Advance Wars update

Just back from seeing the hobbit with my best friends family, was pretty good had some really good light comedic scenes and couldn't help but laugh every-time they're in a mine falling and no one ever falls or is hurt from falling. Also laughed at the MMO adverts they put on before hand, seems to be a trend to get a cheesy quote and high rendered cutscene to advertise MMORPG's at the moment. I mean have you see this one :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajz5Poh_giI

Added all the units, except APC's so far

-Infantry
-Mechanical Infantry
-Recon
-Small Tank
-Medium Tank
-Neo Tank
-Artillery
-Rocket Launcher

Got the triggers sorted for capturing the buildings, has a lot of issues detecting just infantry units in a region so the infantry initiate the capturing now and as long as you have more units than the opposing player then you continue capturing. Also like the turn based game-boy game the buildings heal allied units on upkeep. The floating text for upkeep (+100 and the HP +25%) slowly pans up and last for 5 seconds). Permanent Floating Text is also used to represent who owns which buildings and changes colour when captured by the opposing team (blue).

There is also a simple weather system which checks every minute having a 1 in 5 chance to be raining this minute or 4 out of 5 of being clear weather. The rain half's the vision of units which disables artillery significantly and makes Recon units more important.

The other terrain advantages and disadvantages are controlled using region entering/leaving triggers. The forest regions slow down the units movement by 25% and the roads increase movement by 25%.

Spent a lot of time getting the units balanced counters but only a good length of play sessions will really show if there are significant dominant strategies or units. So I can't really start fine-tuning unit stats yet. I've been thinking over whether to have CO's (commanders) like the advance wars games each with there Special Powers and Unit bonus'. But again it's probably something best added when the units themselves are at a more balanced stage. I could have a select like Hero maps do for the game before the game begins or perhaps just a Button input select screen at start.

I also have another idea I might try for a map inspired by seeing the old bomber-man game being played on the sega genesis at my friends house before going to the cinema. Where as bomber man is about capturing people offguard with bombs placed, kicked and thrown. I was thinking of doing the same with a caster and different missle types. Missleman! :D Delayed missles, slow heavy damage missile,s fast missiles strengths could be based on there mana cost or recast time. Could throw in random pick-ups and destructible environments like bomber man also maybe even creatures?

Also decided to get some 3d modelling done for a change, working on a Anti-Infantry Steampunk Mecha-Tank design at the moment

Advance Wars : Steampunk Rising? :D

So I've had the idea of making my favourite GBA game into a map and been thinking about how to go about changing it from turn based to real time and what triggers I'd need for the capture points. Whilst sorting out my other map, which is a come very far and quite near a finished build. Currently working on issues with the escape airship placement and need to add the ending cinematic.

I decided to go with the iconic map Little Island since it focuses entirely on ground units and fast close quarters 1v1 combat, the very opposite of my current survival hero/tower defence map.

Here's a Screenshot of the map so far, just added the income triggers and been play-testing/setting up 3-4 units.

The original Gameboy version of little island looks like

I've decided since it's real-time to break the forest A-symmetry as they effect the infantry movement/flow a lot more on my map and have lengthened the width by one space to allow a gap between the 2 closest buildings to the base and the trees.

Quick Update on things (Warcraft 3 Survival TD Map!?)

Hey, long time no post. Have been doing a lot as always just been busy with some physio exercises and distracted from my Blog in my extra time. I've been switching between a lot of things recently I've been doing less Uscript, made Third/half the framework for a Magic the gathering card game setup and worked on some platformer AI practising Ray-tracing and States. Also practised using the material editor (UDK) Making several materials. 

Made a quick UT3 Map with a 3d skysphere/box and some weapon Mutators.

Been working on some 2D Animation and Parallax Backgrounds for a Android Game, not sure if it's going anywhere yet. Here's a sample of one of the combinations...

Spent the last 3-4 days play-testing and heavily reworking my Warcraft 3 Survival Tower Defence Map which is going really well, been working in some music and sorting triggers out for more waves and Boss fights tonight.  Besides fixing the usual list of this was supposed to work and why is this change done yet. xD Finding it great fun to have some keen play-testing for once it really is helping me take this map much further to completion both in morale and feedback.

Also got some Morrowind Fanart and Age of Empires 2 : Forgotten Empires cover art in the works which I'm slowly crawling through. xD I really just need a job x3 ah well. Hopefully I can use some of my more polished  recent stuff to help get me work in the near future. For now I'm going to try and enjoy the freedom the best I can. Although I find it much easy to work with others around, probably half the reason why I've been going at this Warcraft 3 map so much.

Spirit Day and Blockade Map

Been working on a death-match map for blockade, still works with the power progress I've decided to keep that consistent throughout the game. Been interesting designing maps with a heavier emphasis on verticle mobility and jump distances. Especially since most the plat-former stuff I've done before besides my Kirby map for CS has been quite linear. So mixing Multi-player pathing with plat-forming paths has been a good challenge so far.

The map also contains teleport/portal like pipes and moving platforms. Been ill for the first time in awhile yesterday but i got around to redoing one of my paintings for Spirit Day http://stormandy.deviantart.com/art/Spirit-Day-Inner-Universe-333255181

Blockade Progress 18th oct

Been 10 days since my last post so I figured I'd post another update on the games progress. 

I've got quite far mostly over the last 4-5 days, sorted out the camera, planned out the player characters proportions, which are very similar to Bomberman. Made icons for the movement abilities (the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen) sorted out a health and power bar. Tested out some basic split-screen.

Little update for the progress with my Unreal Game Blockade

So i've got an atlas (1 texture maps) for all my 64x64 materials and cut it up into 16x16. Got the ideas from Minecraft textures packs/sheets. Using the material editor I've divided up the texture space and altered the UV's to view one section and offset the UV's for each material I've made referencing to the same texture.

Also used the same material set-up to pixelize drop the rez of the results in the sky-dome materials to create I nice looking voxel sky. The done the same to one my own grass textures for a quick floor placeholder.

I've coded the destructible blocks to store an up-datable material instance, so I can offset the uv's of a texture which stores a damage overlay for my materials, I can eventually make a better looking and unique one for each material however for now I've made a quick generic ones for testing purposes.

Scalar Paramater setup which is passed to the code which calculates the blocks health percentage remaining and uses a case statement to update the block to the appropriate UV space of the damage overlay.

 Test texture

Soldiering on

Just played through a bit of Battalion Wars 2 for an hour or so, got some new rechargeable batteries only to find one of my Wii motes has died no reason. Cheap modern Nintendo for ya, wish there were more games like it preferably for the PC though, I'm short sighted so seeing the blurry low rez TV isn't an option gotta wear my glasses just so I can still barely see. It's a nice game but i wish there was a skirmish mode like Advance Wars. The theme tune is pretty awesome....

I've been a pretty crap mood for the last 4-5 hours, started the day quite well with a load of Uscript theory and a bit of Uscripting. Going to try get another hour or so of it in today before i crash. Decided i'm going to spend the next 2 months working on my unreal game and maybe try and put it up on Greenlight if i continue on with it from there.

Playing Battalion Wars reminded me of one my favorite GBA games Advance Wars 2 : Black Hole Rising and how awesome some the midis are for it

Sami's Theme

Grit's Theme

Game Expo and a day of Magic

Been down to EuroGamer Expo down at Earls Court in London on the 27/28th which went well didn't find the Indie stall till 3 hours before i left though, which was the best part for me really. After so much traveling followed by a whole day of Magic Draft for the new set, i can finally sit down and rest and get back to reading more of the UDN.

I met some pretty interesting indie devs down at EuroGamer, whilst play-testing a game called Proteus i recognized from a website a friend had sent me. The programmer for Proteus  spoke to me whilst i was discussing the game with another play tester who was insistent on finding a meaning/goal to the game trying to follow the stars. We got talking about the game, sprites and programming in general and i mentioned that i've been working on my voxel art game in unreal with growing entities and that I've been trying to find resources to help me learn algorithms for growing patterns and other theory. He told me to just drop him an email and he'd quickly try gather some links of the resources he used which is pretty awesome, so I'm going to send a email later today. Been practicing and writing notes on all the UnrealScript state commands and syntax and practicing compiling some really basic test entities with demo states.


I met a few other indie devs one working a relaxing puzzle/exploration game in Unity called Kairo which i quite liked, it reminded me of TFC(Team Fortress Classic) and CS (Counter Strike) Jump/Explore Maps with more music. Another 2 were making a side scrolling jumping/rhythm game similar to the likes of Bit Trip Runner with some smoothly animated vector graphics, which caught my attention for the wrong reasons at first but i got into them. Names slipped my mind so I'll update it with the name later, i also quite liked a game called Barbariball i think.

Been thinking about setting up a Specular sheet for  my terrain pixels since specular maps show so much properties for a material and i don't feel the need to keep the lighting style too retro may as well make use of the unreal engines visuals. Considering normal maps also and maybe even different geometry meshes for blocks done it a voxel style of course like my gun meshes.

Went to a place in Liverpool to play a Magic the Gathering draft with friends and my best friends family which was quite good, minus the occasional stuck up rule nerd. Always like doing drafts for Magic since they always introduce small new mechanics which completely change how the game plays. Its like a endless resource for game mechanic ideas and some of my best mod and game ideas stem from them in some way or another. Also love reading the art since they're on small cards they usually always have a stronger focus on thumbnail composition and silhouette.

Got a nice shiny Slime Molding Card and another normal and a lot of populate cards a new mechanic which allows you to make a copy of a token card you own on the battlefield. So my deck was centered around that. Put a larger emphasis on the difference between normal and token creatures which was normally quite a subtle part of the game in most Magic I've played previously.

Back to Unscript

Today i've been practicing states and reading through the lowest projectile weapon and pawn classes, to plan what i need to rework for my games prototype. Yesterday i organized my

 

After a few months of 2d/3d commissions I've decided to go back to learning more Unreal script. Picked up a game i setup in a few days before summer. I'm continuing with my Voxel art theme for the game, as it compliments some of the entities I've been programming quite well (block spawning actors which grow outwards as the level progresses).

The Power game uses a progression bar for the whole Game session which progressing over either time or Score, as the Power level increases it updates the game world and all the players within it.

 
 The graphics have been layed out in sheets and the materials reference only a fraction of the UV Co-ordinates.

150 Nirns! and more to see

Haven't been updated regularly the last 2 weeks been busy with a work commission and playing some Guild Wars 2. I'll write comments when i can be bothered, back to Guild Wars 2 :P

Also played some Two Worlds 2 for a few hours whilst waiting for Guild Wars 2 to Download

So  I've started playing a Charr Ranger 

Back to Nirnroot Road!

Back in Oblivion to catch all the Nirnroots!

What do ya know, apparently Dead Flame Atronachs can't float.

Silver bow! Which is exactly the same as steel except heavier? =\

Getting Close to 150!?

 Finally have a slightly better bow

Starting the day with some oblivion

It's been raining outside so i decided to start the day with playing some oblivion before getting on with some work. Hunting Nirnroots and running around playing around with the mouse mode on my tablet to play rather than the mouse. I've played Quake 3 and Age of Empires 2 with my tablet before which is quite fun but on my smaller older Wacom Graphire a6 4 years ago.

More Oblivion haha

Hey fellow worldees, going to play some more oblivion been writing notes and thinking for a few hours, i'm hoping i will get more ideas for my FYP playing. I've chucked in the game of thrones and everquest 2 soundtrack into the music folder so I'm not stuck listening to the same oblivion music and and over again xD

I think I forgot how nice the Oblivion manages to look without any complex or much lighting at all, always been a shame about the texture resolutions thought. There art travelled with slr's and the high rez versions are 256/512 in a lot of cases? Really!? xD

Here's an insight to some the stuff i have for my Final Year Project already for those of you who don't know I'm doing an investigation into good design work practice in Modular Environments for Open world RPG's. So I'll be producing a Tree city environment from concept art to 3d models to texture solutions and using the set in a Game engine.

I hope explore a lot, inavate and demostrate ways to make really good reusable content.

Back to Oblivion...

Stumbled across some ruins with Slaughter fish and goblins.

With a camp right next to it.

Well it appears I'm at the stage of the game which I'm harassed by bears and this time with fancy titles, extra hit-points and collectable teeth. Thank god for these fences that although sheep can through bears fortunately cannot.

So after killing bears I went inside to meet the farmer. Initially just to point out his sheep and time and space problems.

Despite his early temper immediately throwing everything off the table onto the floor when I entered, it seems this guy not so bad after all he's just as i being harassed by these western bears and has promised a good reward for six of there damn fangs, why i can't just pluck 6 out of one of the 3 nasty critters I've had to fight through fences I'll never know.

Fetch quests because apparently some games just can't be bothered to make things interesting any other way. Never fear Mr Thorley I'll glitch up some bears through your fence which seems to be doing a mighty fine job defending your sheep anyway, if they didn't glitch outside of it when in danger perhaps you and your precious woolly friends would already be safe.

 Well that's nice of him, to walk out and lock me in his home, aren't i supposed to be fighting bears? *rummages through house* finds nothing but cheap wine. >.<

Waiting game Anyone?

...
..
.
It appears all he was doing once i broke out is hacking out the floor outside with a hoe in the middle of a sheep pen O.o Got start somewhere? and that sir is not the place to start fixing your bear problem... infact

and neither is this, crazy foo ran at a close by bear with a hoe and before I could help he was gone, forever hiding your secret gift for bear teeth. Guess i have another free house and i'm going to celebrate by killing the other 2 bears.

Stole some steel armor then raised about 1000 gold on some binge alchemying all the flowers i gathered gained about 17 levels in alchemy in a few mins.

Well enough for one I think day.