Reduxed Get Reduxed ...

I'm beginning to hate that word ... We'll soon head to thesaurus.com to find a new one with the exact same meaning. Anhow, things which had been redone ... got redone ... for the umpteenth time ...

Yo Dawg! I heard you liked to redux, so we put a redux in your redux!

FFS ...

Anyhow, following on from a previously posted blog in Septemger 2012 entitled "Make Simple Character Model Quickly ... 40 Days Later ..." where I struggled with character limb deformations ... I have ... gone back and started it again from scratch.

And after 16 days, I can live with it ... which ... admittedly is what I said about the last effort ... but then I couldn't. Anyhow, it now deforms nicely, animates much better and ... probably looks exactly the same to the casual observer. But hey, it offended me ... and now it doesn't.

So with a fully, clean, base character mesh I can now get on with making all of the other troop types. I've also got rid of a few more of the engine's stock assets which I was using, making my own backpack ... which turned out to be an ordeal in itself for some reason ... an aidkit model and replacing the decal for moving to with a big black and amber X motif which spins.

I've made various tweaks and improvements to my scripts, and am down to just one post-it note of bugs, tweaks and balancing on the Main Campaign.

I've also redone the 4 jungle levels which I had designed. After receiving feedback that they weren't very jungly I've bent the tree trunks, added a skirt of transparent hanging vines in 2D, increased the number of said trees in the levels and created a new broad leaf plant for the groundcover, which helps to make the scenes much more crowded looking. In other words, more jungly.

I've also created 4 urban environment maps. This brings the total levels to the final tally of 20. There's a video below showing one of the maps - which just happens to be the one without any avenues of trees. I always try and give each level it's own theme such as highground, valley, rolling hills, etc, and this one is tight corners. The urban maps feature buildings - which whilst they cannot be entered directly - have ramps and bridges and crossovers. I was going for a sort of grand European architecture vibe.



So next up, an Ale Festival on Thursday! And after that, modeling the troops for the remaining 6 factions, sorting out the remaining issues with the Main Campaign, doing a whole load of finalized modeling and ... er ... stuff.

Additional Environments And Gui Redux 9000

Finally I have managed to get round to creating some new maps for the different environments and terrains. Up to now I've been reusing the same map over and over again. Now I have one map for each of the available environments - save for urban which I'm still working on the models for. I am planning on each environment type to have a few different maps, and have managed to come up with a workflow process to create these without too much hassel ... which makes a change from my usual "make it up in a completely adhoc manner" which permeates my existence.

I've reused or modified base textures where applicable in an attempt to keep everything looking uniformed and together. I use the same rock texture throughout all environments so that the player always knows which part of the terrain is an obstacle that cannot be walked up.





Whilst making various new models I also finally got round to replacing the rather awful blue/black hatched deployment areas with some brass poles with flashing amber lights on them. It all looks much better and a lot more part of the steampunk aesthetic.

For the umpteenth time I have once again reworked the aesthetic of all of my GUIs, this time giving them a wood grain look which I think looks much better than the rough, patchy look which they previously had.

I also added two new buttons to equipment selection on the deployment screens. These allow for filling up a trooper with ammunition to the maximum weight or money, and also copying the current troop's equipment to all other unequipped troops of the same class, weight restrictions applying. This all helps making loadout a lot faster and easier for the player.

I'm still not best pleased with the mesh deformation of my - currently singular - player character model and intend to fully rework this. Hopefully it'll end up looking a lot better and I will then be able to get on with making troop models for the Pirates, US, Austro-Hungarians, Chinese, Zulus and Anarcho-Commies, as well as finalise my design for the heavy armour models.





I've also done extensive playtesting of the Main Campaign - the one with the dirigibles in it - and found it to be a bit too easy. I rebalanced the way the Ai regimes work ... and then it became too hard ... fuuuu-. After a bit more balancing it needs a good retest to make sure I haven't made it too easy again ...

I've been working off the MIT console refrator development branch and apart from a few issues with the development branch itself, I think the console refraction is fine. Info on that here.

Anyhow, here's some vidya of the new environmental maps, each one played in the most likely weather pertaining to that environment. Mountains are cold and cloudy, Arid is fine and clear and hot, Jungle is wet, humid and stormy.

Feature Complete! Gameplay Finalized! No, Really.

Feature Complete! Completely Featured! Gameplay is all done and working as desired! Artwork is still somewhat a Work In Progress - but one thing at a time.

 After finalizing all of the gameplay script and code for the "Main Campaign" we actually have a fully working game.

The world generates randomly, the player and 5 Ai nations enter the game at equal distances around the edge of the game world, and promptly proceed to conquer it, tangling with the occaisional pirate stronghold and of course each other.

So here's a quick - and considerably edited - gameplay video of it all in action. It's early in the campaign so all factions are using poorly trained conscripts. We start off with the player already in "Tactical Battle" mode against the pirate enemy. It's a mountainous environment - but I only have one map at the moment so it's temperate terrain as a placeholder but it is using the weather and modifiers for the correct environment so it's snowing and everyone has a -10 actions modifier for not having warm armour on.

After a cunning victory - helped by superior numbers and low quality opposition - it's time to permenantly recruit some upgraded conscript survivors to the force of "core veteran troops" who are now giving a promotion and a class type based on whatever their personal attributes mark them as best at. Then back to the "Strategic Overview" mode where our dirigible full of brave chaps occupies the area we just won in "Tactical Battle" mode.

The Ai factions play out their own turns, distant from player so no view of what they're all doing and then the next turn starts afresh. I upgrade my "Grenadier" class by buying the blue prints for rocket grenades.

Next up we move tour lone dirigible into place for another assault against a pirate occupied territory. It's mountainous terrain once again, with the cold weather modifier but this time it's just cloudy and not stormy see we can see a bit further and both my troops and the Ai will have opportunities for "passive fire" during each others movement phase.

This time it's a defensive battle as I have to prevent the enemy from capturing my flag. The Ai chooses their tactics based on their own available troops and the terrain and weather conditions with a randomizer. They choose a full frontal assault which turns out to be a bit hasty as my superior force - in both numbers, weapons and veterans - hammers the tightly packed enemy advance with bullets and our newly aquired rocket grenades.

And then recruit more promoted recruits to my ever growning veteran force before getting back to capture the territory with the old dirigible in the "Strategic Overview" mode. And so it shall continue ...

That's the upshot of the 15 minute and 1 second video below.





I've thoroughly tested all the later parts of the campaign, fixed numerous bugs ... mostly caused by the fatigue of crunch, silly typos and the sort brought on by tiredness ... and am now satisfied that we are feature complete on the actual gameplay.

Obviously there's plenty of tweaks and tiny improvements available behind the scenes, you could fiddle incessantly for the rest of the century with these sorts of things, but it all works as desired.

Next up isn't a move into finalizing all of the art assets yet though. It's porting it over to the brand spanking new Native Script Massive Improvement Branch at https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/tree/consolefuncrefactor that was designed by James Urquhart and embedded into a branch of the brand-spanking new "Torque3D MIT 2.0" by Dave Wyand. This should give the branch a damn good testing, and probably me too as I've been using 1.1F and not taken particularly much notice of the MIT code as of yet.

Extra info on that branch here and in this previous blog here.

Hopefully that'll all go vaguely smoothly.

After which it's back to art asset creation and to replace all of my placeholders with some finalized models and textures before thinking about a demo release hopefully towards the end of February.