Day 91

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Welcome back to Failton! I hope everyone had a very pleasant holiday period, and that Santa, and/or Kwanzaabot (Futurama, anyone?) was kind to you. After a brief break over Christmas, I've been working both on the animation for the trailer and the factory area of Failton again. I've added some detail to the buildings I put in last time and added the next three in.

Day 84

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 UDK Screenshot time! Yay!

I built some of the other buildings for the area around the factory, filling in the spaces I marked out with pavement meshes. The approach to the factory looks better now. I like how the buildings in front of it mean that the player sees it above them, but comes across the entrance after wandering through the alleyways.

Trailer is coming along, but there's still lots to do, and I'll probably take a break from working on it over christmas. Anyways, time to look at the lovely pictures!

As you can see, there are still a few small places to be filled. Most of the buildings are pretty large - though still insignificant compared to the factory - so they may take some time to furnish with meshes and stuff. I'm hoping to join many of them up with bridges made of junk from roof to roof, adding another way of moving around to avoid crowds of enemies.

On a barely related subject, I've been tweeting about doing livestream videos when I work on Failout. I'm not sure how they'd work, or if we will end up doing them sometime in the future, but It'd be a great way to show you exactly what goes on in the UDK.

Well, I think that's all for now. Have a merry christmas and remember to check in for next Wednesday's post.

Day 80

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Hello again, peoples of the internets.


Since Thursday, when the last post was (belatedly) put up, I've been carrying on with animating the stuff needed for the trailer. Today I also did some other stuff in the UDK so that there was something to take screenshots of, but this post is mainly about the decision I've come to over Failton. Earlier it took me 30 minutes to build the lighting on that map. A new record! So I've decided that it's definitely going to need to be split up into different zones.


Taking the area I've already built on as the central zone, I'm going to surround each area with post-Epic Fail junk walls, as if the survivors has closed off sections of the city. This will allow me to build each area as a different map, and cut down the stress on my PC. Hopefully, the player experience won't be completely fluffed up by this, as I'll do WHATEVER IT TAKES!11 to make sure the transition between these zones is nice and smooth.

So, this shows the central zone, which includes the Puka-Cola factory. You can also see the boundaries for the other buildings I'm going to put in from the sections of pavement (sidewalk, for you Americanists) that I added today. I also had yet another attempt at getting the lighting right in the factory, but the changes are minimal - so I won't bother showing that.


Stay tuned for another update on Wednesday, when it'll be the Christmas holidays. Wooo!

Day 78 (Following one day delay)

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Well, once again, there may be little tangible progress to show here. So far this week, I have FINISHED! Animating the main door for the trailer sequence, and made a start on getting the elevator working.

Also my new graphics tablet arrived, and I've been practising drawing stuff with it in photoshop. Hopefully, once I'm actually any good at using it, I can redraw the sketches I've already done, using the graphics tablet - meaning no need for crummily scanned concept art. Yay! Plus, having a general understanding of photoshop will allow me to create my own textures - which will help for obvious reasons, there's only so little you can take from Google images before bad things happen...

Anyway, a time frame for the trailer may be up to three weeks, hopefully less, because a number of things still need to be worked out such as camera movement, effects, editing and audio. Still, when it's finally finished, it should be pretty damn good.

I have very few days of school left until we're done for Christmas, so there should be more time to devote to weapons and levels again, other than concentrating solely on getting the trailer done.

On a side note, LP and I are considering an as-of-yet-secret side project concerning Call of Duty: Black Ops. And possibly other games. Any leaked information you hear is LIES! (just to be safe).

That's all for today folks. No screenshots of crates, or anything else for that matter,  or any new videos to show yet.  I'll try to do something by Saturday, but the trailer preparations, among other stuff, are keeping me busy at the moment.

Day 73

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 Well, as I tweeted earlier, I've been animating doors and stuff for the teaser trailer. Seeing as the amazing door opening sequence makes up most of the trailer, showing you it would kind of ruin stuff. So there isn't too much to show here. I've also been doing some sketches of the character models I want to make, once I can actually make anything slightly complicated. I promise I'll scan them sometime. In the meanwhile, I spent the last few minutes making a crate on 3dsmax so that this post wouldn't be completely empty. Enjoy.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you want to discuss anything about the game, ask any questions to myself and/or my associates or generally flame us for being noobs, register on our forums HERE

Day 70 (right?)

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 Been busy doing some sketches to get back into pencil drawing, so there's been only a little progress so far this week. Still, Christmas holidays soon, and I got a crap load done in the last two-week break.

I've changed the model of the pistol again,but it still isn't perfect. It's much harder to get the details right on a smaller weapon... the R.O.F.L.E. was pretty easy.

 Render window on the left by the way, in case you were confused. You probably weren't but...

Rendered view of the side (OMG CURVED TRIGGER) Textures still look pretty crap on the curved faces, although the longer bit looks a bit better because I stretched the bitmap in photoshop.

Day 66

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Once again, Saturday comes swinging around to smash me in the face and show how slowly things are going.
 Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh on myself, but 66 days sounds like a heck of a long time.

Anyway, this week I've been working on the 3d model for Failout's basic pistol. Modelled more closely to the conventional-looking 9mm from New Vegas, than to the unusual styling of the 10mm, the basic shape is coming along nicely. I think there are a few too many sharp edges at the moment, and everything just needs to be rounded off a bit.

 Need to find a way of making curved triggers...

The pistol's iron sights. It's the picture that's squint, honest.

I haven't yet gotten round to animating the hammer movement yet, mainly because I found a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (a legal one, by the way, with a registration key and everything) lying on a shelf in the house.

I've been playing around with it, and the first thing that looked fairly decent was stuck onto a wall in 3dsmax and rendered. So here it is, a whitewashed wall covered in graffiti. I'll probably use it in Failton somewhere - once I work out how to export 3dsmax materials to the UDK...

Boom, headshot! You're dead, Mr Grey Man With Massive Jaw... Guy.

Day 63

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Well, I've been working on a second weapon since Saturday: the pistol. Being as much the main weapon for the first part of the game as Fallout 3's 10mm, it's pretty important to get it right.  I'll probably be using similar textures for the weapons, to keep a uniform feel, so I thought it best to make the pistol a grey metal with a wooden grip.

 

 Ta-da! Done. Impressive, no?

 Seriously though, this is as far as I've gotten at the moment. the blue bit at the back is still being worked on.

 Going to put the trigger in, finish the back of the gun, add textures, put the hammer in and try animating it before Saturday.

Edit - 02/12/10 Forgot the title... silly me!