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[marshmonkey]

once I unwrap it, I export a wireframe of all the faces, and plop it on a blank file in photoshop, then I just fill in with the wireframe as a guide. Sometimes I have to go into maya and look at the model and highlight faces to know whats what on the UV map.

[marshmonkey]

spray gun and paint

[Hideous]

Make sure you guys have a top-down camera mode when you race, as well.

[marshmonkey]

another quick shot, still very WIP

[marshmonkey]

ok, I finally finished up most of the garage and got it into the engine - here is a screen shot. It's all a fully modeled little environment so that there is something to look at in all directions as you will be able to freely rotate and zoom in around your kart & character.

[marshmonkey]

spent a little bit of time making some mock-ups thinking about how a few menus might work. The idea for the main menu is that the elements fly in from the edges of the screen, and a model of your character / kart on a stand screws into place from the bottom off screen.



The customization menu will be able to handle all your kart and character customization or tuning. The left of the screen is where you will pick which element you are changing, and you can browse through your options on the right side, as well and pull it out further like a drawer with the red arrow to view more options at one time. The bottom of the screen is where your customizable color swatch options will appear for the item you have selected.

[Eclipse]

 :D nice

maybe add some coloured paint splashes around(maybe under the zone with the paint buckets).
It will look more cartoon\less serious.

[marshmonkey]

we have recently been working on testing out our first test of some gameplay rules. In order to get a better grip on how our rules system is going to be layed out we are doing a quick game of tag, where the person who is "it" the longest wins, and whenever you run into the person who is it you become it. We are about halfway done with the mode, and have already happened upon some important fixes and tweaks in the process that will help us once we start on a racing mode.

Here is a screenshot of the level I made in the last few days to play tag in.

http://nimblebit.com/tagtest.jpg

This weekend we are having another lan party in which we are going to test out the game mode with around 8 people hopefully. I will be capturing footage to make into another video.

[Akhel]

 :D

Sounds like lots of fun! Will there be lots of game modes? Please say there will.

[marshmonkey]

yes, we plan on keeping the lua scripting system open so that anyone can create their own game modes as well.

[marshmonkey]

New Video! Basic Gameplay tag-test





In this video we are using a “Tag” type game mode as an intitial test of our gameplay scripting system. Using the experience from this we will design bigger and more exciting gameplay!

In this mode, players compete for the longest amount of time being "IT". The longer you are "IT" the more points you rack up. There is also a 3 second immunity after you have become "IT". For this level, we also made points accumulate faster the closer you are to the middle, to encourage people to duke it out in the middle ring.

The test was a lot of fun, and gave us a lot of ideas and feedback for how we are going to implement more gameplay features in the near future!

[marshmonkey]

we are working on some items for our next video, as well as a new gameplay mode - here is a little sneak peek

[Annabelle Kennedy]

theres a huge amount of effort and polish
and it shows.

much applauds, it looks fantastic!

[Massena]

The new video looks like a lot of fun!  I hope I can get this game in my hands as soon as possible 

I hope you consider releasing this game for multiple platforms, as in Mac and Linux.

P.S. : www.zero-gear.com redirects to the wrong site, I think.

[marshmonkey]

yea, it does. It's on my very long list of things to do.

[marshmonkey]

As you might have noticed in our last video, we have started putting particles in our game. For the non-developers out there, particles are how we create effects such as explosions, weather, dust or any situation where we need to animate some kind of graphical effect using many graphics moving together in a certain way. We are using an excellent particle library called Particle Universe which allows you to create these effects in a script type format. Here are a couple of effects I have been working on lately using this system.

 

Here is a snippet of the script of the second explosion effect, detailing how the system should animate the fireball part of the explosion:

Code:

// --------------- fireball ---------------
technique
{
	use_alias				$defaultBillboardRenderer
	material				fireball
	default_particle_width			25
	default_particle_height			25
	visual_particle_quota			500
	emitter					Point		
	{
		emission_rate				1
		force_emission                          true
		velocity				0
		time_to_live				1
	}		
		
	// expand almost instantly then slower
	affector					Scale
	{
		xyz_scale	    	dyn_curved_linear
	{
		    control_point       0 1
		    control_point       0.1 4500
		    control_point       0.3 500
	}
	}

	affector					Colour
	{
		colour_aff_time_colour		0	 1 1 1
		colour_aff_time_colour		0.1	 1 1 1
		colour_aff_time_colour		0.3	 .8 .6 .6
		colour_aff_time_colour		0.45	 .2 .2 .2
		colour_aff_time_colour		0.65	 0 0 0
	}

}

[Jolli]

HOT

More updates pleas   

[marshmonkey]

been working on 3 items lately for our next video, along with a new gameplay mode. Here is a little teaser for the items:



also we noticed that they have just opened up the portal for steamworks partners
https://partner.steamgames.com/

so we will be lobbying hard to become a partner, since the API looks delicious!

[Alex May]

Good luck, rather looking forward to this. Hope it doesn't become an item-fest like mario kart has become, to its detriment.

[marshmonkey]

I think it will be much more tactical and reaction based, becuase of how physically-based everything is. One of our least favorite things in all kart games are the "fire and forget" binary weapons that have no room for emergent reactions. Examples of these types of items in MK are the blue shell, lighting bolt, ink squirts, and perhaps now the worst item in the MK series - the POW box. Another example is pretty much every single item in Kart Rider. All these types of items really feel like they take the game out of the players hands, and while I appreciate the need for items that make a big impact on the race, I think that you can get some better feeling through more reactive items that are tuned right rather than items that are only off or on. Items is one of the areas that I really wish MK would have explored a little bit more in all their sequels, instead of sticking with mostly the same items they started with on the SNES.