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Archived News | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Current News
I decided to put up a few more screenshots from the Celso 3D demo level. These are from the 3rd-person view. Shot1, Shot2, Shot3 It's not quite a game yet, but there are 3 different fully-animated character/enemy models, and 3 weapons each with a distinct primary and secondary firing mode. It's mainly making a full level with goals that's fun to play that needs to be done.
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Recently we've been working on a 3D Demo game based on the
Java game.
The reason for the change from the Villager's Tale is that this is
a much smaller project, and we hope we might be able to complete a
1 level downloadable demo. (No estimates yet on when.) The Kingdom
Creator Editor/Engine is at the point where making a full game is
possible so we thought we'd take advantage of this, although there
are still many features to add or tweak. It uses DirectSound for sound,
3D sounds are now in and seem to be working fine. The goal is to create
a good-looking playable game, even if it doesn't show-off all the
rendering/animation/other features available in the engine.
Here's are a couple screenshots: Player Model,
1st-Person. (The player model shots are
also from the in-game renderer.)
There's still a partially finished Villager's Tale page that isn't up yet,
I'm not sure if we'll work on finishing it or concentrate only on
our current demo. The Villager's Tale animations turned out very nice, I might try to put up a video of them sometime.
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I've been busy recently moving, and probably will be again
sometime soon, I just got internet again yesterday. An update for
this page is planned, perhaps an overhauling of the design. It will
probably be done within a month.
The game is beginning to feel a lot more game-like. There's now a
playable character (the warrior in the screenshots,) with quite a
few animations (run/walk/crouch/jump/weapon switch/sword attacks/bow
shoot...) The screenshots page might be replaced with a game page
with some more info, story, and images about the game.
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There's now a screenshots page
up from the game demo we've been working on. It's still far from completely
playable form, but there were plenty of opportunities to take some
shots that show off the new art, and newer features like realtime-shadows,
bump-mapping, specular lighting, etc. I'm not sure what the my future
plans for this game are, maybe I'll release more shots or a video
when I'm further along. I do still think it might feel like a playable
(albeit unfinished) game by the end of the summer, however no releases
are planned in the immediate future. I'm not sure if I'll concentrate
more on the 3DKC or game part, the two share most of the same code
anyway.
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| Jun 29, 2004 3D Kingdom Creator |
I've been working on the 3DKC, and added some new rendering ability
as well as the usual usability features, optimizations, and general
bug-fixes. (I decided not to put upscreenshots now, but rather wait
until we have a more finished scene to better show off the rendering
ability.) For one it can now can use bumpmaps on everything, not just
the characters, and has a few pixel shader improvements. However, I
think the coolest of these new features is realtime shadows using shadow
volumes and the stencil buffer. Using realtime shadows on everything
in a scene is quite a speed hit, probably a little less than half the
frame rate. It's too early to tell how much the effect really is, since
the tests are on scenes that are different and mostly simpler than final
scenes would be, but I've only done a couple of the many possible optimizations
for the shadows. The shadows seem to add a lot to a scene, but there
is also still sometimes some funny behavior from my shadow algorithm
to correct. In a couple weeks I hope to add some new screenshots.
I'm now working more on the animation, and getting all animation
abilities from the old CW into the new 3DKC framework, and of course
fixing/adding lots of new stuff. Now that I'm finally working on more
IK related stuff, I might get my IK tutorial more finished in a few
months. Also from months ago I have a 1/3 or 1/2 done 3D selection
tutorial that I haven't put up, I hope to find time to finish that
too.
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I thought I'd add an update about my current plans to create a new demo
with 3D Kingdoms Creator. The old animation
demo was never finished for a few reasons. (I majorly overhauled the
3D editor, so I lost many parts of it, but I wasn't happy with my animation
ability anyway.) Work on the new demo has already started, maybe this
one will be a playable game demo, not just a running animation demo.
This time there's already much more art content (by Josh Hess) to work
with. When we make more progress I'll post some screenshots. The new
demo may even be finished by the end of summer, if everything goes perfectly.
I've recently been doing a lot with the Game Mode, I've added in collision
detection, now you can shoot arrows into objects, and player objects
can't walk through things like trees... in fact they can even jump in
wagons, etc. (screenshot). For the player bounds
I use an ellipse, for the shot arrows (screenshot)
a line. It can do collision detection on a per-triangle basis (this
probably isn't that fast,) but meshes can also have chunks specified
to use for collision detection, presumably with less small geometry
than the visible chunks. That doesn't mean the collision detection is
finished, in some cases player/mesh collisions resolve in an odd way,
or don't completely resolve.
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| Mar 11, 2004 Java Sidescrolling Shooter Game |
I've recently done the programming for a Java 2D sidescrolling shooter
game. I worked on it a few hours a day over the course of a couple weeks.
Although I have worked with Java a little bit before, this is the first
program that I've written in Java. The majority of the game art was
done by Josh Hess, hopefully though I'll have a full credits listing
to put on the game page sometime. (And I'll add a link to it and more
description in the programs sections.) It only has one level currently,
but more levels may be done in the future. I do think it's a fun game
myself, so if you're interested
Play the Java Game!
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