Early Game Play Prototype

Spent a couple of evenings over the last few weeks working on some basic game play prototyping: YouTube Vid

It looks good. I noticed that at one point the player character was emitting dynamic light. Are you going to make that a permanent thing, or just when the player is experiencing a certain power up or using a certain weapon?

I added the floating dynamic light for a number of reasons TBH.

Part of this RPG Sci-Fi concept is that the suits worn by players provide essentially everything the player needs to exist in hostile alien environments. Each character has 50-60 stats including energy, so I really liked the idea of putting players in incredibly dark levels and need to manage their energy to keep the light on...

On a more practical note I am also thinking about how to use dynamic lights to increase the visual quality with special effects, melee attacks, telepathy and so on. I've already implemented simple dynamic lights for the telepathic attack you can see in this short video, so far I am happy with the basic results.

My priority is to get a working demo for proof of concept up and running so that I can demonstrate confidence in this technology for delivering the product, so any feedback is much appreciated

-Concentrate on a working pathfinding for the opponents.
(not just turn and walk)
Else its hard to add this later into the game.

The opponents must also have a variance in action-states.
like enemies, who attack and run back some distance,
others forming a group and doing a rush-attack.

opponents running for cover when low on health.

----

try to make a random-dungeon generator.
So that you have a collection of premade rooms with
standard connections.
The rooms are added up into a random maze later

I think you did an amazing work there budy
cant really critisize anything

regards

Aztec

I just lost my net connection for the last couple of hours so I've been doing some tidy up work, getting the state manager to work more effectivly and generally cleaning up my sloppy code

Thanks for the positive feedback from both of you.

@OXY:


The Ai have two target skills [pointers], a primary and then secondary target which I plan on using for managing paths/nodes while keeping the primary target as the enemy.. To cut a long story short, the Ai should be pretty well setup for path finding, although I am not sure what solution I will use or write something from scratch...



The enemies and to some extent the players are running through a 'state' manager that I've written. Basically every character has around 40-50 statistics that includes classes and ai behavioural states, so I am pretty confident that I can continue to scope this up as I go.

The icons over the head show the state the Ai is in, pretty basic at the moment, but it should provide a pretty stable base to expand on. Certainly I will want to add 'Run for Cover' and other such behaviour to really breath life into the Ai.

Thanks for the comments both.

So what I am really looking for is comments, suggestions and feedback to really help me decide on the core game mechanics that this title will be built on. I have a high level concept of this game along with the main genre (Sci-Fi RPG) with a potential to expand it to a Diablo level.

The game is currently set up for play using the Xbox 360 controller as well as having support for the keyboard and mouse. The game play really dictates how this will work, for example, if the game should be completely supported by the pad alone, features that require mouse clicks are somewhat redundant.

That said, there is a lot of scope for games, especially RPG'a where a mouse is an absolute requirement.

So I really want to invite discussions about 'How this game would play', this will help me lock down ..ehhem...how it will play!

Of course I would love to hear other ideas for the game, UI, styling...its really a bit of a blank canvas at the moment.

Thanks again all, look forward to reading your replies.

From just watching the video, it looks very boring. the enemies are running to the player, the player hits them a few times, they die and the same again. The fighting doesn´t look very motivating, but very monotonous, simple and boring. But think that this is meant to be changed by adding more states and different times of enemies and maybe some different kind of attacks the player can do. But that is just what I thought while watching the video. I once created a simple dungeon game, there I placed only few light in the level, but wanted the player still to see everything around it thus I didn´t make the player the lightsource but had an elve, shining very bright following the player and flying around him, as some kind of a pet or what ever. Was just a random remember of what I once did... .

Thanks Slin ( Long time no speak ),

I agree the gameplay with enemies swarming the player is not exactly exciting or challenging, thankfully this is more proof of how the underlying game is setup, as I can tweak the enemies strength, health, damage and make it a bit more interesting in that respect... however thats a way off yet

As for animations, you probably also noticed that at stages during the punch cycle the players avatar isnt walking. I've just started re-working the animation system to be based solely in bones, so I can blend walk with other anims...

Once this process is complete I will definatly create more animations which will make it more exciting...

The suit light is invisible in the video, but like you suggest its actually a small ball thats following the player, I like the idea of making it more visible and less locked to the players x,y...

Thanks for the comments, drop me a PM sometime

Looks good so far, a bit like Diablo in a SciFi environment. Of course, its still a prototype, but I like the feeling of enormous enemy masses...^^
If you manage animation interpolation with the blended animations, give a quick hint how you did it - I would be interested in that.

At the first attempt, which is shown in the video, I am using vertex/mesh animations, as I could not get bones to export correctly from 3DsMax. However I've now managed to resolve that pipeline issue and will be rebuilding and exporting all characters with the included bones.

I am going to re-do the animations to make them more suitable to this approach, for example creating a set of upper/lower body animations so I can blend walk and attack, or run and jump etc...

I think this work will take me a few days to re-animate the character and then another few days to re-write the animation system to use bones. I've just been offered some help with the animation system so hopefully we might end up with something very modular.

I am really aiming for a modern Diablo Adventure RPG style game thats set in a SciFi world as I think there is more of a niche market there.

This past week since posting the video I've focused on cleanup and now have a much more stable playable. Lots of improvements to the state manager and a considerable number of silly bugs.

I have to get this finished before next month has been and gone so I am going to crack on. Thanks for your feedback and comments, hope to have a new video ready soon.

Probably you already took a look on torchlight but nevertheless here are two gameplay vids: http://www.pcgames.de/aid,698252/Torchlight-So-spielt-sich-der-ueberraschend-gute-Diablo-Klon-Videos-und-Bilder/PC/Video/

The AI seems really simple to me but well working.
I like the clear style they developed without using any shaders^^
The vids gave me some motivation to continue working on my prototype too but I have to learn history for tomorrow...evil school-always interferes with my education

Yes exactly, while stylistically this is not my target, its certainly close to the style of game play I am aiming for. Hopefully with a more cinematic angle and fight systems that are not just based in massive particle effects, although I certainly want to include these in the right places

I really like the scale in the second video, I am keen to include much larger enemies including alien vehicles and other big boss types of enemies. Injecting the Sci-Fi angle into this classic genre.

Thanks for the video links

Do you also plan to generate the levels using randomly placed level-chunks?

That is a really good question, I've been doing some considerable testing and experimenting with pipelines for building the game world.

One variation that I have already explored is to make the game world up from same sized sections, maybe 32m cubed parts that would allow relativly high definition visually as textures would be less tiled and highly unique; of course lots of nice scope for shaders such as normal mapping and other such trickery.

Most importantly, and this really supports the meta game model we're planning for, most important of all is that this would allow dynamic 'dungeon' creation.

Using studio Max as our tool base it is relativly easy to establish a template that all of these parts are modeled from and with some cunning script work parts can then be identified and themed allowing some very nice generated maps and even very dynamic scenarios.

I think that the tiled dungeon approach has a lot of potential but subsequently it also means that there are a lot more polygons in the view and performance is a little harder to manage...

I am also looking at ways to use this system in a more organic way, allowing nice environments, alien planets and so on, to be populated with the core game area in parts... some raised sci-fi gangways where the game takes place while the environment around is less 'underground'

I will drop some of these elements into the game world in the next video, so hopefully more discussion about this can be made..

This afternoon however I really want to get the core Ai awareness system working better. I've got a couple of new states to get finished:

New Video: Here

In this video you should see the state behaviour changing as the npc's awareness of the player increases.

Note: I used to be able to embed a youtube video directly here, but the [youtube] tag doesn't seem to work, any tips?

Looks nice, now make it check if nearby enemies = aware of threat, my state = their state

Really good for a beginning; i like that a lot already !
The characters even simple looks polished, good effects.

Dungeon tiles :
- allow with your own editor to incredibly quickly draw levels
- Easy to build AI on tiles properties and path serach

To optimise frame rate :
- Top view camera showing only some tiles
- Make bigger tiles
- make a system not allowing rotation camera (lot more power
needed) : titan Quest like


Another approach: Terrain with objects on top like :
Cliffs, water, buildings , trees, grass
Advantages:
- Fast
- Multitexturing
- Easy to create with Tools
Disadvantages :
- AI Path search more complicated, you will need waypoints

What counts will be the interface, animation and graphics
Be inspired :
3D tiles games

Have you decided about RPG elements , power tree Diablo style ?
or more open system ?

You got a challenger for the little and very cool game Fate 2 !
Keep it up !

Thanks, a good idea, I should implement a grouping variable, as well as the team variable.


Thanks

This route ticks nearly all of the boxes but leaves a few holes that I am not keen on. Mainly dungeon style building like this often results in very familiar archietecture and for me somewhat makes all RPG's like this somewhat generic.

While this is far less labour intensive and could even generate new maps on the fly, I think the reward does not outway the cost of less generic maps.

It's still far too early for me to call yet, this is again why I am so focused on the core gameplay.


After watching the 'Torchlight' video reference I have to say this fits my thinking for this title more than Fate 2 does. I really like the way that 'Torchlight' has a more freeform, organic feel, which makes the more traditional block approach less possible...

As you point out this also means that path finding will need to be more node based, but I am not completely against this although it would be great to have a quicker dynamic solution...

..between the devil and the deep blue sea!


While I am confident of my own art and design skills and think I will be able to design and build a good interface, I will certainly be doing a art-style guide later in the project and most likely will outsource this work.

You are not wrong though, while the Sci-Fi angle is a good approach the game still needs to stand out amoungst the crowd of RPG Action Adventure Diabloe clones, so I expect this to take up a lot of time.

That said, I have not even given this title a name yet, as I don't want to fall into any of the usual pitfalls, branching off to develop elements that are not really core game play.


I have some strong ideas about the tech tree and way in which power ups are going to exist, as the alien species have telepathic powers I can create some nice cross-over between teran and alien technology.

Using Alien Tablets and Artifacts, players will be able to suplement their powers, add new abilities and so on.

I have catered for 3 major known skills with upgrade levels and a system that should encourage players to mix and match these skill types to get powerful combinations: Thief, Assasin, Speed, Strength and other such 'Master Upgrades'.

With the class system implemented already and also XP points, levels and so on, I would like to see players gaining new skills over time and becoming better capable of doing damage...

In the new video the telepath class is more intelligent which helps him spot the player faster than the combat agents but are not so tough in combat...

A very simple and early example, but it's coming

Thanks for the support Ratchet.

I've taken some time to create a basic template in max for the grid method which I think covers the core parts.

I need to create a set of smaller corridor and arch way parts now, trying to find good reference for how to cover all the bases. Very much the traditional Isometric approach to level creation in many ways...

EDIT:
I've laid out what I think are the core parts needed for a dynamic dungeon would be, based around each tile being 32m square with a height of 12m.



By my count that is 24 individual parts, which isn't too bad. I know that you could actually rotate some parts instead of duplicating them, but I think that would be cutting of my nose to spite my face...

Anyway, so presuming this system works, and that we would create a theme system that allows sets of these parts to be made and used dependant on the environment and so on...

with variations on each part, potentially 2-3 variations per part, per theme, and I think that is being a little conservative, it still means that every map would require approx 100 parts, give or take 10%...

So the system would need to allow for this theme, also allow for individual parts to have variants, whilst also making sure that the map is correct...

I will spend some time UVmapping each of these simple shapes and get them into the engine, it seems like its worth a little more investment of time.

Please let me know if you have comments or suggestions, I am sure some of you have already spent considerable time working out this one

TIA

EDIT2: Just spotted I forgot doorways! duh! that adds another 4 components...

EDIT3: Well this was a little unexpected! Once I had worked out the number of door variations in an end part, I've already now added a further 24 parts.



I also know that I will also need to think about creating a doorway in both the corridor parts and the large room parts...

So the list of parts continues to grow, still I think I have nearly got all the parts.... I think

With doorways, any chance you can count a wall as a sub-part, so you have 24 master parts, with an occasional wall replaced with a doorway-wall as required?

That way you could have secret doors, changing maps etc, where you are only changing sub-parts, not the whole square.

thinking about it, this may not help, as a wall could be full edge, or have one corner adjoining, or two corners adjoining, and where corners adjoin other walls, you would need a different edge to the wall. - so that makes 3 wall sub-parts, and 3 door-wall subparts. I guess you'd then use those 6 definitions on top of ground sub-parts, within your 47 total parts. (24 + 24 {-1 with no walls} )

I like the start of your project, keep up the great work!

Don
have a great day

Be careful with transitions,
When you asseble the level out of unattached models,
And you have floor or wall elements that are curved, you
will see a "gab" in the elumination (model lightshading)

Try to have "flat" connections between the elements to
avoid visible gabs in the elumination.

I've now made 6 new template parts for corridors with doors in, again these are individual parts and therefore wont be rotated when building dynamic dungeons.



I need to create a set of doorways for the single wall tiles now, which means I will potentially create another 21 parts...

Wow I don't even want to start thinking about truly 3D dungeon building yet, but I know when I come to create the upper and lower level parts this list will expand to massive proportions!

@Gumby: I did some thinking about how to make these tiles as smaller parts, seperate walls and interchangable componenets etc. My only potential question here is that maybe I should have seperated the floor from the walls... Still I am also keen on using World Normal maps instead of Tangent maps as the parts have consistant facing, so this will really help the shader give me a very good look.

Thanks for the comments, working out all these parts is really baking my noodle

@Damocles: What to you mean by transitions, I am not sure I fully understand what you mean. You mention that lighting illumination might be off? or am I miss understanding you completely?

If you dont need to tile your textures over the level-chunks, because the chunks aren´t to big to use 1024*1024 (or even 512*512) textures than it is definetly the way to go since Object/Worldspace normalmapping is faster and looks better in same cases

This was my thinking Hummel exactly.

From working with other game engines, especially CryEngine, I have a healthy respect for shader work and know that anything that can squeeze the performance and get better results is worth investing in.

As all the parts are built in 3DsMax, when a full art pass is done with these parts being carefully modeled, we will texture bake them to generate world normal maps, specular maps and so on, as well as some AO either as part of the diffuse or even as a shader.

I would love to get a nice shader that gives all these options with some good support for dynamic lights, this would greatly improve the visual aesthetic.

So I am working on the final set of doorways which gives me another 16 parts...

I allways forget the term.
Its the polygon lightdistribution, that makes
the smooth lightshading.
(in contrast to flat shading)

If you have polygons that are attached on the same vertecies,
they share the lightditributuion, and the polygons
have a smooth lighttransition.
If you have two models, you will have a gab in the elumination,
as they are of course not attached polygons.

Best is to test that in the engine using dynamic light, and you will see what i mean.

I think I understand you, the point where the models join might create some artifacts due to how the lighting sytem works. Thanks for the tip, I will look at them as soon as I am ready to test.

I've now got the complete set, 76 individual parts, which I am now going to export as MDLs and start building a grid with them. It's early days but I am already trying to think about the right naming conventions to use in order for the engine to manage them suitably.

Trying to think ahead about potential for dynamic maps as well as some kind of middle map editor so that my designers could construct maps themeselves...

Anyway 76 models to export...

tessellation?

No actually Gouraud shading..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading

It can bee tricky but perhabs modifying the normalmap (or the maps generally since they where not filtered over the seams) at the borders could help to reduce the artifacts. Another possibility is to use a pp-effect to blur a little bit over the seams

yeah, but having proper tessellation (the density and spread dof the vertices) is what makes gouraud shading look ok, thats why I was confused.

Yes, but in this case the problem is, that
the tesselation does not work over modelboundaries.

If there would be a chance to "link" the objects (at the connection edges)
by code, the shading could be realized evenly.

Withou this, there will be visible seams
when using a moving dynamic light for example.

maybe in some way the geometry of the final parts could help to hide this, or some uniform tesselation size might make this less...obvious...

I've nearly finished simple UV for all the parts so I can give them a simple texture bake, theres no real point optimizing the uv at this stage as the geom is not essential. Still I thought it was worth doing so that we can get a real look at lighting issues...

I will get a handful of them into the engine by brute force just to have a look...

I've nearly finished exporting all the parts, but I couldn't resist experimenting with the parts that I have done already and this is what came out:



Here's a shot, again from WED, of some of the other parts.



I am exporting all the door parts now, but I will need to revisit this entire process once I have a better idea of naming conventions.

For now I just want to get all the parts exported and ready to use...

TIA for any comments

it might have been smart to render the ao with a temporary piece at the each connection edge because now the ao fades in and out at the connections...

I think SSAO would be a well working solution in this case...
(damn, that reminds me that I´ve to prepare a presentation about SSAO for English until Tuesday )

Thanks guys. TBH Lostclimate I just texture baked each part quickly so that I had some form of shading on each part so I could see it clearly for testing.

Once I have a good working map with these parts I can return to think about how the final parts will be exported. I did some earlier experiments with this method and had 2-3 parts with normal mapping and specular maps, which seemed to help the lighting issues, however its clear that the individual parts approach doesn't help the dynamic lighting system.

Hopefully I can get some parts with all the shaders working and see how the lighting looks. Right now its pretty ugly

Now that I have all the parts as models which I've now reduced to 16mx16mx6m as the original size was way too big, I should be able to creat a map that uses all the parts.

Each part has a 1024x1024 map assigned to give me an idea of how much memory this is going to use and then figure out a way to dynamically load the parts as the players move through...

I should be able to build a live 3x3 grid and load in the other parts as the player explores...so it should also give me the fog-of-war for parts that have not been explored yet.

As always I am getting ahead of myself...

Great progress !

Another idea, could be connected rooms , when you ente'r a door , you enter a new very little tiled dungeon part with doors also : like Zelda on Nes , but with some more rooms visible at same time.


Keep up the work !

Here we can see the beasty raising its head even with normal/spec shader on the section..



The sections are both lit by the dynamic light for the telepath attack, but as suggested earlier, its made a real pigs ear of that...

Any ideas? Or does this route kill the use of dynamic lights?

TIA for any suggestions...

I don´t know what shader you are using, but you can try to create a copy of it, which will be used for the big parts only and place the following line into pass (probably more than one) of the shaders technique to disable gouraud shading and to enable flat shading for it:
ShadeMode = Flat;

So that it should look somehow like this:


(sry, for the ugly formatting, I just copied it from the wiki and pasted that line...)

You know I am so out of my depth with shaders most of what you just wrote shot right over my head...

I think I should revisit the wiki and take a look at the shaders, i've somewhat pickled this one and no idea where it came from in the first place.

Thanks Slin

EDIT: Ok it is that shader from the wiki... trying to figure out what I have to change. Thanks for the pointers, I will let you know how I get on

EDIT2: I have made these changes but the lighting issue still remains.?!?

Just as I expected (the problem with dynamic lights and transitions)

I suggest to not fight the transitions directly, but
do it with smart design of the pieces.

make larger sub-levelblocks (whole sections with
their own details), and try to use things like stairs,
a different groundtexture, carpets etc to make
the seams look more "intendet", by having a designed
"break" in the transition.

Another thing is to use smaller polygons for the floor and walls,
when using dynamic lights. (ok thats the tesselation now)


Have a look at my jump and run level:

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.p...true#Post276241

The world is build out of small square blocks. But the
ilumiation still looks even from the front view.
I did that by detaching the frontside polygons of the
block from the top and side polygons.
This way the dynamic light spreats evenly on the front.

Even if you use flat-shading there is still the prob that the textures will not be interpolated over the seams...also these chunks are surely just placeholders and the final versions will look more organic (or not?), so flat-shading would not longer give well looking results.

I still prefere the unique look of hand made environments, but actually it is possible to overcome both problems (non-seamless shading and textures) without making compromises in quality...I´ve already experience in that area because I developed a terrain editor wich can merge single chunks absolutly seamless together and I also made something similar with model chunks in the near past.
It´s a lot of work but I could do it for you if you really need it now...
just PM me...

a pic of my last small project:


there are six chunks with seamless shading

True, the flat shading only works if the parts aren't meant to be more organic. The texture interpolation can be overcome by clever texturing. Or just go hummels way, however it works. He somehow didn't show me that stuff before

Wow!

Thanks all for the comments. I think I will expand the test and create 2 parts at alpha quality so we can really look at how this would work, if there are modeling approaches to help reduce this and so on.

Hopefully I will get a chance to knock them out later today. Thanks again.

@Slin: Thanks for the PM help, although I am not up to speed with the whole A7 lite .c stuff, still an old fashioned script man

Youtube Video: R3D Lighting
:- This video shows a couple of alpha quality tile sections with normal and specular maps, straight from the wiki. Sorry the video quality is a little poor

Thoughts?

pretty good.

Hm, it doesn´t look as if the transition is the problem at the moment, but the engines light manager. Try to set max_lights higher, make sure that you build in mesh mode and check the center of the levelparts and the lightrange. And try to turn off the light maybe. You should may also think about using shadowmapping for those lights, at least if the speed of everything else does well.
And you just have to think about switching to Lite-C. It makes especially the shaderwork but also everything else a lot easier. At least if you don´t already have a big Codebase where you can use big parts from, or some other important reason I may don´t understand

And I actually don´t like that shader from the wiki, especially in terms of speed...

I think its likely that with enough of a game functioning using this method and some nice Alpha parts to show it off, I can really worry about how it looks near its completion.

I will try the suggestions about increasing number of allowed lights, I would also like to remove daylight completely, although I don't seem to be able to get a 100% dark level when only using model geom and not any of the BSP brushes.

As for why C-Script, I've simply not upgraded from pro6 to pro7 yet

Ouh, when you are still using A6 Pro, then the problem with the lights is even more strange than I expected...

You don't need real lights for ennemies !
Real lights are expensive if you don't use an AAA engine using very otpimised deferred lightning !

Even on AAA games ennemies don't cast real lights , some tricks are used :
- old method : weel done alpha light sprite
- faster : light sprite with projection shader like in Doom 3
(your game is top down view : projection shader would do
the job greatly)
With that no more need to break level in too much polygons !

Juts ideas !

@Ratchet: That sounds excellent to me

I really need to get focused on key gameplay too, this exploration of the tile system has shown me enough to know this is a logical way to go ahead when making this type of title.

I have enough parts to create a level now and really can focus on the game play:

In no particular order...

- Core Gameplay!
- - Cool special attacks / moves / telepathy
- - Better Animations for the player
- - Path Finding
- - Better State Manager Ai
- - Pickups & Stuff
- - OSD & GUI
- - Multiplay for 4 people

This is enough to keep me going pretty much through to the new year, so I had best get my eye on the prize

Thanks everyone for the tips, exploring this tile system has given me a clear path forward. Much appriciate everyones input.

You will have a completely "dark" level when setting
the unlit flag on the level-block-models.
You dont needs any BSP then.

then also set the light flag on the entites,
give them a color, and
adjust their material values.

This way you have complete control of the lightrendering
of the model entities.
Also set sun_light =0; to eliminate the dynamic sunlight.

Forget about "AAA". My shader contest entry (which you should still be able to download) could easily render more than 100 lights at a time with little effect on the frame-rate, depending on how much screen-space is covered by each. It uses deferred lighting, and is free for anyone to use.

I have no idea how compatible it would be with A6, though. Mine only works on machines with MRT support (which apparently most people on this forum have), but I think Boh_Havoc's deferred shading doesn't necessarily need MRTs (though without MRTs there're quite a few passes that will probably eat into your max vertex limit).

If you can get your hands on a deferred lighting solution that works with A6 you'll be set -- you obviously like to use dynamic lights to spice things up, and who wouldn't? GTA4 used deferred shading so that every pickup (weapon, cash) was casting light, as well as all the cars' brake-lights and headlights, and all the streetlights.

Then again, if you don't use too many at a time (even though lots were used, there never seemed to be more than a few visible at any one time in your vid), even a standard per-pixel shader should look seamless in your scenario. I just can't remember how A6 shaders interact with dynamic lights

The new video looks much better than the first one, as it looked like there was a little more to the combat than just mash-mash this time. I also really liked the aliens in the glass tubes on the walls

Jibb

I've been working on my npc models and have now got to a reasonable stage as I thought it was worth sharing:



I am still reworking the arms and then I will do some detail work on the torso textures to add details like the head. However, I just ha to get him added to the game to get an idea for how it would look.

The screenshots show the target LOD0 mesh, around 2.5k although the one exported into game at present is considerably less polies. Let me know what you think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAcgfBiCTi0

I dont like the feet, (best is to cover it with the
Coat.)
Else it looks nice.

You might want to add some transparent model ontop of the head,
to make it look as the brain can be seen underneath some
slime.

Nice Ideas, I will keep working at it Thanks

I took some feedback onboard and rebuilt the models arms and removed the feet, to really add to the look as he hovers.

I still plan on improving some of the texture detail for the cloak but the distance these models will be viewed from during game, brighter strong colours help to identify the different enemies...

I am adding the final few animations, but the model is fully rigged now so that I can export bones instead of mesh animations and hopefully I can then start to blend some of these together to create a better flow and feel for their movement.

Wish me luck, comments welcome as always

FYI: The model is made from 758 polies or 1,432 tris which ever you prefer

good, much better with the thinner fingers,
and the hovering look.

The shoulderpads could also be bigger and more spiked up,
so they are more in balance with the collar.

And the chest should get some ornaments, to make him look
more "wirzardy".

Cool character !

The feet : tt's a matter of taste

I like the feet, caus it show even more it's an Alien.
Without it , it becomes to look like a traditionnal mage from a medieval RPG : less original, and we've already seen 2000 times magician medieval RPG.
And it's more alien psychic powers than mage aven if he can lauch fire.

Here is my PERSONNAL advice (take it or not ) :
Bring on some originality : it's an alien game no ?
-Big feet ; another head on the torso, 3 legs, 4 or 5 arms,
alien tail, no legs like snakes, floating in air etc ....
-Effects : put something original for an alien : a flying orb above is head or a power effect belt, or power balls turning slowly around him etc ... bring on your imagination, don't go traditionnal.
-Don't make too standard things , make it alien an original !

Thanks both for your comments, I certainly know what image I am going for here. I am planning on creating a nice set of Alien Symbols and really trying to push something sci-fi and refreshing into the RPG genre, so I really want to make this stand out.

That said, I am happy for the Telepaths to have hidden feet and float around in the game while the other classes, especially meleé will have a much more alien feel and will show the feet and other 'special' features off more

TBH: I am no artist and at best I only plan on giving enough depth to the art that a good artist and team could create much more appealing characters than I ever can. Still it pays to keep your hand in

Over the next few weeks I hope to develop at least 1 more class for the Aliens and then I will revisit the player model.

I am really pleased with my new Telepath Alien and should be able to produce the other classes quicker now. Although I do want to create some other more interesting archetypes...

Please feel free to throw ideas, sketches or refrences my way

Thanks for the comments and support guys

I've created a new torso section from which all the other alien classes are built. In this example the class type is 'Ranger' and the alien is equiped with a power pack and wrist mounted pulse energy thingies...




I've rigged the character and am continuing to work on the animation sets that I will use in the final game. Texture work still needed on the equipment.

Let me know what you think? TIA

Here's a quick render of the final model:

looks pretti good.

Looks good !
Just need to make now another aliens styles, less human and more monster like !

Keep up the work !

they look quite stereotyped-try to create more creative creatures...but since its still a prototype everything looks good so far

Thanks for the comments everyone and I generally agree; this 'species' is very human-esque and certainly follows the stereotyped 'Grey' alien image.

Without going into too much detail about the general background to the idea for this game, it's worth saying that the intention is to create one or two key enemy races that fit this stereotype with the rest of fauna being far more 'monsterous'. I spent a fair amount of time playing around with the EA title 'Spore' and have a pretty good idea how to mix it up for some of the other species

In this first case the species is more human with a greater use of technology and telepathic abilities so I've tried to keep the asthetic and style close to this pre-conception. I hope it will make it easier to identify with them as an archetype or species.

If I may bring it back slighty towards the original 'Game Play Prototype' topic that I set when I kicked this off its maybe worth mentioning 'meta-gameplay' here, as it in someway might help outline the scope of the enemies planned for creation.

Much like some of the new 'Facebook' app/games that are starting to become popular, (especially with the addition of the iPhone and its cross-over apps) games such as 'Mafia Wars' have really captured the attention of the new breed of casual gamer. (Feel free to jump in if you are familiar with this game, as I would love to hear your opinions).

In many ways 'Mafia Wars' is meta-gameplay without any core gameplay. In this respect the plan with our project is to create a gameplay experience that can be integrated with some kind of cross over meta-game portal like this.

So going back to races and enemies in general, we plan on creating several sets that allow some dynamic mission content to be created based on meta-game match statistics, that give a good deal of variation to create longevity of interest with the title and continued challenge for the gamer.

Combined with an inteligent dynamic-dungeon system, we should be able to create a game where we, the developer, can release new themes, items and rares, along with big boss fights and so on to hopefully continue/increase the effective shelf life of the product.

I am also very aware that as a new startup developer with limited time and resource that our target title must be as production light as possible and this is why dynamic content to us is a key consideration.

It's also why I am focusing on the core-gameplay and building one race of enemies that covers the broadest spectrum of these elements.

On a final note:

I really would love to hear ideas about other races, reference material, ideas for cool game-mechanics and anything associated with it really. I am also inviting discussion about meta-game play and ways indie developers like us, might take advantage of this new boom.

TIA for your interest and feedback

Heres a video with all 3 archetypes from this race - First Milestone Video HD Version Available

Nnniccee....
I like it.
Looks very cool, the style is clearly reconizable.

Thanks again for the encouraging comments.

Now that I have the basic enemies working, albeit without any pathfinding or real sense of Ai outside of their core behaviour states, its time to focus on the players avater: The players window to the game-play experience



After spending the last few weeks getting very frustrated with my pipeline as I tried to utilize 'Bones' which has proved to be something of a blind alley. Puppeteer and I, (Thanks for the help), have been trying to work these kinks out through PM but from my new tests I think there are some definate issues still with getting Max rigs accross into MDL bone format without some very odd scaling issues. I think to be fair, GS is long overdue a proper plugin suit for the leading modeling programs and 3DSMax should certainly be a priority. (Note: If anyone out there reading this thinks they could develop a proper set of plugins for 3DSMax get in contact please)...anyway, I digress

So I've broken the avatar rig into 3 parts so that I can animate the torso and legs seperately and in addition the head has been seperated to make variations easier to support.

Hopefully I will have this in and working in a few days.

Thanks again for the support and interest, and to everyone who's checked out the video progress and left comments.