Another brick in the wall
Posted by Jsonedecker, Apr 25 2010, 07:51 PM
Well, I finally got the bug fixes for the trees I have been waiting for. That means I can redo the training space flythrough to a much higher resolution. I can't say exactly when they will be out, but it should be soon.
So while we all all wait, I'll show couple of editor screen grabs of the updated lighting and trees. I know there is still plenty of polishing and tweaking left to do to even out some of the lighting, but I think things are looking pretty good. 
Clearing some cobwebs
Posted by Jsonedecker, Dec 31 2009, 02:23 PM
Wow, it's dusty in here!
I can't say updates will come more frequently, but here are a few things in the pipeline......
and....
You can see 2 character body styles wearing 2 different types of vests... Body Armor and a Tactical Vest. Each one had distinct advantages/disadvantages in game, like amount of gear that can be carried among other things. Some of the gear available is shown, but certainly isn't everything. Each kit item you wear represents an item you picked for your loadout. So your appearance in game is a direct representation of how you chose to load yourself up prior to the match.
Why is some stuff white? Simple... I haven't textured them yet! I figured I could wait forever until all the art was complete and polished or start to show more things along the way. Of course, nothing shown is finished and subject to change at any time.
I will be trying to put a short animation video together soon as well.
EDIT: Okay, here is a short video showing a few motions.
GB Motion Example Movie
These was captured in real time in the game engine with me rotating the camera around the character as he moves. The gear is old placeholder pouches and not the newer stuff as seen in the images above.
Cheers!
Move on over
Posted by Jsonedecker, Sep 3 2009, 11:30 AM
I've been working on leaning and stepping out motions lately.... yep, we will have leaning as well as the ability to step out and back from cover in a fluid motion. Oh yeah, and you can do it crouched to.
That is all. 
An unaimed arrow never misses.....
Posted by Jsonedecker, Jul 28 2009, 04:26 PM
Things have been quiet on the BFS front lately and I thought it was a good time to share those reasons and give an update to the status of projects.
When I started BFS there was a clear goal in mind. Black Foot Studios was built to be a publisher/Work For Hire funded company. That means that from the outset, our business model required funding from outside sources based off of projects being developed. There was not enough internal private money to fund a full fledged company and even though we dabbled in private investment it was clear that wasn't a viable path to pursue given the circumstances. So we set out to put our best foot forward and sell our IP to a publisher or other 3rd party with the full understanding that it was the only way to build the company. As I have mentioned in the past, that didn't exactly work out as intended and we were forced to rethink and re-invent ourselves into something that was more sustainable given our resources.
Part of that plan was to develop a prototype simulation application and receive funding from the military. That is how Sky Gods was born. However, for various reasons, we never got to the point were that would become a viable option and the idea of Sky Gods the military funded simulation died before it got very far. The plan was always to develop a commercial game of SG alongside the simulation, using the military money as funding for the commercial application.
Everyone pretty much knows the rest of the story with regards to Ground Branch so no need to get into that. I have always been 100% up front with the plans and status of BFS and the games we are making and this is no different. So the short of it is where are we now and where are we going?
BFS has been operating as a virtual company for some time now and we have had some good people move on to other ventures as well as those still with the projects finding themselves in need of other income sources and/or other outside influences effecting their involvement. Given those things, we have had a tough time achieving goals and milestones that we set out for ourselves. It's tough to hit goals when the situation around you is constantly changing without your control.
Right now we are an Indie developer in every sense of the word and I have come to the decision to embrace that more so than I have in the past. I have been reluctant to do so as I have held on to the idea of building BFS into a full functional and stable game studio. So it has become clear to me that I had to make some decisions on where to take BFS as well as how best to provide for my family. We tried and ultimately fell short.
So then, along comes a once in a lifetime opportunity for someone like me........ A job became available that fits my interests and skillset to a "tee". I mean, there are maybe a handful of other people in this industry that might be a better fit for it. So my family and I made the decision to go after it and after a somewhat lengthy process I have been given an offer for the position and I am going to accept. I do not want to give away where this position is just yet until the hiring process is complete, but rest assured once that happens in the next few weeks I will let you all know. I will say that I am not going back to RSE. 
So what does this mean for BFS and the projects?
BlackFoot Studios is still a legal business entity and will continue to be so. We still have all our licenses in place and will continue to develop with them. Sky Gods as a game is now officially dead and will not be developed. Ground Branch is still very much alive as an IP and will be the basis for whatever product we do release. Since Sky Gods was always developed using the same principals and foundation as Ground Branch, everything we have ever done is interchangeable and nothing will go to waste. Up to this point, all the work done has really been "generic" in the sense that it's work that would be the foundation of any title we made and very little were game specific.
So what game are you working on then?
We decided around the first of the year, once some of these things I mentioned became prominent, to refocus both projects into something more manageable and that fit the team's structure. We haven't branded the game just yet, but everything discussed in the forums for both GB and SG is relevant. The first game we release will follow the principals set forth for those 2 designs as well as be what is expected of a BFS title. Nothing has really changed design wise, other than refining what was there into something smaller and more compact and that can continually be expanded upon once released.
When will the game be done?
I have no idea and don't even want to speculate. We haven't been good at hitting milestones to this point so anything I say will undoubtedly come back to bite us. I will say that the plan is to make the process more "organic" and release things as we do them... once we achieve that initial release goal. We will continue to build on it as we go instead of saying "here it is, its done, go buy it".
What is it going to cost and how will I get it?
No idea. At this point we are solely focused on making a great game for the love of the game and we'll figure out the monetary part later.
How many people are working on the game?
About 5 off and on at this point, not including the great forum staff. We are a dedicated bunch of people doing this for the love of making something that isn't available. We are doing this for no ongoing monetary gain at this point either.
But you said you are taking a job somewhere?
Yes, I did. This particular job allows me to continue an outside business and is structured in a way that allows me to devote ample time to it. As I mentioned, we are now and Indie Developer in its truest sense.
I'm sure this isn't exactly the news everyone wanted to hear, but it's reality. We gave our best effort to make this work according to the initial plan, but it just didn't. I'm sure there will be those "I knew it" folks trolling around and so be it. I know that I did everything possible to full fill my plan and the goals I set forth, even though I did come up short.
So I'll end this post with reiterating that BFS is still around and we are still building a great realism based tactical game just as we set out to do, though we are not sure when we will get there.
We are BlackFoot Studios and we are a group of passionate people making a game for the love of it, no matter what... we are Indie Developers.
-John
The Journey - Part 1
Posted by Jsonedecker, May 24 2009, 09:01 AM
Well, I usually do not like to post test stuff as people tend to not take into account that it's just a test. But today I was so impressed by my latest delivery on the characters that I had to rig him up and try out some animations. 
So there is no mistake.... This is a complete test image of some of our motions being tested on one of our work in progress in game models. I spent a fraction of the time rigging him to our skeleton as would normally be done, the hands and head aren't textured and there are various glitches in the normal/AO maps. But I thought it was cool so I'm sharing. 
It's always a "crap shoot" when posting test stuff like this, but I hope you enjoy it.
Action! Not Words
Posted by Jsonedecker, May 13 2009, 06:57 PM
Our character revamp is almost complete. No words necessary, I'll just leave you with these to ponder.....................
New feature try out
Posted by Jsonedecker, Apr 30 2009, 11:49 AM
I was messing around with a new engine build that has Epic's latest Global Illumination lighting tech shown at GDC, Lightmass, in it and thought I'd post a screengrab from the editor.
Day
Night
Nothing super special, but what is interesting is there are no lights in the scene. All the actual lighting is derived from a global environment value and the physical light's emissive property for the night version and just 1 "sun" directional light for the day one. It's not physically accurate like a IGES light type, but it's still quite a nice feature to have.
Learning To Fly
Posted by Jsonedecker, Apr 24 2009, 04:21 PM
As I mentioned in the Off Topic section of the forums, I decided to get off my arse and learn some of the new so called "next-gen" techniques and applications. After trying out both Zbrush and Mudbox, I decided to go with Mudbox due to it's ease of use and my familiarity of the general workflow. I'm not going to cast a vote on which application is better than the other, but given my learning style and time to devote to a new application, Mudbox fit my current situation best.
After a day or two of messing around I decided to make something that could be used in game and picked something easy... some concrete barriers. Here are the high poly sculpts that I "bake" the normal and ambient occlusion maps from:
And here is the in game version with the normal and Ambient Occlusion maps:
And the in game wireframe taken from the game's editor:
I spent most of the day learning the ins and outs of painting textures in mudbox and here are the game ready concrete barriers.....
I'll mess with the materials some more later, but I'm going to call those done.
Here are the textures:
It takes a lot of work to make content these days!
So, the painting in Mudbox is neat, but I much prefer to work in Photoshop due to the vast amount of tools and the fact that you project textures onto the geometry in Mudbox. Projecting is easy and lets you not worry about seams as well as allows you to get a good base texture made very quickly, but it a pretty "basic" operation. So I'll paint the base with different texture projections on a unique layer then export all those out into PS to work with. With this method, I can have a nice texture that doesn't have any seams at odd UV edges so it's a great base to work from.
Then I just detail away as I normally would. When I am done with the diffuse texture, I'll use the nvidia normal map filter to make an overlay for the base normal map generated from the high res mesh. This gives me a lot of the fine detail that matches up with the final texture.
All in all it was a good learning experience and I am finally getting up to speed on some of the more up to date game art techniques that I have been putting off.
Oh, and a word to the wise..... NEVER upgrade your OS, main work applications and try to learn a new app all at the same time. I finally migrated to Vista 64 and did the upgrade to Max 2009 all while trying to learn Mudbox. So learning my way around Vista, learning a new app and trying to get my Max work environment setup just the way I like was quite frustrating at times. Next time I'll do things in stages.
-John
Looking for a Max Script coder
Posted by Jsonedecker, Apr 2 2009, 11:07 AM
I am looking for someone to write a 3ds Max script to help import animations in FBX format, save out the animation then apply that animation to a base character for export.
It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basics of the process. So I am looking for someone that is comfortable with how 3dsMax works and it's scripting language. A full on plugin would work as well.
Development Stuff Part 2
Posted by Jsonedecker, Mar 14 2009, 07:33 AM
Thought I would start the weekend off with a Work In Progress screen grab of a MP space we are working on. I'm sure it will go through many revisions but I wanted to show some more work, even though it's just a warehouse..
Hopefully we'll be showing characters here soon. 
on Clearing some cobwebs