BananaTech

Wait, umm, where are the boobs? I could have swore i put them here somewhere. Oh well, for now, here is a robot!

His name is T0d0, he’s a junkbot. This is more of a test paint, but before i go into much more detail with why there is a painting of a robot, instead of a 3d robot or a pixel bot or whatever, just read below, lol.

In my search for something different, something cool and unique, something no one has ever done before, i saught out artists on the internet. I remember a long time ago seeing a gif animation of a 3 legged robot thing walking, it was a 3d render, but the way that the robot was textured made it look just like a quick, rough painting. There was no shading on  it, just the flat paint texture, and a cartoon outline, and that made it very believable as a 2d image, though it was being animated in 3 dimensions. Then I began to carrouse the net more and found an excellent gallery belonging to a man called Matt Dixon, and then the idea hit me in the head like a ton of feathers (a ton of feathers is heavy!). Why not have a game that looks like a painting? I instantly knew what i had to do to make that so. So, i modeled that robot you see above in blender(my favorite 3d modeling program, not really my favorite renderer, lol), then i rendered it with a flat, shadeless, white color, and turned on the cartoon outline effect and set it up to max, rendered the bot in a standard t-pose, and loaded the picture into photoshop and began to paint over(see: rotoscope) my model as a test to see just how well i could paint over these renders, and to see if the speed would allow me to do that to all of my sprites, and so far i’m very sattisfied. After one day of work i have that image above, which is suffice to say much larger than the sprites would be in game, meaning much less time making those (less detail=less time).

 So, there you have it, a game that will hopefully look like a painting!

The wonderful fokes over at Yoyogames.com have had 2 competitions in casual game design already, the second of which has just ended, and the entrants eagerly await the verdict like a young Tv addicted child awaiting Zack Efron’s John Hancock on their Highschool Musical lunch boxes. The first of the competitions was winter themed, and had few in the way of rules other than to include winter somehow into your game. The winner of the Winter competition was 2Dcube with his Mario Galaxy remnant 2d space platformer called Frozzd where you play an astronaut whos duty is to traverse unusually shaped, and frozen planet freeing little floating orange creatures frozen in ice. The gameplay was good, and smooth, and the planetoid gravity was quite strange to play with, but worked well. 2Dcube won himself a thousand dollars for this little game, and from what i’ve seen, he’s pretty much in the running for another grand with this second compo.

The second in Yoyo’s competitions was Ancient Civ themed, basically make a game that somehow revolves around an ancient society. This could be many things really, i mean, i’ve seen breakout games selling online that call themselves ancient civ games. But, like i mentioned before, 2Dcube seems to be the best bet for this competition as well, with his game Mubbly Tower, which i’ve yet to play. I’ve seen screenshots, and to me it looks like a strange blend of Loco Roco, and some Jenga clone where some cute looking evil bad things try to shoot it down. I’ll have to go play that to know what the hell’s going on, but the graphics are stylish, though a little cutsie.

And now another competition is making its way slowly through time to our dimension, and i (along with most of the members of the Gmc community) have seen a glimpse of this new hope for Indie game devs in the form of the new theme. No rules have been laid out, though i doubt they would differ from the last compo, as the rules from that contest werent much different than th first. So, Yoyo has decided that the entrants will be making games with cooperation as a the main theme powering the beasts of low cost interactive entertainment.

Yea, i know what you’re thinking too. If you give a bunch of [mostly] kids cooperation as a theme, you will likely get a rash of itchy itchy multiplayer games and wannabe Mmo’s. Cooperation is more of a guideline, than a strict set in stone path you must follow. Cooperation could be anything from a little man running around doing peoples chores, to a simulator where two factions of some strange race must work together to save the planet they previously feuded over from an invading horde of sticky goo monsters that burn like acid.

Seeing as I’ve been unable to enter any of the previous contests due to computer related downtime, I’ve snagged up a good base for a game. The idea will be single player only, well, i cant exclude the possibility of multiplayer some time later, maybe. It will take place in an alternate future, post apocalyptic landscape, something like fallout, only more of a red rusty color than the blue and brown hues in fallout. Details will remain sparce, but i can tell you now that this is going to be a heavy game. Very feature intense, and artistic, and surreal. A good adventure with lots of action, aliens, scantily clad future girls, and big robots!

Okay, so i’ve begun the tedious process of texturing my demon, which i think i’ll be giving an official name shortly, along with all of my characters in this pack. All of the texturing thus far was done within zbrush’s projection master plugin, which some of you may know, will cause unsightly texture glitches, spots of color out of place and all that, so dont pay no attention to that in these next screens, as photoshop is a texture’s best friend, lol.

So, i’ve decided to create a donation button to post on this site, still need to work out which part of the xml file is the right place to put this code, so for now, i’ll just put it here!! These funds, however much i receive will go to upgrading my computer, so i can produce better, more detailed artwork, and games.  Thank you if you help, even a dollar is better than nothing, it doesnt take much to make a person’s day.

As i barely mentioned, i started work on this model pack a while ago actually, so i have much work done already. Infact, the entire first character is completely modeled, and almost entirely normal mapped, minus the hooves, which arent present in any of my pics yet because of that fact, lol. Those are easy as pie though so its okay. Here is a slide of my progress to now.

View the Slideshow!!

Okay, so everybody who’s anybody in the 3d modeling field has made them, and if you make games or 3d movies, chances are that you’ve even downloaded/bought some. That’s right, i’m talking about model packages, featuring anywhere from 3 to 30 character models, fully rigged, animated and textured for use in your video games or 3d rendering projects. These things are all over the Indy game scene, especially at sites like The Game Creators - Forum, Dark Basic users, Fps Creator users, And even Ogre 3d and Blitz users have a need for these model packages, to help speed up the production of their products by removing the need to create the required content.

I have personally tried my hand at selling my models online, one at a time granted, and in about 3 years i’ve only made 5 bucks, off of 3 models on turbosquid. So, i’ve decided that maybe the route to go, is model pack. So, i’m going to announce it here, on my blog.

Work has OFFICIALLY BEGUN on a high quality next generation game media package done entirely by me, lol. The theme of this first package of mine, since i plan to do more than one, is Hellish Creatures, though i dont think i’ll call it that. It will include several monsters and being you would find lurking in the depths of Hell.

The Following models have been slated for this pack:
Demon - a tough, big armored devil, big bull-like horns, bat like face, and burly goat legs. He’ll slice you down to size with his massive axe, adorned with human flesh and skulls
Devil - More goat like then the demon, it’s tall and slender with two big boney wings. Better be careful of this one, he’s adorned with horns all over.
Succubus - Very similar to the Devil, she is a seductress, slender, with long dear-like legs, big hands with long skinny fingers, and a tail like a whip, and a set of wings to boot. She’ll lure you in with her beauty, then take a bite of your soul.
Zombie - Your standard rotten corpse, much more decayed than most you find, holes in his skin reveal the bones and rotten old organs beneath. Your tortured soulja boy, fodder for any man with a gun.

You can expect these all to be top notch quality. Check back here often to see updates and renders of works in progress!

Okay, so lately i’ve been in the mood to play some new games. I’ll often times find myself just browsing the web and i stumbled upon something very interesting. Its a game called Severance: Blade of Darkness. For those of you who dont know, here is some information on it, taken straight from the wiki:

Severance has an immediately recognizable fantasy premise with swords, sorcery, and the like. It features four playable characters: Tukaram, a barbarian; Naglfar, a dwarf; Sargon, a knight; and Zoe, an adventurer. Each character starts on a different map, has a different preferences and selection of weapons, and have different strengths and weaknesses in terms of power, agility, and defence and, most important, different sets of combos or moves. As your character progresses through the game, they earn experience points which enable them to increase in level and gain new special attacks and abilities which are executed via combinations of buttons and direction keys, much like a beat-em-up genre game. Some of these special attacks are weapon-specific and can deal out huge amounts of damage or hit multiple foes at one time."

I’ve had some time to play this game, but so far with just 1 of the characters, Naglfar, the dwarf, and from that i can tell you without a doubt that this is one of the best, if not THE best hack and slash dungeon type of game i’ve played yet. It may be old, 2001, but the graphics are good compared to the standard of that year. It looks something like a mix between morrowind and quake, but the real icing on the cake is its lighting and effects systems. Lights cast real stencil shadows, not just from the characters, but everything, characters, barrels, crates, even the level itself will stop light. It look simply amazing and fear envoking to see a menacing shadow of an unseen orc lurking around the turn in a cave, coming closer as the shadow gets bigger, and you can hear his grunts. Very cool. One of the other things that makes this game great, is its gore system. Swing your sword at an enemy, land the blow and watch as blood splatters onto the ground and walls and look as it drips down. Get his health low enough, swing again and watch that arm you just swung at fall to the ground, quick, before he falls over dead, take a swing at his head and look as it topples over and his body falls limp. Go ahead, pick up that head, or his arm even, and bash enemies with it, or even toss it at a lesser orc from a distance. Yep, you can do all of the super humiliating moves you’d expect to be able to do in a real one on one battle with an orc or two. Dont expect them to be any less rough with you though. More times than not, you’ll have your head, arm or leg removed, hell, you might get them all removed before finally keeling over. Yep, definitely not a game for kiddies. One more important feature, that i nearly forget about from time to time, is the underlying physics engine. This has by far the coolest looking physics of the era, excluding the physics from tresspasser which came out 4 years earlier. Pick up a stool and throw it a stair case and see how it bounces around, and tumbles down, finally coming to a rest at the bottom of the staircase after wobbling for a second. The only thing that could have made the physics even better, would be ragdoll death animations. I would be in heaven watching that monster troll toppling over and sliding down a slope, til falling off the ledge of a cliff, and banging against the walls like, well, a ragdoll. All these things, along with a few others such as the particle system, rippling reflective water effects, and the very cool looking glow your character has when they gain a level in experience, add to the overall greatness of the game.

Now, that’s not to say it doesnt have its down sides. One thing that really gets me, and has had me irrated since i first started playing it was the lack of strafing. I need my strafing in a game, sure i can get used to left and right turning instead, but when you play a game with mouse based turning, why add key based turning as well? The only time you can strafe is when you are locked on to a target, and then you need to use the keys to do it. Anyways, like i said, its irritating, but it doesnt hamper the gameplay, it just adds to the difficulty overall.

The other thing i think should be changed, is how the mouse movement is handled. Its not like regular mouse movement, where if you move the mouse a tiny bit to the right, he turns a tiny bit to the right, at the speed you move the mouse relative to the sensitivity. In Severence, mouse movement is set at a common speed, if you move the mouse a little bit, he moves a little bit, but he does it much faster than you actually move the mouse, and if you try and make your character spin around really quickly by jolting the mouse to the side, prepare to keep doing it over and over, since the speed is hampered as well. Overall, it makes movement more smooth, but much less accurate, and therefore irritating at times, and if you own a laser mouse like i do, you know they have a tendency to glitch and move about on their own, which can cause dire results in Severence if you are on a narrow bridge per se.

Bickering aside, this game is fantastic, the combat system is the most unique you may ever find, the effects are, for its time, top of the line and really add to the quality of the product. If you havent been convinced to try this game out yet, from reading all the positive remarks posted above, get off your butts and go do it.

And just for the Hell of it, here is a review posted by The Highlander, another extensive review, like the one i just did, lol. Wow, two times the review for only one time the post, lol.

Video Review

Watch that, then download the demo, you know you want to.

Ps, here is the demo! 

If you enjoy the old game DooM, you will know most of the songs in this list, and will definitely like what you are hearing. The wonderfully talented people over at http://doom.ocremix.org/ provide all of these perfectly remixed masterpieces absolutley free, so if you like what you hear here, go there and you can download them all and put them in your own personal mp3 players.

No go my brethren, for you shall not know how long their bandwidth will shall last!

Okay, so, long ago i had the idea to make a 2d half-life fan game, it would feature lots of the stuff from half-life 2, including the gravity gun, and physics and a storyline, and blah blah blah. Anyways, one of the elements of the game was going to be pretty much destructible everything, from wood that splintered to metal that would bend under pressure, to concrete that would crack and crumble if shot at.
I never got around to finishing the project, though i may go back and pick it up again under the guise of an original project. Suffice to say, i have decided to release the editable of the early concrete destruction effect, which will work on sprites of any shape and size. It leaves jagged holes instead of the standard circle, which i find to be extremely retarded, and it also correctly shades the edges for a more immersive effect.
But, be warned, its not the absolute fastest technique, though it is i believe to be the best looking at least. It isnt optimized, at all. But what you can do to speed it up is to break up your sprites into many smaller segments, so the calculations are not done on the whole surface, just the surrounding areas.

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