Hello again! Its been a Long while since an update... But... that dosnt mean that things have stopped. In fact, things got really busy as Mark jammed out a ton of new code... as well as many new models done by Fredrik.
Shown here from top to bottom:
1) Musicland Note launchers & Winterland Penguin.
2) Marks Placeholder GFX for the newstuff.
Spring Tiles, Tron-Disc, Beehive, and bees
(I thought Id show you how talented Mark is... as not only does
he do a great job with programming... but also makes his own
art quite decently.)
3) Guilotines & Spider from Haunted House level
4) Alien Hugger Model. Done by new artist Jon, and slight mods
from Fredrik. Still needs animation...shading..ect.
... OOOOh and look at the Tronland Ball Cycles stating to come to life! (Lit up grid)
Also seen are the MCP with Electro tile weapon, and the Plasma beam gateways.
Colors are a tad off for now... and more GFX details and level design are definitly planned. This is just a test level.
And now the bad news... We lost are remaining 3d modeler Fredrik. Seems he dosnt have time with his School work to participate anymore. We thank him greatly for his hard work! ^_^
We may have another 2 guys in the works... but till then... anyone with the time and modeling skills... Please help us finish the game up.
Please mail me Asap:
Xiaou2@hotmail.com
We could also use good pixel artist for the new tileworks and other art.
Hello All,
Every now and then, I get an email about the Project... Are we dead???
No. We are still here. We are still working.
Unfortunately, my time has almost vanished as of latly.. as my job has required me to work mega overtime. Its depleted most of my energy and time twords making the remaining progress needed.
As for Mark... he too has been busy with work.. but still, has found bits here and there to devote to the coding.
Currently, Ive been working on the 3d Tiles. While all the original arcade tiles have color shades that can be grabbed from the original arcade game... there are tiles that are missing... who's color shades we could not easily guess. So... Ive been modeling a 3d tile set in max.
It took me quite a while to figure out how to get arround in max... and to make the set efficiently. However... the key to the entire thing is the rendered output.
It seems that Max's shading abilities are somewhat poor. Or at least - not easy to get a good result without a lot of tricks. When I rendered some tiles... some of thier shades were the same, even though they were different angles. This is completely unacceptable.
After what seemed like an eternity of attempts to grasp what was going on... I think Im close to success.
I was able to come up with an alternative control method for the game... as some may not have a 2nd mouse for 2players.
The idea came to me while exiting a dreamstate! The older version of the game had a digital controller option... but... that did not allow for good control as you had no way to alter the acceleration - besides letting the games formula to take care of that for you. This meant that if something charged at you - you had almost no way to aviod it - as the formula was too slow... and if the formula was 'upped', it was too fast for the tight cliff ledge sections.
So... I thought... lets add a PUSH button. This is NOT a gas pedal... so you can not just press and hold it. Rather... each press with release will give the marble a set amount of push.
If you press the button at a steady pace - the ball will roll slow... but if you press the button rapidly, the ball will speed away like it had rockets attached to it! ^_^ This of course leads to you wanting to go too fast - which makes you fly right into trouble ...or a nasty cliff edge ; )
Control is still being tweaked a bit... but its getting close to perfection.
I will try to update the site at least once a month from now on. Homestead's interface makes it possible for me to make a site (as Id never be able to program it by hand)... but, because of its ease in some areas... it makes it harder in others. To update a homestead page of this magnitude - takes quite a bit of fuss... making it Fuss-Terating... and wasting valuable project time.
Keep checking back here for updates...
Sincerely,
Steve of Marble Insanity
