Topics

16

Sounds and Music / New track idea / Open-Source VST for guitarists

« on: October 02, 2010, 06:38:39 am »

First, for those who have been wondering what happened to me, no, I have not quit the project, I've simply been extremely busy dealing with a small crisis that is now mostly over in my life, and have been balancing all kinds of things left and right.

I have the start of a new track, just an idea at this point that isn't anywhere near finished, since it's been a while:

http://www.destructavator.com/92dl/New_S---_1.flac

It still needs a lot of work, and yes, near the end I did indeed hit a stray note.
Keep in mind that I also work on other projects, so if this track doesn't totally fit UFO:AI then I can develop it for something else.

Some of you with your ear to the ground may have noticed that I kick-started a new project on SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorchcrafter/

Very few free plug-ins for guitarists are both open source and anywhere near completion to the point of being usable.  Such plugs for Macs are even more rare, with *almost* nothing at all to choose from, so this is kinda new ground.

Now, if I can just get Git to work right on my computer, I should be able to really get back into UFO:AI again.  I really hope to also get a Windows binary installer together for those who have been waiting.

-Dave

17

Linux / OK, what am I doing wrong here?

« on: August 09, 2010, 02:59:20 am »

I tried to fire up UfoRadiant under Linux, Ubuntu 10.04, just so I could say I've done it at least once.

I get errors and none of the textures display - what am I doing wrong, did I miss a dependency package?

(log attached.)

18

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Anyone else notice MD2 animation errors?

« on: August 07, 2010, 07:36:26 am »

In latest revision, Linux 32-bit Ubuntu, I've noticed quite a few issues with the MD2 animations that weren't there before.

Heads fly off bodies then fly back on (TAG sync issue?), and when killed many animations flicker between dramatically different (random?) frames.

This is with the existing, old models, which really surprises me - They used to work just fine.

Anyone else notice this?

19

Artwork / New civilian (child) model

« on: July 31, 2010, 10:46:39 pm »

One area where I've found the game to be a little lacking was good civilian models, especially children, so I'd like to introduce all of you to this little character.

He's a boy somewhere in his teens, more than capable of running around causing all kinds of trouble and mayhem, even when he hasn't gotten XVI, complete with the attitude to back it up.  He points and gawks with the "Oh wow, cool!" mentality when he sees a military dropship come out of the sky, land in front of him, and real soldiers with real machine-guns and stuff come running out blazing away, and yet he can run around screaming in terror when he sees an actual alien.

I kept in mind that the game takes place some 70 to 80 years in the future, and obviously since I can't know what youth styles will be like by then, I kinda thought one up loosely based on some of the newer stuff I've seen, but mostly tried to avoid anything archaic or very old-looking.  I also didn't want to go too outlandish with anything too futuristic (I considered, but then decided against Visual Kei*).  The only major thing I need to finish, besides minor touch-ups, are the hands, which I didn't do yet.  I'm also thinking about making a version with a jacket or second shirt of some kind.

I should also mention that this kid hangs with the GPL crowd, although he doesn't mind Creative Commons kids too much.  Anything else he has a problem with.

So, what do all of you think?  (Don't be afraid to give constructive criticism, but on the other hand don't be too harsh, he's a bit sensitive!)



*(If you're not familiar with it, Google it!)

20

Artwork / Easy way to make helmets with existing heads

« on: June 16, 2010, 10:23:49 pm »

First off, this is *not* a finished helmet that I would propose to use in the game as it is - this is just a start, and at this point mostly to show a texturing technique I learned.

I struggled for a long time trying to find a painless way to make a helmet for the new soldier models, one that could use faces from the existing heads, without having to labor long and hard on multiple versions for each head, rebuilding them based off of the existing heads.

The procedure is now simple - I build just one helmet model, and for the "face" part of the helmet I use a custom texture inside blender that doesn't generate its own part of the skin by itself, but instead grabs pixels from a simple 2D plane mesh in front of the helmet.  The 2D plane has a front head-on shot of the head, taken with an orthographic camera in another Blender scene.

Once the custom texture is prepared and the plane aligned properly, it can then all be baked into a regular skin and exported with the helmet as an MD2.

For different faces, all that is needed is to swap out the 2D plane and tell the custom texture to use a different mug-shot of a different face.

Virtually no mess, no fuss, once the initial helmet is made and everything is set up.

EDIT:  Darn, the image upload folder is full again...  Hang on a few minutes...

21

Coding / New CodeBlocks Official (Stable) Release!

« on: June 05, 2010, 07:53:02 pm »

I'm surprised this news wasn't posted already, but the CodeBlocks IDE development team just released (finally!) a new, stable, official version.

I'm currently downloading it (it isn't on sourceforge, but it is on Berlios - the project page has links), and will report back soon on how it works building UFO:AI (among other projects I'm working on).

They also have a release that includes some version of MinGW, although I'm not sure what version, but I'm guessing it is one of the more recent ones.  I'll find out, though, and I'll also see if it works building UFO:AI.  If it does, it might simplify the process for those who want to compile from SVN without having a script do it for them.

I'll report back soon on how it works...

22

Offtopic / ROFL!!!

« on: May 25, 2010, 03:20:48 am »

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127058298

This one pretty much speaks for itself.

23

Artwork / Shoulder Patches for new soldier models

« on: May 25, 2010, 12:06:54 am »

I think you'll like this (when a finished version is done), I used some of the techniques I recently learned while making new heads to learn how to put shoulder patches on the new soldier models.  Not only that, but I also can put them in a layer for the GIMP file used to re-build the different uniform colors for those who don't want to learn Blender.

In this example they obviously came out too small - this is easily fixable, but how does the actual patch design look?

The patch itself was also done in Blender, and the colors can be changed very easily (doesn't have to be gold, I just picked that randomly).

24

Artwork / GUI Design

« on: May 04, 2010, 09:37:10 pm »

As we already have more than 8 actors on the alien and civ teams, there shouuld be no prob with the general code. Afaik it's mostly a GUI thing (and some GUI-related code maybe).
AND a matter of game balance of course.

Goodness!  Well, making the GUI is certainly something I can help out with - Is anyone else already working on it, or should I look at the proposals in the wiki and get started on something?  GUIs typically aren't that hard for me to do - the graphics portion that is (coding it is another story) - It wouldn't take me too long to come up with something.

25

Artwork / Yet another try at this (in Blender)...

« on: May 02, 2010, 09:11:16 pm »

Some of you may remember when I tried to make new heads for character models, and they didn't come out too great...

Well, stubborn as ever, I've researched some new modeling techniques I haven't tried before, and come up with this high-detail head that I think will work much better once it is mapped onto a low-poly mesh with a few new texture mapping tricks I've just started to learn.

A few notes:

- You may notice that the haircut leans forward in these pics, that is intentional at this stage because of the way Blender renders hairs, once the images are plastered onto a low-poly mesh as a texture it will be bent and re-shaped to look more normal.  Long story short, the end result will look better than if I had made them stand straight up at this level of the process.

- The same goes for the eyelashes and eyebrows, when everything is put onto the low-poly version they won't stick out forward, but will instead look normal.

- At some point I'll also correct the lighting, contrast, and saturation so it will look right in-game.

- I'm especially proud of how I got the ears to come out much better this time.

26

Offtopic / This actually works (try this if you can afford it)!

« on: May 02, 2010, 01:56:46 am »

Talk about really getting what you pay for...

For those who don't know, I'm one of those people who typically orders pizza (delivery) at least once a month, and I used to be cheap about it, giving a few extra loose bucks as a tip, sometimes with coins (like many people I know).  I always had to put up with the usual hassles and horror stories that most people ran into, especially on busy evenings when many people were ordering.

Then I read an article on the pizza business, one thing it mentioned was that many pizza restaurants tend to really remember frequent customers and how much they tip.

So one evening, just for the hey of it, I gave the delivery kid a whopper tip, and after getting to see the boy's face light up I kept it up with the next few orders.

Now they really earn that extra money - The food comes in 15 to 20 minutes or less instead of meandering someplace unknown for an hour (I feel like I can almost snap my fingers anytime and have a pizza ready right there on the spot), the food is prepared more carefully instead of thrown together and it sure tastes a heck of a lot better, and the delivery people are extremely pleasant to the point of being unnatural, even the younger ones, even on a hectic night for them.

Bottom line:  If you can afford it, and keep doing it, they'll really earn it and give you first-class royal service.

I guarantee the food will be that much more tasty as well, worth bragging over.

 

27

Offtopic / R.I.P. Floopy disc... (Finally)

« on: April 27, 2010, 03:26:50 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20100426/tc_zd/250362

My old Dual-core Dell desktop only has a 3.5 one because I ripped it out of an old 486 computer so I could backup and get rid of my old floppies.

...That and it runs Windows 7, which actually recognizes the archaic piece of hardware.  Not only that, but because of that I get to see what the floppy drive icon looks like in Windows 7, something most people haven't seen and likely will never see.  (Actually, it's not that exciting, and you're not missing that much, so if you happen to never see it by the time you get to be gasping on your deathbed, you can go in peace.  Seriously, if you go out feeling your life was unfulfilled, it was something else - Trust me.)

28

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / r29482 crash - Is this something that's my fault?

« on: April 20, 2010, 06:46:41 am »

This was from skirmish mode, testing the new city map - All I did was start the mission, didn't move any units, just swung the camera around to look at parts of the map, and when going to the top level where the alien ship is it crashed.

I'm not sure if this is something I did when building the installer/compiling the map, or if it is just because the city map is still a work in progress...

When the installer is done uploading, others can try for themselves.

Sorry if this was already discussed in a recent post, I've been busy the last few days and haven't checked into the forum as often.

29

Offtopic / Happy Daylight Savings Time-Change! (Yeah, right...)

« on: March 14, 2010, 02:56:22 am »

For those of us here in the United States, have fun going around your home having to change all your clocks, enjoy losing an hour that you won't get back, and relish having your daily routine out-of-whack for a while until your body adjusts to a new wake/sleep schedule!   

For those who live elsewhere who don't practice this "ritual," have fun laughing at us for going through such silliness!   
(I personally never found any real benefit to this mandatory-by-government nonsense...)

(Then again, our dysfunctional American government is bogged down in plenty of nonsense, nothing new there, been that way for a long time...)

30

Coding / Fixed the TAG export script! Now Blender can directly export animations!

« on: March 10, 2010, 07:30:40 am »

As I said in the bug-tracker:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=805242&aid=2967149&group_id=157793

I found the bug, I fixed the bug!  

...And to top it off, I did it in the python language which I never learned or even touched before!

Now I can directly export MD2 models and TAG files that work properly straight from Blender.  I ran several tests, it works beautifully now.

Should I go ahead and commit the fixed script to the trunk?

(I'll also attach it to this post.)

The problem is that the built-in MD2 exporter in the latest stable version of Blender exports frames that are off by just one compared to the TAG export script.  One starts counting at zero, the other at one.  The solution is to get both to count from the same value.

I tracked it down to line 507:

Code: [Select]

Blender.Set("curframe", current_frame)
...and changed it to:

Code: [Select]

Blender.Set("curframe", current_frame - 1)
...and now everything lines up properly in-game.