I missed my status update on Friday because I had a lot going on.
Christmas is a done deal, yay. No more stressing about gifts and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.
Stalled projects:
Mechwarrior Dark Age game - on hold until I finish other projects. Still optimistic I can make it work with the right engine and some porting.
My 'Neo-Monegasque' book series - ... @#$^... I've really come to hate this book series. After getting bad feedback from one of the preview-reviewers I'm contemplating just finishing it and letting it die a quiet death.
Other books - I keep a mental fire lit, but mostly my energy is on things below.
Active projects:
I have a lot of 'pre-baby' stuff to do in prep for this kid that's coming. Like finding a better doctor, more suitable, etc.
I did a lot of game development work over this weekend and am very pleased with the results.
The receiving 'opening' area. I think I've finally licked the interior lighting issues on that pillar.
The right of the pillar; a visible and nearly completed docking area, ship, warning signs/lights and some of the rest of the station extend beyond view. Had an issue with occlusion killing the objects just beyond the glass so I had to turn occlusion down to 0 to fix it for now. I need to re position that lightray decal though. Also missing my red lighting for the warning light, which I had to remove in the process of troubleshooting the missing object situation. This area still needs a lot of tweaking, I think but with proper lighting it should be fine.
I really like this hallway, what can I say. I use it's combination of natural and indoor lighting to provide a nice looking calm scene; this will be contrasted later when things go to pot and things are all busted up. In all, I like how it looks so I try to include this as a 'progress' screenshot so you can kind of gauge against previous configs.
Receiving Rec Area/Dining hall. Continues to be a source of difficulty for me with lighting artifacts that I can't isolate the source of. That said, it's getting there. The addition of EAI's arcade cabinets and the old cosmic diner pinball machine gives it a more natural feel. I cleaned up some of the elements after taking this picture (Pinball machine, walls, arcade machines) so they didn't feel so clumped together.
The new area - the fusion core. Was going to be a water reservoir but had trouble with indoor water setups. It was tremendously tricky to get the lava functional as it is but I like it. From here there will be pathways to engineering and the bridge, as well as crew quarters. I have a lot more work to do here but the start is looking very nice.
I was given some feedback that the lighting looks a lot better than previous screenshots. Also that it reminds the viewer of system shock, which to me is high praise. I think system shock most closely embodies what I'm going for here, though obviously these two are quite different.
Anyways at this point, I'm considering a hub and spoke design for the maps, whereas I was considering something a lot more linear. This will allow a more reusable level design, though I'm not 100% sold on it.
Another key point of progress was made in getting some older characters functioning with one of smallg's scripts. It gives me a core AI to work around and that saves a lot of time. I can clean it up and make it run a lot nicer with my background in AI code. But the base is pretty good so I'm happy with that. It also gives me access to models which I can configure for my own use.
