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General project infos

Thu, 02 May 2002 11:25:00

RambOrc

1) Camper resigned his position as Lead Programmer on the Korax project (no big surprise here). He also made Janis the project admin on SourceForge, with full rights to all parts of that account. 2) Yesterday I've half-finished the new shop layout. I've used one new wall texture this far and will maybe use 2-3 more, plus the merchant sprite of Mago. I'll mail the stuff to Janis to put into the KMOD wadfile. For lack of furniture it doesn't look too enticing, but is a definite improvement over the previous version. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] 3) As soon as KMOD 2.2 is ready to go, I'll upload it to a temporary web location and give the URL to a couple of people like JP and Dark Mage for beta test, you are welcome to send the link to other people as well (just not officially post the link anywhere). I'd say we give them a week for test and if they don't find any SP bugs, we just cross our fingers and release the stuff. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] 4) Roadmap looks somewhat different than earlier this year, it seems Scattered Evil will be nowhere near finished by June, next target is late Summer. Once it's finished, we'll start with Korax Arena. I suggest we just put a hold on The Serpent Power for at least a couple of months after work fully stopped on Scattered Evil, such a distance helps a lot to get a wider view of things. I didn't yet mention it I guess, but I plan TSP to have a basically different concept. While SE is basically a Hexen with tons of RPG features and new maps/graphics/etc., I plan TSP to be an RPG with Hexen elements like story/world/graphics/sounds. Same goes BTW for Korax Arena, I plan a radically different handling of player resources than in Hexen, i.e. no 2-color-mana stuff or 4 weapons. But I guess it's not a good idea to go into detail before SE is at least near completion. I should rather concentrate on writing the SE design guide, I know. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Fri, 03 May 2002 22:54:00

mago

You may find it annoying from my part, but I think you should, instead of just making some maps and fit them to a story, invent a real story-line, and try to make some really good and original maps, designed specially for the tc/mod/game. I mean, we all can make some dumb map in WadAuthor (hellooo, I'm still waiting for those tutorials addresses...) [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] , but only you guys can make some crazy and heavily scripted maps which can make us play them all the afternoon. And this way, we could also make use of all the potential of the new features which will be added.
Sat, 04 May 2002 01:53:00

RambOrc

That's one of the differences between SE and TSP... the first will use the maps we can find at all becuz there's simply no capacity to make them. SE should be out in 3-4 months and I'm the only official level designer on the team. Not only do I have very little time in which I have to make ~20 maps, but I don't even have much inspiration becuz since I know there'll be a possibility of creating advanced maps (with all the features I listed in another topic a couple of days ago), I have even less urge to make good maps with the old engine. Starting with the city which simply doesn't make sense with a more enhanced engine but contains over a hundred hours of work, maybe even several hundreds, can't say any more. I started work on it more than a year ago (yeah, for that it doesn't look too enticing, I know). OTOH if TSP will be 2 years in the making, it still won't lose the following IMO, since in those 2 years we'll have a finished RPG out to show to people (SE) and a Korax 2 engine based mod in constant development (Korax Arena). And such a long time means it'd be possible to first work out the story in details, list the locations and work them out in detail on paper, and start with building the maps only afterwards. Acceptable? [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Sun, 05 May 2002 10:31:00

mago

Well, I have lots of ideas, but I just can't find anything that teachs how to add scripts to a level, so I can't help in that. Anyway, what if you hire some map makers. Sir Billian seems to know how to make a level, Maybe he would care to help. By the way, if you need, I think I can make some simple objects in 3d. Do you need something?
Sun, 05 May 2002 11:11:00

RambOrc

If you also know how to skin them, you could make the thatched roofs for the houses and the simple wooden building blocks for 3D floor simulation. I had Kendrome on this job for about half a year but all he did was a roof model with a texture that didn't work. A couple of months ago I asked Blacwolfe from The Skin Crypt whether he could skin me that roof model, he started with it, got me back 2-3x with problems like the texture is somehow distorted (how the hell should *I* help *him* with that, he's the skinner not I), then never replied to my last mail on this topic. So I'm working with Camper's >1 year old crude and badly skinned roof models up to this day. [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img]
Sun, 05 May 2002 16:19:00

mago

Skinning, now there's something I never did before... The skin itself isn't the main problem, but how to add it to the model... Anyway, I'll seek for tutorials on the subject, and then let you know. Roof and floor: what exactly do you mean? If you want some solids like a 3 sides prism for the roof and a compressed square for the floor blocks, I don't know why you haven't done it before, because that is not a problem... UNLESS there is some complication I am not aware...
Sun, 05 May 2002 17:23:00

RambOrc

The problem was how to assign a bitmap to each side of those models. We never figured it out with Camper.
Mon, 06 May 2002 07:26:00

mago

What do you mean? I thought skins are made to wrap up the model... Is that the way you did for the others models (the chairs, tables, trees...)?
Mon, 06 May 2002 10:47:00

RambOrc

Yep, but we used a simple 2D texture and it was wrapped over all faces of the object, instead of only one.
Mon, 06 May 2002 10:53:00

Tzar Sectus

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by RambOrc: <strong>The problem was how to assign a bitmap to each side of those models. We never figured it out with Camper.</strong><hr></blockquote> That would be just to import the MD2 file into a normal 3d modelling program (3D Studio MAX for instance), define which polygon gets which part of the skin and export it back to MD2. Of course, you'd need someone with experience in modelling to do it. -Remi
Mon, 06 May 2002 15:20:00

RambOrc

Clarification... I have a basic knowledge of how a skin is made, the same way I have a basic knowledge how a car is driven, but I still never learned the details of either one, so I can't do it. The only prog we had is a Quake Modeler something and that's the one we never figured out with how to assign proper skins. Since it's about pretty crude basic objects, all it needs is the basic knowledge how to create models and apply skins to them in a proper way. I can deliver the textures for the faces.
Mon, 06 May 2002 17:40:00

dj_jl

AFAIR the roof model skins had some size problems and were not editable by Quake Modeller. I will try to fix it.

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