Hardwar » art

Dev Update #19

Andrew — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:14:06 +0000

Since the last update we began making progress towards further developing the game. It was decided that rather then wasting time on an in game editor that we should use Ogitor for building the level, at which point we can simply load levels into the game. From my perspective it takes a lot of work off my shoulders and means that world builders can start making the level straight away simply by downloading the editor program.

nirokugraphic posted a great piece of concept art showing the exterior of a communications relay.

Since starting the project I have been experimenting with different libraries and have come to some conclusions. When it comes to user interface libraries I’m coming to the point where I can see a lot of flaws with MyGUI and am considering to switch back to CEGUI. There are a few things that MyGUI can’t do such as correctly aligning base UI elements and although MyGUI is initially easier to use, it has too many limitations to make it practical for everyday use.

Weekly dev update #7

Andrew — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:03:03 +0000

This week I slavishly hacked away at the code with little success towards fixing the errors I have been having. Fortunately not everyone was as unproductive as I am. Ville pitched in with a new main menu design as seen below.

I believe this is still very much a work in progress however the results so far are much better then I could even think about. It might seem like a main menu is such a trivial thing, however the aim for this project is that every part of it is as good as it can be.

The main menu is one of the first things a player sees when starting your game so giving a good impression helps to create a much better overall experience. If you would like to join in feel free to contribute your ideas on our forum.

Loading screen redux

Andrew — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Only one day after posting my poorly done concept artwork for the loading screen and I received an amazing response back from the community.

Below I have posted my original drawing (left) and next to it is Tranberry’s effort (right).

As you can see it is really looking good and I am currently making an effort to get it into the game.

This however is taking time because I have removed CEGUI in favour of MyGUI, a different GUI library. I am also in the middle of finishing my university course so there won’t be many code updates until next month after my final year project deadline. I will be active in the forums though so please come and join in the fun.

Loading screens and models

Andrew — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:15:00 +0000

There has been some discussion over the loading screens for the game. This is what we have so far.

There are plenty of things still needed for example we could use a game logo on here for a start, but it’s coming along nicely with lots of people taking part in the discussion so please login to the forums and join in.

Dave “c-thru” has been busy working on 3D models for the tunnels. As usual his work is top quality.

Latest Artwork

Andrew — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:05:00 +0000

David has done some amazing modelling on the hardwar forums that I wanted to post here.

The idea with regards to buildings in the game is that they’re going to be made out of reusable parts which can be stacked on top of each other to form a variety of different buildings.

Working on the main game

Andrew — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:16:00 +0000

So the editor is progressing nicely. Discussing with c-thru we have decided to make the entire crater as static geometry but have the buildings placed in the editor. So every game could have different building locations but the main craters or level geometery would look the same. I think that this is the best decision as we want sometime playable as quick as possible and it’s much easier to just make the craters in max, export them and then add buildings.

So I started working on the main game. As usual the hardest and most difficult part is starting. I have planned for all games to be run through a server which means that if you start a single player game it would start up a server on your computer which only you can connect to. I am thinking that this would save us alot of time rather then building a single player then adding multiplayer support. It also requires doing alot of stuff I’ve never done before which is time consuming so my progess has been slow at this point while I move code around and do lots of experimentation.

Editor is working

Andrew — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:48:00 +0000

So it’s time for a quick update. Dave joined me in the quest to make the ultimate video games and he’s one hell of a 3d modeler. Here’s some of the buildings he quickly whipped up.

For the past 4 days I’ve been in RAD mode kicking out code like there was no tomorrow. I decided to stick with Ogre and get a map editor going. Here is the result.

For more information you should see the development thread on the freegamer forums where we post more often.