October 27, 2004
October 24, 2004
Help and Opinions
Thinking of getting a laptop...remember that's "thinking", not deciding. Any help/opinions/experience on the subject would be grand. Here's the link to the machine I am thinking about...
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=34-114-095&DEPA=0
Remember, it has to be able to run Unreal Tournament 2004 and Maya. I also need it to be fairly light weight and travelable. I'm not happy it comes bundled with xphome, but that's about the best I can do for the affordabililty part. Anyone know anything about the FX5200 go series? It has 128 meg ram, so I'm considering it pretty heavily...
October 21, 2004
Go Cards!
YEEEEESSSS!!! THE Cards are heading to the World Series! Now if we could just get those Blues past the first round of playoffs...or maybe even onto the ice this season...
not slackin
Just so you all know I'm not slacking (and neither are my artists!)...
This is a shot of some of the textures and two of the characters as static meshes. They aren't moveable, this is just to get the scaleing correct. So far, pretty good, although the new mesh (Mr. Jangles) is a bit too high in tri's, he's about 500 over. Gonna have to change that.
October 14, 2004
October 12, 2004
More art
I've been told to focus (for the moment) on producing the content for my thesis project, with much attention to the visuals (3d assets, texturing). This has been a slow process, but is picking up quickly.
Here's a screenshot of "Tingle" one of the "furry" clowns. Special thanks to Scott Arnold for his hard work. Not all of the clowns will look like this, but I thought this was a great contrast to all the other traditional (sorta) looking clowns that I will have. He is not supposed to be so "blocky" and that's only because I haven't smoothed out his geometry yet.
Here is the boxing glove that I finished. Quite proud, although it will probably be to many polys for the in game pickup, so this model will probably be used in the first person viewpoint perspective. A simpler model will need to be used for the actual pickup object on the ground.
This is a simple pie model that will be used in game for probably both the tossed mesh and the fps viewpoint mesh. Not bad stuff, texturing needs to happen!
And here is another tent that I constructed for level 1. It looks much more tent like than what's already there. I think I may have to take a look at this one again however, as there is way to high a poly count for it. Blah...
October 07, 2004
Pics of Spaceship One
Quite a few pics of spaceship one with lots of diagrams and such. Very interesting and informative. Commercial sub-space flight aircraft has certainly taken on an interesting form. Feel free to browse these many pics of Spaceship 1. Got this in an email from my mother of all people!
October 06, 2004
Good ideas
Some good stuff came out of the symposium tonight, stuff I need to get down on paper right away.
Hampster wheels and clowns driving them with the anti-clown ray.
Gameplay glitch in the building of towers and the knocking them down feature. Too easy to knock down and too hard to build up. Solved by a giant wall that can only be circumvented by building a tall tower or by making other objects too heavy to knock down but light enough to build up with anticlownray.
People want to see more, which is good, but I need to produce it. Plus polish.
Get rid of the guns! ( I am trust me ).
October 05, 2004
Much needed
So that people can see what I have actually been doing, here are a few screenshots of level 1 and of my test level for clownerstrike. Anybody who shows up to the Wednesday seminar will be able to actually play with it, as well as level 2 (hopefully).
This image is from the demo level that I put together. Notice the ladder unit with the chain attached? That geometry was made in Maya and imported into the engine. The physics chain or rope at the top behaves correctly according to the properties set. Proof of concept.
A view from directly above the circus floor, at the apex of the circus cone tent looking straight down.
An in progress look at Unreal Editor with all the physics geometry of level 1.
October 03, 2004
Frumpy Funnies
Relating to my thesis indirectly...
I try and read the funnies section of the newspaper as often as I can, snatching it up at rare times when I find myself in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. Having read quite a variety of strips from across the country (each newspaper runs different strips mind you, a fact I hadn't realized until late) and very few, if any have ever made me laugh out loud or chuckle or even smirk besides the mainstream ones that we all know and love. Examples: Everyone loves Calvin and Hobbes, and so do I. I also like Fox Trot and the Far Side. But that's about the end of the list for the good ones, or the ones I continually come back to for a good laugh.
One comic strip sorta escaped me however, and that was Frumpy the Clown by Judd Winnick. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran it for about 2 weeks and then lost it back during my days in highschool. I was VERY disappointed to say the least, as I have never laughed so hard at a clown scuba diving in the toilet, only to freak out the mother figure.
I have since consulted the almighty Google (or "the Oracle" as Todd likes to call it) and also Amazon and have found two published collections that I am drooling over at the moment. Here are the covers that speak a thousand laughs...
and
So why did I post these? Well, there is a clown in this, but not just any clown. In fact, he really isn't a clown at all. He is just painted that way. I feel his actions are extremely honest with the world and the people around him, and that he is only perceived that way. This is important to my thesis because it sort of forces me to look at what I am doing with my characters in a different light. It is a game, and it isn't based in storytelling, but the way we perceive a character is often largely defined by how they look. Perhaps some subtle changes to the animations of the characters that I am putting into the game might be in order. Definitely something interesting to ponder.
Overdue
Way way way over due on many posts. Let's start with an assignment. These sketches are more like vomit on the page, but surprisingly accurate for what I feel my thesis project will be doing on the screen as mirrored in my head. A nice way to sort of pull the circus out of my brain and share it with you all. These don't illustrate great gameplay, they sort of lead up to it (or at least what I think will be great gameplay). The point or heart of the matter I guess. Only testing will tell. Here you go...
