Update

Well this is my first post in a while due to the easter break and my painfully slow home internet. I've made some good progress since, I've tweaked the walkcycle which looks great, and I'm still working on textures. I'm planning on bringing out a short technical demo within the next week to demonstrate the animations, the models and also to gauge performance on a range of computers. After this I am going to start modelling other characters and levels. It probably seems like I've taken a long time making one character, not to fear though! Most of the last few weeks I've spent on the skeleton, which I can re-use, so making the others will be much quicker. I'm settling into GIMP, which is new software to me, it still confuses me sometimes. expect the .exe demo file sometime next week.

Progress good, but slow

I'm slowly chugging through the mountain of work. Between blogging, recording my progress, researching and doing my project submission, there's little time to work on my actual project. I've managed to find a few hours a week to work on it at home and I feel it's progressing nicely. The project certainly has a lot more direction than it did. I've downloaded GIMP and am learning the ropes now, I'll need this to make textures for my models. I've already made the body texture for my main character, once I apply it I'll post screen-shots.I've also made a walk cycle, I can substitute this into any upright character and make them walk backwards and forwards. Doesn't sound like much, but the process I used to do this underpins the whole game engine. I'm feeling a lot more confident about the technical side of things.

Screenies and progress

Starting on a positive note today, my home computer is working again. I'm still not sure what was wrong in the first place, but the important thing is that it's fixed. I have also deciphered enough python and BGE (blender game engine) tools to start working on levels and physics. progress with modeling is painfully slow with just one person, so far only the main character has been partially modeled, but I have a few screen-shots ready so...


If you are observant you will have noticed that the character is still un-textured and un-armed. Not to worry, they are both on the way. While I'm posting pictures I figured I would post this as an example of blender's power when poly-count is not an issue...

This was a little project I did last year, made solely with blender,

My project

My second post in one day! I'm getting into this. I figured it was about time to start elaborating on exactly what my project is about. I got the basic idea from a game called indigo prophecy, there is a brief training session where the user controls a crash test dummy called bob to get used to the controls. I thought on it for a while, and figured it would be cool if the crash test dummy escaped, and the whole game was based around him. I wanted the character to look like a cross between this:
this:
and this:
As I have it so far, the game starts on a train, where a field commander is training in the use of the droid, en-route to a mission. When a bump in the track causes the droid to fall off, he continues alone to complete the mission, only to find it has already been completed. I am imagining the game with lots of rich high-tech surroundings, odd-ball characters, intense cut-scenes and back-plots. Even reading through this it sounds like alot to chew, so I guess I'll take it one step at a time and see how far I get... Expect screen-shots real soon

Big snag

My computer at home is playing up! This is going to hinder my progress as I cannot use python on the school computers without admin rights. It's a really strange problem though, for some reason my monitor can't get a signal from my PC, and yet it works fine with mum's PC, and my computer works fine with mum's monitor. I think it's something to do with the fact that my monitor is high res (1440*900) and mum's is lower (1024*768) will update my drivers tonight and hope for the best. If anyone has suggestions I would appreciate advice. As far as my project goes I'm chugging through it nicely, have made a few models and am actively scribbling down a plot. Unfortunately the completed models are on the home PC, so no screen-shots just yet, but expect them soon. One big triumph is that real-time performance seems good with the models I have made so far, I was concerned that I would have to lower the poly count, this would impact on the visual appeal of the game. I'm not positive on the extent of blender's hardware acceleration and if it has any at all, I guess we will have to see...

I've just realized that this might sound like gibberish to some people, if so let me know and I will clear it up for you