Ok, got some stuff done today. Tweaked the plasma pistol and finished the plasma rifle. I also got the shot detonations finished for both of them. The charged shot still needs work. Pay no heed to the blue contrail, it's a side effect of the plasma rifle's detonation effect and is only temporary. I managed to post a new video of each. Also, in case you haven't noticed I got a new release posted yesterday. Just check the upload date in the Halathon download section. The release does not include the detonation effects though :(
Things to look ahead for: Fuel rod shots and detonation and perhaps some more sounds.
Still not sure what I'm gonna do about the charged plasma pistol sound.
Well sorry to say I haven't been doing much Halathon wise. I got the 'Idle' sequence for the plasma rifle in, but that's it. The rest of the work consists of getting a lot of screenshot samples for the plasma pistol and fuel rod shots, and getting the plasma rifle in all together. Since that's a lot of work, and school just ended for me, i'm feeling pretty lazy right now. So, I don't know when I'll be inspired to start work again (this week I hope), but hopefully not too long. I'll try to be cool and actually post some stuff next time.
Good news all around. I finally finished rebuilding all the shotgun frames that had their right sides chopped off, so it's basically done. There's a new movie of it posted. But, the big news is probably the fuel rod gun which has a finished firing animation which looks pretty sharp in my opinion. There's also a movie of that posted. And, last but not least, I managed to finish the low resolution textures of the weapons today. So that means no more using the crappy images from the shapes files without properly defined color tables. You get nice juicy OpenGL goodness. Yeah, it's a bit pixelated, but it has to be due to the
Work on the shotgun has progressed well. The sounds are in place and I've been able to recreate most of the frames that have been chopped off on the right due to Halo's screen resolution. There are still two frames that are a real pain to remake because there's just so much of them chopped off. So, I've deviated from the shotgun a little and moved on to another weapon for the moment. It has been decided that the needler will not be included in Halathon. Not only is it far too much work to give it a decent firing animation, but the physics of Marathon simply will not let us make it work the way it should. Keep in mind that nothing in this project is solid. There is still a small chance it will make an appearance in the future. For the most part it depends on what the A1 devs are willing to fix in the future, because the player-created guided projectile code has been broken.
But do not worry, there will not be an empty weapons slot in Halathon if I have anything to say about it :P
Since the shotgun's been proving a pain lately I decided to move work over to the weapon that is to replace the needler which is the Fuel Rod Cannon. At first glance I thought, no way is this gun making it in Halathon. But, the more I began to think about, the better it sounded. It basically fires a bigger, stronger, greener version of the grenades that Marathon's assault rifle does. I've already gotten the physics to work quite well, not to mention the sounds. It still needs a firing animation, but other than that it's already pretty far along in the process.
Oh, and by the way...
Halathon's first release debuts today!
Nothing is finished, and the plasma rifle hasn't even been started on yet. So, to say the least, this is a very early release. But, it is a taste of what is to come. The main reason I put the files up is because I was playing around in some multiplayer maps against just aliens, and it was fun as hell :P
I just wanted to share the experience.
I'm sorry that the hi-res versions of the weapons are not available yet. They're simply not ready for release because there's this nasty bug that we like to call the First Frame Bug or FFB. Basically when Marathon draws a hi-res image that hasn't been displayed before, it takes roughly 2 seconds. That may not seem like much at first, but consider all the frames that need to be drawn in Marathon. There are 9 frames for the melee attack animation alone. Now take into consideration firing and reloading sequences for each weapon. It ends up taking a good minute or so to get each weapon running smoothly and effectively, which is far too long by most gaming standards. So, until this little bug is either fixed, or we find a way around it, you'll be stuck with the crappy images that I didn't bother setting color tables for.
Hopefully in the near future I'll get the fuel rod looking and working nice and sweet. So stay tuned
I've gotten a few more things done on the project. I have posted two new videos since the last update. I made a movie of the shotgun in its early and ugly stages for some people who were curious about its progress. I haven't deemed it worthy of an official post so you won't find it among the other movies, but you can view it here.
The other movie is a newer verson of the plasma pistol which is in the section it's supposed to be. But, I accidentally left iTunes on while recording it so I hope you don't mind a little background music from Soul Calibur II.
That's it as far as new material goes. I do have some more good news though. nForcer has upgraded his account with his ISP so he now has an entire gig of virtual space to play with (that means me too). So, I will definitely not be having any problems getting bigger and better files up if I need to.
And on a final note, I hope to get the new blog system up and going after this monday. nForcer keeps jabbering about how cool it'll be. I don't really see the big deal about blogs. But, I guess that'll change soon.