Incoming Source - Near news

Seven years almost. Wow, crazy to think about. Doing one thing for seven years of your life. But it's good that I enjoy this more than most things as it's the only possible way I could have been working on this IP for seven years. We are about to hit one year on the Source engine (august) and we are getting close to a beta release and that is a good feeling.

I originally announced the first version of Incoming (for Half-Life 1) on August 25, 2000. We were open about the inspiration from Halo at the time, and I can understand why it was different 6 years ago. Halo wasn't released, the fame hadn't hit, so it wasn't a huge problem as many people weren't aware or 'attached' to the game yet. I launched the Source version of Incoming on August 3rd, 2005. It was a bit different, to say the least.

I guess it was somewhat expected, as two Halo games were released by this point and we're incredibly popular (and deserved, in my opinion). My original plan when re-creating the game on Source was to stay as true to my original idea as possible, which in fact did include designs from Halo. Over time, it just wasn't accepted. I can understand why people didn't accept it and wanted original content. At first it was just like "That's great and all, but we already spent development time on these art assets, they are either finished or near finished, whats the point?" And media release after media release, the same comments about "Halo" or "Halo Dinosaurs!"... yeah, those were fun. Over time, and when I was at my job I would doodle. I always doodle, whether its in school, work, hardly when I'm at home though, unless I need to for school or I *need* to get a design for Incoming done. So I would doodle tons of character armor designs, vehicle designs, and basically everything and anything. I would design many variations of each thing until I was happy with each aspect. Doing this obviously lead to the re-designs of various things such as the Gladiator and then DeCoY, who I have known for I think five out of the seven years, re-designed the player model. I didn't mind the borrowing of the Halo content.. but after the re-designs took place, I was happier knowing I could say "yeah, these are ours, we designed them". And of course the public agreed. Since that change, it's been a pleasure releasing media and showing off what we are working on. I think it was a great step for me personally, for the development team and I think for the public.

We are getting close, which I think is apparent. I would personally record ingame videos with action or atleast map walk throughs with some gun action, but I need to find a way of doing this. You may have noticed, since Februray, any ingame videos had a soundtrack overlayed on top of it. This is because I sold my custom-built desktop PC back then to get a Laptop since I was never at home due to college work, at friends houses, work, and if I was at home, I figured I'd just get a super powerful laptop that was able to play the newest games to plug it in. So I bought one. And the one feature it didn't have was a built in mic (Dell E1705 - GeFore 7800 256mb, etc). What this basically means is, when I use fraps to record video there is no sound. I was pretty pissed, as thats just obviously a standard feature and I couldn't figure out for the longest time why there was no sound. I would email fraps, change settings, record more video... and then somewhat like 2 months after I go on the Dell Forums and tons of people were pissed about this. And there were many 'work arounds' such as modifying the Windows registery, etc, none of them worked. So I am going to eventually buy an external Audigy sound card but until then, since its summer, a bunch of my high school buddies are back and our new private beta is almost ready so I am going to be using their machines to record video with audio.... mostly because over the course of the last month I have changed most, if not all of the weapon sounds and it actually just makes it that much cooler, in my opinion. So you'll be able to get your hands on that soon enough.

Speaking of the new private beta that everyone is going crazy on right now, especially myself as I have been re-doing, touching up, and converting maps like a dirty whore for the last week. Changing textures, adding models, modifying the entities on props for the new .fgd for our game mode, and Skybex having to fix issues that I mess up such as water, and so forth (since I'm not even a mapper really) and touching up the maps to make them sexier. Our amazing (and gorgeous) lead programmer, amogan, finished the weapon selection menu today. We had the weapon selection implemented for something like the last two months, it was just extremly messy and didnt work the way it was supposed to. It was beyond the point of being able to 'fix' so amogan just re-did it. On top of that, I personally also designed new VGUI menus for both the Team Selection and Weapon Selection menus, and they are much much better, atlelast according to me =)

But, we are also getting kind of angry, or atleast I am, in a few aspects. There are some wierd 'bugs' that are making me want to start smoking again, basically.

I am personally asking anyone from the community or websites, that if you can lend a helping hand, whether you just want to contribute help or be a full member, any help is appreciated and I will personally take care of you, obviously letting you test the beta when its ready.

What are some of the issues that is making Praz want to start smoking again?

1. w_models . We 'believe' we found the problem after about a month. This made GunGrave and myself go nearly crazy. I posted on forums, he posted on forums, I emailed Valve with no luck. What is the problem? We added our 'new' w_models and the wierd thing was, the muzzle flash for the firing would only appear on the first shot and then about 40-80 seconds after that, it would appear again. This boggled my mind. We later looked into it and the idle.smd was 100 frames, and someone made me aware that it needs to be 1 frame. I am not sure if this is the cause. If anyone can clarify 100% of that being the problem, or can help us figure out and solve the problem, I will pretty much love you.

2. All of our vehicles for the first public beta are ready (modeled, skinned). We have three ingame: Penguin, ATV (still adding player animations) and one of the alien vehicles, the Griffin. We need someone that can help us add rigs to two other vehicles. One human vehicle, the Gladiator, and one alien vehicle, the Sceptor. These will use the buggy rig.

3. Weapon skins. Whether you just want to contribute a helping hand or join the team and help us with our future weapon skins, doesn't matter, any help is appreciated. You won't be skinning human weapons, as all of the human weapons are finished and already ingame. We have two ( out of seven) alien weapons ingame, and all of them are modeled and UV unwrapped. They need skins though. I have refrences for the types of material, as well as concepts and images of our other alien weapons (one which can be seen below, which was done as a 'contribution' from the wonderful steven qain. The one shown has normal maps and specular maps, I don't[b]expect that type of thing.

[b]If you feel that you can help in other areas not listed above, don't hesitate, I have an open mind and am always interested in hearing from people with any type of abilities and dreams. If you want to fill another area, feel free to contact me as well.

Contact Details:
AIM: Praz1187
MSN: praz34@msn.com
E-MAIL: david@prassel.com
ICQ: 54157633

On top of all of this 'fun stuff', my personal life has also been crazy. I don't want to get too personal, as that's not the cool thing to do. But I recently got a new job and have been working alot to fix alot of mistakes I made when I was younger and dumber. I recently broke up with my girlfriend of three years, which I'm doing okay with, just trying to patch things up with alot of friends I neglected from putting alot of time into that relationship to make it work. On top of that I'm dating girls and just trying to figure out what I really like and what not, taking it slow. Fixing alot of family problems as well that rose during my last relationship and trying to patch those up. Just a bunch of stuff like that and just this past week I have finally been able to start prioritizing things in my life and have found, well, not found, but made time to work like a jacked-up coke addict and get tons of content ready for the new private beta, such as all of the maps on the main page. So for everyone, development team, fans, and people wanting to join, I am not ignoring you, just trying to handle everything and I appreciate all of your messages, I just don't have the time I wish I could but I am currently working on making that time.

Other than that, things are going great, old members have returned in the past months such as Peder (a god of a modeler), Jeo, a great mapper re-making the map, vt_vast which is completly different and completly awesome. We also have gotten new members such as Skybex who is totally awesome. I love the guy, and its amazing that he can put up with a jack ass like me. He has been helping me with maps and making tons of prop models, such as the awesome trees you see in our new versions of the maps we have been showing. Everyone is doing great work, and thats great to think about with everything else being all crazy and sporadic. This paragraph is more of a thank you and everyone, development team and fans included, rock!

Anyways, since no one read that, here is what you scrolled down for:

vt_oasis:

vt_brisk:

Altair Plasm Rifle (re-skin) and Human BullFrog ATV:

Visit us at:
Incoming-source.net