. We're going to try and get as much of these concepts done so we can just drive it home when its time to start on levels full steam. I will have to inquire about damage level for shapebase objects, as we want to have destructable buildings, as well as show their level of damage both physically and through the textures. Hopefully when the more pressing stuff is done, I can look into this in a few weeks.
Although I already have some early weapons in the game, they still need to be redesigned...I found that using a particle sprite for muzzle flash is not really reliable in our case, so I'll just do it in the model iteslf, and maybe add some other little animations here and there.
Programming Progress
===========================
We just had the latest build of our demo uploaded, and we go ta few new goodies working, care of our programming crew. Honestly, I don't know whats more entertaining...getting a new build working, or listening to our lead coder curse his head of trying to get CVS to merge properly. Either way, its worth the price of admission :)
We've got a preliminary profile system working, which allows you to put in a name, and select a race and skill (Command, sniper, heavy weapons, special operations) type. Selecting a skill type allows you to use a specific player model with its loadout of weapons currently. Eventually, it will work so that we can select a loadout for weapons and equipment from an inventory, which will be filtered by your skill type.
Homing projectiles have also been added this time around, along with muzzle lights during firing. We'll need to set up some parameters for the homing missiles, and more for the muzzle light. I wold like to get lasers working next...
We are developing components for controling attributes of the players, like speed, armor, etc. Right now we have an engine component, which controls a player's top speed and the acceleration value in runforce. The problem is that, when setting the runforce value on acceleration too low, saw 10-15, the player "jiggles"...this is noticeable on bots, and when you switch to an external camera. I asked one of our programmers to track down why this happens. Its fine when you play normally, but if we're using bots that have this value in runforce low, it won't be too cool.
Alright...time to cool off with a quick Jedi Knight Duel, make dinner, do a document update, an dprepare for tonight's meeting, roughly in that order.
About the author
