Oldpman's Sci-Fi Block Kit

I've been meaning to do a proper write-up on this kit since I bought it.
It's no secret I love Sci-Fi set pieces and that I tend to favor them (if only for my own projects sake, but nonetheless I do tend to bias *JUST A BIT* towards SF pieces when evaluating.)

Store Link: https://en.tgcstore.net/pack/10731

Oldpman is renowned for his prolific kits that contain many building blocks with which you can build sprawling maps. I own a few and enjoy them, though mostly they don't typically fit my style.
The previous pieces have lacked the gritty realism I usually enjoy.  Initially during the development phase of this, his first foray into the realm of Sci-Fi set pieces, I was nonplussed. I saw a lot of interesting shapes (that much at least was compelling) but a lot of the same out of place bright colors again.  Somewhere right before I smash the buy button, this all changed.  He managed to figure out illumination mapping and boy - what a difference that made!

See for yourself!

I remember sitting on the forums and watching this take shape; seeing it become closer to being a real piece I'd be interested in.  It debuted shortly after the Sci-Fi DLC came out, which admittedly was probably either really great timing by riding a wave of enthusiasm or really poor timing by being a competing product.  I resolved eventually to buy it when I saw some of the screen shots from the illuminated versions:

Most of this is done without lightmapping!

When it comes to Indy game development, you really have very little going for you.  You DON'T have multi-million dollar budgets, more than one or two people (in most cases) working on it, and massive art departments to work with.  So it's important that you have a clean, consistent style that's compelling to look at and doesn't scream "INDY GARBAGE".  This is one of the reasons to purchase Game-Guru in my opinion; you can source LOW PRICED, QUALITY art/assets very easily.

The updated palette brings it into System Shock/Doom-style levels of grit and color.

We've been gifted by several really good content releases for Sci-Fi products and this is no exception.  In fact, I'd easily say with the illumination mapping and low price ($14.95 as of this writing), it's firmly in the 'must own' category.  

You get 118 pieces and every single one is very intelligently put together.

Fitment of the pieces is less 'snap-together' than previous kits.  This does require a smidge of extra work to get pieces aligned, checked, etc.  That said, it looks phenomenal when completed.  Of special note is the brilliant touch of overhead glass windowed ceilings to work around the known limitation of quirky indoor lighting in GG.

Note the very clear squares letting light in from above and beautiful curved windows.

I'm going to just say I actually like this BETTER than the pieces from the Sci-Fi DLC.  Now that said, there's reasons to buy the Sci-Fi DLC as well (custom character pieces for instance) - this set only includes one character.  While it's not bad, it's not great.  It's a non-functional 'drone' which can be used but will require customization.  I like it's 'meh' face texture though the jets are a little bland looking.  That's more a byproduct of the lack of particle effects within GG though.

The "You done yet?" drone was a welcome addition to an otherwise set-piece only kit.

There's a LOT here though; objects, colored lights, signs, robotic arms, even a docking bay.  Really solid stuff.  Take for instance this barrier door:

I love how the barrier creates shadows but also takes illumination.  It's subtlety like that that makes it an Indy game look more professional than it might actually be.

 At the end of the day here it's really hard to match the quality and value of this.  You're paying a pittance for a FULL level building kit.  And not only that, it's wildly interchangeable.  A lot of these kits have a very 'similar' feel.  Levels lack variety because the pieces are all square, simple, or symmetrical.  The rounded corridors, variable heights, colors and shapes all make this infinitely variable which is a HUGE welcome for someone willing to put the time into developing a quality Indy title.

The bottom line: Pick this pack up now.  You'll have what you need from the art department; all you will need will be to improve your skills to meet the high bar that Oldpman has set for you.

TGC's 'Sci-Fi DLC'

So it's been a while since my last post.
I know, I know.  But to my credit - most of that time was spent shovelling.

York PA got dumped on - we got as much snow in one day as we get on average for a WHOLE WINTER.   So I've literally spent every night shoveling, every day shoveling.  It's left little time for creative pursuits.

On top of that I've had my hands full with life stuff such as my second son's upcoming birth.  That means Dr's appts, calling around, finding sitters, etc.

I never expected the level of traffic my little post to John Romero would generate and I'm happy for it.  No more excuses.  Time to knuckle down and get to work.

I've waited a long time for the vaunted "Sci-Fi DLC" by 'The Game Creators'.  I have several of their other packs (having been a FPS Creator Reloaded gold backer) and much of the content is unfortunately redundant or kind of amateurish.

That's not the case here.

The kit comes with a whole slew of useful items:

• 23 Building parts
• 7 Characters (alien, space marines and a spaceman)
• 11 Collectables
• 73 Decals
• 34 Interior sections
• 21 Rocks
• 43 Scenery items
• 3 Martian terrains
• 3 Martian skies 

Now given my store entries are purely of skies, the skies are minimally useful to me.

I don't care about the custom level they made aside from the bits of script I can rip out and repurpose.

So let's talk price.  Currently it's on sale as a promo - 14.99 USD.  That's a really good deal for a ton of very high quality assets.  Take a look:

 One of the many characters included - looks similar to a custom one I made!

A little note on the characters - all of their component parts are included in the character creator!  Which while not a fantastic builder by any stretch (the base parts are just dreadfully bad) the new heads/bodies breath lots of life into the system and further diversify user-created products.

Lots of the interior elements look really good too as set pieces:

 

 Like this little guy in his glass womb.  This is perfect for any sci-fi horror game.

I've spent a long time looking for various parts that go together as a whole and while this was originally designed for ground-based games - it works really well for a number of sci-fi pieces.

 

The outdoor pieces look way better than the preview shots did, final post-work looks great!

The indoor pieces in my opinion though are where this set really shines.

 

In particular there's a ton of decals and graphics which allow a lot of flexibility for stick-on neon lighting or displays to add flair for each room.

 

This console is modular and can be built with additional monitors and displays, for instance.

All in all I'm very surprised and pleased with the level of quality they brought to the table and ten out of ten times would buy this again, especially considering the pittance they are asking for.

Another important point to consider is that they regularly add pieces to the DLCs.  I know for a fact a drone set is coming soon after they put finishing touches on it.  The fantasy DLC is also getting stuff despite being in the wild now for around a year or so.

The bottom line on this is that it's a quality piece to own especially if you're into the genre, like I am.  Give it a look!

Thanks to TGC for the pictures which I took from their DLC store page.  I'll try to add some of my own graphics later or give a few sample shots as time goes on.

 

Status Update: Monday 12/28/15

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.

Friday Status: 12/18/2015

In the real world, I've accepted a full time position as Linux IIS Admin w/ The Bon-Ton Corp.

Things are going to get a lot busier for me, I suspect.

So status, in no particular order:
1) Neo-Monagasque Chronicles Book Two got a shitty review from a friendly reviewer.  That was ugly.   I'm not really sure how to fix the story problems he has with it, or if it's worth fixing at this point.  It kind of gutted my interest in it though.

2) Mechwarrior Dark Age Javascript game.  On hold, as mentioned previously.  No new work will get done on that till next year.

3) My Sci-Fi WIP has a bit more work done.  Working on cleaning up the lighting and finishing up the first zone's layout:

 Revised lighting.  Still having trouble with that primary pillar in the foreground.  The spool on the left is just a placeholder for more stuff later.  I want this entire area to look like a busy docking bay which means people, places, lots of workers and palettes of goods. While I like the lighting, I will say one significant negative is how the overhead lights look off now.  More work is going to need to be done.

More revised lighting.  Spotted some issues here -

• Natural lighting should be seeping in from above, it is not.  Meaning I have to adjust some of the ambient levels or fake it.  
• My coffee sign fell down, because I had to adjust the physics values of the entities.  A simple mistake, easily fixed.
• Light post on right is poorly positioned and looks like it's off.
• Needs more 'reason' to come over here.  I want to turn these machines into functioning entities, shouldn't be too hard. At that point the hard lighting used for illumination/shadows should really help push the player towards these machines.

This was originally an outdoor panoramic scene but because of an engine issue (shadows displaying on empty space) I decided to fool around with making it part of the ship and it came out really well.  So now you still have a window to space but you can see the ship more naturally as part of an extension of the actual player's experience.  The docking bay itself is actually an old free model done by cosmic prophet for dark city (or was it nuke city?).

This area is my first real "crew" area; it's clutter and design is specifically oriented towards giving a more human feel for the ship.  I'll have a few people sitting, eating, cavorting.  etc.  There should be a lot more decoration to give you the feel that this small mess area is a nice through-way for travelers.  There are a few mistakes here though.

• One of the panels (mid center, slightly left) for the roof shows misaligned ceiling textures.  This simply needs rotated.  
• The area needs more lighting in general to put shadows on the interior elements.
• The far pouch actually is the first secret area and I need to hide this better.

So as you can see, this is coming along well but progress is slow because I have little time to work with this regularly.  I want this to give a nice solid feel; this first level (Receiving Bay) will actually be somewhere we visit again later - it should have a trashed feel at that point as things have gone to relative shit.  

More to come!   For now, I'm slowing down as it's end of the year; holidays are winding up, I have a lot going on in my life (Baby, Job, Holidays) and mostly I'm just taking it as it comes.

Forthcoming reviews:  The "Deep Space" package by oldflak
                                      My comprehensive 'must have free stuff' list - part one
                                      Wizard of Id's warehouse pack.
                                       Errant AI's Arcade Pack.

Deal of the week:  https://en.tgcstore.net/pack/10703  - ... 600 dollars worth of resources for 27 dollars.  Holy jeeze!

Project(s) status Friday: 12/11/2015

I started this morning off with disappointment.
Got told flat out by TGC that some of my art (Note, I'm not a great artist so this isn't horribly surprising) was of insufficient quality for the store they have.  Given the level of some stuff that's on there either they are upping their standards or I just *REALLY REALLY SUCK*.

Sigh.

Well, on with the project status.  My wife, as many may or may not know, is pregnant.  So we're anxiously awaiting our new addition in a few months.  It takes up a lot of my time.

What time I do have is spent at work, with the kid, doing housework, or very infrequently - playing games.

Every monday I sit with my 5 year old (Soon to be 6) and do some game-guru 'daddy time'.

Anyways... today I wanted to have an update ready but turns out someone posted some 'free weapons' that were blatant plagiarism and as such kind of mucked up my ideas for today's review post.  I may do a different one later, but not right now.  It frustrates me to be stymied like that.



Current project status:

1) NMC Book 2 - still waiting for beta readers to get back to me.
2) Javascript Mechwarrior Dark Age game.  No further progress (currently no desire)
3) Yet to be named "sci-fi" FPS game - good progress!  Figured out and corrected internal shadow systems, can now proceed normally.  Looks like I'll be getting a free scientist model from one 'henry weaver' and that will help CONSIDERABLY with some of the efforts I'm moving forward with.  Combined with the lackluster character creator (though I've done some interesting things with the face mapping) I have a bare bones set of 'original' characters plus some bad guys.  Now comes level design, then population of levels, then scripting, object placement for pickup objects, tuning, refinement, etc.
4) The doom analysis is complete for Doom 1.  Interesting stuff in previous blog posts  here here and here!
5) I promised to look at zombie AI code but someone already found the issue - so that's off the list.
6) I need to take more screen shots of my WIP.


At work, I'm writing a script to use puppet to deploy salt-minion on SLES SP3/4.  Irony level rising.

Project(s) status Friday 12/4/2015

I'm  resolved to try and keep up on my projects for once, instead of letting them languish.  Part of that is being open and honest with my few regular readers about where I'm at:

1. The Mechwarrior: Dark Age JS game has stalled.  This is because of inherent limitations in Javascript.  The most recent thing I did was build a shellscript which parses the DB @ www.warrenborn.com and builds a JSON for the various expansion packs.  That was done about a month ago.  The question then becomes - what engine do I want to move forward with? Easiest would probably be Unity, since it's got javascript as an optional scripting method.  On a plus note the basic combat engine for one on one combat works like a champ, including statuses like pulse lasers, flamers, etc. 
2. My Sci-Fi trilogy (book 2) is being reviewed by my proofreaders.  I'm fifteen thousand words and about 8 segments short of where it needs to be before it's a first draft.  So I'm waiting for their reviews so I can get an idea of how to fill out those missing pieces.
3. My Sci-Fi game (unnamed as of current) is stalled because of life; I am trying to work on it from time to time but it's hard when your job and home life take up 95% of your time.  Current issues are interior shadows in the Game-Guru engine and asset/story choices need firmed up.

In life, I'm a Linux Systems Engineer and Lead Linux Administrator.  I'm currently working on deploying SALTstack to SLES 11 sp4.  I've got most of the elements in place and a functional system running but boy howdy was it ugly to get moving.  You'd think something called (S)use (A)dvanced (L)inux (T)echnologies would be more compatible with (S)use (L)inux (E)nterprise (S)ystem.

I may write up a blog post on it.  Currently I am sticking with puppet for minor tasks despite it's raw incompatibility with Suse's package management system.  It's decent enough at user removal/etc though.  SALTstack however has the benefit of direct 'zypper' package management integration which is pretty sweet considering it's the backbone of how Suse manages packages.  So that's also been taking up my mental CPU cycles. 

One upshot from a gamedev standpoint is I learned how to make functional alpha channel decals work in Game Guru.  This gives me at least one solid tool to work with.  After that I want to work on doing skyboxes, because frankly I find most of the ones on the store are too repetitive or boring for my tastes.

BSP's SCI-FI weapons pack

My original BSP weapons (pack 1) review is here.

I have been waiting a long time for something like this.  I've had a Sci-Fi project on the back burner which I have wanted to do for a long... LONG time.  Years before even doing anything with FPSC:R.

So without hesitation, I purchased the kit.

  Hot damn.  Sci-Fi always gets the blood pumping.

 I was not disappointed.

This kit cost a meager 8 dollars; that's a pittance for what you get:

5 guns, one low price.

Lets review the 5 weapons given:

You get the IronFist Shotgun.  I have to say as a firearms owner and enthusiast - this thing is awesome.  It behaves EXACTLY as I want a "Space Shotgun" to behave.  It fires out of an eight round drum magazine and the animation is smooth as butter.  It's easy to handle and frankly just feels good.  

Next up is the Quasar Gun; this is a full-auto carbine which has a good bit of recoil.  Of the bunch, its my least favorite aesthetically though it does have a pretty nice alien feel.  I really enjoy watching the drum rotate as it fires.  It features a thirty-two round box magazine which then feeds into some kind of accumulator drum that rotates.  There's one minor flaw and really my only complaint here.  If you really go frame by frame on the box magazine it shows some pretty gigantic bullets.  I don't really care honestly because it happens too fast for the user to notice but it is a fault and bears mentioning.  That said, ejected shell casings are PERFECT on all weapons - no more full cartridge ejections! 

The S4-VC6 pistol is a fantastic weapon; it's a nice all around weapon with good visibility of the gloved hand.  Now normally I'd complain about how you can see the hands but honestly I don't plan on using non-standard weapons and if I do, I will simply reduce the weapon's visibility via configuration files.

 

A pre-alpha WIP screenshot of my upcoming space-shooter.

The Sniper R400 Panther is a well rounded sniping weapon.  I have a confession to make - I hate sniping weapons in this game engine.  They are quite simply too strong.  They make the game exceptionally easy on a number of levels.  This gun, however, feels balanced and decent with it's twelve round stick magazine- unlike the base level 'remington hunting rifle' that comes with gameguru.  It's a good weapon in most circumstances and basically acts as a long range 'upgrade' to the pistol.  It's also gorgeous in the right lighting.

The Typhoon is straight out awesome.  At first I thought "oh great, another full auto gun."  But in truth, it's a weapon unto itself with a fifty round magazine of what are effectively pistol rounds.  It does less damage than the Quasar but slams out the rounds so fast and cleanly it is my preferred weapon of the bunch.  This little monster feels fantastic and is right at home in any Sci-Fi game.

One important note: All of these guns actually come with an alt-fire mode.  Literally press left-alt and you get a melee attack animation that's not shown in the video or really documented at all.  Your character lowers his gun and throws out a quick right hook.  It's a nice freebie and makes the 'what do I do if I have no ammo' situation less difficult to work around.

Overall opinion and observations: This pack is extremely well priced.  You get 6 weapons for the price of 4, effectively, which is a helluva deal.  The weapons all feel unique enough and their respective weapon boxes/ammo boxes look great too.  The muzzle flash on all of these guns is SPOT on and looks fantastic.  The minor flaws of the other weapon packs (recoil, gun feel, ejected weapon cartridges, etc) have all been clearly lessons that were learned from.  BSP has outdone himself.

If I had to buy just one: It's 8 dollars.  Just buy the pack.  There's really no reason not to.  But if you are absolutely trying to be as cheap as possible - get the Typhoon.  It's too fun not to have.