SourceForts - Developer Diaries

Let's have a cave in shall we?

013109 — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:22:01 GMT

Everything in this thread and everything in these pictures ranging from layout textures and models are subject to change and do not reflect the final product!

A boring bland wall stands before us, lets sex it up some.
First need to remove all non essential entities so we can get a clear shot of the wall.
This seems like a good area for the cave in to happen.
We start off with a basic shape we want for the rock slide/cave in before it gets turned into a displacment.
We need to shape it up a bit, few tweeks and in game tests.

Next some debris from the wall is added in as well as turning the support beam into a displacment and twisting her up a bit. Popped in our broken rail models, yes they have a use now! And shaped the cave in around the props and geometry.

Thus we end up with this, a few more tweeks here and there (more broken wall around hole) and we will be good! :D

<3

Map WIP.

013109 — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 06:20:40 GMT

No content in this thread is a reflection of the final product of "Project Haven". Everything you see/read is subject to change.

Running with the idea of a world post human, I wanted to recreate an image I'd seen of a small freeway bridge collapsed into a city channel.

I first made the bridge, nothing fancy, mostly just for sizing reference.

I'd then need to then destroy the large slap of concrete, using the clipping and vertex tool gave to low quality level of detail on the breaks. So I then turned most of the structure into a displacement.

Along side with the bridge I needed to create the channel itself, so with a non broken bridge and a few brushes I made more of the gameplay area.

We then discussed the height of the gameplay area, it was deemed to small so modifications were made.

Once that had been agreed upon it was time to drop the broken bridge into the map, and give it some textures.

With the bridge in place it seemed only fitting for the area under the bridge to be the location for the flag, the structure was tweeked a little here and there to make sure the block sizes currently in game could fit nicely with freedom of choice. And with this being a standard SF gamestyle map the base to base combat would force teamwork in protecting walls and flag defense so the bridge defense would not be 100% overpowered due to the mass of concrete above the flag.

Place holder buildings were put in next to make the player feel more in a large endless city enviroment. The buildings will later have more detail and destruction.

I began to play with the color correction water and mist in the map, a few nice looking results as well as some stinkers came to be in the coming days.

In the end it was decided to not use any color correction in this map, not only did some of the colors I tried not look to swift they all had an effect on important team color entities. (blocks, flags)

It was unanimous to go with this lighting in the end.

As of today the map has been passed off to another team member so they can add more overall detail to the environment. Then later we can replace the HL2 textures.

-NumB3rZ

Confessions of a Crap Artist - Concept Art Diary Entry No.1 - The Scout

KayThreeWhy — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:16:11 GMT

Greetings SourceForts community. I have recently joined the Dev team as a concept artist.

In this thread I will show you the work I've been doing for the development team to date. This will be an ideal chance for you to give me and the team you're input on how you think the style should develop and the future look of SourceForts.

So feel free to offer your suggestions.

A general theme for the art style was fleshed out and was decided that the characters would be based around machines and robots. Set in the future in a dilapidated crumbling world the robots would be gritty and grimy but highly technological.

The first thing I worked on was the The Scout class. Here is the artwork for The Scout:

THE SCOUT

As SourceForts is intrinsically a capture the flag based game The Scout seamed the logical starting point. Basically he's the free runner of the classes. tasked with capturing the flag he has to be light agile and fast.

Monty raised this advert which I think represents the spirit of the class well. Check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCS1tBGdWXs

This got me watching a few free running videos to get me in the mood while drawing, This was one of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MeiwLLZjDo

Class Overview
-Based on speed and agility
-Only carries melee or disruptor weapons
-Lightly armored
-Low health

Main role:
-To capture the flag
-Base infiltration

Initial Sketches and Thumbnails

As the head would be an important element for a character I started with that. I first sketched out a few thumbnails to explore the silhouette:

I then rendered out the one that stood out the most:

Having Input from the team I Scrapped most off that and came up with this rough sketch.

At this point it's all about defining the character's silhouette and overall look.

The team liked this concept and offered a few tweaking suggestions. They suggested a skinnier, lithe design based more on speed than power and thinner shoulders and hips.

Just a little note: The gold section on the back of the character is a backpack/flag holder attached to his back and not part of the shoulders. This will be described in more depth later on.

So the next step with this guy would be to develop into a tighter concept based on feedback I get from you and the team.

I hope you like the work so far. Let me know what you think.

The next entry will show the work for the tank class, stay tuned :)

The Builder concept !

NocturnO — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:21:04 GMT

Developer diary by Freshdumbledore

Hi, in my first developer diary I will give you an overview on the concept art work flow. As our prototype of Project Haven will feature the builder first, I concentrated on the working drone.

Back in September I did some thumbnail sketches to give the team something to discuss.
At that time my objective was to create some robots without further detail on how they should look like. So I created this sleek and �apple-like� style.

outcome: too human

the next months I worked on the scout, the tank, the reclaimer ... but I had no idea for the builder. Then I made a concepts of flying robots and hovering ones. Flying would have resulted in gameplayissues but hovering was OK. So I�ve drawn those quick sketches:

The team said: �we take take number 3!�
After a week or so I looked at the concept again and wasn�t satisfied with it so I sketched a while and I came up with a drawing I like and the others accepted it.

Now the builder could be build ( :P) in 3D and I had the task to design the weapons. Also I worked on some details like the arms and how the robot actually moves.

I saw a video of fluid air muscles which where developed by a German (!) company.
Link: Muscles
Those doesn�t make noise and are as powerful as human muscles. Perfect for our robots!

In addition I presented the first set of weapon ideas to the team. Again, the concept has been accepted but I wasn�t satisfied with it, but this time I took another approach to design by using 3D software.
As I really suck in modelling the result was bad... also the weapon looked too similar to the gravity-gun from HalfLife2.

Hear I tried to visualize the power of the weapon with steam-jets.

Then Draken explained his idea of an rotating part on the front part of the build gun

We had a big discussion but the concept has been discarded.

Now I imagined how such a gadget would work in real life and I used some knowledge of my physics class.

I explained my ideas like this in the forum:
This ion-beam-gun could actually work with a lot of energy! :P

with a strong beam of photons the object you are pointing at will ionize. so its charged. above the arena is a magnet which will make the object hover.

If you want to get the energy back from the object you just need an electron-receiver ( the left palm). When ionized the object is emitting electrons ( little parts of mass) which you collect.

This is the idea behind the gun. You don�t need both a leech ray and a build gun. It�s all in the same weapon.
I tried to paint my idea for the particle effects but I failed so I describe them:
When the beam from the weapon is going to the target, the air on its way will be ionized as well an glow a bit, but there will be no hard edge beam you can see.
When hitting the target the object will glow a bit ( so the player know which object he hits).

If leech ray-mode is active black particles are coming out of the object and are accelerating towards the left palm of the player.

The team liked the idea but I didn�t like the design as it didn�t fit to the sleek robots.

Same functions but a better design, accepted and liked by the hole team, next step in production pipeline � the modelling!

I made the last scetches during my examperiod so they are quite simple.

I hope you enjoyed reading this diary,

FreshD

@sourceforts

Stieffers — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:37:59 GMT

Welcome to SourceForts. Not Sourceforts, not sourceforts, and definitely not source Forts. The most original modifcation for Half-Life 2? Maybe? Definitely. I have posted this unprecedented message in order to inform my patrons of the upcoming release of Project Haven. What you ask? Here I answer.

Project Haven is the next step in SourceForts. It will be a roundless update of SF which in now being coded by Draken, Hischild, and other worthless CPPers. We have been updating our Twitter feed with small updates, and hopefully you have been enjoying these updates. I sure have... been posting a lot of them.

So anyway, ask any questions about PH you have here. (Yes, PH; bitch.)

The Scout

Monty — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:34:46 GMT

On time, sort of.

The basic style for the player models is a mix of what Ccarcia did [link] and what cowboy is doing [link]. The idea is to use cowboys concepts as the skeleton, and add armor plates in the style that Ccarcia drew them. The scout is CCarcia's drawing, minus the diamonds and black iRobot-esque muscle, with cowboys skeletal stlye instead.

This is my first attempt at a character model. This diary will be fairly slow. Critiques are welcomed, please be brutally honest.

This is what I have so far:

Its a leg, if you cant tell

A bit anti-climactic, isn't it? I've remodeled the whole thing twice, and the knee/joint has gone through at least 6 revisions (2 of which were based on the black muscle style). I'm not sure If I will keep it at this. The round things that look like livers will be ribbed via normal map.

The next step is the foot, which will incorporate a visual indication that the scout does not take fall damage.

Modeling Stuff

Stieffers — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:09:22 GMT

This is another of my world famous developer diaries. Today's focus will be on modeling stuff. First, you get a reference image. If one does not exist, then you draw a really shitty one. Here is my reference image. The detail and craftsmanship really shows.

Fuck you, I am an acomplished artist.

Next, you model it. You have to pay special attention to detail. Most importantly, you cannot deviate from the reference image. If you take artistic liberties, and the reference image was drawn by another artist, then the other artist will become very mad. He may quit your shitty mod and work for an equally shitty mod (SF?). You have been warned.

Safe to say, my model looks nothing like the reference. After many painstaking hours of drawing and redrawing polygonal cubes, my railroad tracks began to take shape. Best of all, I was well under the 100,000 tri limit that Sayyan had given me. In the end, the railroad tracks turned out fantastic.

Not even the Amish have craftsmanship this fine.

Headset

Sayyan — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:48:02 GMT

I need a new pair. They need be comfortable for several hours of wear and have a good, high quality microphone. I had the Fatal1ty set, which was nice till the microphone messed up, and I currently have a pair of Sandbergs which aren't that comfortable.

Any suggestions? Money isn't really an object, under �100 and preferably under �50.

Summer Camp

Sayyan — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:45:17 GMT

I'm taking leave of my SF duties for two days (20th-21st July) to attend the Carsonified Summer Camp.

It's an event for freelancing students and web startups, totally free but limited to eight places. I got picked from the couple of hundred that applied to attend and it's pretty awesome.

They've got loads of great speakers lined up and it's going to be great to network.

So yea, just thought I'd share that.

http://summercamp.carsonified.com/

PHP Frameworks

Stieffers — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:50:43 GMT

Let's have a fireside chat about PHP frameworks. First off: Holy fuck. People who use PHP frameworks for some ungodly reason think they are comparable to Zeus. There reasoning is one giant circle. "I am better for using a framework because I use a framework." Not only this, but those who don't use frameworks or don't abide by the MVC design approach are considered "coding cowboys". These guys need to chill the heck out.

So that's the preface. I recently looked into abiding by some sort of encapsulation bullshit and started with CakePHP. The documentation was confusing to say the least. I began by trying to do something simple, but it turned out to be grossly difficult. For those not familiar, Cake essentially tries to copy Ruby on Rails, which is a framework for Ruby. The logic != sense. (See what I did there?) One framework basing itself on another framework from another language makes about as much sense as the plebeians who use terms like "coding cowboys".

Well, suffice to say, CakePHP was not for me. I looked into the well known Zend Framework. After 'installing' (unzipping) it, I gave up because I realized that it was not a true framework. It was just another collection of PHP libraries. "Well fuck me," I thought to myself. So my endevoir continued.

I finally settled on CodeIgniter because the documentation was award winning. After an hour or two of tinkering I found that the whole framework trend was a load of hoarse shit. A framework makes sense for something like C++ where coding a UI is about as fun as getting shot in the foot. However, for a simple scripting language like PHP it is totally unnecessary. The greatest feature in any of these frameworks? They provide an htaccess file to rewrite the URLs. That is why I now use PHP frameworks. I feel so trendy.