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5 days till Black Dawn!
After making the top-down concept of how Black Dawn should look and play, it was time to get started on the art. We wanted a nicely populated map with a lot of foliage, trees, and props. We did this so that we could have a lot of content ready to go into multiplayer. From the very beginning it was clear that the project would require help from the entire team. Crysis was definitely an inspiration, because similarly, it had characteristics that Black Dawn would later have, such as the trees, water, foliage, and props. We first created a water material, and then began the terrain itself.
Speedtree was a useful tool to quickly create trees on Black Dawn, but we soon realized that having many speedtrees on the level really beat down the performance. We cut the trees in half, and we were still getting a low framerate. Although speedtrees look great, we decided that we needed to make our own low poly trees, that way we can still have a lot on Black Dawn without causing the framerate to drop fatally.
Once we had enough to show off, we released the very first picture of Black Dawn, along with a riddle for people to guess its name:
Lighting in Black Dawn went through many phases. After getting a full-day system working on our test level, we decided to implement that system into Black Dawn. Unfortunately, it too was a performance hog, so we decided to instead break down Black Dawn into 10 short levels (5-10 minute long each), and keep the lighting dynamic to some extent. As you complete the level, you'll notice that the sun will begin to rise and shine down on the carnage that is taking place.
So naturally we changed lighting around quite a bit. Here are a couple experiments we did.
We had to do a lot of props for Black Dawn, as mentioned earlier. Below are a few examples. Enjoy:
See you all tomorrow!
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4 days till Black Dawn!
Blog 7: The Dead 6
The Dead 6 was a GDI special forces commando team that operated in the First Tiberian War. All six members of the Dead 6 were, officially "killed in action", in an effort to remain covert in risky situations. The official stories are that one died in a raid on a terrorist bomb-making lab in southern Chile. Another fell during a bloody conflict while gathering intel on rival Nigerian warlords. Another was assassinated by thugs in the Balkans. Another died in Turkey; another in Australia; another in Jordan. The original Dead 6 team consisted of Havoc, Sakura, Gunner, Hotwire, Patch and Deadeye, but two members of the team left - Sakura joined the Brotherhood of Nod because it offered a higher salary, and Havoc left because he preferred to work alone. However, members of the Dead 6 are sometimes reunited in special situations.
In Black Dawn, Havoc, Gunner, and Hotwire will be making a reappearance.
Nigel "Gunner" Grant
Sharp-tongued and tough-minded Nigel Grant was a former Special Boat Service operative for the British. This Afro-English lad's formative years were spent toughing it out on the streets and in the pubs of London's south side. After service as an elite solider in the U.K.'s SBS, Gunner joined up with the GDI and the legendary Dead-6 Commando Detachment as a rocket soldier. At 6'6" and 274 lbs., Gunner doesn't complain about the heavy lifting. In fact, he doesn't complain about anything; the often caustic Brit gets the job done with a steady hand and a cool head and saves the shop talk for the pub.
Shai "Hotwire" Aviv
A tough-as-nails commando and a woman of few words. Prior to joining GDI, Shai Aviv was a member of the Israeli Mossad, where she served with distinction. Rumour had it that Hotwire was killed in Jordan, but her body was never found. When she joined the Dead 6, she took on the roles of tactical engineer, proving to be an invaluable asset on the battlefield, when vehicle repair, structure capturing and demolitions were needed.
See you all tomorrow!
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days till Black Dawn!
Blog 8: Man Kilts!
In order to guide the player through this custom level, we needed our voice actors to enact parts of Black Dawn. What became clear early on was that we needed to invent a special character to guide players on the ground. At first it was just a custom GDI Officer with a green uniform, but in time, we decided that perhaps it was time to introduce a new character to the Renegade universe.
Captain Angus McFarland
McFarland is a jolly heavy-weapons expert famous for his comedic sense of humour in tough times, rosy cheeks, red beard and belly. Of Scottish background, McFarland was best known for his proficiency in golf and his drinking habits. Before joining the military, he owned a fishing business, where he learned to navigate small and large boats in harsh conditions. After he went out of business, he joined the Special Boat Service where he met Nigel "Gunner" Grant, who taught McFarland all he needed to know about the use of shotguns, chainguns, grenade launchers and other weapons.
Although McFarland was infamous for his risky-but-unnecessary tactics, his service record was impressive. In Greece, he single-handedly rescued a captured GDI commander from a Nod-controlled village. Breathalyzer tests confirmed that he was intoxicated throughout the entire mission. Even when he was not in service, he was still on the job: when an underground meeting between two Nod commanders was occurring in Edinburgh, McFarland sneaked into the Nod safehouse dressed as a chef, and served his enemies haggis with explosives hidden in each plate.
After an irresponsible weapons mishandling on a British vessel left 8 soldiers wounded, he was discharged from the SBS. However, he was soon recruited by the GDI because of his proficiency in dealing with high-value targets. He eventually led his own combat team as a Warrant Officer and led many successful assaults against Nod installments in eastern Europe. McFarland coordinated with the Dead 6 on a few special missions, and built a close rapport with Nick "Havoc" Parker.
McFarland constantly disobeys military regulation, but the successes of him and his team have consistently overshadowed his faults. Because of his heavy weapons expertise and thorough experience in search-and-rescue operations, GDI has sent McFarland to the Black Sea alongside Havoc to lead their commando teams through the Nod stronghold.
McFarland will be revisiting Renegade X in the multiplayer release as well!
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2 days till Black Dawn!
Blog 9: Work in Progress
We began internally beta testing Black Dawn in June. Beta testing is a necessary process that all games go through, because it gets the project outside of the development bubble and allows others to get an impression on it. You experience other people's first reactions to your game, and see if they're able to follow the game from beginning to end without running into confusion or serious bugs.
In the development process, one must "idiot-proof" his game as much as possible, which means the game must be straight-forward enough for people to figure out on their own without the use of a manual or instructions. This is important with the installation process, the settings page, and moving through the objectives ingame.
In June, Black Dawn was still at an incomplete state, so we were able to gather useful information while we were still in development. We found, tested, and resolved almost 200 glitches, and in the last two months of development, we really polished the experience to the level of what you'd expect in a professional game. The HUD took a lot time to get to the right place - you can read about the HUD in an earlier blog post.
We also had to make sure performance rates were relatively equal in all objectives. Lower-end machines of course may struggle to run Renegade X, which is why I have put the minimum and recommended system specs.
Minimum:
Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
2.0+ GHz processor
2 GB system RAM
SM3-compatible video card
4 GB free hard drive space
Recommended :
Windows Vista 64 SP2
2.0+ GHz multi-core processor
4 GB system RAM
NVIDIA 200 series or higher graphics card
Plenty of HDD space
We also added more cinematic elements to the experience as time went by. At first, we were just going to do an intro, middle, and end cinematic. Now, I can say that we have either a cutscene or an ingame "event" in almost every objective, so there's a lot of pretty things to watch in this short singleplayer game. There is almost 15 minutes worth of cinematic content in Black Dawn altogether.
We had to add little objective markers to each part of Black Dawn to keep the player focused on his mission, so every player knows where to go at what time. There are also boundaries that prevent players from going off map.
That's all there is today, sorry I wasn't able to take any pictures for this update, the team is on a very tight schedule. Hopefully we can make it up to you in tomorrow update.
Remember, Renegade X: Black Dawn - singleplayer only - will be released this Saturday! We're aiming to have it up by morning in most timezones.
Take care.
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发表于 2012-1-27 12:15
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发表于 2012-1-28 12:18