FortisVenaliter's Dev Blog

The forest

So I had one of those all nighter things. I just kept working on this idea in my head. So, I made a ground. Then I put a stream next to it. Then I made the sky and made the stream pretty and reflective. Then I modelled a tree (Maya is so awesome, albeit intimidating). Then I made leaves and bushes. Then I added 3D sound so you can hear the trickling stream. Then I made the trees and bushes sway. All in one night. Then I slept.

Ah, nostalgia. This project brings me back to my childhood

Been away...

I've been away doing other things for a while, so there hasn't been a lot of progress on the projects you have seen. But check out this screenshot of a project I just got swept up in. I'm not gonna explain it, but isn't it pretty? Make sure to click the image to see it in all it's glory...

Unsigned Lighting Engine

The new Unsigned Lighting Engine supports 10 flashing strobing lights (of multiple types) in real time. Here is an ugly example of it, and this is only 7 lights! You can see the range this will provide for Arena artists... I'll divulge more about arena the updated arena creation tools later.

ASCII FPS is finished!

Here is a screen of the final game!
This game was developed for Nick Gravelyn's XNA7Day contest. Details found on his site: http://xna7day.com/
I will add an upload to it on Sunday, when the contest is over.
Also, I may have a download for an XNA Component that converts any game into ASCII art!

Another Screenshot

Just another Screenshot of the ASCII 3D engine. I really like the way this is heading!

ASCII 3D

As part of Nick Gravelyn's XNA7Day competition, the challenge was to create a game with only text. Here is a preview of my real-time ASCII art 3D engine.

Booty Hunt

From a Studio I've been a part of for a few months, Crazy Tater Games, is a game possibly coming to XBLIG: Booty Hunt. It is a free-roaming 3D Pirate platformer. Check out the screen:

Love for the IList<>

I have discovered a newfound love for the IList<> interface. I use arrays and Lists pretty extensively and the List's ToArray function can be pretty memory inefficient, especially when using structs. Now I can store a list or array in an IList<> and treat them the same! Yay! I have always been a big fan of polymorphism and this is an example of it at its finest.

New Arlington Pub screenshots

Arlington Pub

Here is a little preview of Arlington Pub. A collection of Pub/Bar minigames set in a social environment with Xbox LIVE Avatars.

Wave format recognition

So, for Unsigned vocals, I am trying to come up with a solution in C# with DirectSound that can read microphone input and extract frequency and amplitude. Apparently this is a big subject. No wonder Rock Band isn't perfect. If I can get it to work though, I'll be sure to release the code on the net, as it seems no one else has been able to do it.

Unsigned 2.0

Unsigned 2.0 has been released!

Please visit the Unsigned Site for download links!

Character Customization

A bit of Character Customization!

Unsigned 2.0

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are gearing up towards

Here are just a few of the many new features:
XNA 3.0 with reduced dependancies
Solos
Big Rock Endings
Custom Animated Avatars
Crowds
Better Venue detail
Dynamic Lighting cues

Cool, huh? Here are a few screenshots to tide you over until its release:

Yay Animation!

You programmers out there... you know those features you work on for a few weeks before you can even think about getting them into the game engine? You have to write the framework, build the tools, build the content.... etc. etc. etc. Then you finally get it in... and it is glorious? It is a feature that improves the game's immersion so much and looks so cool that you feel giddy? Yeah, well thats how I feel about AVATAR ANIMATION!

Yes, Unsigned 2.0 will support custom avatars (not so custom for this version, but still a little custom) that respond to you.

In Rock Band and Guitar Hero, the avatars respond to the chart. They strum the note and move their hands based on the note chart. Boooooring! In Unsigned, they respond to your controller input. You play with the frets before the song starts? You see your avatar moving his hand along the neck. You overstrum or hit the drums at the wrong time? Your avatar will too.

I just wish I had an artist to make avatars that dont look like crap. oh well.

One word to sum up this post? "Neato"

Sorry

For those of you who do comment on my postings, thanks! I do read them, and I love to hear from you guys. If you find your post deleted, chances are, I didn't want to. But you may have noticed that I seem to get spam for gold in a certain prolific mmorpg. And there also seems to be a bug in the blog software I'm using that makes it so that when I try to delete one post, it just goes ahead and deletes them all for that entry. Pain in the ass... ><