There is great news! This is one of the last news updates for Project Brazil before we release Beta 200 this Spring, sometime in the time between late March and the start of May!
Art By Jess Lackey & Brandan Lee
Shadow Star is in Pre-Production Starting Now!
Check out our IndeGoGo Preview page here!
Don't forget to check out our new Game also! We have an IndieGoGo Starting this March to finance some of the Pre-Production costs, including buying a new PC that I need to help me with the goal of Finishing Fallout: Project Brazil.
For the past 5 years I've been playing the mod I'm making on a rig that only ekks out ~12-20fps, tops. As you can image, that's agony. So I need a new rig to record the in-game content for our release trailer and in-game cinematics. A new PC will also allow me to get Shadow Star started off right, creating the art and paying my team to start a new game. It's another Sci-Fi Role Playing game like Fallout, but on Starships.
Even with a new baby, we'll still love Project Brazil. We'll be working on FPB until it is finished this summer, and continue to support it long into the future, as long as people still play it.
We've got practically all the new 3D art done. I've got some touchup and collision meshes to fix on Vault 18 and the Father's Den, some Navmeshes to adjust, and a few texture flickering problems to solve, then we're in the clear as far as Art goes, forever. :)
As you might have seen last time, we have all new Armour & Armour textures in Vault 18, all new Vault Environment art, and rebuilt combat mechanics. Including Melee Vault Shields!
We only have a handful of new Voice actor dialogues left to cut as well thanks to Quinn Kurmaskie and Mark Hickman. Together they have cut over 2300 lines, covering General Silverman, Warlord Elsdragon, Wilson Wilco, Dr. Rossman, Senator DuVille, and many, many others. We have 5300 lines of dialogue in Project Brzil, ~4900 of which are playable outside of cut content, so it's a MASSIVE undertaking. Not getting burned out on that process is hellish hard. So much gratitude to them.
To commemorate the release of Beta 200, I went ahead and made some new PC Game Boxes in real life, because what says "done" more than a physical box? If you join us at Phoenix / Tucson ComiCon / TusCon, you're sure to find one of these boxes at our table, where we'll pass them out to our fans.
Project Brazil still has a long way to walk between now and release, but we are on course now to have all the objectives checked off we had expected to finish by December (*cough* we got a little burned out working 10 hours every day for no pay every night and weekend and every day off for 5 months.)
What is left now? Scripting.
We lost the venerable Seddon to his Doctoral Thesis defence, as he's now looking for funding to do his research on the way to becoming Dr. Matthew Seddon. Which I think is pretty cool, and a good excuse to say farewell to the team if ever there was one! He put in some extra overtime hours in making our story come together in the final battle of Fort Daggerpoint ahead of Rick's programming reaching that mission. So when Rick gets there, all he'll have to do is tie those established script events into the right threads.
That leaves RickerHK as our sole surviving original team member besides myself, and the last coder on the team. From here on, the weight of the project is all on his shoulders (no pressure Rick) while we cut audio and dust up any remaining art tasks. We could use another coder? But this should be fine before BETA 200.
Speaking of Rick, he just finished up this sequence that bridges the 2nd Main Quest in the Raider plot-line back into the NCR First Main Quest, in case a player who had been abducted by the Raiders early on decides they DON'T want to side with Warlord Elsdragon and leave his ranks for the NCR instead. That requires the player perform some daring heroics, busting their companions out of jail, running away from battle, hijacking a Vertibird, and flying it out across the desert. It then gets show down and crashes into the desert, where it's just a quick walk to the place where the NCR Side of the story begins.
Over 730 lines of code later, that sequence works. We only lost a few player characters to glitches that cause your ragdoll body to be shot into space like a rail gun slug. Oh, Gambryo.
After that, this is what remains before that mostly patched together final battle. The Raider version of this quest barrows heavily the same assets and scripts, so I'll just show this side. This flowchart describes the player meeting with Senator DuVille and getting his side of the story, and meeting the "Online Girlfriend" that some of you may remember from Vault 18 back in the old 131 days. You'll meet her, grab the keys to Fort Daggerpoint, talk to Jameson, then talk to Silverman and board a Vertibird to Fort Daggerpoint & end the story there.
You can read more about our progress on the Design Documents Found Here. In the mean time, you can keep track of us on ModDB, Fallout Nexus, or Facebook. We've got a thriving online community centred around each one.
Cheers
Brandan Lee
Project Leader
Damn, I really can't wait anymore. You guys are all awesome! Looking forward to your official game as well.
Thanks! We're still battling away. :) The end is near and that is a good feeling. Don't forget to watch the Shadow Star page and pass around the hat when the IndieGoGo is up. That'll help me tremendously getting all this done. Took WAY too much time off work so I could spend those hours on FPB from September to now.
Really looking forward to next release! Keep it up :)
I am watching this mod for a long *** time now, and i am glad that after years its still going strong, and it seems, its almost done! I am so happy to see this, i remember playing the vault levels that i totally loved back then. I Cannot wait to play this in the next couple months, good job guys! waiting anxiously.
Fantastic work guys. :)
btw you should blame Havok physics on that ragdoll glitch not Gamebryo, Perhaps Bethesda should think about changing the physics API in the future?
For example Gamebryo lightspeed (the latest engine version) uses PhysX. Also found that a unknown physics engine called Newton Dynamics, used for example by Frictional Games on all their games, is very stable.
It's actually the script that does it. :p Teleporting a ragdoll actor never updates the Havoc with new coordinate data, so it just flings them off in whatever direction. XD I would lay bets that since it was true in Skyrim, it will be true in Fallout 4 even with PhysX.
Ugggh. I can't wait for this mod to get finished. x-x It, coupled with a few other mods I love will make the ultimate New Vegas experience.
But Summer is about to end. :o
Thanks for the support guys. :) We're down near the bottom of the task list. Just gotta shake off the ashes of burnout and get this IndieGoGo launched.
I'll be sure to check out your new game! Don't even know if it's a game I'd play, I just want to donate to somebody making such an awesome mod like this for free!
If you like Project Brazil - put that in space, and there you go. :p Maybe add a little MechWarrior on top of it, but that's the idea.
I took a little longer look at the page this time around, I must say the idea sounds pretty great! I'll be sure to check it out once the game is done :D
Hey, first of all I gotta say--big fan of your guys' work. Really, when I first saw this mod I visualized it as something completely different, and while what I thought was interesting enough to get me to download it, the actual mod... wow, just wow. I can't even start a new playthrough until this mod is finished just because, without it, the entire game feels incomplete.
That said, there's been a question I've been wondering about since... well, I downloaded the mod. Forgive me if this has been asked and answered before, but if you side with Bragg in the Vault is there still going to be an Enclave flavor to the main quest? Or was that one of the things that will need to be restored?
Bragg's flavour is easily my favourite part of Part 2. It's going to take us another week or more for Rick to script in, but the materials are already in the GECK.
Awesome. You have no idea how glad I am to hear that--no, really, I banked my entire character development arc on what they do for the Enclave in PB. I feel like a kid who just got a Christmas present a day early.
Part 2 can't get here soon enough. You guys are great, and I wish you all the luck with Shadow Star and your Indie endeavors. And thank you for the quick response. :]
Great! I love the Enclave Side. You don't see much in the way of the Enclave while you're on your solo mission, but they stay in constant contact by radio, so you talk to Bragg a lot, and get special mission guidance & gear. Works for both Raiders and NCR players.
Also, you'll have to play part 1 over gain. All the new changes invalidate old saves completely. Which isn't so bad, considering all the new stuff in Vault 18.
Keep up the great work guys!
the hype is real
I was excited for this mod to be released, but now that I've read your concept for Shadow Star I'm super excited for both of them!
Really impressed that you're going to try using real science where possible in that game.
I'm glad you like it! It's a struggle getting started with this mod still working to finish, but it is coming along. :)
so your going to make a BattleCruiser 3000 like game? Sounds cool, never played them but sadly I think they were super buggy, but the concept is awesome. Also I think there was a Wing Commander spinoff which kind of captured this idea. Hope you're successful in Shadow Star