....Back From the Dead.

...And everything else for that matter.. But Now, I'm back with a vengeance!

I have plans, see, and they're progressing more successfully than ever. Fancy a clue? Well, lets just say, they involve water, lots of water.

But first, what've I been doing with myself? (now now, no dirty thoughts...) Well, a great many beginnings of things, and not much else... Apart from a little something more on my previous developments:

So I offered the Star Wars Gang a little help:

...Which didn't go anywhere, at all.

A couple of other little projects included a futuristic bar, complete with funky blue lighting and a spiffing animated door:

I liked these, it was a really nice texture pack from Facepunch and I loved spending time tweaking the lighting and its effect on the brushwork.. It's not as easy to perfect low level lighting in Source, shadows and lights tend to be more tricky, but I think I nailed it nonetheless.

Another project I'd been working on was a little RTS type thing, which was goin well, but didn't get very far:

Not that I didn't enjoy playing with brand new custom textures I'd designed myself, I just found the relatively plain layout and design a little constrained and tricky to keep interesting. It didn't look too bad in some areas, especially the bridge, and the rocks models a friend made for the cause.

And back to my latest caper, how's this for a little teaser:

Anyways, back soon with more updates, hopefully sooner than the last one, hehe.

So, more progress on the Steam Powered side of things (no pun intended there.), and I'm now working with a couple of friends of mine to create a little something to accompany this project now..

The idea is that players will be able to explore various areas within the "city" of pylons and strange structures, and then to access other areas, will have to build airships, and use them to navigate the mysterious and dangerous places around, just like Jasper Morello!

Pretty pictures included, now with video!

So my assets are coming together bit by bit for it..

And here's some of Capsup's progress with a propeller system which will allow players to navigate our fanciful universe:

Excuse the music, hehe...

And now it can go up and down too!

Steampunk - The New Black

So this is my current project, a little bit of Steampunk to brighten up the Source world.

I've been doing a little research, and in my occupation that usually involves watching loads of movies and drawing shit. so I've been watching loads of movies and drawing shit.

My plan is to mimic the Atmosphere and sort of, environment of a great Steampunk short, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. And here's a picture or two to give you an idea:

The story revolves around a navigator, consumed by a mistake he once made which got someone killed, and so on. Loving wife, bla bla.. ...So he goes on a voyage, and the entire movie is set on these mysterious gravity defying airships and the visuals are just STUNNING.

So anyway, the whole thing is set in this sort of Steampunk type world, but without to much attention given to the world surrounding the main characters, cue my entrance.

So I've started experimenting with various things, lighting, contrast, and trying to get a sort of endless fog underneath the map, which is giving me the most trouble of all.

First Attempts:

These are still pretty awful, it's really hard to latch on to a completely different environment style, especially one so completely stark and almost 2D as this is, so bear with me as I delve deeper into this style and work on the methods to bring it to life.

This is my personal favourite, and the closest I've come so far, I've been improving upon it, but the func_dustclouds I'm using to create the fog effect underneath are causing the engine some problems when I scale the func_dustcloud brush to encompass a larger area and add more particles to the mix.

...I'll be back in with any progress on this, as it'll be my little pet project to work on whenever I get a free moment, which right now, isn't very often.

Bit of a recap.... Or whatever..

So yeah, bit of a "Here's one I did earlier", a small project, and one of the few I've completed.+

Taken from Facepunch Forums 17th April, 2010.

Uh... Yeah, my map started a few days after the competition began, with a few rough ideas floating around my head, I had already chosen to do something along post-apocalyptic lines if the theme allowed anyway, the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome inspired me, anyone who's seen it may recognise some parts of the map.

Now with sketches:

The sketches turned into a few rough plans, I wanted to have as much detail as I could in this map, so I tried to add this to my drawings to see how I could achieve it realistically, without overfilling the player's view.

When I finally got into hammer, I didn't start with the terrain as one usually would, I began with what you could call "set pieces" which I could later place into my terrain to fill it up, the segments in my drawings accommodated the method quite well. Here you see them in various stages of development..



Once I had my terrain "hammered" out, (hehe) I proceeded to procrastinate about textures for at least a week, I just couldn't make up my mind, I finally mixed a couple of blend textures and made a few hybrid blend textures, simply pointing to existing textures.



This part took the longest, the final stretch from almost completion to actually finishing my first, yes first map. Lighting, I found was key to setting the scene, and I took time to perfect it, sound was also an issue, I needed a realistic soundscape to envelope the player, I don't think I've got the hang of them yet, as I didn't get to use any custom sounds or find any truly fitting ones for my map. The skybox was also pretty tedious, I probably should've redone it, as it isn't quite as 3D and unnoticeable as I'd hoped.



And Now we get to the present, my map at its present and final stage to be exact...

...Hope you enjoy: These are my final screenshots.

All in all, I simply can't spend another minute on it, it feels pretty much complete to me, a few minor glitches, which are barely noticeable. There are areas that I think could have done with a little more time, but with the deadline approaching I didn't want to get to deep in half finished areas. So this is, it... Hope you all like it.

Also, I've hidden Gnome Chompski somewhere in the map, he's visible from within the playable area so there's no need to noclip to find him... It's not hard, really.

...And here's something I might do if I ever open up the vmf again...

So that's the blast from the past, I'll be a little more up to date from now on....