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.

Failicide!!!!

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Greeting Failians!!! Yes tis I the almighty Dr. Din, thought I'd forgotten you didn't you? Fear not, I've been busy learning about loopholes and how we can weasel our way out of copyright issues without serving life sentences ( hoping to get that down to 5 years at least).

Well actually, I haven't done any of that meagre copyright-ish stuff yet, I've been dealing with far more important matters such as Constitutional and criminal law, not to mention all the various philosophies involved. So I can protect a cold-blooded killer but I can't protect a bunch of fools seeking to gain profit from a game parody...yeah...don't tell Badga or Lp I called them fools!! However I must commend my animalesque colleague for the outstanding work he has done/is doing, keep it up my dear black and white-striped furry marsupial (badgers are marsupials right? cba looking it up)

Until next we meet, may the Fail be with you!

Day 33

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Did I miss some days out or something? Pretty sure I wrote more than two posts in September...

Anyway! Been busy again with other things I'm afraid. Boring post is boring. So, starting from the end of this post, I will be cutting my posts down to two a week. probably one on the Wednesday, and one on the Saturday as a review of the week's progress.

In case you think I've just been slacking and playing New Vegas, you are wrong! I watched a 3DsMax tutorial today, but didn't actually get round to trying out what I'd learned. I may have to find some cash for a full version - the trial will run out soon. Maybe they give them away free to "students". 

Adios amigos!

P.S in 5 minutes before midnight GMT, so it is technically day 33 this time.

Minipost: Zombiefication!

Ghouls were the enemies that added the horror factor to fallout. I just thought of our alternative - Autoplay. A terrible condition affecting those who have suffered extreme doses of Fail.

Autoplay does, basically, what it says on the tin: taking control of the afflicted's mind and turning them into a fail-obsessed vegetable. These zombiefied few can be found in the heavily contaminated areas of Failton, searching for the raw essence of Fail.

I want this to add a Left 4 Dead-type feel to some areas of the city, accentuating the horror factor that originated in Fallout.

Day 21.1

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Well, today's post will be in two sections. This is partly down to the fact that my recent posts have been very brief for the most part, as I've been hard at work shipping out that alpha build for the rest of the team.

Later on today I'll be starting the second stage of Failout's progression - as in, level two - and as this is a much bigger task than the bunker, I think it might well take me a few weeks to complete. During this time, I hope to get someone else working on finishing off the Failbunker (under my supervision of course - that thing's like my child!) i.e: animation, bug fixing, objectives and the final mesh placements. I don't think we'll be ready to put characters in there for a long time yet, and I'd prefer to do that once we have some level structure under our belts. I also need to write a story for the characters to be built around, and that takes time.

 So, today's task is to build a city (Failton) which can be enclosed by walls to create a stand-alone level. That is, if I don't build the entirety of Failtopia as one level, thus making it open world - but I don't think that would be wise. I don't have the computing power to make it, and you (most likely) don't have the computing power to play it. Anyway, the city will probably be a large, tiered structure with high surrounding walls (for keeping out those nasties!) and several open courtyards, so that the player doesn't feel like they're still back in the bunker.

And with that, I must leave you. Until later on anyway, because I need to start building this thing. Remember, any suggestions are welcome, and will be read and ignored as my highest priority.

Remember children, Fail kills. Play safe.

Official University Post!

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In Soviet Russia Badga kicks my ass, but this is NOT Soviet Russia!

I'm actually blogging from Uni, how's that for dedication?! Problem is I don't know what to write, I am dreading the prospect of double Roman Law atm however it will help me with Failout because I'll know how the Romans dealt with lawbreakers and then compare how we will be punished if any copyright infringement occurs, I have a feeling our punishment nowadays will be less brutal and less likely to involve our genitalia. To quote Gandalf: "And that is a comforting thought." Well-said o wise crooked-nosed bearded one. I bid thee all farewell, perhaps Badga may use this blog as an excuse not to post his daily, the slacker. In that case, stay tuned until tomorrow for more exciting  failerrific pictures from  the upcoming sensation that will sweep the nation(s): FAILOUT!

Like a half-baked sausage....and ham.

R@ndom

Hello, I'm Lp the Pr0ducer.
Today Din left for a Gay bar and Badga had to do badger stuff so they left me all by myself to post. I thought of trillions of ideas and stuff to talk about but i didn't find anything funny enough. I guess i could talk about my week.
So i trolled facebook the other day, Found out Badga is a badger with antlers and Din can make fire with his bare hands! That was cool.
I knocked my head on the cupboard and ..... cant remember much after that.
Fell on the mud in the middle of a storm, ruined my favourite Tshirt (Urban dictionary, Bradge)
Tried to post and cried about how fail my post was and ..... Thats all i did this week besides getting drunk and throwing up.
I am deeply sorry for the FailPost but as you can imagine, I am rather drunk at the moment.

This is Lp reporting from The Land of the Drunk,
Love you all! And sausages too!(PS. wrote all that to say that tomorrow there will be a special edition Lp post! containing detailed information about whats going to happen in the next weeks of failout!)

Day 9

Badga could not write today's blog post unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances involving him breaking his fingers while having sex with....well...another badger of course! As a result and his legal advisor (zeugma ftw, look it up u naabs), it has fallen to me to write this post. 

Today's philosophy lecture dealt with the question of what makes a human's actions moral and how they differ from the actions of an animal. You probably know where this is going. Yes that's right, Fallout's karma system. This will probably not be implemented in Failout, I just mentioned it to get your hopes up and then immediately dash them to pieces like the heartless son of a biatch lawyer I am to become. Unless maybe Badga has a lot of spare time and consequently spare time problems, meaning he does not know what to do with all that spare time and must inevitably design a karma system for Failout to stave off boredom. This will not happen. Ever. However, rest assured, the final version of the game will have oodles and oodles of pie, it will simply be in a hidden area which is impossible to reach, making its presence in the game absolutely pointless, so we won't include it.

Until next time, this is FffffffffffffailDin, AA-OOH, coming to you live from the Capital Failland!! Bow-wow! (Well done if you got the Galaxy News Radio + Three Dog spoof reference, here's a cookie)

Day 8

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 Multiplayer... I always wished Fallout had an option to play with other people. We'd need servers, though, and servers cost money. Anyway, it would have to be a pretty ordinary FPS game seperate the single player RPG/ish thing, at least I'm pretty sure making MMOs wouldn't be practical on the UDK - Or possible for me to do in under 20 years.

 Work on the first level is going more slowly than I'd expected now, but I'll have unlimited time to work on it in a couple of week's time! Holidays ftw.