Coder Corner

I’ve been working a little bit on my Konoko Payne level. I’m usually on the software engineering side of things, so progress is slow and results certainly do not look next-gen or anything. But I’m quite happy with how it turned out. With some more years of practice I might be able to create decent-looking levels

Anyway I was thinking about sharing a few pictures:

• this is the whole level so far. I do not count the “prototype” level I did before, which is really not worth anything. Old ONI fans will probably recognize the last level of ONI, i.e. the Syndicate Mountain Compound. I started from that level indeed, for the top structures. I added some shadows, detail textures and a lot of new things but the basic layout is exactly the same as in ONI. As you can see though, the original entrance doesn’t go anywhere: instead there is a vertical shaft going underground. I always wanted to do a game with one of those classic underground secret bases, as in old James Bond movies or old games like Zillion. So, there. It’s also more than slightly inspired by Ghost In The Shell - Standalone Complex on PS2, as I will show just afterwards.
• the same picture, without textures. The lighting is precomputed by Flexporter. The level is made of different regions connected by portals. Each region is an independent MAX file, to avoid stressing MAX too much with a giant monster level in one single file. Also, using different MAX files would mean different people could work on the same level at the same time easily. If only I had different people to work on this
• here is a closer shot, to see more details. That’s it for now, that’s the whole level. Not much, but I haven’t worked on this for long. I mean I have the coding to do as well…

Now, as I was saying, there’s a very strong GITS influence here. So much that you could call it a complete rip-off. But hey, I’m not selling this thing, I’m only practicing my MAX skills. So no harm done. I created some cool comparison pics to show the scene in KP and the original scene in GITS. The GITS pics have been taken with a crappy digital camera so they’re kind of bad. On the other hand using a digital camera blurs everything out and curiously makes it look better than the real thing.

Konoko Payne on the left, Ghost In The Shell on the right:

Here are bigger, individual versions:

• http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/KP_GITS_CMP00.jpg
• http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/KP_GITS_CMP01.jpg
• http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/KP_GITS_CMP02.jpg
• http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/KP_GITS_CMP03.jpg
• http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/KP_GITS_CMP04.jpg

In any case this project is a lot of fun!

Afro Samurai is a really frustrating game. But it has one interesting feature that makes it worth checking: you can cut enemies in half with your sword. It’s intriguing, you can move a cut-line over the character when you’re in “focus mode”, and it looks a lot like my previous character-cut demo. I wonder if they also do the cut at runtime, or if it’s all pre-cut ?? Drop me a line if you’re one of the devs!

Assassin’s Creed is also frustrating. I finally took the time to play it, and now it looks like I hit a fucking bug that prevents me from progressing further. I’m in Damascus, 4th mission, I went to the Bureau leader, I climbed all the watchpoints, but my objectives (pickpocket, etc) never appeared on the map. I’m stuck and it seems I will have to start again from scratch. Or better: forget that game altogether.

Frustrating, yes, but not as much as Nightshade ever was. Fun fact: there’s a “retry counter” in Nightshade, that lets you know the number of times you restarted a mission (in one sitting, it gets reset each time you go back to the main menu). Well I can tell you from painful experience that this counter does not go above 99 Yes, that’s right, I restarted some of those insane levels more than a hundred times. In one sitting. Oh yeah I can be pretty stubborn. But I finished the damn game, at least.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24786

http://forums.mapcore.net/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5989&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=870