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Daily Progress update.

I know… updates two days in a row??!  What madness..

Manged to get A* following objects to automatically turn and adjust their facing while maintaing their portrait’s orientation.   Also increased the basic map tile size by one so things aren’t as cramped.  The remainder of the evening was spend working on the following Mocup UI:

As you can tell I’m targeting a baseline 1280×768 resolution.  (obviously.. doesn’t everyone count the pixels on every image they see?)  The different thing is that designing for widescreen (6:9 / 6:10) and then making it work in old school 4×5 instead of doing it the other way around, lets you make some design decisions that you usually probably wouldn’t do.   With Widescreen you can essentially forgo the old L shaped UI frame and just settle for a thicker | shaped sidebar.. and still have plenty room left over.

I think we’ll be seeing more and more of this as the old 4×5 proportion fades into obsolescence. ..

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Painting update – day 8ish

So after a nice little hiatus with the game programmy project its back to work on the behemoth that’s been hogging up the kirchen for going on a month now. 

painting-day-8-002I really didn’t want to do this, which is why it probably took so long.  You see, I didn’t finish the background first… and you always start in the background and make your way closer to the viewer.   That way.. you don’t wind up having to paint over large swatches of the stuff you’ve already painted.  

Which I did.  Which sucks and isn’t a lot of fun knowing you’ve got to do something you were happy with all over again. 

I actually fudged over the planet area fairly well so there’s just a couple small things that are going to need reworking.. so in all reality it could have been much worse. 

So After that I started re-refining all the shade transitions on the gearwork and after I slopped a little shading on the planet guide beam thing I made up my mind to actually render out the gear works instead of the flat blue shapes.  

The base color for 2 of them done and some simple shading on the smaller one and a little detail and it’s a good stopping point.

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WAR and other GOO-ddies

So at this point Warhammer thoroughly has its claws in me.  Little time to play any of the other things (like The Witcher which was getting really interesting when I got distracted).

The new Brothers in Arms came out last week and my pre-order activated, maybe got 2-3 hours with it so far.  It’s very pretty and the gameplay is just as involving as the previous BiA games with awesome ingame cinematics and storytelling.  Very nice for a Tactical FPS fix.

The world of Goo releases today.  It has been getting spectacular reviews across the world, looks like it’s this year’s Portal.  And it’s supposed to be beatably short and a joy throughout so that’s definatly getting picked up this week.

But the Xmas release avalance is definatly getting underway.

Here’s a few highlights:

  • Oct 17: X3: Terran Conflict
  • Oct 20, Dead Space
  • Oct 21, Far Cry 2
  • Oct 28, Fallout 3
  • Nov 11, Call of Duty : World at War
  • Nov 17, Left 4 Dead
  • Nov 18, Tomb Raider: Underworld
And that’s just the next 30 days…
Well.. Time for the reviewers to get busy cuz Im probably gonna miss most of those.
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Waaaaargh

Yup… I was weak.   Warhammer Online is out and available online at EA’s web store.  Hmm I guess the downside of instant gratification online delivery is that I’ll never ever ever be bored again… or wealthy 🙂 

Overall they’ve done a great job with the in game systems, maps etc.  Pull up your map and quest locations are indicated in a faded red, so you always know where to go.   Quest rewards seem to be fairly varied with public quests being really cool and fun.  Yeah the whole public quests and open group concepts really go a long way as to breaking the ice and meeting people to play with.

The PvP parts of the game (which can give XP) are a blast and full of adrenaline.  I can’t wait to get to start doing the keep sieges etc.  

Class variation is pretty cool and at least the chaos classes are a lot of fun with unique playstyles (duel sword wielding melee healers anyone?) and runor has it they’re looking at putting some of the cut classes back in over the next couple months.

So how it’ll play out in the long run is anyone’s guess but the outlook is pretty good.  If my interest in the game plays out like DAoC / WoW  then I’m in for about 6 months or so before it just gets boring.  Guess I’ll find out.

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Witcher – first impression

Ok, so the initial download is 14gb… ouchy… so that took most of a day.

Wow.. this does not feel like the old Neverwinter Aurora engine. (or look like it for that matter) 

Just about an hour into it, the first 15 minutes were intro videos and cutscenes and some in-game cutscenes.  I didn’t skip any of them, very well done and felt like either a solid introduction to things or tied into the game seamlessly.  Combat is more diablo than NWN but then again I’m not all the way throught the tutorial part so that may change.  

Its pretty, very pretty, and architectually things feel more authentic than most western rpgs’ attempts at a ruined castle. 

If the story is half as good as the reviews make it out to be the enhanced edition is going to put up on hell of a fight for RPG of the year.  (Fallout 3 has got it’s work cut out for it.)

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Sporedom

Hmm, so spore is out.

Played it a bunch for the last couple days and still kinda not sure what I think about it.  Which is, well, kinda weird.  Some parts are good, very good in fact. Some parts ..eh  not so much.  But the exploration factor.. wow.. just wandering around and seeing the other critters that exist, if you at all enjoy a trip to the zoo you’ll be well pleased.

A small ookiness factor, and I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it.  Just by sigining into the spore online world (as prompted to do so at the game startup) it turns out everything I create winds up online for other people to see..  Which is.. a little invasive.. in my opinion.. http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-drakkheim

Anyway, It’s a nice little toy that Im sure to play with for a long time.

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Another weekend gone..

Ahh another weekend come and gone.

Lots and lots of musing about game dev type stuff not sure if anything will actually come of it, whatever.. no biggies. 

ArmA, specifically the player made ‘Evolution Blue’ level, may well be the best co-op fps game ever.  Spent most of satuday clearing out the first two and a half towns gaining some ranks, driving & flying some bigger and more well armed vehicles.  The only thing it needs are some better tutorials on how to manage your squaddies.  It’s one heck of a learning curve but when you get the hang of it rolling into a hostile town with your squad is well worth it.  Heck,  I’d buy a game just based off this one level (if they fixed a couple little bugs too).

Elsewhere.. Spore releases today.  (download currently at 42%), totally promises a fun and addictive toy to play with for a loong time.  The creature creator (free trial here) shows off the versatility of the game.