Project Assessment March (Ret P4)

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

March 07 2013 17:09 GMT

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I am now ready to talk about ingame material.

Over 30 hours of streamed dev material is available to internal viewers, 7 parts of the Dev series are finished, 7 internal demo videos have been created, and around a dozen assessment and analysis videos are created. Since November 2012 I've been steadily progressing on revising and adding to existing content in the game. Black Sun doesn't even resemble what it used to look like in Salvation-era recordings. Care to call my bluff?

Many mission critical ships like the Emperor revision and The Wayward Daughter are ingame and functional already. Some of the more challenging stuff, like the Bloodstone Battlecruiser remodel, are still on my plate.

A lot of particle has been done. Most viewers will be too casual to tell the difference in some of the finer nuances, like the explosions for Anahn being 1/4 the particle count but having infinitely superior timings, color, and animation. But many of the more major changes, like the new muzzle flashes, the revised Xy`Kranasha explosions, and all the new stuff is already worlds apart from my work a year and a half ago.

The Emperor had two main weapon types in Salvation, while it will have four in Retribution. In fact, the Emperor will barely resemble what it did in Salvation, seeing as two of its weapons in Salvation were entirely placeholders! Argh!

I just got done submitting script version 3.2 to my Russia cohort which, pending some more sleeping over specific wording sets, is pretty solid as a beta right now. I'll be trying to do several takes of the script's voices sometime soon, and I need to practice my Adashim something fierce.

Apex and Black Sun conceptuals were my only practice in 2012. With the immense Canadian summer bearing down on me, it will be tough to voice act with the deafening roar of my industrial fans trying to prevent my skin from melting off. I'll have to turn off all my fans, and drape blankets over my monitor/mic again, in 130f 100% humidity heat. This could be quite unpleasant!

With March, I hope to get some really big things done. The Anahn battlestation(s), the Bloodstone Battlecruiser, and potentially the Pride of Ages. I might start working on 4th generation Anahn models, and I'll make another major particle pass. As always, the Xy`Kranasha and Royal Anahn fleets need a lot of work. However, with the current script version, the amount of Undead material I have in the game right now is fairly satisfactory. Pending some quality assurance, a lot of sound material, and a particle revision, they may enter beta phases. As soon as mid or late summer, the majority of ingame material might be demonstrable for critique to my private viewers.

Entering the Critique phase for the Undead is soon to happen. This is a critical moment in production, because it means I am ready to make the final versions of one of the races. I can devote most of my modeling energy to the more troublesome stuff, and tackle the bigger projects in relative mental safety.

The Xy`Kranasha texture in Salvation was seriously busted and needed to be replaced, which only happened in February this year. Awful.

Work is very slow on the Xy`Kranasha, but even so they are progressing at a reasonable rate given my workload.

However, the sins material is only half, and arguably the least difficult half, of this project. Soon, very soon, I need to start modeling material for the UDK (CGI) portion of this video. Without being a character modeler, I either need to pull characters out of games and remaster them or hope my Russian cohort can get his head out of the vodka-doused gutter long enough to figure out a way to pull off the super difficult female characters.

The big bullet, of course, is learning the UDK. I'm super fucking incompetent and have learning disabilities, so actually picking up new things, or improving my skills, is really tough. I need to get started on the UDK sooner than later so I can learn the ins and outs of making my scenes, making basic materials, and finding out how to actually get the UDK to dump my scenes as frames I can then composite.

I've modelled some basic architecture shit in the past but nothing on this scale. Unfortunately, most of the UDK material will be unanimated since I can't animate. I'm hoping that through lighting and particles I can pull off good lighting, but I'll have to learn Cascade to pull off the latter. I took one look at it, and it's worlds apart from the shitty pile of garbage I use to make my hundreds of Sins particles. The pressure will be really immense.

A holy fuck what lot of work awaits me. I'm pretty scared, because it's really easy for me to fall into depression for years at a time. I've wanted to get into the UDK since it first came out but only a month ago did I have the balls to put one of my meshes into it just to see how it looked.