Retribution Epilogue (Ret p11)

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

May 30 2014 08:05 GMT

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

The dust has settled and the goats have had their way. Retribution, as a project, is likely never to walk again.

In the wake of this defeat, I released three things. 1.) The fully casted portions of the Developer series that were at the time available on my FTP. 2.) All of the test videos. 3.) The project's Sins of a Solar Empire particles.

What is likely to interest Team Liquid the most would be the test videos.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/ret_devseries/rettest.html

With Test 1 being the earliest, when I first picked up Salvation with the intent of remastering it, into Test 19, the penultimate final test I ever conducted. Also of interest is Test 18, which featured my very first UDK test material. Some tests come with analysis videos in which I discuss their contents and talk about the current state of the project.

I also posted a huge quantity of image media regarding the project's assets. I'll now mirror those for teen liquid.

^ I was experimenting with lighting settings at some point for skyboxes previously deemed too dark for recordings (sins has no dynamic lights).

^ I used a program on steam called MindTex to take a shitty jpeg from some commercial CD and try to make a full-featured texture set out of it. It turned out pretty decently for a first attempt, and considering the source.

^ UDK composite material test. This uses two layers of texture sets, with one using a bump offset, to give objects with the material a fake "depth". This was the most advanced thing I managed to do with materials in the UDK before I gave up on the project. I discovered how to do this by reverse engineering default assets.

^ A texture set test for the Myrookk Undead, one of the factions that never saw its ships added into Sins before the project died (the other faction being 4th gen Anahn). I decided this texture looked too much like b5 shadows, but I wasn't sure how to change it given the engine limitations.

^ The Wayward Daughter is shown in one of the Sins videos, but I later planned to only put this huge megaship into the UDK, since sins can't portray big ships properly. The battle scenes involving things like this would have been the second most difficult thing for me to do, with the first being character models. My reliance on an individual I had then known for around a decade to make the character models was the reason why the project's death was ensured.

Trust. No one. Ever.

The Anahn Mobile Cannon, seen bottom left, is a placeholder. The Xy Worldeater, the big orb, needed a major revision, since it was at the highly prohibitive poly limit for Sins, and the claws looked dumb as hell. Both were to be major challenges for me to fix with my limited modeling skills.

^ Most of the immense particle detail work I put in, from rendering FumeFX texture sheets and fine-tuning projectile animations, would probably be lost on most audience members simply because Sins, as an engine, is garbage and its particle engine sucks. No child particles? Really? Even wc3 had that...

^ A prop created for the Foundry scene.

^ I can't texture or UV, so I split meshes face-by-face to assign unique textures to various components.

^ A model from Siber (homeworld 2) I was in the process of mangling for a DyiithJhinn ship. Extremely early in.

^ A model from SolCommand I hacked for the DyiithJhinn. Taking an existing mesh, de-triagulating it, fixing the horrible modeling practices of some modelers, and then detailing it is a far more trivial task to me than simply coming up with a reasonable base shape to then detail. I struggle immensely with shapes. I am garbage at modeling.

^ Base model from Axel (homeworld 2)

^ This base mesh is from the Sands of Time HW2 model and is the single most agonizing thing I have ever backported. The model was atrocious. Getting it detail-ready took an entire day...

^ I was almost willing to make the cinematics using lineage 2/tera models, but I really lacked any possible way to tailor them towards my own character designs, of which the specifics are quite in-depth. I tried, and I failed immediately. That was over a year ago.

And finally, some voice acting test. I did many such tests, more of which can be heard in the videos, in an effort to keep my voice acting sharp. However, I have actually voice acted next to nothing in the last 2-3 years.

https://soundcloud.com/iskatumesk/ret-record-practice-1

If Retribution was ever to be continued, two things would have to happen.

1.) I'd have to get the character models.

2.) I'd have to redo all of my work in the UDK (most likely Unreal 4) and learn how to do it the right fucking way and not deal with badly programmed indie games that make my already difficult work twice as hard.

Sadly, neither of these will happen. You can only depend on yourself, and I can't buy my way through models. I don't have the mental fortitude to learn new skills and I'm totally screwed when it comes to the character models. So, that's it.

I'm fucking around a bit in Starcraft 2, but like all such projects, that work is private. I'll still post a bit here just for kicks, though.

^ Lineage 2 character I ported. Took some work to figure out the animation process, because sc2's animation engine is weird and m3a's are buggy as hell.

^ Tera model port, with a custom arrow I made and armor recolor.

^ One of the towers from my Foundry prop scene. I put it into sc2 to see how it'd look. Verdict: shit.

Whelp, that's it for me.

/edit

I forgot some images. I added them to the stack.

TheCzarOfAll

United States170 Posts

May 30 2014 15:28 GMT

I was expecting this:

img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071102043319/starcraft/images/4/49/Retribution_Cover.jpg

lantz

United States762 Posts

May 30 2014 16:41 GMT

I have not read the blog yet, but as soon as I saw retribution, it reminded me of the Santa Barbara

Tal

United Kingdom1015 Posts

June 01 2014 03:21 GMT

It's sad that the project failed - judging by your other blogs you put a huge amount of work into it, and (as shown by this post), you were pretty successful in the parts you did finish. These things happen though.

I'd love to hear what the next project is.

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