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Archived News | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Current News
| Dec 26, 2005 Game Progress? New Tutorials? |
I've decided we need more practice missing deadlines, so I've planned an update of the Villager's Tale webpage for February 1st. This includes both giving more info about planned gameplay and setting, and visual media like new screenshots and a video. I'm not optimistic on getting all that done in this time period, but wanted to set a goal anyway.
Also, I've been considering adding a programming tutorials section that updates weekly, but just has smaller articles that don't take me long to write and not the longer in-depth tutorials on this page.
I'm on vacation now, so I won't be doing any programming for a couple weeks. Happy New Year.
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| Nov 22, 2005 Kingdoms Creator Page Updated |
We redid a lot of the 3D Kingdoms Creator page. Although generally the same as before, the subpages have been redesigned, and there are some new or changed screenshots. (Just click to enlarge.) In many places the text descriptions have been added to or altered to be more up to date with the actual program. A new subpage, Rendering, has been added, since everybody likes graphics =)
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| Oct 31, 2005 Tutorial now mostly finished |
I figure if I mention HDR, I should put up an example screenshot, so here's another screenshot of the Antiques Dealer, this time with a strong light on him and HDR effects turned on. Someday we'll gather enough interesting new screenshots from the game itself to update the Villager's Tale screenshots page.
I added the 3D editor programming page to my tutorials section. The text is now complete, although I always plan on adding more detail and new subsections in the future. Also, I added a few images because I've never liked the feeling of staring at a huge page of text. Most are well related, but I used the HDR screenshot mentioned above as the header mainly because it looks pretty.
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| Oct 19, 2005 Another Partially finished tutorial =) |
I just put up the beginning of a 3D Editor programming tutorial. It's actually more of a description of 3D Kingdoms Creator, although I do think looking at how other people do things is usually helpful in any area. I'm waiting until it's mostly finished before adding it to the tutorials section of this website. I also just checked my 3DKC page, it looks like it will be time to update it soon, it leaves out a lot of things, and some are out of date.
On the Villager's Tale side of things we're currently doing a lot of work on the animations. I also gave in and added HDR( High-Dynamic-Range ) rendering support for 6800+ cards. One problem is that for best use, levels need to be designed around it, so I don't know how well it will be used. It's still cool to see the occasional bloom from bright objects, and have your "eyes" adjust when move between brighter and darker areas( like stepping into/out of buildings in daytime. )
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It will still be a while before the Villager's Tale page is updated, since we're waiting until we have enough to do a major update. Nevertheless work progresses at a decent pace. Here's a new character screenshot.
I've also started documenting 3D Kingdoms Creator because I figure it should be done, in case I ever find the need for detailed instructions for it. I'm going to use some of the programming documentation as the basis for a general 3D editor programming tutorial, so eventually I'll have an update for the tutorials section.
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| Aug 19, 2005 Villager's Tale Screenshots updated |
There are now new screenshots on the Villager's Tale page. Overall I really like how they turned out. I thought about delaying to get more shots, and so we could do more tweaking on the enviroments and characters, but decided it's better to just get things out, since nothing's ever completely done.
The current target minimum setup for running full detail as used in the new shots at a reasonable framerate is an AMD 2400+ and a GeForce 5900 (or equivalent Pentium or ATI processors.) I've been considering targeting newer graphics cards and CPUs. If I did I should be able to create more impressive visuals, but it would be extra work both for the new stuff, and making sure it scales back to older cards well. And I'm already a bit intimidated by the amount of work involved to create what I want to.
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| Jul 12, 2005 Villager's Tale Screenshots, Characters and Levels |
Who would have guessed that making a modern 3D game is a lot of work? The level editor and game engine are now at a good state, but there's always much more programming that could be done. So I'm going to concentrate more on level design than programming for a while.
The new character models & textures are in good shape too, although a lot of work is still left to be done in creating animations. Here are a couple screenshots of one of the new character models: Screenshot1, Screenshot2, Screenshot3. As soon as enough is done on the levels, we plan on updating the Villager's Tale page with more screenshots.
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| Jun 15, 2005 Villager's Tale |
We seem to be making decent progress on the Villager's Tale. A few updated character and creature models are done, and the game editor/engine has gotten some new features. I still want to do some more work on it before taking the time to do a good webpage update. So for now, there's just this crummy one.
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| May 26, 2005 Working on 3D stuff |
A week ago I created a 3D string object to add to the 3D Kingdoms Creator, so it can be used to create chains or ropes. It looks surprising cool for something not that complicated. The ends can be attached to objects, it's fun to just attach them then drag or rotate the objects and watch the string react by sagging, swinging, or dragging along the ground. Here's a couple screenshots of a chain, I just dropped in a couple boxes to ground things, the shots would look nicer if it was part of a full scene.
Also some work is being done on the Villager's Tale, for instance some of the character models are being revamped. After more is complete we'll update the VT screenshots page with some newer shots, some of which may show a bit more of the game than the ones there.
I'm thinking that I'll do a some work on the unfinished humanoid IK tutorial next month. Since it's already up and incomplete, I might as well just add a little bit to it now and then and upload as soon as there's anything new. No updates yet to the IK tutorial, but I did slightly update the selection tutorial.
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| May 13, 2005 New Tutorials on the Page |
My first tutorial update in years is completed, and now uploaded. Well, I didn't finish everything I was hoping too, but I did get a lot done. As mentioned in the previous news update, the normal mapping tutorial has been updated with some newer information, (and a few grammatical or phrasing errors were corrected.)
There's a new 3D Selection tutorial that's finished, although I plan to go back later and add some diagrams, and maybe clarify a few parts.
My IK tutorial however hasn't been updated beyond the minor stylistic changes I made for all my tutorial pages. I do still think it's possible I'll finish it sometime, since I have worked on the IK system in Kingdoms Creator recently, which has refreshed my memory on the subject.
For the odd sort of person who likes reading about programming (yes, that includes me) I added a random programming thoughts page.
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| May 05, 2005 Working on Tutorials |
I'm now sure there will at least be some kind of tutorial update this month, because I've finished an update of my normal mapping tutorial, although I'm waiting to finish more other stuff in the tutorial category before uploading everything. It has a new section in rendering, some small updates to many sections, a newer screenshot to show normal mapping results, and a small table of contents.
I'm more than half-way through a Selection/3D Math tutorial, so once I get that in postable form I'll update everything on the page. I also made a page where I just jot down random thoughts on programming, which I'll stick in the tutorials section when I update everything.
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| Apr 27, 2005 PHP gallery updated, and miscellaneous work |
I spent almost a full day finishing the basics of my PHP image gallery program, gallery jr+. I'll probably work a little more on this sometime, because unlike my ill-fated perl bulletin-board, there's a chance this one might be useful. (It's already useful to me at least.)
Another day I spent making endgame database code for 4 piece and less endings in checkers. Late in the night I actually managed to get everything working okay, but decided not to upload the program since I'm embarassed by the size of the databases. (Making them small and fast is the time-consuming part.)
Even though it's been years since an update, I still get quite a few visitors to my 3D tutorials. I've been very slowly working on a new tutorial and some slight updating of the old ones. Once I have enough new stuff, I'll upload it. Probably next month some time.
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| Apr 18, 2005 PHP & Photography |
I started a programming page on PHP. It will probably be filed under the Miscellaneous category, and therefore partially hidden, but I've decided that now that it's easy to update the news I'll mention any significant changes to sections of this webpage here.
Yesterday I got back from a one week vacation to New York City. I'd recommend visiting there to anyone, there's a lot to do if you don't mind spending some money. The photographs I used in the PHP sample are all from this trip, so if you're interested in them, you can go directly to the photographs.
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| Apr 08, 2005 The Villager's Tale |
The Villager's Tale website has been updated, it now has some info on the game story, technology, a news section, and some screenshot wallpapers. I'm not sure how often it will be updated, but the game itself is currently our main project. In the future we should have more screenshots and more information about the game for the page.
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| Apr 05, 2005 www.joshhessart.com |
Josh Hess, who has done a lot of the art that's used in programs on this webpage, now has his own site, www.joshhessart.com. You can look at what else he's done, and look at his animation reel, which is almost entirely animated and realtime rendered in 3D Kingdoms Creator. (Max was used for making the 3D models for importing into Kingdoms Creator, and Maya to animate & render the part with the warrior with an arrow through his head talking to the raptor.)
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| Apr 03, 2005 Programs Page Added |
I just added the Programs Page. So the 3dkingdoms.com redesign is pretty much completed. Since I seem to be getting some stuff for the webpage done lately, maybe there's even a chance that I'll finish a couple of the programming tutorials I started and upload them.
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| Mar 31, 2005 Main Webpage Redesigned |
The main 3D Kingdoms page now has a new design. I wrote a page updater & displayer using PHP & MYSQL, so it should be a lot easier to add news entries or new programs. (And hey, if it isn't, I have only myself to blame.) This page updates like a blog now, but I don't plan on frequent news updates. As of this update some of the smaller programs aren't on the webpage yet, but they will be back. I will soon add a separate page with just the programs and descriptions.
Also, the Kingdoms Creator webpage has been updated and is now close to finished, we may even leave it as it is. I've started doing some more work on the program itself too. The Villager's Tale may be our main project soon, there isn't much on its webpage yet though.
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| Mar 24, 2005 New Kingdoms Creator Webpage |
I uploaded the new Kingdom Creator
webpage. It isn't quite done yet, but it's much more up to date
than the old one was. This main page is being redone too. Maybe by
the end of the month we'll be done with webpage stuff and ready to
spend most of our time on making a game.
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| Mar 18, 2005 Webpage Plans |
We're still planning on redoing and updating many parts of
this webpage. Hopefully it will be done soon this time. (There are
a lot of half done parts already.) The Kingdom Creator page is incredibily
out of date and in need of an overhaul. Unfortunately Celso had been
put on pause for a couple months, now we're deciding whether to try
to complete the Celso level or work on the Villager's
Tale.
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