Well, I finally became confident enough to port my UTHiveGame code over to a new project titled Villainous which will be my attempt at achieving the heist gameplay I am setting out to create. So far the project is coming along faster and better than I had hoped, much in thanks to a man by the name of Nico de Vries who released the source code to his BattleTeamArena mod under the GPL as well as personally giving me permission to use much of his source as a base for my mod. The gameplay of the two have almost nothing in common; however, he wrote some amazing functions for drawing “Nice” hud elements and much of his source code has been an educational experience to read through (especially for a non-programmer such as myself). To find out what functionality I currently have in place, as well as my immediate plans for what I’ll be implementing next…

Updated again Sept 27.

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Well, inDevs has been incredibly inactive for a very long time - blame it on my laziness. However, today I’ve started work on my first real project in quite some time. Ultimately it is going to be a heist mod (though graphically it may not make a whole lot of sense, since I’m a terrible artist), for now it has started as a team-assimilation mod. I’ll be starting a new wiki project file (project started here) and keeping things updated as I make progress. Click more to check my current progress if you are interested.

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So - I’ve long been a fan of the Conflict series of games. It started out with Conflict: Desert Storm in which you played a team of special operatives (each with their own unique abilities and functions) who performed various missions through the Desert Storm campaign. You had your rifleman, your support (MG), your Sniper, and your Special Assault (Silenced weapons and Shotgun). In general the game was great fun and was made moreso by the ability to play cooperatively with a friend (One controlled the Rifle/Support while the other controlled the Sniper/Assault)

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Well, as some of you know I have been spending quite a bit of time recently toying around with the Unreal Tournament III level editor, UnrealED3. I’ve made an array of small levels and am currently working on a much larger Capture The Flag level. The level itself will be a shell to better contain a mechanic I recently used in a smaller level (one created merely as a “test” to see if this was possible in Kismet). Read on to learn about the level, including screen shots and descriptions of how various things were accomplished using the editor itself, Kismet (a visual scripting engine included), and Matinee (an “animation” editor included).

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I just wanted to inform everyone that I have updated the site to require a previously approved comment before guest comments will appear on articles. I apologize for not catching all those spam comments sooner; hopefully with this change that will not become a problem again in the future. If it does, I’ll just have to require registration.

It’s a bit of a rant, just to forewarn…

So, about a year or so ago, my brother decided to purchase a new Wireless Router for his apartment where he and his Fiancee (and their son) are living. The specific purpose was so that he could get on to Xbox Live and play games with me and his other friends, and for a time, it worked quite well.

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I have installed some Wiki software for the inDevs.net webpage to start the UT3 Paintball (to be named) modification project. However, the wiki can be used to house any number of modifications and/or maps. It is not designed to be used as a release platform for our work - that will be done right here on inDevs.net. Instead, the wiki is for our internal use in keeping our projects documented and communicating our progress. By nature, wiki’s are extremely easy to work with for documenting and keeping track of all work that needs to be done on a project while allowing multiple contributors to add, edit, and discuss the various intricacies of the project.

For now, you can view the wiki here:
Indevs Project Wiki

The UT3 Paintball mod page here:
UT3 Project Sub-Page

And the UT3 Paintball Design Documentation here:
UT3 Paintball Design Doc

I am currently toying with the idea of making a total conversion mod for Unreal Tournament III; more specifically, a paintball mod. I realize that such mods are fairly cliche among amature developers and by no means “original,” however - I absolutely love paintball and have not seen it done well since the days of Quake II. The largest hurdle to overcome is going to be the art assets; particularly the paintball guns themselves. I just recently recieved my Unreal Tournament III collectors edition (which contains hours upon hours of video tutorials for content creation with the engine and editor), and stumbled across quite a few excellent resources. While in the long run the mod would have to become a total conversion, for now it is going to start out as a simple GameType modification.

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Well, I’ve finally played around in the Sandbox2 editor for CryENGINE2 enough to where I feel confident in making a decision as to what projects would mesh well with the technology, and what projects would not. For now, I wish to concentrate more on multiplayer experiences than singleplayer, so I’ve decided to check out the new version of an old favorite of mine. Unreal Tournament 3 recently launched, and I hopped on the ability to purchase a collectors edition tin (could not find one in person so I ordered it from GoGamer). The more I use the engine, the more excited I am about starting a new total conversion mod (though, I may do it as a simple gametype addition for now and change it to a TC mod further down the line when I feel more confident starting from scratch). Anyhow, read more for some links to useful resources getting started with the UnrealED experience; also, I have attached a download with all the exported scripts from Unreal Tournament 3 (the areas of the source code that are available to the public, just not yet hosted at an official source).

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Well, I have now tinkered around quite a bit with the editor bundled with the new Crysis game, Sandbox2. I think the editor is amazing for what some people need, and has it’s shortcomings in other areas. The general idea I’ve gotten from it is that, if you are looking to make a primarily outdoor, single player experience - CryENGINE2 may make an incredible base for your game. However, if you are looking to create a primarily indoor experience - or a multi-player experience (or both), you may want to look elsewhere.

In the full article I touch briefly on my impressive on the terrain editing and texturing, the A.I. control and scripting, solid creation (from-scratch simple geometry construction), as well as some uncategorized thoughts.

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