This is only the beginning...

Currently listening to the new Mars Volta album, Noctourniquet, and all is well.

Honestly, I may have underestimated how much needs to be done before the alpha release, but I’m okay with that now. Maybe May or June, hopefully end of summer.

I’m roughing out the low-polys for characters now, that way instead of having to load in new models and textures every time, we can just use the same low-poly and just change the normals and materials.

Still toying around with constants in the code for the base mechanics, spells, etc, though the XP curve is set. Battle tuning and all will come later. Also still iterating on the HUD because every time I think it’s good, I think of something else it’s missing, or some other key bind or button or whatever else that needs to be available.

I’m gonna say it straight up so no one has any false ideas about what this alpha will be like…

It’s going to be an ugly blocky mute buggy piece of shit.

But that’s why we do alphas in the first place. It can only get better.

I’ve found what I needed in the AS2 implementation, and it’s a lot more stable, so now I have my entire UI and menu system in place, it’s just unskinned. POC is coming along much better now.

Community comes back next week, this is exciting.

Still working on my UDK game.

Problems:

Read More

I might start purposing this blog. Something like “The trials and tribulations of indie game development(using UDK)”.

…but, I don’t want to release too many details, have the project fall through like so many others and have people be disappointed in the outcome.

I can tell you this much though:

Right now I’m working on an hybrid that has elements that will be immediately recognizable to anyone with MMO, SRPG(Particularly Disgaea), RTS, and/or MOBA(DotA, HoN, LoL) experience.

The core game will be single player.

It’s going to have multiple 1v1 multiplayer modes(This part is actually mostly developed, it’s the rest of the code, the art assets(including sound), and the levels that need help right now)

Players can control a party of varying sizes(Don’t know how large it will get, maybe 80 or so if the engine can handle it, but at least 40(though varying multiplayer rule sets throw this info out the window))

It’s been in pre-design for around seven months, and active development for one.

UDK(Primarily UnrealScript) has been both a blessing and a curse

[Mainly due to my own hatred for Object-Oriented Programming]

{I may have learned C++, but I’m still a procedural guy at heart}

And finally, HOLY HELL DO I HATE SCALEFORM

NOREALLYYOUGUYSTHISSHITISTERRIBLE

Gotta learn flash, AS3, and CLIK

Then interface it with unrealscript

So many places it could, does, and will go wrong

(AND HAS)

And even then the AS3 implementation is sketchy at best.

Working in UDK is a little more complicated than working in id Tech 4, but the change is more than worth it.

8 projects in the pipeline, hoping to have one or two in proof of concept alpha phase by the end of the month.

Implemented a GLSL render path, probably going to strip out ARB2 et al. for a slimmer binary, just need to work on the shader files themselves now.

Taking out anti-piracy checks to DVDs, and CD-Key checks, as in a standalone they only would disrupt my efforts.

Also, working on fixing some of the really bizarre hack workarounds in there right now, like the red/alpha switch.

Updating the netcode to be compatible with IPv6, and working some more modern features into the new GLSL shaders, (hopefully) bringing the id Tech 4 engine up to current standards(ala BF3, RAGE, MW3, Crysis 2, et al), but that will take some time in development.

Also going to strip the tool set out of the binary and make it standalone as well, hopefully this will allow me to remove the MFC dependencies.

I guess I’ll try to update this more often as the project goes, but mostly I’m going to be busy working on it.

I’ve spent the better part of 2012(thus far, roughly 48 of the 57 hours that have passed) stumbling through id Tech 4…

But…

Progress has been made, bugs have been fixed, improvements are being added…

Back when I was working on id Tech 3, the same amount of progress would’ve taken me months.

Am I smarter now? Am I just more accustomed to how Carmack writes code? Am I a better programmer? I feel like the real answer is that I’m just more driven.

Drive is a new thing to me, and honestly, how much I can accomplish when I put my mind to it scares me.

(Source: magnettoanothermagnet)

Back to writing my novel, it’s been a crazy few weeks.