Blog - Leon_Kilean

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Jan 9th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

I´m working on this small map pack, where the player is portrayed in third person, and he has to sneak around monsters while doing simple puzzles. Big kudos to SDK-Projects for the answers with my troubles in the third person view, namely that I couldnt get the character to animate.... In the end, I just didnt realise I had the wrong activator for the game_ui.

Should be cool. If Im realistic, it´ll be finished around the next christmas.

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Dec 11th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Ok I havent been around in a few months now, decided to take some time off since Pirates of the Empires was cancelled AND pretty much after that I came to the conclusion Dead of Night wont work out.

Lately I´ve been working on other things, like my comics, and, well, playing on my new computer (Bionic Commando Re-Armed is awesome and Far Cry 2 is boring, its pretty, but boring, sorry) and now I was thinking I´ll get back into the whole game graphics stuff. So, there´s a new map coming for Fistful of Frags, the HL2 mod, where I collaborated, I made this really rainy and dark map for it, I tried to go into the direction of The Unforgiven, but couldnt quite get that far, well, because of a few things... it should work well as a multiplayer map so excessive use of the particle system was out (for really heavy raining with fog clouds ´n such, looked really nice but I had to scale it down) and I had to light the map up a little.

BUT Im really satisfied with the ending result. I wont post pics of that map here just yet, maybe in a few days, or whenever I happen to ask for a permission, since, well, I dont want to take away from whatever media wave Ryell is building for FoF.

I´ve actually missed posting here, its so much fun talking to myself.

EDIT: nevermind, Ryell told me I can show the level. Here´s a picture, and a bigger version in gallery above. Remember to try Fistful of Frags for HL2!

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Jul 9th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Well, Pirates of the Empire is cancelled. Instead of any big announcements, the webpage will just stop updating and it´ll eventually fade away from people´s minds.

..Its a big shame, I really liked that mod, and we made some really fast progress with it. What killed it then? Lack of interest, not from us, but from contributors. Creating a big total conversation is really risky, because if you lack one asset, it can stop the whole production... for us it was the player models. We just cant do anything without them. Or actually, we could´ve. We could´ve spent months into creating content that wont eventually ship it, because we´re missing an crucial asset. Oh well, this is the way mods are. Finishing one off is just a strike of luck. Pirates opened my eyes for how crucial it is for me to know 3dsMax inside out. I´ve made some progress with my skills lately, and now I can rig models, bake hi-def normal maps for them, animate them and skin them. I just need to practise and practise and get better with it! But yeah, instead of worrying about Pirates too much, I´ll just make the best of it now. I have the jungle foliage props and all that, and now I´ll be looking for a project where I can give them as a gift. The galleon ship is a bit different problem, since its afterall very crude and blocky, since it was ment to be mobile too. Atleast the initial plans were like that. Maybe The Hidden mod would like the jungle props for a predator-esque map? I´ll have to check out.

Well, yeah, whats done is done. Dead of Night is coming along pretty nice. 2 out of 3 weapons are done, the vampire needs the claw models for first person view, which I might do sometimes, but not now. And the vampire model is fully skinned and animation has begun. Mmm, yeah. Fistful of Frags, well my map has proven to be a bit too far away from the FoF concept, so I need to revise it a little and really polish the shit out of it. Figures, its still pretty early and I wouldnt release anything unfinished.
I might post some new screenshots soon, since I´ve done some work on an asylum map by Katasdf, in Dead of Night. I´ve added custom props and new textures into it. He´s responsible for the brushwork and lighting, well, I tweaked it a little, pompous bastard that I am.

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Jun 23rd, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Since I have so much free time now during the summer, I´ve decided to finally learn how to create character models. After watching a few videos and reading some .pdf´s I could make an simple human model in 3dsMax that works properly and is animated. I could model higher definition, but Im not comfortable with the rigging process. It was surprisingly easy. Maybe thats because the model was so simple. Anyways, there´s plenty of tutorials for 3dsMax on youtube and some links over at cgtalk.com which are worth looking at, for anyone who is interested.

Oh and I just HAD to upload a video of the character. I think it´d work ok in something like a mobile phone game, or a really old school engine. Im too lazy to figure out how to embed videos here, so its in the video gallery.

Its also a good reason for me to expand this profile page. Har.

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Jun 17th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

So I updated this profile, I´ll do so in the future too, probably. Whenever I have some behind the scenes stuff from the mod projects Im involved with. Pirates of the Empires, Dead of Night, Western Quake 3 and Fistful of Frags.

I dunno, I couldnt think of anything to ramble here, so I´ll just say whats up with my mod work today. Pirates of the Empires, the HL2 pirates mod, is developing smoothly. We´re still looking for an character modeller, which is quite crucial for the mod to release. I´ve stopped working on the enviroments (materials, props, skybox, levels) for now, because quite frankly the core gameplay objects and such are far more important. Right now Im trying to focus into the gameplay related stuff, like weapons and items. My first was the big galleon ship, which will have fireable cannons into it. One thing I dont want to do (which I think is an common error with mod developers) is to slow down and start polishing a single feature or two. The crappier and faster, the better I say. I´ll polish when Im not an amateur anymore.
So, yeah, I started off with modelling an cutlass, and my next objective is to bring it in-game. Instead of totally new hand models, I´ll just modify the HL2 hands to suit my needs. Nowadays people dont seem to do enough crappy hacks with mods either. Its all about game industry-level visuals and being the best. Thats just bullshit.

Um, Dead of Night. Its the spiritual brother of Vampire Slayer, and its for Half-Life 2. I loved the original Vampire Slayer and Im really happy to work on a wannabe sequel for it. Right now its very quiet for me, because quite frankly I dont want to do any unnecessary work. They´re hammering away the first vampire model and the core code, and I think my next objective is to get the vampire in-game and skin that. My first map for Dead of Night, a snowy gothic village DoN_Trade, is covered at their forums, but for some reason not in the moddb´s profile. Oh well, it´ll be in the webpage atleast, when that comes out. I think for my second map, it´ll be an eerie carnivale.

Fistful of Frags, I promised Ryell for fixing my cpu problem with FoF that I´d make him an custom map for the mod. FoF has amazing assets, good gameplay, good visuals and I just wonder why people dont make custom maps for it? Well, I decided to do something different for that western mod. So Im going to make an winter map! It´ll still be an town tho, but a shitty broken down kinda ghost town.

Western Quake 3 I havent done anything for in ages. Since they´re making an stand-alone feature, I reskinned all of their player models and made a few of their textures again, so that the visuals are a bit improved. I also talked them into using 3d skyboxes here and there, and provided them with some 3d skybox props. Lately, I dont think they´ve had any work for me, so I´ve kept quiet.