Salv, s_barale@yahoo.com, Mapper/Modeller

September 11, 2006 11:36 GMT
Well after some pretty heavy scripting weekend Testbase its getting pretty close to beta I think. The bridge inside the central chamber doesnt work exatly like it did originally but its my most precious piece of scripting so far..I spend a whole day making the thing work so you better like it Smile. As far as I can tell everything works in terms of mecanics and the map is finishable in its current state. Theres still item and npc placement to do but that wont take long..I reckon that at this pace it should be done in 2 weeks, testing included.

July 31, 2006 08:26 GMT
Hi folks.

Just like to let everyone know that progress on Testbase is going very well. About %80 of the outside terrain is done. Looks pretty cool, I made it the same way the Gromas terrain was done, with meshes, which accelerates the process alot. There are distinct differences between this version and the original. For starters, its not as "messy" as the original was, but it still has lots of jumps, cliffs and variying levels of height which is usually fun. I also decided to deviate a little bit from the original and made it a little "watery" nowhere near as Kamino but theres water at the bottom and oceans can be seen far off.

Its an interesting map to work on coz it has both big outside areas aswell as interior all in one map. Most games usually break this into 2 different maps, but this one is one thing which is pretty cool :). Will have pics soon hopefully. Till then, May the Force be with You!

March 07, 2006 08:15 GMT
Hi everyone.

Just thought I give a quick update on what Im up since I got access to the plans again. Alot has happened since my last plans update, which was ages ago. First, I moved to Canberra and Im doing a course in games development, or multimedia as I tell most people. I moved here on new year's and Ive been in 2 different places already. The one Im at the moment is the second, but it looks like Im gonna have to move again, hopefully to a flat by my own.

Anyway onto business, just today Ive finished polishing up my first ever in-game cutscene. It took me all day to get right but now at least Talay will have a nice little cutscene of Kyle finding the "clue weapon" in the rebel base. Which is something I always had planned.

The second task will be to make the Crow take off and land at the begining and end of the level. And that would wrap up Talay. Then theres the Gromas cutscene, which would introduce the Darktrooper Phase I, as most of you who would read these updates would know.

And finally the Secbase cutscene, which was actually prerendered in the Mark II demo. This time around we can use the power of scripts to make that an in-game cutscene (as it should have been) and hopefully take about 50 megas off the package size.

Till next time and keep tuned since the Dark Side of the Force just got Darker :P

October 14, 2005 08:04 GMT
Today I made the first Beta compile of the Gromas map, gotta say Im quite happy with hows its come out. As soon as the FTP is online the first round of testing will be able to begin.

I'll like to mention that eventhough the map looks good the size of it pushed me to compile with a lower lightmap resolution that I would have hoped. This means that shadows get somewhat blochy and arent so well defined. Getting another gig of ram for the compiler calculations may solve this, but I may be wrong and it may have nothing to do with it.

At any rate, with maps this big Im happy it compiled at all, but I'll continue to work on this point.

May 06, 2005 20:03 GMT
Hi Everyone.

First off, sorry about the not-so-high quality of the recent map pics, I forgot to decrease quality loss.

Ive been getting myself fairly busy with mapping the past few weeks, especially with Gromas Mines. Its come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. For Jabship, the good news is that I basically found out that shader lighting renders better results than using entity lighting as it spreads out lightmaps better resulting in a more beliavable admosphere for maps.

I also made 2 "skyportal" maps, one for Nar Shada the other of Coruscant, this are esencially like 3D all around "panorama" views that sorround the level. The obvious advantages is that, since they are part of the map itself, they are much more active than skybox art. And secondly they just plain rock, coz they seemlessly blend with the playable space and dont give that "ah the level ends there" feel which, a place such as Corucant with its massive open views, could defenelty benefit from.