Update # 53 : Feb 2011 news - Armored Core : Limit Release

Hey again everyone,

I am sorry for slow development I really am, I guess this is gonna be another one of those posts where I explain whats been going on, similar to some of the first updates, in terms of whats been causing development slow downs.

Personal Explination

So first off people may remember update 44, in which I detailed how I moved out of my parents house and in with my gf, well after 6 months of not finding a job (the purpose for which I moved out in the first place) I am moving back near my parents again (or in with them its undecided atm). I normally don`t post personal information too much as I don`t want it to get in the way of the main updates but, I suppose now it doesn`t really matter. So how does this effect things?, basically I have been trying to sort out stuff since new year, with all the content almost done by then and me messing around with various new techniques in UDK, that I have never used before I was happy and content with getting the OVA done by my birthday (Feb 15th), until I had my birthday party and found out that one of my best friends has possibly gotten lung cancer.

This of course hit me pretty hard as its the last thing I wanted, I lost another friend in game development, younger than me to cancer in 2009 so I do not want the same to repeat, so I have had that constantly on my mind, hes currently getting passed around by Drs so its kinda annoying to find out whats going on.

Aswell as this, I want to drag my gf back to near my family with me,instead of us both living out in the middle of the open country with hardly any transportation, like we are doing now, the countrys nice but if theres no jobs then its no good, and it makes it even worse when theres only one bus that comes through here and its possibly getting axed soon, and cause I don`t drive that would get rid of all possibilitys of transport apart from feet, So I have been trying to sort out her moving in with some of our closest friends or us getting a decent place near my parents, its kinda hard cause my parents don`t have enough room for both of us, and I don`t want to chance leaving her here because of her possibily struggling with the bills and stuff.

So 6 months of hard work, moving out, and trying to get a job in the UK gone to waste basically along with alot of money too, because theres hardly any jobs here. (around 3 Million unemployed)

All the above has had me worrying alot, and thus has delayed production, I have had to take care of personal things alot more in the last 2 months than the first 4 I was here, its become a real downer, to the point I began to question how much I really have improved and weather or not I still suck, when your an artist , your your own worst critic, and I can safely say that I probably still have huge room for improvement when it comes to texture tweaking and organic modeling, but what I have managed to accomplish so far has made me happy and given me abit of hope for the future.

Update

So now as you can see, I have been working on texture tweaks, and also one new item, mainly because the load outs I did for the AC`s previously was abit... well overweight, I took inspiration from some of the more rediculous AC`s like one of the ones from the PSP series of games that has Dual back mounted nade launchers, a Karasawa and a Moonlight and I just didnt like it, so I made a missle pod, and switched Limit Breakers kit around for some extra boosters, I also had to re rig Dragon Striker cause his Rig was awful, then again it was a quick rig from ages ago.

I even went as far as rigging the boosters on the back of the torso, which I forgot to include in the earlier versions, so now the boosters can move on pivot joints, and on Limit Breaker the ankle joints have abit more movement as before they where static and didnt move, which proved a problem when animating some times.

Thanks to : Recipester.org

I finally figured out how to merge animation files in 3ds aswell, seeing as I have never done it before, so now I am thinking of creating the entire animation in 3ds before actually importing it into UDK then I have more control over the animation.

Anyway , Laters!

-Dave