TODAY'S PROGRESS REPORT!
Today had a great deal of work accomplished! A successful multiplayer test, sonic screw drivers discussed and modeled, human character faces with early textures, and a revisiting of first person interfaces we'd drawn up last Fall!
Thank you IndieDB!
IndieDB put Blockade Runner into the headlines for the main page! We appreciate it immensely, thank you IndieDB!
Nathan the Blob in Multiplayer!
Zack, Nathan and Gabe rocked the server/client of Blockade Runner! That green blob below is Nathan in the captain's chair of the basic shuttle you begin with on the server!
Of course, there's still a lot to do, but we've got a big grin on our faces from the pure awesomeness of multiplayer.
This is what we started the game for together 56 weeks ago, and we're honored that you've all joined us and contributed to the development so we could get to this point! Thank you!
Terah's Faces
Terah's been studying from an old "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life" for help on the facial detail of the characters. Below, is her story. *CHUNG CHUNG!*
When it comes to making textures for interiors and pre-fabs, its fairly straight forward.
You've got to have a background, a foreground and details for the foreground that look pleasant all together and have that extra something that makes it different from other interiors or pre-fabs. Making a texture look like a human, however, is frigin' annoying.
You have got to make sure you've got proportions, shadows and lines correct or else it will just end up looking like a flat monster, and nothing like a human.
When I did some preliminary textures for the head below, I hated it. I was ready to give up and move on to another art task till I could get some help when Micah pointed out just two tools to me in Photoshop.
Those tools were the burn tool and the dodge tool, and they made all the difference. Its funny how people can agonize over something to the point of exhaustion and then find the simplest solutions.
- Terah
Tomorrow:
More details on characters, sonic screw drivers, and a soon-to-be-realized mockup of the first person interface!
Voting results!
We promised the voting results today and here they are!
- O - Add glass ( plates of glass in numerous angles )
- R - Patch Updater (you no longer have to download new copies)
- K - Improve framerate with larger ships
- A - Make Plating/Interiors appear around prefabs
- L - Add mipmaps (no more grainy ships from far away)
- N - Add more frame angles ( 22.5 degrees, 11.25 degrees,and more!)
- F - Prefabs made less irritating to place
- E - Editor tool belt (assign blocks / tools to 1-9 keys)
- M - Add shadowmap (directional light casts shadows across the outside of the ship!)
- S - Simpler to use Interior Editor (point and click easy)
- B - Editor easier to use
- H - Fix Alt+Tab causing crashes
- T - Interior tiles working on angles better
- W - Ship previews in the loading screen centered properly
- U - Control over which interior tiles are placed
- C - Editor menus cleaner
- P - Overall Presentation (spit & polish)
- D - More editor hotkeys (i.e. tools like symmetry etc)
- V - Add tool to take screenshots in-game
- Q - Sound Effects (improved 3d sound effects)
- I - Remove Symmetry glitches (specify)
- J - Remove plating glitches (specify)
- G - Externalize text ( game's in-game text made editable from .xml files [ allows for translation ] )
- X - Bug fixes (specify)
Next time we'll probably forgo the letters, as some (albeit hilarious) spellings were possibly favored over a completely truthful vote. *cough*KLOBRN*cough*ROMULANS*cough*. (thanks guys! ;D)
An honest surprise is the spit & polish being a lower priority, with a bit of a no-brainer being the addition of glass blocks.
Thanks everyone, we'll have a new vote soon!
