Friday, October 31, 2014

General Banter: What's new 10/31

So if you're following this blog you'll notice this week I laid back off the reviews for a bit.  This is because there's a huge ramp up by a lot of the developers of TGC content.  I think it has to do with the upcoming 1.0090 update, which is highly anticipated as a big fix for a lot of outstanding problems with the engine.

In the meantime, I've been neck deep in code and made some pretty awesome strides.  The first is an all in one script that handles AI NPC's.  Basically turns the 'neutral' NPC into one who will talk to you.  It runs through an array of strings specified in the globals and then picks one based on a passable value to the individual NPC.  

I also have a much heavier one that can be used as a custom unit script, specifically to make them have multiple responses and even script-able actions.

<insert vid here>


Once I get an answer in the forums over here: 

On my question of invulnerability I will be able to wrap up this script and get it on the store.  A little final testing on the lightning script will work for that one too.  I'm planning on price points of 50 cents USD for the lightning script and 2 dollars for the NPC string scripting.  That one took significant more work, so it gets a higher price.  Given it's flexibility I think people will find it'll be quite sufficient for most of their needs.  With support for I think a maximum of 255 strings, that's a lot of flexibility for NPCs.

I also have a similarly structured inventory control system in the works, though that's going to be tougher to implement without serious delving into the LUA classes present in the game engine.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

General Banter: My sordid affair with games-making.

First, a little background...

Since I was a small child, I've had an interest in games and games development.  When I was about eight, I received my first 'computer'.  It was a Tandy TRS-80 Color (CoCo).  I remember getting it and having literally NO idea what to do with it.  My mom had bought it for me at a yard sale, probably having no idea what she's set off.  I'd sit there for hours, tinkering with code in BASIC, having little to no idea what I was doing.  I'd make red flashing asterisks on the screen and feel empowered.  Still, I was slowly absorbing the little pieces of what made things go tick.

Nothing like cartridges and a 300 baud modem to get the blood flowing.


At school, we had several APPLE IIGS's running LOGO (Anyone remember that?)  and BASIC. I'd make a little triangle move around and take some of that knowledge home to apply to new and more interesting things.  I don't recall what happened to that Tandy, but I do recall it falling by the wayside when I got my first Nintendo Entertainment System.

From there, I spent several years in the void of video games (ah, nostalgia!) while focusing on computer projects at school.  I knew they interested me and pursued them rigorously.

A lot happened starting around age 12-13.  I cracked my skull open and oddly ever since then I noticed my purely logical thinking went to a sort of logical and abstract form.  My code got weirder.  Less understandable from a flow standpoint to those who'd read it.  But it still always did the job, often in novel ways.

Fast forward a few years...
Around age 15, I'd lost my first REAL PC due to some high phone bills from BBS door gaming. Long distance was clearly not my friend and my mom was not plussed.  She sold the smokin fast 486 DX2 66 to pay the bills.  Then, feeling bad for her now dejected son, she found a diamond in the rough - an original IBM PC XT with two MFM 5MB hard drives.  You can imagine my joy at the downgrade, initially.

Turns out the sucker didn't even work.  I had to dig through the thousands (literally) of pages in the original IBM manuals to figure it out.  At one point I recall calling a very amused IBM tech support agent who kindly referred me to the manuals since they didn't support such an old system.

Yes, it literally came with all those books.

At some point, I managed to learn all about how computers work.  The physical components to me now were in that inventory and fascinated me.  I used this computer to try writing very simple AI programs in Basic (Chase the dot, dot warfare, etc) it worked well but I had trouble with implementation of some concepts.  I started taking formal programming classes in high school and learned all about modular, top down programming in my Pascal class.  I also learned simple graphical tricks and micro game making in Macintosh Hypercard.  I purchased the original "GCS" Game Creation System at this time.

A copy of the original advertisement for the 3D GCS.  
Make sure to click to full size and read for some giggles.

I was hooked on FPS's thanks to doom and the GCS.  I made some interesting stuff, messing with the forth/fortran backbone (who the fuck ever thought that was a good idea, is beyond me) to improve AI.

Somewhere in here I pissed off a programming teacher, switched schools 3 times, and eventually ended up at Dauphin County Vo-Tech school.  This school had a programming teacher who took me as his last great hope to sink the death star.  He taught me C, unix shellscripting, and a host of other things.  Got me a job in programming for the state, then later Keystone Programming.  Unfortunately massive pressure at home caused my life to crumble and I had to basically start anew.  The teacher, feeling crushed at my difficulties (as well as dealing with his own), retired the following year.

My biggest 'video game' programming achievement during this time period was writing the 'Coop-Bot' based on some code I found from the axe of friendship.  The coop-bot was an amazing AI piece built as a mod for quake 1.  No one at that time to my knowledge had written TRUE cooperative bots. Mine however had functional personalities and capabilities.  The code eventually was used by "Nelno" the Amoeba who wrote the reaper bot and moved on to write the Unreal Tournament bot code (based on the reaper bot code and by extension my own).  It was like fame by proxy.

My senior year in highschool was incredibly turbulent and somewhere in there, I had an english teacher nurture my writing abilities.  I wrote numerous short stories which ended up in the book I promote on the right (albeit many years later, after many MANY rewrites).  I however was stressed to my limit and despite my talents I was extremely limited by my circumstances.

Ok, a lot of background...

I spent the years after high school trying to start my own game development company and eventually got so soured by scumbag investors who wanted things like 60% stake for 40,000 dollars seed money (barely enough to get a programming firm off the ground, let alone finish a project).

We'd done a lot of free work, creating an impressive 3D terrain renderer and server architecture (me and my 6 or so buddies).  Eventually my experience was soured and I shut the whole project down spitefully.

A few years passed and Mechwarrior 4 came out.  I.. LOVE Mechwarrior.  Still do to this day.  So I decided to mod it.  I made a mod for the original game called 'Siege'.  This mod addressed many of the glaring problems in the game's multiplayer - namely a complete lack of single player functioning assets (turrets, repair bays, etc).   At some point I wrote the devs asking if they could increase the spawn points in the map to 32/32.  They asked me to send them my code and promptly ignored me.

A few weeks later, the rumored 'black knight' expansion came out featuring.. you guessed it... a special new deathmatch mode... called SIEGE!  Ironically nothing I could do at this point; they by right had the rights to all mod's intellectual property.  It did, however, REALLY sour my taste for game devving.  Throughout the years that followed I'd monkey with lite-c, opengl programming (thanks NeHe!)  and other components like the Allegro library.

But never again could I recapture the joy of just making a map, coding some scripts, and doing cool things... like back in high school.  Some 15 years later the spectre of Game Development reared it's head again and in my searches I discovered the FPS Creator Reloaded kickstarter.  I donated to it because at the time I was really impressed that they had a shader-driven engine that cost less than 800 to 3000 dollars.  The visuals were perfectly acceptable and by my standards would save me hundreds of hours in programming it myself.  Development comes along steadily and the system is easy enough to use.  Once the 'construction kit' is in play - I'll be running full tilt.

In the meantime, I'm learning LUA coding for the purposes of improving function in FPSC:R and making micro scripts to do simple tasks.  So far I've done some interesting screen effects and also written some custom AI modifications (shocker, right?).

Like these basic weather effects, for instance.

I hope, with time to produce not only interesting code snippets for what I find is an overwhelmingly helpful community (though considerably smaller than the Unity or Lite-C Communities) which might help pad my monthly art/development budget... which currently sits around twenty dollars per month.

Next time: The differences between writing a book and making a game.

What drove you to start making games?  What kind of experiences did you have?  I'd love to hear your comments and feedback!  If you'd like to support me please feel free to purchase a copy of my ebook:  The Longshores Rising

Monday, October 27, 2014

Teabone's TGC Store Products

Teabone was one of the first authors I bought from, when I first started aggregating content for this site.  I didn't spend much, his items were well priced.  However, this Canadian artist gave me several options of where to spend my pennies and I realized in comparing his products against others that a significant reason why I'm even writing this blog today was because of the choices I had to make back then when initially selecting what to get on a shoestring budget.

Teabone, a canadian, has apparently been working with or had an interest with FPSC for a long time, on the order of like eight years, if his forum profile is any clue.   He, like many other indy gamedevs has a number of interests strewn about.

His intermittently updated blog:  http://t-boneproductions.blogspot.ca/

And His TGC store:  http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=45855

Unfortunately there's not many items to review here.  Teabone has a very limited selection at this time and I must say that's a crying shame.  He's one of the better artists in the TGC community, at least in terms of his use of textures and color.  Every time I purchase I look at Teabone's store, hoping to find more to buy, but only finding the same eight or so products.  I truly hope more comes soon.

What is the one item I can't live without:  What is the one thing found in every dorm room, family dwelling, and office place?  It's so prolific yet we overlook it for less ubiquitous models.

Is that pizza bro?  Can I have a slice?

That's right, it's pizza.  A massive portion of the modern world's diet, this humble bread, cheese, sauce and toppings concoction has been vastly underrepresented in the gaming world.   Thankfully, Teabone has put a stop to it.  Now personally, I also own this:

Because this also fits in dorm rooms, family homes, and offices.

That's right.  Toilet paper.  Both of these items will cost you virtually nothing to own.   The art style meshes well with the likes of gencheff, nomis3d, HenryHam, etc.   I find that these items work so well I find myself using them in almost every single scene I do.


The bottom line:  It's top shelf art, at bargain basement prices.  Buy one.  Buy them both.  Buy everything he has.  You'll just find yourself wanting more.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Game Design Review - On Guns P2

This is a continuation of a topic in my Game Design Review series which began here:
http://fpscreloadedreview.blogspot.com/2014/10/game-design-review-on-guns-p1.html

When I think back to the original doom, and quake, I recall their weapons accuracy.  These games were fun and consistent, without all the tedious need for upgrades and add-ons just to make a gun shoot well out of the box.  It was an era of run and gun.  I really enjoyed the original Doom; it shaped all my gameplay experiences to come.

The guns back then behaved vastly more intuitively than they do today.  Oftentimes without any form of crosshair, to boot.

From this pretty awesome article: 


So let's talk terminology first.  It's a sticking point amongst many gun enthusiasts vs non-gun enthusiasts.  We see so many wrongly labelled examples it's quite maddening.  Why do we, as developers care?  People appreciate accuracy both in their weapons AND from the developers in terms of modelling game components.

Magazines vs Clips

Clips are, on the by and whole, not used anymore.  They are a relic of a bygone era save for mostly revolver clips.  A clip is a little metal piece that is used to hold bullets together.  It's flimsy and tiny, and generally is not what people are thinking of when they refer to a 'clip of bullets'.

Picture per wikipedia.

Note the distinct lack of a housing.  This defines a clip.  It's literally like a paper clip.  A simple metal piece that binds rounds together.

Some AK-47 Magazines per http://pokin-holes.blogspot.com

Not real hard to know the difference once you've seen it.  Also makes you look REALLY stupid to anyone who has even a passing interesting firearms if you're not making the distinction.

Shells, casings, and everything in between.

Similarly, the same applies to Shells.  Shells are effectively a whole, pre-fired bullet.  It includes the whole material components of the casing (usually brass or steel), the projectile (usually lead or copper), gunpowder, and a primer.

From hunter-ed.com


Often, however, people refer to empty shell casings as shells.  This is incorrect.  It's splitting hairs but do you really want to seem like an idiot to the more educated of your audience?

So, some simple education is in order on how bullets and guns ACTUALLY work.

In the beginning...

Humankind (arguably, at least in academic circles) proved his superiority both through his intellect but ALSO through his ability to throw objects which could kill his prey.  This effective 'arm reach' improvement gave a huge evolutionary advantage over similar predators.
(Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-chimps-humans-baseball-pitcher.html )

As time went on our methods of throwing things improved.  We used spears, spear throwers, slings (where bullets effectively originated), arrows and eventually firearms.

How firearms work.

Firearms are remarkably simple.   The bulk of the work is done by the bullet itself.  A firearm or gun is effectively a means to provide a loader, a way to initiate firing (trigger and firing pin), and a stabilizing platform (the barrel).

Obviously I got this from http://gunlink.info ^

PUT SIMPLY - IF YOU HAVE EVER USED A PEA SHOOTER, YOU KNOW HOW A GUN WORKS.  JUST SUBSTITUTE YOUR BREATH FOR A CHEMICAL REACTION WHICH CAUSES RAPIDLY EXPANDING GAS TO PUSH THE 'SPITBALL' (aka bullet).

On another note - once a gun fires and the casing is ejected.. there should be no more projectile in it!  I'm amazed how often people think it just shoots magic out the end and ejects a whole round.  Or alternately, that they think that it fires a whole projectile, casing and all.


IMPLEMENTING MORE EFFECTIVE GUNS IN FPSC:RELOADED

Now for the meat of this article.  Inside of the FPSC:R Engine folder (Typically C:\program files(x86)\the game creators\fpscr) there's a game core folder.  Inside of that folder is your weapons folder.  Within that are the individual weapons.

What we're looking for is the 'gunspec.txt' file.  This is gun specifications and effectively controls the behavior of the gun itself.

Within this file the main settings we are concerned with are:

'accuracy'   - The base hipfire accuracy of the gun.
'zoom accuracy' - The alt-fire 'down the sights' accuracy of the gun.
'force'  - Felt recoil.
'damage' - For tweaking your preferred damage settings.

The accuracy field is not as granular as you might think.  The game basically uses this value to define the cone of fire coming from the weapon.   The smaller the number, the smaller the cone.  Zero is no cone.

For the purposes of our example let's look at the values in the original shotgun gunspec file.

damage            = 15
damagetype     = 2
reloadqty         = 6
accuracy          = 8
shotgun           = 1

An accuracy of eight makes this gun seem like it's a blunderbuss. Heck, a blunderbuss was probably more accurate.  Damage is 15 per pellet.  In it's stock configuration the shotgun feels like one of the weakest weapons, often requiring 3-5 shots at a mere 3 yards to put away even the lowliest enemy.

This is my modified numbers:

damage         = 11
damagetype  = 2
reloadqty      = 6
accuracy       = 2
shotgun         = 1
range       = 1500

You might think this seems drastic.  Bear in mind, however, that the accuracy value basically acts like degrees of an arc.   I'm estimating but I'm fairly sure that it's approximately 5 degrees of arc per value of accuracy.  So a value of one gives a five degree cone, a value of two gives a ten degree cone, etc.  This value in testing gave me a nice tight spread.  This also seemed overwhelmingly powerful so I toned down the damage to bring it in line with it's value as a weapon.

I also added a range value, which wasn't present in the file by default.  This should (if not now, then later) make the weapon ineffective as a long range platform. An example of this was the quake (1) shotgun which could shoot the entire length of the map and retain a moderately realistic tight spread.  It made for an effective weapon at any distance, which was unreasonable.

Recommended changes for other weapons:
Colt 1911 - 35 damage, accuracy 1, zoomaccuracy 0, reloadqty 8 (up from 7).
Notes:  The 45 ACP bullet is a low penetration, moderate damage round.  It's on par with a 9mm in terms of ballistic performance.  Also, many modern 1911's carry 8 in the magazine, not 7.  Examples: the Wilson combat 1911, Sig Sauer's 1911, and even the Taurus PT1911.

357 magnum - 50 damage, accuracy 0, zoom accuracy 0, force 150.  
Notes:  The 357 magnum is a hell of a round.  It hits pretty hard for a pistol round and I wanted to
model accuracy as well.  The payback is of course in terms of recoil.

This was off a virtually stock el-cheapo Taurus PT1911 shooting generic ammo.


Ironically 45's are pretty damn accurate, but I *PREFER* using slightly different values to exacerbate the differences between the guns.  I also have a custom 1911-22 I put in (a 1911 using a .22LR barrel, magazines, etc) which has a fast fire rate, higher magazine count (12), less damage, and perfect accuracy with low recoil.  I needed slight value adjustments to make that work.  Until something more granular is available, these values will have to do.  I kept the default pistol ranges for now.  I want to play more with ranges before I make recommendations there.

Was this post helpful to you?  Please comment or message me if you have suggestions or criticisms!








Thursday, October 23, 2014

Dvader's TGC Store Products

Dvader is the renaissance man of the TGC community.  He's been around a long time and does just about everything from games, to levels, voice acting, coding, and all the way to 3d modelling.  It's impressive, to say the least.

Get his older DarkBasic Games here:  http://www.sentientsoftware.bandedsoftware.com/

Dvader's TGC Store:  http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=10622

While his shop is constantly being added to, he is the ONLY person I have seen who has a video walkthrough of his store:

Definitely some slick shit going on here.

Dvader unfortunately suffers from what a significant amount of jack of all trade types (I count myself in that lot) are afflicted by:  lack-of-mastery-itis.  He's got some really amazing products here but clearly his art (at least by my tastes) is not quite up to his coding level.   Some of the objects are remarkably well done though and definitely deserve a look or purchase.  Other objects with potentially less sophisticated art styles often come with their own unique script which is worth it's weight in terms of use and function in and of itself.  So there's definitely a lot of really great reasons to check out his store.

Dvader's use of color is a little brighter than I prefer but here again, your miles may vary.

One thing that is completely noteworthy is he probably has the best glass modelling in the game, bar none.

I can think of few AAA games that can match this level of quality for a simple glass.

His glass is better than every single other person's on the store, without question.

What is the one item I cannot live without: Here again I am forced to choose a split on my choices.  There are too many low priced, must have items to simply name one.

First, I really like this ashtray:

When you are making FO3 look bad, you're doing something right.

I find a good ashtray under-represented in most in respects gaming wise.  But on the TGC store I'm pretty sure this is the only one.  But look at it! We don't even need others.  It's literally THAT good.

In terms of packs, he only has one.  It's his 'clutter pack'.  It's well priced and has a significant amount of objects that really are completely unique.

It's reasonably cheaper at a 20% reduction over the already low price per item.

Now I'm just going to add that Dvader has one last thing that absolutely NEEDS mentioned.  His pick up and move script is amazing as hell, cheap, and necessary.  He's also got some free scripts worth grabbing but this pay one is incredible:




The bottom line: You may find his art not to your tastes but honestly there's too much here that's invaluable to pass up.  The pickup script is vital; the glass objects are beyond compare.  Decide for yourself and take a look!

If this post was helpful for you, please feel free to comment and share it with others.  I welcome all constructive criticism.  If you'd like your products reviewed, leave a comment below and a link to your game creators store.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00INF6MGA

Free ebook (FREE UNTIL OCT 24th)  per this reddit post:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2k35y9/free_copies_of_book_game_project_completed_just/


Break today

Need to take some screencaps for next piece on Game Design Review and until then am doing some light reading:

http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/barton   - on weather effects

This is because my first scripts will be weather effect related.  I've (I think) nailed lightning pretty good:

Soon for the low low price of 50 points, probably.

This is a completely dynamic lightning 'zone' which will not cut off the sound to play another but instead finishes the one in progress.  You make a trigger zone, add the script and sound effect, and you're off :)

The next steps in development are to test the rather spartan particle system built into the engine currently to see if it's even viable to add even simple rainfall or snow.

I'm also planning a fog system, some other little code snippets for devs to use as they see fit.


http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/left4dead2_mapping/l4d2-visual-gameplay-reference-guide-campaign-design.php  - on level design.

Now THIS one is going to be for my technical design review; I plan on showcasing how perspective is used to draw visual elements together.

So stay tuned :)

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

PirateMyke's TGC Store Products

PirateMyke is another prolific The Game Creators/FPS Creator developer.  He's probably logged hundreds, possibly thousands of hours into creating assets for just Reloaded, let alone the previous incarnation of FPS Creator.

PirateMyke's store: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=126323&page=1

His youtube channel has a good amount of walkthroughs for his store items and is also worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm12bBEndLKBxECbFJLBrpg

Myke has a significant amount of well priced packs.  Texture quality is a little low, but implements well when actually used in game.   This should improve as the lighting system in 1.0090 helps provide pre-baked shadows, occlusion, etc.

4 packs, all quite affordable and all very useful.

Some of his models, while textured well have a curiously large amount of polygons for such simple models:

Take for instance this very nice stove - comes in at 2154 polys.

Note the stove, which is excellent, and it's oddly high poly count.  Also note the texturing on the walls.  While acceptable, it's not my taste.  Strangely, Myke's proficiency in texturing seems to be less in walls and more in small objects.  Take for instance this amazing table:

Eye-poppingly beautiful, IMO.  

And then compare against this simplistic (not a negative, just very different) kitchen island:

It's like they were made by two different developers, honestly.

When I first evaluated PirateMyke's products, I wrote up a draft and realized I couldn't pick a single product to recommend.  I like his stuff, truly, but there was a glaring omission which I felt needed to be addressed before continuing.  So I contacted him and gave him what I felt was constructive criticism.

He responded, and then some.  Which leads us to my choice for his best item.

What is the one item I could not live without:  The Patio Pack 1.  You see, prior to this writing there was no such thing as a patio pack.  There were, however, a significant number of equally impressive patio items which I couldn't choose a victor from.  They all were just.. so good.   So I asked Myke if he'd consider making them into a bundle.  He did one better.  He made a whole new pack of patio items... and flooring... and gardening.   Honestly it's an incredible amount of work when all I asked for was a simple bundle on the store.  I'm flattered he'd take my suggestion so seriously.

There's more potential here than this pic lets on.

Now admittedly in a forum thread he's advised he did use some free models to help build this, but even still it's a tremendous body of work and is priced to sell at 500 points.


The bottom line:  Art style is different but certain pieces which are vital of form and function.  His pieces are effective and functional and can find a home easily in a great many settings.

If this post was helpful for you, please feel free to comment and share it with others.  I welcome all constructive criticism.  If you'd like your products reviewed, leave a comment below and a link to your game creators store.


Monday, October 20, 2014

Rolfy's TGC Store Products

Rolfy is a long time The Game Creators supporter.  He's known for his excellent scripting and secondary effects. While admittedly I'm not a long time TGC supporter myself, it doesn't take long to figure out who stands out in the community as someone who has consistently provided meaningful mods and updates that aren't actually employed by TGC.

Visit his store here: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=44335

When I first evaluated Rolfy's store, he had some really great items.  Since then though, he seems to have expanded significantly.  I had to rewrite my entire draft because of it.

Most recently, he added his art of war kit:

Blogger's not playing nice, use the link to view the demo vid:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUufjZVDLDk

I used to be a regular building until I took an RPG-7 to the knee.


His selection of covered crates are phenomenal.  I'd say his least impressive piece are the rocks, but that's relatively speaking.  It's still miles better than a great many other offerings.  You pay a premium (compared to other TGC store prices) but IMHO it's completely worth it.  Rolfy's items are so unique, so impressive they stand on their own easily without peer.  Here again though.. the prices here for a 'higher' priced item such as Rolfy's are easily dwarfed by other engines like Unity or 3rd party creations for engines like Lite-C/Acknex.

I for one, wish I could throw more money at this guy.  All in due time, I suppose.

What is the one item I could not live without:  While the wave pack is ideal, if you are looking for a single item.. the straight wave has a significant amount of utility:

It's a little tricky to position but works exceedingly well.

The curvy waves are definitely useful as well so unless you're a miserly bastard like me, buy the pack of waves.   It's six dollars well spent for some real immersion enhancing items.

This is a full vid of the entire waves pack in action.


The bottom line: Rolfy's items are not some one hit wonder.  I'm quite sure I'll be revisiting his catalog again, and soon.  Keep a keen eye out for his work!


If this post was helpful for you, please feel free to comment and share it with others.  I welcome all constructive criticism.  If you'd like your products reviewed, leave a comment below and a link to your game creators store.


Friday, October 17, 2014

Nomis3D's TGC Store Products

Nomis3d's products are pretty exceptional and worth a look.  His items have an interesting symmetry with Gencheff's, I think completely by accident.  For instance, Gencheff has his Pripyat (google Chernobyl if you're not familiar) ferris wheel.  Nomis actually has a Pripyat sign!  He also has numerous ISO containers with Cyrillic/Russian lettering.

Store link: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=186502

Notice the high attention to detail; the LOD enabled textures which will help keep framerates under control.  I particularly like the shaders used with the metal textures.  It's not out of place to say that Nomis has some of the highest quality products on the store.  Easily in the top ten, or possibly the top five.  Maybe even the top three.  It's hard to say and really starts getting subjective at that level.

If you need M113 Gavin's (good choice, btw, my favorite armored vehicle!) or ISO containers.. Nomad's your man.  He's got them in spades and they look fantastic.

What is the one item I can't live without: Tough choice. While the pack for the Gavins is a MASSIVE bargain (75% off buying individually almost seems like a typo).

600 pack price, 2400 individual.  A 75% savings.

Same with his ISO Container pack.

All it needs now is a cargo ship ...

But for me, personally, I found that there's something that better suits my needs.  Something I can use in a wide variety of modern environments and has a lot of utility.

Just this humble little house.

For me, finding a way to do fast housing is a big deal.  This house would be at home in a number of environments.  It's run down just enough to count in ruins-type setups.  It could work at a campground, or in an urban environment.  Check out this interior!

Now this I can work with!


For one hundred and fifty points, this is a steal.  It's well priced, very useful, and fits with a number of other models by other developers.

Bottom line: Bookmark him if you haven't already.  This is one to keep an eye on.  Prices aren't bargain basement cheap on individual items, but the packs are stupidly low.

If this post was helpful for you, please feel free to comment and share it with others.  I welcome all constructive criticism.  If you'd like your products reviewed, leave a comment below and a link to your game creators store.
Found this gem on reddit today.

http://pixelatto.com/upload/PixelattoGDD.pdf

A one page GDD.  Nice.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Bengetronic's TGC Store Products

Currently the PirateMyke Review and The Cosmic Prophet's review are both postponed until I see their newer products.  I know cosmic's got some really great stuff in the works, and PirateMyke is looking at adding a lot of new things as well.  So I'm moving them to the bottom of the list for now. 

Bengetronic added his items mysteriously to the store a few weeks ago with little fanfare.  I didn't see any forum posts or notifications.  Just... one day there it was.  Similarly there's no forum profile per-se under the name Bengetronic.

Under google though, it all begins to take shape.

www.bengetronic.com  - This is his portfolio.  He's a professional 3D modeler and it shows.  His portfolio is impressive, which explains the quality of his work (more on that later). He appears to be a long time FPS Creator artist, however, given the resume I found on this site.  I'd love to comb through and find his older work.

http://bengetronic.blogspot.com/ - An outdated, albeit interesting blog he wrote but stopped writing a few years ago.  Interestingly, he makes masks - like my wife.  Check out her blog sometime if you're interested in mask-making: http://mariemessina.blogspot.com/  (She's started writing up posts again so expect updates soon).

Anywho, on with the show.  Bengetronic's models are top notched and priced to sell.  They outperform the vast majority of their competition in a number of ways.  The only two limiting factors here are the lack of a pack (which means buying each model individually, yuck!)  and currently his work is limited to one 'set' of items - specifically they are all based around a construction site.

Just a fraction of what's available.

These are ultra-high quality, low poly count (good for framerates), that are quite frankly DIRT cheap.  Even without the pack, you can buy every single item for 580 points.  That's five dollars, eighty cents USD.

There's only ONE model that doesn't strike my fancy - this guy right here.

The pipes are a bit chunky looking.

The steel pipes he did are lackluster compared to the rest of the set.  They try too hard to be a low poly model and end up seeing out of place with the rest of the set as a result.  He would probably have been better served using I-beams instead of piping, in this case.  At thirty cents, I'm not sure I care enough to not buy them though.


What one item can I not live without:  This is a trivial question, in this case.  The models are SO cheap there's really no reason to choose.  But if you put a gun to my head I'd pick..

Easily at home in any industrial environment.

This simple generator costs a meager 30 cents USD and represents itself quite well.  It's transferable to many modern environments due to the ubiquity of needing portable generators.

The bottom line:  The bottom line is simple here. I'll be buying most, if not all of his models.   There's a huge, varied selection, they are cheap as dirt and look exceptional.  Do yourself the favor and open your wallet for Bengetronic.  His store is found here:  http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=200625

If this post was helpful for you, please feel free to comment and share it with others.  I welcome all constructive criticism.  If you'd like your products reviewed, leave a comment below and a link to your game creators store.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Kencharleslong's TGC Store Products

Ken Charles Long.  I don't know much about the guy.  I think he uses a different name on the forums than he does for his store name.  Speaking of, here's his store:

KCL's store: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=27308

Let me be the first to say I really like KCL's store offerings.  He's got a whole host of free goodies as well which I urge you to pick up asap.  I've gotten excellent mileage out of his free "Medieval Derelict House."

KCL's models look better in game than they do in the store.

This is a big object which has a lot of utility in the 'abandoned ruins' department of many different settings.

The first thing you're going to notice here is a significant number of packs.  All are well priced and a superb value.  He's also got a very good selection, coming in at 59 individual items as of the time of this writing.  The art style is not exceptional but quite good.  I can find little fault with in, especially considering most of his pieces are specifically designed as background scenery objects.

The objects are exceptionally low poly on the whole, which generally tends to reduce detail. However, let's be honest here.  Most of us are NOT making multi-million dollar titles.  As such we fall into the rank of indy development and this means we're afforded a certain amount of latitude with model quality.  This is also useful when using a less than optimized engine (such as the Reloaded engine) in keeping framerate and poly counts in check.  Interestingly KCL gets a lot of mileage out of his low poly models, making them look better than they have a right to be.  In terms of price to value - I'd say that KCL's offerings are probably the best on the entire TCG store.

Good detail at a meager 439 polys.

What one item can I not live without:  This is a very difficult call.  Ken has such well priced products (~70 cents for most of them!)  that picking an individual product is mostly a question of what suits your needs best.  Pack-wise there are also several very well priced packs, all offering exceptional savings.  Personally I really prefer the three superior sheds he has in this pack:

His three best pieces, for one low price.

I personally really like the additional clutter of these sheds and find that for the price, I can get good mileage out of these three.  The other pack is enticing but the sheds are too similar.

The bottom line:  KCL's offerings are absurdly cheap, prolific, and the quality is excellent for a TCG store item.  If you've got five or ten dollars to spend, you're going to have a hard time spending it more wisely than on a few packs from KCL.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Game Design Review - On Guns P1

This is the first in a series of articles which I plan to post irregularly, perhaps once or twice a month, specifically relating to game design mechanics.

One of the first things I noticed about the FPSC: Reloaded engine was the initial guns it came with suffered from the usual host of faults.

Now the thing is,  games have had these faults for a long time.  I generally attribute these faults to developers who simply don't have the hands on experience of USING the actual firearms in question. For context, I'm a long time shooting enthusiast - your typical American Gun nut as it were.  I shot black powder competitively for over 15 years and did reasonably well, all told.

I've shot, firsthand, many of the guns used in video games (at least common ones).  And generally have shot at least the caliber or type/make/model of the gun in question.  I've read ream upon ream of ballistic data, penetration info, wound channel characteristics, stopping power and other items.

So let's start with the first and most glaring issue:

CROSSHAIRS

People - in general - don't have a crosshair built into their eyes.  Now I know this might come as a shock to you, but in the beginning - games didn't use crosshairs.  So it's my preference to remove it from my games.  This is not unprecedented, as games such as wolfenstein,

Now games generally tend to provide a crosshair as a holdover from that day when games only had hipfire but lacked any sort of system to use sights.  Nowadays games increase their complexity and realism.  They include accuracy mechanics, recoil, etc.  I'd say if you use a crosshair, a simple dot reticle provides a simple point of aim versus a full blown crosshair while not requiring a suspension of realism.

This brings us to our second issue:

ACCURACY

Much of the reason a crosshair exists is so people can hipfire and hit the target.  Most games include reduced accuracy for hipfire as a sort of artifical skill penalty.

Unfortunately over the years, this has become less and less understood and now people model the accuracy of one gun versus another.  Allow me to educate you on this:

Most guns are inherently accurate.  That's right.  Accurate.  While not amazing, most (non defective) guns retain sufficient tolerance that 'bad accuracy' means hitting something the size of a 7 inch plate.
Compare that to good accuracy, which would be within say a two inch circle.  Or excellent, where the shots overlap each other.

Rifles, in particular, are measured in terms of 'minute of angle' or MOA.  A minute of angle is 1/60th of a degree.  Consider that the average AR-15 is around 7 MOA.  This is 30% more accurate (seems like a lot, right?) Than your average AK-47, which is around 10 MOA.

We're talking the difference of 3/60th's of a degree here.  So within 100 meters/yards you're not going to see a significant difference in terms of video game accuracy.

Here's a real world example.   This is the shot pattern at ONE HUNDRED YARDS for an AR-15.

Courtesy of thetruthaboutguns.net

Consider the above - those thin lines represent a quarter of an inch. AT ONE HUNDRED YARDS. Using fairly generic hunting ammo.

Now compare that to a standard AK pattern:
From a shooter's forum, name withheld.  The above shows two separate groups of approx 3-4 inches spread.

There are literally THOUSANDS of 100 yard or meter patterns on the web for BOTH rifles that mirror the example pictures I took.  Now bear in mind this is at 100 yards.  Which looks like this:

Courtesy of thrumylens.org

So literally the difference of about two inches variance at one hundred yards, often on iron sights.

Compared to video games, which portrays accuracy like this:

I don't know what movie this is from, but I'd watch it.


The primary factors in missed shots (in the real world) are user skill (did they jerk the trigger, have a bad flinch, etc), technical malfunction (is the barrel loose, is it causing shots to tumble), and of course ... recoil.  Recoil is the physical action a gun takes after being fired.  Many guns use the energy from the bullet to drive a simple bolt assembly backwards to load another round and prepare the firing pin for another shot.  This is called a 'blowback' style gun.  The actual action of moving parts is a significant portion of where recoil comes from.  AR-15's use a lighter form called direct gas impingement whereas AK-47's are piston driven.  The AK has heavier, bulkier moving parts so you get marginally more recoil.  Recoil is also affected by the round itself.  More powder, bigger bullet, etc = more felt recoil.

Bear in mind most games portray AK-47's with completely unrealistic recoil.
From combat arms - and this is relatively TAME for a videogame AK-47.

When really... it's more like this.

OH MAN SO MUCH RECOIL HOW DOES HE HOLD ONTO IT

In context of the Reloaded engine, virtually every gun needs to be brought down to a zero or one value for accuracy.  At WORST a two.

Which brings us to the biggest habitual offender.

SHOTGUNS.

Shotguns in video games are consistently the WORST example of a firearm - EVER.  Even 'accurate' games like battlefield tend to be so woefully inept at portraying them.

For history, the shotgun is designed from revolutionary war-era shooting that basically was "If you can only shoot two or three times a minute, shoot lots of pellets in the hope of hitting.".  The shotgun is a very simple concept.  It's a long tube, typically smoothbore (no rifling) but sometimes includes rifling (for slugs - more on that in a minute) which fires whatever is in the cartridge.  You can shoot all kind of crazy, insane shit out of a shotgun.  Go to this youtube channel if you want a real good idea of just how nuts you can get:  https://www.youtube.com/user/taofledermaus

Your TYPICAL video game shotgun is based on using buckshot.
These are typically 33 caliber (a unit of measurement) pellets (smaller than a 9mm pistol bullet!) arranged in a cartridge with generally nine (standard 12 gauge) or sometimes up to thirteen (12 gauge magnum) pellets per shell.

This is what it looks like:
So firstly, at least get the pellet count right.  No meaningful defense round uses anything less than buckshot (unless they're using an oddball or they're one of those doofuses who uses birdshot).

Next, let's look at the accuracy.  Video game accuracy:


Now this doesn't look COMPLETELY bad right?  I mean .. it's about a three foot circle at 15 feet or so.  You can tell by the width of the body of the badguy and the shots that missed going over his shoulder.  Watch the entire vid for context.

But here's the truth.  Shotguns don't spread out THAT much.  They spread out about this much at fifteen feet:



So as you can see at 5 yards (15 feet) it's a 5 to 6 inch group.  That's literally a 600% over-estimation in group size by even the most tame video game developers.

In reality, most shotguns are effective out to about 35 yards (with buckshot).  I can't find the source but I recall reading that the british had tested it and found that you had a 30% increase in accuracy vs muskets out to this range.  Past that, it was exponentially less effective.

From bearingarms.com

Note - two to three hits in the critical zone(s) at 35 yard range.  So tone down your spread guys :)

Lastly...

Shotguns are not like this:
Yes, that's a real artillery launched nuke.

They don't have THAT kind of power.  Instead, think of it like a small caliber pistol (33 caliber, to be exact) of above average pistol velocity (typically 1300-1600 feet per second for a shotgun, vs 900-1100 for a pistol).  Compare that to say.. an AK-47 which shoots a 32 caliber projectile at 2200-2400 FPS!

So basically they're like shooting someone a small pistol round... up to nine times in one go.

So it looks like this in flesh at around the 10 foot mark:

Hint, it's the fourth one down.


You can clearly see the damage caused by rifles is pretty substantial, just like the shotgun at near point blank range.  So just try to factor that in when you are modeling your games.
I'll save my recommendations for the second part of this article.  Ta-ta for now!

Next time:  Magazines vs Clips, shells vs bullets, casings, slugs, and how to implement into your own games realistic gun configurations!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Gencheff's TGC Store Products

Gencheff lists his location pretty plainly as 'the land of the roses'.  For those without google, that's Bulgaria - which apparently produces a metric ton of roses.  He's produced a significant amount of free models, all of which are of excellent quality.  I'll admit, Gencheff's modelling is among my favorite.  He's got excellent taste in color, a real knack for shaders, and the artistic style is similar to my preference (I.e. on the thinner, grittier modern day side of things).

Gencheff's TGC Store:  http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=131681

There are only a few downsides to Gencheff's store products - firstly, it's slightly higher poly than the engine likes right now.  Until the performance of the engine comes down, it's hard to throw polys around so one must take great care in placing high-poly assets.  It's the price you pay if you want good looking models, in most cases.  Second, his art style lends towards a STALKER-style game.  It might not be up your alley in terms of setting.  Third, and most importantly - there's not enough of it! With only 13 models on the store as of current (admittedly not counting his freely included alternate skins), I find myself wanting more!

What one item can I not live without: Gencheff has a number of great items and his railway pack is not to be overlooked:

Make sure to check it out on the store!

At 6 dollars, USD, it represents a very fair value.  You get a significant variety of railway objects that are of distinctly high quality; the items ARE of high utility though one will probably use them sparingly to avoid killing the currently under-tuned Reloaded game engine.

If you want a SINGLE item suggestion, I recommend this:

Two for one :)

The 'rusty car with interior (2 variants)'.  This car, while likely based on an Eastern European design, is generic enough to be used in any environment.  It's well detailed and comes with two skins.  And point blank it beats the pants off pretty much any other vehicle you'll find in this price range (including TGC's City pack cars, which are acceptable but don't hold a candle to this one).

The bottom line: You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't give Gencheff's offerings a serious look, especially if you're using any kind of modern or post apocalyptic setting.  More offerings from him will help round out his catalog so check his store often for updates!

BSP put another weapon kit out.

A mere few days after writing my piece, BSP's put out a second set of weapons.

There are pistols and what not in there, which make rounding out a full 'custom set' much easier and detracts a lot from my previous negatives of saying that it wouldn't mesh with stock weapons.  They still won't mesh with stock weapons but now you can replace them outright, which makes it less of an issue.




Wow, that's pretty sick that you can remove the silencer on the MK23.  BSP's work is really improving a lot :)

AND IT'S ON SALE.
GRAB IT WHILE IT'S HOT.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Errant AI's TGC Store Products

I already had a review written up for Errant AI, which I had to scrap.  So I'm writing a new one from scratch to better convey my feelings here.  This is on the heels of the latest newsletter, which featured screenshots of his new products.


I must confess a secret love for all things vending machine.  It's.. kind of weird.  If I could have a downstairs room dedicated to vending machines, arcade machines, and pinball... I'd probably never leave it.  It's weird enough that to the point when I would make houses in the old GameCube game "animal crossing" filled to the brim with vending machines.

I'm literally that weird.

So I kind of have a ton of 'free' vending machines.  Some are good (Gencheff's for example), some are mediocre, some are bad.  Some are excellent (cosmic prophet's diner is a must have freebie collection).  

But nothing.. and I mean nothing - compared to Errant AI's (at the time) lone offering on the store:

Mouth status: AGAPE

Impressively low poly count? Check.
High Def textures? Check.
LOD enabled? Double check.

Oh man.  This guy needs more offerings, I thought to myself.  I was simply unprepared for what he was to unleash next.  So with that, I'm cutting right to the chase here.

What one item can I not live without:  The snack attack pack.  Huge savings (50%), massively diverse inventory and of course... sweet, delicious vending machines.

One should play - o_fortuna.mp3 while looking at this bevy of screenshots:

Eventually found a good shot of the whole pack!

Not just one vending machine (snacks, in this case!)

Not two!

BUT THREE. THREE MORE INCREDIBLY WELL TEXTURED VENDING MACHINES!

And that's not all; he also added a ton of products from the vending machines themselves. All of them are perfect - no stolen brand names.  Completely legit texturing from a copyright standpoint, all equally high quality as the vending machines just waiting for your custom collection/inventory scripting.  

There's even more after this, if you can believe it. 21 snack items in all!

Simply the best soda can in the market.



If I had to choose a non-pack item I would pick... a vending machine.  But only at gunpoint.  I mean seriously, the snack attack pack is such a well priced deal you'd be a fool to buy these items individually.  I understand circumstances vary but given the outright quality of these items there's almost no compelling reason I can think of that will stop me from spending 12 dollars to buy the whole kit and caboodle, as it were.

The bottom line: Beg, borrow, or plead - but find a way to purchase this kit.  I eagerly await future offerings from Errant; his art style, use of color, texturing, poly counts... everything are pretty much as top shelf as it gets.