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I've been neglecting this devlog lately - I'm just too tired 🤔

working on maps is exhausting  😩
I found out that for low poly maps new textures are essential
since the last update about 300 new ones were added 🤔

anyway just some screenshots:

the casino city is so far so good 

a new use for mirros: during hunting for references I seen some casinos put them on the ceiling  🤔 

a regular casino hallway with ugly couches - and let me point out the all new fire extinguisher model 🤔
(also when it explodes it freezes enemies closeby)

new textures for toilets (because that is important) 🤔

an update for the zoom crosshair 🤔

an underpass with a placeholder ad - the plan is to add new ones as I have ideas for them 🤔

making a bus model is hard .. and it still looks horrendous 🤔

I got pretty good at making casino carpets - but i'm  not sure if this skill will come useful in the future 🤔

and I made a lot of fake casino games  (alas they are not playable just decoration) 🤔

anyway that is all for now .. I missed a lot of stuff (e.g. new minecarts and some new enemies)
but then that would be spoilers  👀

until next time  👋

but isnt a vpn just to change ip etc.? oh well 🤔

I'm glad you like it so far 👍
especially nice to get praise from fellow fps makers  🙂
it's an engine built from the ground up (well its built from the previous games engine)  🤔
yea I hear even AAA is taking it easy with military shooters now as there are way too many already  🤔

havent seen a comment from you  in ages (like a week ) har har 🤭 
seriously though what happened?  you lost your pwd? 🤔

I looked it up - the wii was full of weird stuff  😓
it feels kind of redundant because during the whole game you shoot things 🤔

I know - but I just wanted to make sure there are no
misunderstandings if anything happens 🤔

so i'm in crunch mode now
I'm trying to force myself to make at least one new area a day

also I couldn't help myself and added a new gun

I ended up remodelling the sand demons - now they are only 300 triangles

they are now featured as part of a new unplanned boss

at least I don't have trouble making boss arenas

there is still plenty to do though
but more and more things are falling in place  🤔

until next time!  👋

I'm glad you like what you see so far 🙂
the game is quite low on spec demand ..  have you tried the demo?  🤔

unfortunately the only way to merge is to make a new quad 😓
so it involves deleting the  existing quads and making a new quad (press B and select vertices)

BSP (or CSG) was just a tool I thought would making maps easier  
they are not required to be used by any means 🤔
(but you can use it if it feels easier)

the problem was with them that after around 100 operations
or after certain ones the whole BSP breaks and errors start popping up
and turns out that is just the nature of dynamic  BSP and there is no easy fix 😓
(that is why there were groups added for them - and  groups are
BSP 'islands' that don't interact -  but this  only somewhat helped things)

for Zortch 2 levels I don't use the BSP anymore and I just split away or remake rooms now
after you make a lot of levels it just gets in the way   🤔

but you can already replace the tracks with whatever you want (provided they are ogg files 👀)
or just turn off the music volume and start up aphex in the background  🤔

I really just wanted to make a raycaster fps  - something in the spirit of Wolf3D, Catacomb 3D or BlakeStone   🤔 
a started many but this was the only one that got finished in the end  😓
here is a video of some of them (with early footage of LAB at the end)

it's better than anything I came up with for sure 👍
which is why it's so hard to make a sequel or follow up 🤔
among other reasons 😓

I wish I saved some of the ones from flash sites - it would have been interesting to compare what everyone came up with 🤔
it didn't occur to me that they might go away one day 😓

well there was no story on purpose I kind of wanted the raw gameplay to be the main thing and it was meant as a generic game - hence the setting  🤔
and then I didn't add a story later because every flash site back in the day made up their own story and I thought that was more interesting  🤔

they have internal names in the code but not very creative names:

I'm glad you liked it and damn that makes me feel old  😅
I only plan on a engine revamp later on as Birds reported some errors on his laptop 🤔
content wise I don't plan on updates anytime soon 😓

just a quick update (8 days this time if anyone is keeping score)


redrawn some old door textures - nothing really exciting about that


modelled this low poly bomb for one of the bosses



rebaked the prison guard - as I got a lot better at baking thing since the start of the project  🤔


here is a screenshot from the prison level


it's coming along nicely - only thing is I wanted to be at this stage 1 year ago  😓


if you blast a guard its legs just keep on walking around like this 🤔

any resemblance between the guard robots and the robots in LAB are pure coincidence  👀



not quite sure why I insist on this design tbh 🤔

anyway that is it for now
it's all map building, polishing, and figuring out what to cut from now  
this year is a race to the finish  🤔

until next time 👋

the problem with them was that they didn't look good from an fps view ingame 🤔
so for any new gun this dance would start all over from the beginning  😓

sorry I have no idea which year it will it be 😓
with any luck this one  🤔

that is very pimp my ride thinking  🤔
we put a car in your car so you can drive while you drive  👀
(it doesn't sound bad but it's kind of redundant when you can already fire guided missiles 🤔)

that is very optimistic  😓
in the end it's better to be late than to rush out something bad  🤔

nah I'd prefer to complete the thing first   👀

sorry, he already has a voice (well its just mumbling) 😓

yea it's a problem with my texture baking - they came out too flat 😓
I rebaked them since then so hopefully in the final version it won't be such a problem 🤔 

technically I could but in practice it's too much problem 😓
I want to concentrate on finishing it up for singleplayer first no matter what 🤔

happy new year! 🥳
and I have no idea   😓

they are there - kind of 
its just the navigation is for developer thinking
e.g. you change modes with 1-9 and  hold Q and E to bring up menus 
so thing is for me its very convenient
but how to add a beginner mode is the tricky part 🤔

you can experiment around with the level editor (included in 1)
it didn't change much for 2
of course it's not very user friendly  😓
doubt I can make it easier - i'm not good enough  🤔

the cheats are the same as in the first game 🤫

there are already cheats
and there will be a free demo  🤔
(as in a multi level one - the current one is really just a test demo)

just a quick update
there is nothing interesting to make a devlog about right now
just raw work
I've been making textures mostly


only wanted to make new light textures first but things got out of hand  🤔

but this proved to be a good idea - turns out the more textures you got the easier it is to experiment and make new areas

my new approach is to play around with lights


here is my "new invention" - the light crate 
sometimes you have no other ideas but to place a crate at areas - so why not pretend they belong? 🤔



night areas are super easy to get right with lightmaps



and with the new textures I experimented around with some new setpieces

so there you have it .. I'm trying to find a new direction for the levels
because the demo released highlighted plenty of shortcomings with my approach
turns out just adding an automap won't solve things
I still need to figure out a way to hold the hand of players.. without them catching on 🤔

I see you with more silliness next time 👋

it's tricky because they both come with tradeoffs 🤔
with a physics based one interaction with physics objects is easier 
with a kinematic one you get more freedom but all the physics interactions are hacks 

both can be responsive and snappy thought that is only about how input is processed
in that case a very snappy one is easier with kinematic
as with a physics based one the physics take care of deceleration and inertia  🤔
so this may be a strange answer but both is possible and the only difference is which part of the code is hacky and cheats 🤔

another late update
it's getting increasingly hard to post on itch
there seem to be many outages lately

good news is that one big milestone is ready

all the guns are complete!

plus by popular demand this gun wheel was added for quick select
more like a gun ellipse as there were so many of them they didn't all fit 

the latest new weapon is the railgun - after weeks on weeks of modelling and experimenting
I ended up with this very generic looking sci-fi gun

these guns are very challenging - in the end the most important thing is how they look in the fps view 

other guns got redesigns too - this is the new flamethrower
the alt fire was changed to shoot fireballs making it a bit overpowered

some other guns only got their design altered a bit
the citrus juicer (or acid shooting shotgun if you prefer)
now has three barrels on it's end (I simply removed the triangular cap from the old design)

the grenade launcher is more sleek now - almost as if it got a hd update

and finally let me show you the rejected railgun designs:

as you can see unlike many people who work smarter I just work harder   🤔

and now with all the guns finished and all enemy models done it's finally time to concentrate on the levels
so more working hard for me will commence  🤔

until next time 👋

I'm glad you liked them  👍
Nekkrobox was indeed a game jam game  
(for the bad lovecraft themed games jam  🤭)

oh I want to share things with everyone - I just find code to be harder to share (to be useful for others) 😅

that is a good question as I'm not that familiar with unity myself 🤔

usually the character and animations on top is just another object linked to it somehow
i'm not sure what is the best way to set that up in unity though 😓
in the end you are probably better off with one of the bought ones as this was never fully finished  🤔

you would be surprised but this is often the easier route  🙂
but a character controller is always tricky 🤔
this lara is just a sphere floating above the surface  🤫

I tried recently to bring a similar movement to unity :
https://mutantleg.itch.io/otto-takes-on-unity
among other things, I was helping out my friend FreeHawk with his game
and made various experiments - so the code is a bit crude but it might inspire you
I don't really use unity for my own projects
as it just feels so inconvenient to me 🤔

I'm glad you liked it 👍
yes, it was the engine's debut and a complete catastrophe  😓
and it led to me rolling my own level editor later in Nekkrobox
and that was further developed into Zortch
so not all was lost - but this game highlighted the shortcomings very fast 🤔

that was actually the intention but I screwed up 😓

the dinos get placed but their ai attacks anything non-dino before you get to meet them 😭
and get invisibly slaughtered offscreen - greatly reducing enemy count in the last area 🤔

and we are at 3 weeks since the last update
I mostly spent the time tightening up stuff

so I figured I should replace the old shotgun sound and this led to a bunch of other changes
and I remodelled some of the guns

now the rocket launcher feels like it got a hd udpdate - yet its the same high res model 🤔

also I did some optimising this time by only baking and modelling the visible parts 
turns out being lazy and optimising goes hand in hand  👀

the shotgun looks much more neat now

and the machine gun now looks like it means business  🤔

on problem with baking these characters is the lighting
I lost count how many times I rebaked this gal
problem with monochrome is they look very flat from far
this is a problem if you want players to notice them easily  
up close is fine but turns out you only see them up close very rarely
as these gals are always on the move 🤔

the solution was to go for the old trick  or orange-blue  lightning  - this really brings out the shapes of black stuff
and this was inspired by checking how people light up their alien toys - which being full black usually have the same problem 🤔

now I have to rebake all characters though
this new wall head was remodelled recently
and already in for a rebake

I'm being more lazy with lava and other damaging floors
but they still give me a lot of work 
for these mouths I had to write a tool from scratch to generate the animated texture 👀

and finally here is a puzzle that got cut from zortch 1 involving getting large balls to a goal
so far I got one area where I want to use them - and that is why they look like giant billiard balls 🤔

until next time! 👋 

I just find spheres easier to use for slopes and stairs (and the math is simpler)
for player movement they are perfect
I only got problems with the enemy code because they insist getting inside little holes 
- so for first person I found sphere to be better but  for third person capsule would be probably better 🤔 

sure, it's rather simple (in concept 😉):
- first you linetest against the plane the triangle is on (any point on the triangle and the triangles normal)
- then you have the point where you hit the plane
- and you need to find  the closest point on the triangle   to this point
- and then you measure the distance between these two points and if it's below the radius it's a hit

of course it can be done in a more sophisticated way by also doing a linetest for each vertex as if they were spheres etc.
and less sophisticated: just using more than one raycast to check for the floor

what tools are you using btw? would you like example code? 🤔

i'm glad you like them 😎