Today, a friend of mine referred me to an awesome tool that will change my life as a modder for Source radically. This is a tool that I have been expecting from Valve for years, and never happened to be released. As seen in Valve’s Developer Wiki:
Propper is an edited version of vbsp that outputs a model instead of a bsp.
Many mappers need to make props for their maps, but don’t want to learn a separate modeling program. This tool allows them to make models in Hammer in a one-step process. It’s also useful to modelers who work with mappers. No other method of .vmf export keeps texture mapping intact, or auto-generates a physics mesh.
Can create static props or physics props
Generates a .qc file and automatically compiles the prop for use in your game.
Generates a working physics mesh.
Automatic material conversion–Turns map textures into valid model textures.
Distinguishes between real textures and “tool” textures.
Respects Hammer smoothing groups or autosmooth.
Configure your prop from within Hammer.
I cannot wait to test it out! This feels like a SDK-Project milestone to me! Did you know about this tool? If that’s not the case, take a look on the video of how models are done in Hammer. I’m still amazed!
Some of you may know that this map was already released, and it has been online for quite some time (Around 3 months) in L4DMaps, but after the new VPK packaging method was released, I didn’t update the map as the rest of the community did and my map was removed from the server. That has been specially annoying because some of the people who tried out my map gave me pretty useful feedback in its comments… feedback that was lost forever. However, I think that this updated version will run better than before. Next week it will be available for download again. Hope you like it!
There are a few things that keep me loving this industry:
Valve
Epic
Mods
Indie games
Old classics
When at least 3 of these things are mixed together, something wonderful happens. Today, I found a couple of awesome examples in YouTube. If the guy responsible for these maps keeps making such mods, he’s going to become pretty famous among the modding community IMO. What could be next? Adventure Island? Megaman? Metroid? GOD, I love modding!
Now it’s time to look back in time for a moment: it’s the year 1998 and now every single hit from the 16-Bit era is being redesigned in 3D. In Playstation and Saturn it was easy to spot one of these games because of the “3D” word at the end of the title, same with the number “64″ in any Nintendo 64 game or the “HD” in the current generation. Well, many of these games couldn’t deliver an experience comparable with their predecessors, but Road Rash 3D not only preserved its wild soul, but also became the final revision of what a Road Rash game should be. The reason why I talk about this game is because not long ago a leaked video of an abandoned attempt of reviving this saga for this generation was made public, and that brought me back good memories about this game. I played the campaign mode for a week and man… what a great game!
LIKED:
Too advanced for its time: Instead of several circuits or independent routes, Road Rash 3D plays in a huge county with many roads that can be blocked or opened depending on the race that you have chosen. “Blocked” it just a way to express it, because you can just continue driving out of boundaries and take the risk of using an illegal detour. The drawing distance is good for that time, but gets better thanks to a visual trick that turns 2D backgrounds into 3D in a very natural way.
Choose wisely: There are 4 biker groups, each one with its very own characteristics and 4 exclusive motorbikes. Techgeists focuses more on the speed while Dewleys bikes are tougher. Choosing one bike makes you good only at one thing: Speed, handling, durability or acceleration. Which one would you sacrifice?
It’s not only about racing: What makes a racing game even better? Weapons! YES! And best of all: you have to fight for them in order to unlock them. Well, this is nothing new in the Road Rash franchise, but GOD knows that it will never get old.
Best Jukebox Ever: This game features one of the greatest OST I’ve ever listened in any racing game. It’s so good that you can even buy it in Amazon. It sets the perfect mood for this game. Just awesome!
DISLIKE:
Don’t drink and drive: Controls in Road Rash 3D are the downside. The sensibility is too high and playing without an analog stick is like driving a real motorbike using a digital pad. It only can end bad. It takes a lot of time to get used to them.
Punching the air: Collision detection is awful in this game. The overall feeling of the game is great, but THIS issue fucks up too many epic moments. Hitting another biker is a bigger achievement than finishing a race in first place. Stealing weapons is just a matter of luck.
In conclusion, Road Rash 3D is an awesome game and not many people are aware of its existence, which is a pity. This is the last and greatest Road Rash released to date, and still, will be the best forever. Road Rash: Jailbreak doesn’t count. That game is a joke. Fuck it.
Last week I got Borderlands for XBOX360, one of those games I heard about but I wasn’t really interested on playing. I don’t know how it managed to slip into my collection, and what a nice surprise, it’s a good game! I have to admit that I have some kind of fetishism in games with numbers coming out from thing’s heads since Final Fantasy VII, and I enjoyed this game mostly because of that. Mixing the RPG factor with a FPS game was pretty clever, and I enjoyed every single second I played it, although this game suffers from the same dependency than Left 4 Dead. If you play alone, you will get bored pretty soon, but playing with company… oh, God, it’s just awesome.
LIKED:
Partying together: As in Left 4 Dead, Borderlands improves when playing it with friends, specially if these friends are using characters with different abilities or skills. Each character provides an unique advantage for every combat and sometimes you find yourself applying an improvised strategy without even noticing it.
Living in a dumpster: Pandora is a fucked up planet, where living equals surviving. That was brilliantly represented along the game, with arid lands, gigantic scrapyards, dirty rivers and improvised towns built of trash and metal sheets. The art side is very neat and simple and the neo-western music is not intrusive and neither boring. It just woks perfectly.
Customization in the right amount: This part always scares me in games like this. Too many possibilities is annoying and not many is disappointing, but Borderlands has a good balance in this aspect. Lots of weapons, lots of grenade types, class modifiers, shields and skills, with no co-relation between each other, which simplifies the whole thing.
A nice looking post-apocalyptic land: Cell-Shading saved this game, in my opinion. Otherwise the visual aspect of Borderlands would be boring, bland and everything else but special. Kudos for whoever decided to make such a drastic and risky move in the last moment.
DISLIKED:
Please wait while we load the world: Pandora is an open world, or at least that’s the feeling that you have when you start the game. It’s just a pity that they couldn’t get rid of those annoying “loading” screens when travelling to new areas. I understand the reasons why they are there but, as I said, it’s a pity.
One car’s land: Vehicles are an important key in this game, without them, moving around Pandora would be a pain in the ass. It would be nice if they would include more vehicles or upgrades for the car that you’re driving all the time. It’s nice that you can change the color of the vehicle or choose between a machine gun or rocket launcher for the co-pilot, but the possibilities concerning vehicles could be much wider in my opinion.
What the hell is all about?: I can sum up Borderlands plot in 3 steps…
Collect 10 diaries and hear something about a key.
Meet all the factions and watch them fighting each other.
Kill a giant vagina for no reason. The end.
As a player, I was playing the game just for the fun of it. The plot didn’t interest me a bit at any moment because they didn’t make the minimum effort to make it look as interesting as the Universe the plot is based on. Halo 3 effect.
Beyond the simplicity: I mentioned before that I liked Borderland’s simplicity concerning customization, but there is only one “complex” thing I was begging to find at some point of the game: weapons customization. I know that having this feature is kind of pointless knowing the insane amount of weapons that you can find in the game, but still, it would be helpful.
In conclusion, Borderlands will not disappoint you. If rumors are true, a sequel must be in pre-production already, and taking the first one as a foundation for its sequel only means that the second one is going to be as good as its prequel, with some very necessary additions.
My PSOne collection keeps growing, and one of the latest games that joined the club was Jumping Flash. By the time it was released (1995, I think) I was so used to 2D games that when I saw this game for the first time it just blew my mind. It was the first console game ever released that mixed successfully two components never related to date: platforming and 3D environment. It was so beautiful and (apparently) fun to play that since the day I first saw it, I knew I would have to buy a Playstation console. Well, 14 years later I finally got the game and I wasn’t wrong about it.
Of course, times are different now and both graphics and gameplay look bland, basic and primitive nowadays, but somehow, part of the essence of this game managed to survive until now.
The gameplay is pretty simple and feels very arcade-ish: you control a mechanic rabbit in first person view and your goal is to collect several carrot-shaped items in the level. Sometimes it requires exploration, other times it just requires some platforming skills. The drawing distance in the game is pretty bad, forcing you to move around the level in order to find the items which could be visible if you would be able to see things further away. The enemies some times get really annoying, specially when you realize that a 20 polys frog can cause more trouble than many final bosses in any next-gen game. Talking about final bosses, every 2 stages you have to face one. This is the part that I enjoyed the most, because I really miss good old-skool final bosses, with life bar and blinking in red when they are about to die. I just love that effect (And I included it in an early version of my Xen Invaders mod).
Best thing about the game: the music. I just love it! Probably because it brings back some good memories about my childhood. But of course, there is always a downside: although the levels are very colorful and varied, they look lazy and uninspired, the cutscenes are a joke and there are no rewards or unlockables. For such a short game, that would be helpful.
In conclusion, Jumping Flash is fun to play, with a very straight forward 3D platforming gameplay style and good balance between action and exploration. You can also buy it in the PSNStore, but honestly, better save it for longer and better games. Probably this one is not going to fulfill your expectations unless you’re an old timer.
Before coming to Germany and joining Yager Development, I worked for 1 year and 3 months at Pyro Studios, in Madrid. We worked in a next-gen project titled COPS: The Police Experience, which supposed to be the next Holy Grail in Spanish videogame history. Sadly, and after 5 years of development, the project was cancelled one week before last year’s Christmas. However, by the time that happened, I was already freezing my balls in Berlin (And happy about that, I must say…)
Since then, this project was abandoned and forgotten in time… until this week, because a website called Unseen64 has leaked some info and media about the game. Of course, I already had all this stuff at home, but I couldn’t publish it due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) which forbids me to do it so. Probably some pissed-off ex-employee from Pyro Studio leaked this media, and I’m glad he did it. Now I can talk freely about it!
So, this was the first project I worked on when I joined the industry 2 years ago. I must say that the idea behind was pretty cool, although the execution was bland and boring. This could have been a big hit, and it looked amazing from outside, but inside, the team was rotten, tired, pissed and skeptical. Most of us felt relieved when we heard that the project was finally cancelled, although I felt sorry for many of my ex-colleagues being fired in Christmas season.
Anyway, watch the video and comment what do you think about it. Some bits of the video shows a few of my ideas, like the shootout in the catwalk, the player shooting the glass to find a better sheltered path to progress, the robber shooting with an Uzi through the window and then falling through it and the shooting range (Yep, shoot-shoot-shoot). Enjoy!
Smart move, EPIC. Now it’s time to give the Unreal Community what they deserved for a decade. As seen in EPIC’s UDK Wesbite:
Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.
What does this mean? Means that you have free access to the most powerful tool in game development nowadays, with frequent updates and a strong community that can support you whenever you have a related question. This is one of the best things that has happened to the modding/developer community in the last years. The UDK comes with 3 game examples, and each of them provides enough material to start experimenting with your games or projects.
