RPG environment (II)

After a week, the poll is already giving interesting indications. I asked the visitors to choose among different backgrounds for the new role-playing game that I want to develop. There are a lot of possibilities, from the Galactic Empire to the Ancient Egypt, but the choice seems already restricted between the Ancient Japan and the Middle Earth options, the latter prevailing. In particular the most ancient backgrounds, from King Arthur down, are almost ignored, while most recent ones share almost the same preferences.
I can't believe that only orcs, elves, trolls, dwarves and the like, deserve the attention of a CRPG, thus you have still a week to change your mind and choose something different. Of course, you can confirm your preference, but remember that also multiple choices are possible: if you like orcs, but also post-apocalyptic mutants, you can choose both.

MDL smooth transitions

Just a short news to announce that smooth transitions in MDL models between different animations are finally available.
Probably you remember a demo that I published a month ago: The Trenches. The main problem was a jerky movement that affected some of the transitions. That was caused by differences between animations intended to be in sequence.
In the next release of the engine, the programmer can set the transition time between two sequences, so the cut will disappear.
This is useful to GUN TACTYX 2, the model of which are in a too evident way affected by the problem, but also to the next SOCCER TACTYX.

Finally, the MDL support has improved enough to be considered almost complete, so I can look forward to the real game mechanics.

Indoor soccer field

Thanks to Kr0meel, the soccer field, where the SOCCER TACTYX Championships will take place, is going to acquire its final shape. Finally the textures are those intended by the author. In fact, you can see in the screenshots an improvement in comparison with the demo that I released yesterday (read yesterday's post for a link to the current very simple demo). I'm not sure yet about the light intensity, but this is a parameter that we can easily modify later.

Loading screen

In a few days I'll replace the basic demo with a playable one, at least in its essential structure. I don't know yet if the simulator of the bots' virtual CPUs can afford the effort to support 11 vs 11 matches, but I think that a 5 vs 5 is a more realistic objective and also more manageable for the script writers.
Imagine two teams of bots, each of them controlled by their own script, playing football in an indoor field, running and shooting balls to show who is the best: that is going to be SOCCER TACTYX.

MDL models during training

SOCCER TACTYX

Yesterday I began to program SOCCER TACTYX, a preview of the next to come GUN TACTYX 2 in which the bots does not shoot each other but peacefully... play soccer!

I put together some ideas on occasion of the European Foot-ball Championship (Euro2008) and then published a very early demo: nothing to play yet, but at least you can see the models at work.

You can download the demo here.
I asked for permission to use the models taken from the International Online Soccer, a great MOD for Half-Life 1. Recently a version of IOS for Half-Life 2 has been published (visit the official site). Then you can see in the demo a simple indoor field made by Kr0meel. We still have to set correctly the textures, that's why the room seems so flat.

Executing the demo, you'll see the usual loading screen, then, clicking on PLAY, you'll see the models performing their animations. A lot of work is needed to complete the game, the European Football Championship is near, thus I'd better to post and go back to the script editor. Feel free to post suggestions and comments.

Stay tuned for more news about SOCCER TACTYX.

Soccer tactics

On occasion of the European Football Championship, I'm going to publish a preview of the new GUN TACTYX 2 framework, based on the models of the International Online Soccer MOD for Half-Life that you can see on the left. I've found those models a month ago (read the post) and I immediately thought that they were perfect for the soccer mode of the game.

The (real) european football championship is going to start and I'll try to finish the preview of the game in a hurry. The simulator will be a simplified version of what I had in mind since there is too few time for the complete version, but I hope that the players will appreciate the simple and neat functions needed to program their soccer team. To drive eleven players after a ball is not a simple task for a script, but nodoby says that these kind of games are accessible to everybody.

For those who don't know yet what kind of game GUN TACTYX is, visit the official site at GameProg.it.

RPG Editor

Yesterday I opened another poll to choose among different backgrounds for the RPG game, based on APOCALYX, that I'm going to develop. In the meantime I received in a few hours some positive feedbacks about this subject. One of the most exciting comes from Nout, the author of the NsEditor (a quite old preliminary version is available on FileFront). He has recently improved a lot his editor strictly connected with APOCALYX (read, for example, this thread on the forums about recent changes) and he pointed out that the NsEditor and the related framework is tuned for Role-Playing type of games.
This is a good news for me, because to write a game completely from scratch is very time consuming, while Nout's editor and the related framework and entities help a lot. I always write my Lua scripts line by line, but it's time to learn some tool to reduce development time and not reinvent the wheel again!
Stay tuned for more news. Feel free also to send suggestions to my email address. Thank you in advance!

RPG environment (POLL)

So you have chosen. The next real game that I’m going to program from the ground up, based on APOCALYX, is a Role-Playing Game. In fact, the results are: RPG (30), RTS (12), FPS (6), Other (0). Now it's the time to choose the background of the game. There are so many possibilities that I'm disoriented: Is it better to choose the usual inflated medieval asset, or a more original one? The choice is up to you.
Here I simply list several possibilities, with just a few ideas about the possible careers, but you can also propose something different. In the last case choose "Other" and send an email describing your idea: the more original, the better. You can also offer your help, if you want: in that case contact me!

• Galactic Empire to boldly go where no one has gone before
• Post-atomic Mad Max-like earth or Waterworld-like oceans
• Gangsters from news-boy to gang boss or police chief
• Western Fronteer gold-miner, bounty-killer, cow-boy, gambler
• Buccanneers from ship-boy to governor or captain of galleons
• Ancient Japan ronin, samurai, ninja, shogun, emperor
• Middle Earth-like goblins, trolls, orcs, elves, dwarves, humans
• Arthurian cycle from esquire to king Arthur or wizard Merlin
• Roman Empire from slave to gladiator; from private to emperor
• Ancient Egypt from slave to Pharaoh or Minister of religion
• Other give your fantasy a chance: describe your ideas