I put together some simple videos of the mod. Both of them are just very basic flythroughs of each of the maps we are working on, and aren't of any particular interest but it's sort of a precursor to the video releases I'll be doing in the future. I've been trying to work out a decent pipeline to show off some of this material since I did a very hacked up job of the original teaser movie which involved a lot of work. I've managed to put out some videos which are a little better quality and have better download sizes.
Keep in mind though that there was one mistake made while capturing these videos. The fellow who did the capture process did not set the game settings to maximum, and on the default settings the atmosphere looks slightly different and there are some visual oddities. This is due to the way the game has scalable detail settings, and I haven't tuned things correctly for medium and low settings. You'll also note that there's a bit of aliasing along the edges of the terrain. I'll have that resolved in future videos.
Here they are for now:
Additionally, you may also want the .mp4 versions of these videos which are encoded in h.264 and much higher quality. You can get them here:
On another note, we've been making some good progress adding some of the scripted elements to the game with some of our new team members. You'll start seeing things like Grenades, Mines and a more polished CTF Gametype in the near future, as well as the new megatexture for icepick. That's it for now, enjoy.
Volunteer Page Up 2009-02-16 23:32:25 (GMT)
Hey everyone. As mentioned earlier the project could use some reliable and experienced people to help out with the project and assist in tieing up some of the loose ends with the texture and script related tasks. I've put together a simple webpage explaining each volunteer position that we need at this time along with a loose description of what is involved.
If you have a fair bit of free time and the sort of experience that you feel makes you qualified for these positions please look through this page and send an inquiry to the email address specified.
It's about time that I do another update and let people know what has been going on with the project. Things have been progressing well and I've been spending a bit more time laying down all of the remaining tasks into that Task Manager system I mentioned in the previous post. It's not going to be very long before we start going from the planning phase, right into actual production of all of the features that still need to be implemented. While the task manager and planning portions may have slowed down things slightly, I feel that a methodical and prepared approach is the best way to see that this project is finished in the not too distant future.
I will be looking for some volunteer help to complete all of the minor features of the mod. It breaks down to very simplistic tasks like creating inventory items and assembling the proper scripting to ensure that each item works as it should. Most of the more complex systems have already been completed, or are nearing that point. If this project gets sufficient help from some people from the community, then it could very well mean that the development time for the project can be chopped down drastically. If there's anyone interested in helping out, I will be putting up a simple "Help Wanted" page for this project and begin circulating it around the web. I'll try to add another post to the blog to bring that toeveryonesattention.
As for the actual game, there's been a good amount of progress made on our second map, and the interior texture tiles that go along with it. The most drastic difference would have to be theskydomewhich was put together byNeolightand myself. It's brought a bit more of an identity to icepick. Some of the buildings have been worked on as well by Chris and there's some examples of a practical use of the textures I put together. There are several others coming in the pipeline that haven't been used yet, so what you see in the final product will likely have more of a variety in the texture tiles that are used. For now, just enjoy these work in progress images of the map:
Again I should remind you that the actual texture for the terrain is still being worked on, and the one that is there will be replaced with something that fits in much better. The focus of this map is to have a bit more of a free style map that isn't tailored to any specific shape. There will likely be multiple routes which you can use to approach the platform to capture the flag. This particular map is more focused on speed and offense as opposed toChthonicwhich is a little easier to Defend on. There will be more visual elements added to this map, and much more finished looking bases shortly so stay posted for those additions.
Going forward, the areas that we're focusing on is the remaining interior texture sets for the Red Arbiter's faction, and working out all of the scripting elements needed to deem the project feature complete. Along the way we'll slowly work on these maps and ensure the final product is fairly well polished for testing. That's about it for now, stay tuned for some more updates in the coming weeks.
New Year Update 2009-01-03 4:24:49 (GMT)
Hey everyone, it's been quite a while since my last blog posting. I'm quite sorry for that, but I've been busy with many things lately ranging from work related activities, the holidays, and of course work on the mod. Everyone else who is working on the mod has been quite busy as well, we have some people working on exams and going through a bit of a crunch time just before the holidays. In general, it's quite a busy time of year for everyone it seems.
Regardless, there have been a couple new developments. I'm fairly satisfied with some of the new material we have drafted out recently and I've been going through the list of tasks that have yet to be completed and have started itemizing each task which needs to be completed. We're entering this information into a new task manager system, but we're still working out all the little kinks in it. It should be functional soon, which in turn will give me much more time to focus on actually working on the project rather than organizing and explaining the details of each project on a per-person basis. I'm not one who likes to spend too much time managing things, so this should be quite helpful.
The new task manager system will also allow me to take on additional members to the team to help speed up the progress on the project. Soon I'll be looking on various forums and websites for some volunteer help to assist with the texture and level design portions of the project. Content is one of the biggest obstacles of this project, but in time we'll be able to overcome that and start setting our sights on actual testing.
Speaking of testing. I've received quite a few PM's and Emails asking for entry into the closed beta whenever it happens. I cannot keep track of all the people who have asked, and honor them fairly. There is no first come, first serve policy when it comes to the beta, so it's best that you not even ask. When the project is ready for the closed beta process, then it will be announced and there will be a special process involved to ensure that we have all the right people we need to test the mod properly. Simply asking nicely isn't going to get you in unfortunately :(
That's just a quick update of what we've been doing lately. The pace of things is picking up again as I'm starting to work on things much more regularly and hopefully we'll have much more to show in the next couple of weeks. For now, I can show you some of the texture sheets that I've put together along with a few screen shots of our next map which is in very early stages of development. We've been focusing on making a great terrain for skiing, so the terrain texture and skydome is a placeholder along with some of the structures there.
Textures
Mini-Update 2008-10-22 20:17:00 (GMT)
Hey everyone, things on the project have been progressing just fine lately. We're still working on the netcode and working on further optimizations, but I have a feeling that much of that will be completed shortly.
New Animations
Recently I did a little editing to the player movement script to add some additional movement states. It includes a new set of animations for skiing and jetting to go along with the run cycle animations that were recently added. Before, your character would assume a fall pose and stay completely vertical as they flied through the air. Now your player does various leaning motions and your jets also orient themselves a little differently as well. It makes your character look a little better in the third person, and adds a nice little polish to the movement aspect of the game. We've also done away with the lame jump-kick motion that occurs when you ski along the ground. I've redone the skiing motions so your character enters a bit of a squatting stance and their legs pop as they make contact with the ground. It's meant to look a bit like a skier going over a set of moguls, and it seems much more realistic than what was previously there.
New Map: 'Icepick'
We're also working on a new map that I've decided to call Icepick. It will feature rolling hills that are based off of procedural noise from World Machine rather than a specifically sculpted terrain like Chthonic. Aesthetically it should look somewhat like Katabatic, but there won't be any large flat areas. The only flat areas would be located around the flag stand and base, which would have a large platform where people can swoop down and grab the flag. My initial tests with early terrain are very good, and I feel this map should work extremely well with our physics formula. Neolight has produced some concepts for some of the bases. Here's one panel from his concept sheet, and hopefully this will give you a bit of an idea of how the map will look.
I'll have more on this map in the future, but for the time being we're going to hunker down and start working on some textures. When those sheets are finished, perhaps I will display some of those ingame.
Thanks for reading!
New Developments 2008-10-07 16:43:09 (GMT)
Things have been progressing quite nicely over the last few weeks. I've managed to get some level of interest from the community and I've picked out some qualified people to help with some of the small scripting aspects of the project. I am looking for someone to assist with the mapping part of the project, and I'd like to progress a new map fairly soon. If you'd like to apply, we've added a nifty contact icon on the top right of this blog. Anyone who applies should have some level of experience mapping, and basic 3d modeling skills are a requirement. As always include samples of your work in your email!
Netcode
Going on to some of the things we've been doing over the last few weeks. We've started working on a brand new netcode model that's different than the Vanilla ETQW netcode. It's structured a bit more like Starsiege Tribes or Quake 3. ETQW generally had the clients running their local environment slightly ahead of the server environment. This means that it does a slight bit of prediction regarding the position and orientation of everything in the gameworld and then when a new update is recieved by the server, it rolls back everything to the server state and starts the prediction process again. The whole process is called reprediction and I believe it's used to maintain the accuracy of everything in the gameworld. It would be quite important for a shooter like ETQW where it's more of a close quarters shooter and every inch matters.
Unfortunately the reprediction process isn't ideal for our project, and under lower latency conditions, it makes the entire series of jetting and skiing movements very finicky. Fast motion and broad sweeping motion from players looks choppy and it doesn't quite add up to what you'd get out of playing the game locally. What we've done is have the clients run behind the server environment and in the process this simplifies the prediction process. The end result is movement that feels very natural. We increased some of the prediction parameters and the game performs just about as well working online, than it does offline. Some people have noted that the performance of ETQW is a bit problematic, they may have 60+ fps but it still feels like a special sort of lag. It's likely this was caused by reprediction. With our netcode model, there are performance enhancements due to a more simplified model, and the game actually feels much more fluid online. I'm getting around 120 fps in the game, and it actually feels much smoother than it did before the netcode change. It's still a system that's a work in progress, but it should be completed by the time the project is ready for testing.
New Terrain
Another new feature is the resurrection of a system that we developed a long while ago. In the early goings of the project we decided to try putting together a terrain system that ran off of a heightmap , and tiled infinitely (or at least as much as the game would permit). We were successful to some degree, but only recently we started adding a bit more to it. There are still some bugs with the terrain, but fundamentally, it functions as it should. While there won't be "unlimited" space on maps, you can actually tile or stretch this terrain far larger than ETQW's limitation of +/- 32k units. The total amount of space for all maps should be +/- 120k, or 3048 meters in each direction. This is a ton of space, and I highly doubt anyone would need maps that would require all of that space. Here are some images of the terrain that we're testing:
Obviously these aren't final, and Chthonic isn't quite designed for seamless tiling. The terrain supports adaptive tessellation so hills in the distance are less detailed than the ones closer to you. It also culls the terrain at a certain distance, but it's barely notable when you're actually at ground level, as you move through the world the game adds additional tiles and it repeats. It functions quite well right now, but still requires a bit more work for it to be finalized.
On a side note, some of the new animations for the character are progressing quite nicely and some of them are working ingame. I should have the rest of the series working soon and we'll look at getting a video put together to demonstrate the new animations. Perhaps some new concept art of the map we're working on as well.
Thanks for reading!
What comes next? 2008-09-29 15:01:08 (GMT)
Hey everyone, while I sort out things over the next week and go over the feedback a little more, I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss where the development of the project is headed over the near term. At various points in the project, you need to sit back a little and look at what you've accomplished so far. Right now, this project does a couple things fairly well, but for the most part Physics and Combat are the two features of the project that really make it worth playing. For the purposes of a watered down, duel mod, it may work out pretty well but we're going to be going a little beyond that and working on bridging components together a more team oriented experience.
Teamwork
One of the more overlooked aspects for Enemy Territory - Quake Wars is how the flow of each map is aided by a series of messages and miniature missions that players can pick up on the fly. An example would be a deployed turret, someone on the GDF team can spot a strogg turret, ask for it to be destroyed if it becomes a problem. Then someone in a solider class can select a new mission to destroy that specific turret and receive points for completing that task. While earlier versions of our project won't have deployables or heavy weapons like rocket launchers, there will still be sub-missions oriented around CTF specific roles, and the point weighting will be adjusted appropriately.
Looking at Starsiege Tribes, or Tribes 2 there were various support tasks or Defense roles that were neglected. After each match, you would generally have people who capped the flag listed at the top with the most points, followed by heavy offense attackers, then defenders last. In ETQW there are actually systems in place that reward people for defending an objective for set amount of time. Anyone who spends their time body blocking the flag, or gunning down cappers with the blaster successfully over a period of time will be rewarded with points. As the scope of the project gets larger, more specific tasks will also be associated with destroying deployables, or the enemy's inventory stations or generator. This also means that dynamic waypoints and information on the compass will also appear as you sort through these individual tasks.
The other aspect of team specific functions is that fireteams actually tie themselves into each mission task. Permanent roles like Capping, Offense, or Defense will each have their own mission task, and as you select a specific task your team mates participating in that role will be highlighted with a specific color in game. Additionally the VOIP function in ETQW can also have it's chatter separated by Fireteam, so those who are participating on Defense can communicate independently of those who are attacking the enemy base. Hopefully getting all of these mission tasks will make functioning as a team under the CTFgametype much easier and more exciting.
Rough areas
There have also been some harsh criticisms about what was seen in the project so far, but I actually look forward to hearing about them because I believe they are still quite valid. I've heard some people mention that the map that was played felt slightly "floaty". They're quite correct and I'm just not satisfied with the way Chthonic (the map seen in the trailer) works. The floaty feeling spawns mostly from how high some of the canyon walls and hills are, you can gain additional speed, height and you get more of a sensation of floating while watching the video. If you compare some of the physics with internal development maps, you won't get that feeling as much as the terrains are generally smaller. I think what needs to happen is about a 10% reduction in the z axis scale of the map and some fine tuning of the scale of the hills that are in place already.
Some of the arches placed in the map also seem slightly out of place. They're a fairly pronounced feature that was in some of the concept art, so they needed to be in place to judge their impact on the map. We'll look into putting in some additional rock like features in the map that will make those types of formations seem a bit more common. There will also be a center objective to the map which is essentially a spawn point which can be captured. It should have a resupply station as well as providing a staging groups for a nearby attack on the enemy base and it should affect the momentum of the map depending on who holds control over it. I believe this will make the map seem much smaller and add quite a bit more action focused in the main bowl of the map.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned either, but some people pointed out that the posture of the character seems a little awkward. This is mostly caused by the fact that a mixture of newer animations are being used with older animations that were essentially placeholders that I put together many months ago. The character will also hold each weapon in a unique and natural fashion. Each weapon tends of have a different size and topology so there should be a necessity for unique positioning of the hands. There will also be some specific animations generated for the jetting and skiing motions. There will be general leaning motions while you jet and ski across the terrain and there will be the appropriate effects to along with them. Once everything for the final stages of the project are organised and sorted, I'll continue on my work to update the existing animations in the game and make the movement of the character much smoother and more natural.
I also mentioned in previous posts that we're going to be including an additional map with the project, and that map should have vastly different characteristics from the map that was seen in the trailer. I'll have more on that a little later in future blog posts.
Thanks for Reading!
-Arc
After the media release, and feedback 2008-09-22 2:24:18 (GMT)
Hey everyone, after the release I got a considerable amount of positive feedback. I'd like to thank everyone for their encouraging comments. Additionally, I got some general queries and suggestions from what was seen in the teaser video. In this blog, I'm going to pick out a few commonly asked questions about the project. Before that I'd just like to mention you can send your general feedback about the project to twarsmod@gmail.com . Starting off with the most popular question:
"When is the public Beta?"
The public beta is still a while off. This project is working towards Milestone 1 which will result as a playable build of the mod which will feature the following:
- 3 weapons - 1 armor class - mines & grenades - a simplified inventory station - a CTF gametype - 2 maps
Currently the mod is not feature complete, but many of the things from that list exist in some form. The biggest roadblock would be a series of bug fixes and tweaks that will take some time to work out. Following that we'll progress to a brief closed beta stage, and with some positive feedback, we will release the Milestone 1 build for public testing.
"Its going to get annoying when every time your guy hits an object he grunts."
It's one of many things that was carried over from Quake Wars. Obviously you wouldn't impact the environment in QW as much as you would in this mod, so that sound effect is going to be disabled, or replaced with something much less annoying.
"The speed of ion blasts seems extremely fast, almost like it's a point and click shot."
Currently, the physics for some of the projectiles have estimated values, but all of these are temporary. Splash Damage decided to create static values for the exit velocity of weapons so you couldn't do things like jump when you threw a grenade and add velocity to the projectile and gather a little extra distance. In the very near future, we are going to create a new projectile class that reads your current speed and adds it to whatever the specified speed of the projectile. By doing this, you would not be able to outpace your own projectile, which was very possible for slow moving projectiles.
"The recording looks kind of jagged though, did you get decent FPS?"
Unfortunately, I did not have very many options for recording the video other than fraps which produces quite a bit of video lag while it captures. The game runs very nicely on my less than a monster of a machine maxed at 1680x1050. (dual core 2.4ghz, 2 gb ram, single 8800GT) In the future, videos will be captured properly at much higher resolutions than 640x400.
Wrapping up this blog post, I'm going to include some concept art done by one of our artists Neolight. Many of these are just loose concepts to establish the theme for Chthonic (map shown in video) as well as some of the interiors.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Tribal Wars Media Site & Development Blog 2008-09-19 2:32:41 (GMT)
The Tribal Wars public media site is now live!
Welcome to the site, I'm Arcanox the lead developer for the Tribal Wars mod project. Tribal Wars is a team based multi-player shooter that utilizes some of the aspects of it's parent title 'Enemy Territory - Quake Wars' and combines it with a variety of weaponry and gameplay seen in titles like Unreal Tournament and Starsiege: Tribes.
The purpose of this project is to develop a game that is very heavilly oriented toward teamwork and communication with a Capture the Flag set of rules. Each player has an arsenal of powerful weapons at their disposal, but they also have a jet-pack as well as the ability to slide across terrain. This results in a very fast and challenging gameplay. The highly skilled players flourish, but those who work together as a team always come out victorious.
My philosophy for developing this mod has always been about quality over quantity, and there's been a heavy focus on the fundamentals. When drafting the guidelines for this project, I wanted to be concise and clear about every detail that would appear in the final product. We're not quite there yet, and it's clear that certain areas of the project are a little rough around the edges, but over the coming months we're going to look over every detail and ensure that what we deliver will in fact be a fun, fantastic modification. Failing that, we're always free to change whatever we feel doesn't work, and that's the beauty of having a modification designed for the community.
The purpose of this blog is to deliver periodical updates and developments with the project. We'll include more videos and screen shots over time, things that I hope everyone will enjoy. This is an Indie Project, and contributions to the are made by people in their spare time, so progress may be slow. However, we could always use some additional help from qualified individuals to help speed things along. If you are interested in applying as a production artist, programmer, or level designer, you can send me an email to twarsmod@gmail.com . I strongly recommend you include samples of your own work. Any general inquries about the project can be sent to that address as well.
Media Release Material 2008-09-19 20:43:36 (GMT)
This is all of the material included in the media release, it is here for archival purposes.
