Infiltrator E47 - Assault Master Design

"So... how 'bout them assault masters," you may be asking. The answer is that the most powerful non-boss enemy in Infiltrator, the Assault Master, has been redesigned more than three times. If you factor in the AI programming, pixel art, design, testing, etc, then each iteration is bound to take awhile. That said, this latest one is much more elegantly put together. I kept the tactical and strategic ideas of the enemy in mind along with rest of the game this time.

All of that in mind, the new design is going to be much more time consuming and meticulous to implement, for reasons I will outline below. Since it's going to be a bit before I finish, I thought it might be interesting to explain the design, the logic behind it, and the challenges it presents.

Infiltrator part 12

I said in the previous session that we needed a new player ship. I'm building a 3D model of it in Blender, even though it's going to be a pixel ship in-game. Don't ask why...

I said don't ask! ARG! Because it's fun, that's why. I know you're thinking this isn't going to help Infiltrator get released any sooner, which is probably true. But, if you recall from the start of this series, I said this project was probably headed for failure. I also said that I didn't care, because the whole point was to have fun on the way there.

The model isn't finished, but I'm happy with the base shape. It has many of the elements that made the Pyro GX cool, but doesn't directly copy. This is the difference between an inspired model and a copied model. *Digs out old Pyro GX clone model...*

And a 100% faithful remake of the original PyroGX by a Descent fan:

I debated for awhile as to whether or not I wanted to go 100% pre-rendered 3d for the sprites like the player, enemies, and such. I decided to keep the art style I have now because it's unique and appealing. Pixelships on top of 3D pre-rendered stuff is actually pretty cool.

In the meantime, I feel like I'm getting close with the level editor. Hopefully in a week or so there will be something more cool to show you from there.

     --LazerBlade

2011 retrospect

I was going to do a write up about site stats. Then I decided to turn it into a 2011 retrospective. Then I noticed that this will be the 100th post on this blog, posted on my birthday. Crazy how things work out huh?

So what did I accomplish this year? I finished a 3D screensaver, reviewed a number of games, started a webcomic, created two music albums, started a webshow and finished the first season, moved to this new blog, and made quite a bit of headway in a new game project.

Now the stats are interesting. Things started pretty slow, with a normal build. Then, two months ago, traffic started climbing like crazy. I have about 1000 views a month now, and still climbing. The one thing that orks me, is why I have so many silent viewers. I get comments from time to time, but yeesh. Talk about the silent majority...

Now I have to look back and see what I learned I guess. After all, what is age, if not a measure of experience? No, I don't make resolutions. I'm already more awesome than the average person the way I am.

So, I learned many things. The first thing I learned is not to start a project without being willing to commit serious amounts of time to it. Something that just takes an hour a day is a huge investment. Secondly, try to make very specific goals about the end product of any project at the beginning, to avoid confusion later on. Third, try to be realistic about what projects you choose to start. It's okay to be ambitious, but make sure you have the time, skills, and resources to complete your project before you start. It seems generally  best to choose a project that's just a bit out of your comfort zone. Something where you'll have to learn new things, but something you can still finish. Fourth, school should NOT be taken for granted. It's not safe to assume that your school will take care of itself while you work on something else. Last, under promise and over deliver. I've never been 100% accurate on how much time or other resources it would take to complete a project. It's much better to assume it will take more than you think. That way if it does, you''re ready for it, and if not, you just come out ahead of schedule(which is a good thing.)

I'm sure I've learned plenty more, but these five seem to stick out the most. Anything else I need to mention that's important... Oh yeah. Start writing blog posts early so they don't have to cut o-

    --LazerBlade

Work in progress: a tribute to One Must fall: 2097

We all know I'm a big fan of the DOS oldie, OMF: 2097. I really liked this game, hated the sequel, wish there was a new one somewhere, etc. I've been interested in recreating parts of it for the longest time. I even recently finished a remix of the theme music, planned to show up on my next album. Heck, I even made a fake trailer for a re-make back before I knew much about animation.(Yea, you're not going to see it. I've embarrassed myself with it enough times already. ;)

Anyway, let me dash you hopes early and say I'm not planing on remaking the game. Now, exactly what am I planning then? A short(around 5 minutes) 3D movie attempting to capture the feel and awesomeness of the game. To show you I mean business, here's a render of one scene I'm working on:

                                  (click for reasonable size)

You'll note the bots are in the standard t pose. This is because I haven't started animation yet. They are however, fully rigged and ready models. I'll be honest, I've had the jaguar model sitting around since the first teaser. The Katana is the only new robot on the table. You can probably tell that I'm not going for an uber-realistic or high detail short by any stretch of the imagination. The simple torches demonstrate this. I'm just trying to make it look good and capture the feeling.

In the light of story, I haven't quite decided if I'm going to include much of one yet. I'm pondering my options, but mostly I'm just cranking out art assets at the moment.

Finish this or not, it will look really cool in my demo reel.


        --LazerBlade

Digging up the dead (projects)

I just love digging up projects I once had on hold. You may have guessed based on the last post that I revived my movie project. You are correct. I dug out my old 3d computer lab and started working on it in Blender again. I posted it on BlenderArtists to get some critique so that I could know what to improve. Here is the latest version at the time of this post:

It's the same old lab but you can probably tell I've been working on it. There's still a lot to do, but that doesn't mean it hasn't progressed. I'm also trying to get some good looking droids together in Blender, but that's apparently quite hard when you have nothing but your imagination to guide you. Maybe I should dig up some free concept art or write some out myself. I dunno...

As for the script and storyboard, those are secret. I'm hiding them until after I finish. If I fail first, THEN you can see them.

I have zero work done on the protagonist, but I have some idea's. The idea I've given the most thought to is not showing their face. I'd have to have them wear a motorcycle helmet or something sometimes, but it would really help set the mood. It would also help me get around the problem at being really horrible at facial modelling...

So anyway, this project is no longer on hold. No guarantee's that I'll move very fast, I'll probably actually end up only posting every once in awhile because of how slow it will be. And no, I'm not setting up a time budget because my estimate would either be way to huge or way to tiny. I don't really have experience with such large projects.

        --LazerBlade

What makes a hacker's paradise?

I must admit that I really enjoyed the last couple weeks or so. I started out working on Infiltrator(more on that in a later post.) I added in some basic enemy structure, and went about trying to implement spawn/die system. Everything went perfectly, before the evil monsters of pointers in C++ arose from the pits. I couldn't get the application to stop crashing on me. I worked late into the night drinking more and more coffee.

I was pretty much out of ideas. I needed a break, a new look at the code and problem would probably help. I decided to do a little 3d modelling for the movie I'm working on:

That got boring after awhile, so I did some kung-fu, and then some music. Then I played around a bit with my new Linux Mint system, and decided to burn down the house of the person who decided we didn't need ~/.bashrc anymore.

And you're asking, what makes a hacker's paradise? I'm telling you. It's a world full of fun and interesting little(and big) problems to play around with. Oh, that and coffee and pizza. That's why we techno-geeks came to planet Earth, we didn't have coffee and pizza on our home planet. There has been no shortage of fun stuff to do for me, and that's what made things well... fun.


          --LazerBlade

Blender and video editing

I don't know where Blender 2.49b is when it comes to video editing, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about video editing in Blender 2.5. I was originally planning on posting a new LMMS tutorial, but that didn't work out. It did work out for me to spend more than two hours trying to do my video editing in Blender though.

I was trying to add some overlays during certain parts of the video. That really should be no big deal, I mean there are tons video editors I've done this sort of thing with, and probably plenty editors that I haven't tried. You'd think I'd be able to add a couple overlays in no time at all.

That's what I thought, but I very quickly became aware of several little quirks and flaws in the system. Firstly, seeking is totally broken. I can play the movie and make note of what was going on during frame X, and then stop the movie. But then if I jump to frame X, it will sometimes be somewhere completely different. A certain frame very seldom remains the same when you jump to a different part or play the movie again. On top of that, it seems to randomly cut off the beginning and ending as well.

I learned that going back to frame 1 and pushing the "Refresh Sequencer" button will occasionally snap things back to normal, but it breaks again the moment you change from frame one regardless of how you do it. This is especially a problem when it comes to exporting the movie file, as this problem also happens when outputting frames to the file.

I spent quite awhile trying to get it to work properly, as my overlays stayed in their place. It was just that they started at frame X, and what was going on during frame X in the movie file I'd imported was never the same. I eventually gave up. I may never try Blender for video editing again. Then I guess I might come back later and give it another chance. But for the moment, I'm still using good, old, and a bit to minimal Pitivi which comes with Ubuntu.


        --LazerBlade