Arx – End Of Sun

There is lots of progress with the mod, and here are a few screen shots of the work in progress ‘Human Outpost’ level, a poetic license remake of the original masterpiece.

Human Outpost - Level

Human Outpost - Level

Human Outpost - Level

Human Outpost - Level

Human Outpost - Level

A month or so has passed since the last update, so I thought it was about time to post an update on the blog!

As more and more time passes, many of the pieces of the puzzle that we have tirelessly toiled over are starting to come together!, they are actually starting to become a ‘bit of a game’. In the images below you can see the hero being perused by two new skeleton monsters. The semi-transparent ghost skeletons are tricky adversaries and take three fireballs to dispatch.

Work in progress - Skeleton monsters

It has become plainly apparent that we are unlikely to find / recruit any modellers to produce creature assets for us. Many of the top mods and total conversions such as The Dark Mod, Ruiner and Hexen Edge of Chaos are all in a similar position of needing talented help too. I’m beginning to think that Arx EOS will be the last total conversion for IDTech4 that gets produced, even if the engine gets open sourced.

So, un-deterred we have been hard at work learning how to model our own creatures, convert them into .MD5 meshes, animations and articulated figures, plus writing AI scripts for them. Its a lot of work

What we are planning to show you next will be a video demonstration of our non-linear level transition code in action. What this means in practical terms is, that without having to rely on any level scripts at all, – its all automatically done in SDK code, the hero will be able to pickup and drop any items he finds in any other level and they will stay there. Once all the goodies have been looted from chests and alike, they stay looted. Items that are moved stay moved on the next visit to the level. Slain monsters stay dead (unless you don’t want them to!). We have also implemented a new level change system where any level can have any number of entrances and exits, so we can create a much more advanced level layout than any hub system. Also by keeping each map small, we can avoid many of the performance issues that large detailed maps can suffer from.

Work in progress - Skeleton monsters

Hope to get the video created and uploaded soon. In the mean time if you would like to contribute in any way, as always please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you.

A little news on the progress of the mod.

Finally managed to create and get the animated .MD5 chicken models into the game – yay!

They only have a couple of simple animations, where their wings flap, heads turn and tails wiggle a bit. But its a start

Just need to transform them into proper AI’s rather than func_animate entities now….

Work in progress - Chicken models

Well, the campaign to find a modeller to help with the project is not going so well…

In the mean time, I’ve taken it upon myself to start learning how to do it. Here you can see the ‘Chicken’ – behold its splendidness.

Work in progress - Chicken model

Work in progress - Chicken model

Some exciting news and progress for the mod with this update!

We now have a couple of artists who are helping out with some nice environment, texture and creature designs for the mod (see Ratman monster concept image below designed by Olivier).

Thank you guys!

(http://www.olivier-ruillard.com/) & (http://cyrus-crashtest.deviantart.com/)

Also, a unique first for any IDTech4 (Doom3) based modification! – I have been coding away at the SDK for quite a while and we now have a fully working implementation of non-linear level change / transitions. Any level can have multiple entry and exit points, items can be carried and dropped into any other level. Moved things stay moved, used items stay used, dropped things stay where you put them and killed beasts stay dead.

We are now in the process of finalising the story / plot and will be starting to plan out all the levels and areas that will be in the game. Stay tuned…

Concept design - Ratman monster

Lots of progress happening with the mod at the moment.

I am hard at work in the SDK implementing the non-linear level transision code atm. So far things are going well and it is progressing very nicely. The system will allow the player to travel back and forth between completely different level maps in any order that the level designer permits. The system will remember for each level what items the player has already collected or consumed in each level or any new positions where the player has kicked or dropped items. Also new items collected in one level may be dropped in another so that has to be catered for. Not forgetting remembering which monsters the hero has already slain.

So far a lot of the above is working in manual test mode, so its a question of much testing and finishing the code…

On a lighter note, Neurological has gone on a mission to create a whole new set of original textures, we are also going to experement with parallex, bloom and other effects. So far we have decided to remove the HDR due to the servere performance problems encountered when using it.

Here is a quick example of some of Neuro’s new original textures:

Original Testure Examples