Life stuff.

Too much going on.  Planning on new updates next week as I catch up.

Valuable Asset's TGC Store Products

Realized it's been a while since I wrote a review so it's time, once again, to put some poor bastard under the microscope.  Today's victim?  Valuable Assets.

Store link: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=35753

I get the feeling I'll be coming back to this store soon.  Valuable assets showed up on my radar about a few weeks ago and I had planned on writing a review earlier but .. he just keeps releasing new things.  It's so regular I could set a clock by it.  By the time of this writing, I'm pretty sure most of what I'll say will be outdated.  That said, there's enough inventory at this point for me to review a large swath of products.

5 packs and a total of 81 products (for now).

Apparently Valuable Assets also goes by the moniker 'teamhalo'.  Apparently under that older moniker he did a lot of art for the FPS Creator (classic) community.  Indeed, his website link from the forum points simply to: http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2262, aka Pack 48 for FPSC Classic.  Google shows me he's also a pretty decent gallery artist as well.  

VA's done a terrific job.  I really like that the textures are clear, yet gritty. They seem of high quality in terms of texture definition and the models themselves fit a very clear theme, which is nice.  Very often I find artists are putting their art all over the place, without direction.  Every single pack thus far plays well of each other pack. 

Looks like where I grew up!

What's the one item I can't live without: This is a hard one.  I really like his grunge city pieces. His trash models are interesting in that they are not decals, but ultimately redundant for my purposes, so that one is out.  The ruined buildings are useful looking, but the utility factor really sits them squarely in a FO3 style environment.  

So really it comes down to price and utility.  The best value for the dollar right now is the blood pack:

Just a fraction of the 31 blood spatters.

Sure, you could say they're all the same (they're not).  But if you have the horror pack or are planning on doing an FPS of any sort - blood is sort of going to be necessary.  There are other blood kits on the store don't compare in quality or type.  This blood looks fantastic and you get a veritable library of crime scene photos.  I really love the attention to the different types of spatter, as well as the dried blood versions.  It'll go really well with the horror kit from TGC.

Yep, that about covers it.  

Pic courtesy of metalinjection.com

The bottom line:  I really can't find enough to say about VA.  He's given three superb free models. He's got excellent, low priced models on the store.  Definitely give him a glance or three.

Current project: AI_NPC.lua

This is my AI NPC code.  It's a pretty simple modification of the NPC code to orient the character towards the player, then spit out some text at them when they hit the use key.

ADD TO global.lua:
+ Code Snippet
nsarray = {}
nsarraymaxvalue = 3
nsarray[1]="test1"
nsarray[2]="test2"
nsarray[3]="test3"
ns_def="Default."

FYI, NS=abbreviation for 'npc string'.
As you can see there's an array max value used to define just how many times our loop should cycle.  Then there's a flag passed to an array index via nsarray.  That flag unfortunately for now had to be the health indicator.  I'll work on the code later so the guy won't die when you shoot him (at least easily) but for now this gets the job done.

Then make an AI_NPC piece:

AI_NPC.lua
+ Code Snippet
-- LUA Script - precede every function and global member with lowercase name of script

-- globals
ai_neutral_state = {}

--Mike's Simple NPC script
--You must set the following global variables:
-- nsarraymaxvalue = 3
-- nsarray[1]="test1"
-- nsarray[2]="test2"
-- nsarray[3]="test3"
-- ns_def="default"  
-- Each of these array values correlate to the health of the object.  
-- More can be used.  Default is fallback if it's out of range.


-- init when level first runs
function ai_npc_init(e)
 CharacterControlUnarmed(e)
 ai_neutral_state[e] = "stood"
end

function ai_npc_main(e)
local hastalkedyet
local NPCm
local NPCh 
NPCh = g_Entity[e]['health']

NPCm = nsarraymaxvalue
hastalkedyet = 0

 -- Detect player distance
 PlayerDist = GetPlayerDistance(e)
   
 -- Always looking at player
 if PlayerDist < 200 then
    LookAtPlayer(e)
   if g_KeyPressE == 1 then
    for NPCi=1, NPCm do
        if g_Entity[e]['health'] == NPCi then
            PromptDuration(nsarray[NPCi],1000)
            hastalkedyet = 1
        end
    end
    if hastalkedyet == 0 then 
       PromptDuration(ns_def,1000)
    end
  end
 end
end

Video Example:

Not the best code, I'll admit.  But it does the job.  Enjoy!

General Banter: Why FPS Creator: Reloaded?

Ok, so I know I said I was going to write something about the differences between writing and making games.  That, however, will take a lot more resources and time than I currently have available.

So instead, I thought I'd focus on why I ended up here with FPS Creator Reloaded instead of a different engine.

Don't get me wrong.  I've worked off and on with a number of engines.  Unity is pretty feature rich, albeit it didn't really 'make sense' in terms of code manipulating objects.  I didn't like the cost either; it was tremendously expensive by my standards and what's worse the game assets available on their store were not cheap either.  I mean pricewise it wasn't unexpected but at the same time it was just a lot to swallow.  If you wanted to make a worthwhile game, you had to shell out 1500 dollars.  That's not the kind of cash I had lying around.  The newer price of a monthly fee is pretty nice though and definitely bore consideration.  75/mo is similar to the structure that other engines use.

The Unreal engine is a similar setup, though vastly cheaper and ironically the industry standard. Currently they're doing a deal for like 20 dollars a month and 5% of your gross revenue.  That's pretty impressive and I may (or most likely) will go to that in due time.   The problem here is one of technical complexity.  This is not the kind of engine you want to bang off your ring rust with.

Prior to this I was very familiar with and comfortable with the Lite-C/Acknex A8 engine.  Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* the A8 Engine.  It's awesome.  So easy to use, the object management is easy to code and intuitive, lite-c is a breeze, etc.  The problems?  Much like Unity, the only version worth a damn is the Pro version.  That's a cool 900 dollars, by the way.  The other huge problem is how absolutely outdated the engine was becoming.  They simply haven't touched it in 3-4 years and without a much needed update, it's simply not worth looking at.

None of the other engines really struck me.  There are plenty of good ones out there, sure, but they just didn't have what I wanted.  A simple, easy to make FPS engine that allowed coding and was reasonably up to date in terms of technology.  That means shaders, terrain, etc.

Enter FPS Creator Reloaded.

FPS Creator has been around a LONG time.  Like ten years long.   It's extremely basic, but it's amazing what has been done from a technical standpoint for a simple engine.  It's also got an extremely long running history where it's been updated over and over.   There have been debacles in the past with the company failing to deliver (FPS Creator X10 was fraught with failure) but overall the core premises in FPS Creator Reloaded were very well thought.  Moreover, the price was right.  I got in the pledging at the top level for eighty dollars.  This was  a steal given the sheer volume of assets I'd be receiving, let alone a shader enabled engine.

So I saw these videos:

And this one:

Both of these intrigued me.  For 80 dollars, I could afford to check it out.  Especially with the lifetime upgrades bundled in.

The engine since then languished after a brief trial period as I waited for further feature deployment. The promise of lifetime upgrades ensured if I simply waited, I'd have what I was looking for.  Now with LUA code implemented, physics, etc it's become a functional enough engine to work with. There's still some glaring faults, but it's saved me massive time in terms of programming an engine myself in lite-c.   The upcoming patch 1.0090 promises massive adjustments in lightmapping, engine performance, etc.  I for one, wait with baited breath.

If in the future I choose to move on to another engine, so be it.  But for 80 dollars what fool couldn't afford to at least keep this constantly improving tool in his toolbox?

Currently the price is 100 for the 'gold' level; if you're interested in a discount coupon, comment or message me.