May 2001
- 31 -
More retroactive action
I'm late in my entries again,
but there's no real reason. I just can't think of much to talk about,
besides my plans for Azenera, so I'll talk about that. I've decided
that the Kavoh cities will be more technologically advanced, and I'll mix
primitive designs with really high-tech stuff. That's actually consistent
with Drakan because the island world levels, populated by goblins, had
the most advanced weapons and fortresses. The orcs will be more militaristic
and have furniture such as beds and tables, like humans. Wartoks
will be nomadic, and will sometimes be accompanied by rogue goblins or
orcs.
The textures and lighting in
the Wisp Cave are almost done now. I've decided to make a big part
of the cave have really dim lighting, but there's a glow staff you can
get so you can see more clearly. It's a lot like the dark caves in
Dragonmech, but now it's not totally impossible to navigate without the
glow staff because it's not pitch black. There aren't very many unlit
sections in the game, so it's not really a big deal. Here's what
the Wisp's chamber will look like.
I used the underwater effect for the entire cave because it looks more mysterious, and also because I didn't want to change the layers around to keep the water vertices from messing up the ground in between areas of the water. I always put ridges in the ceiling of large caves now, because I'm no good with small-scale layer sculpting, I don't want to have to remember all the numbers for gradients, and it's better than making them flat.
I've added a few more caves around
the landscape. There's one in the middle of the level, encased in
a mountain, and there's another one in the highlands. I've also put
in a cave with a new enemy, the Ice Skull, which you need to destroy with
Arokh's breath so you can get one of the two ice keys to open the gate
to the valley of the Ice Giant.
The other ice key will be in a gated area outside the Kavoh city which can be accessed through the cellars. Defeating the Ice Skull will also get you the Ice Sword, while defeating the Ice Giant will get you the dragon's ice weapon. Apparently the western part of Azenera is home to many ice creatures, even though it's in the tropics.
Arokh's Twin has set up a server
for new Drakan single player levels that aren't being accepted by Surreal-News.
I don't know what's up with Surreal-News but it looks like it would pretty
much dead without the forums and news access by forum members. You
can find The Fortress of Unreasonable Darkness here
now.
I'm designing the Kavoh town
in JtA2, and I've decided to give it a mix of a lot of styles. The
outer walls and castle have the same texture and structure as the fortress
from the first level. The buildings themselves are straw and wood
houses like the ones from Auropolis. The furniture so far consists
entirely of the Evil Ballista Base model scaled to different sizes, and
some houses have areas with grass on the floor and vines hanging from the
ceiling. I'm hoping to find some more textures and objects that will
be different enough from the standard human furniture models, but will
look as if they aren't just thrown in there for no good reason, even if
they actually are. I've also started putting in some caves, and I'm
wondering what texture styles to use. I've used the rock walls and
ceiling, dirt floor motif too much already, so I'm thinking of having one
cave with that purple rock texture on the floor and ceiling, and the normal
rock texture for the walls. I could also throw together some underground
city in one of the bigger caves, maybe even in the big cellar I'm putting
under the Kavoh town.
Well, I finally checked out that
demo of No One Lives Forever. It seemed interesting from what I played.
I made a dumb mistake on the training level and didn't save during it,
because I thought I wouldn't have to, and it was getting late at night
so I just went ahead and played the first mission in Morocco. First,
I had to shoot some assassins who were going after a deaf ambassador I
had to protect, and it was kind of funny because he was oblivious to everything
that was happening. Then I went through the hotel, being attacked
by some bad guys, and went into another room, where I shot more assassins
who were trying to kill the ambassador. After that, I went outside
and tried to pick a lock to get to the next area, but that's when my computer
decided to crash. It just totally froze up and I had to reboot.
I don't know if the problem was my computer or the game engine, but I really
hope that was just a fluke and it'll never happen again. The frame
rate wasn't as good as I expected on a Radeon video card, but I had anti-aliasing
on so that might have slowed it down a lot. I use it in Drakan because
it's good for screenshots in 640x480 resolution, but it really slows down
Unreal Tournament if I use it at higher resolutions, and I think it has
been messing up my computer sometimes so I think I'll run the NOLF demo
with anti-aliasing turned off and see if it works better.
JtA2 isn't done yet, but I've
uploaded a single player level made by Douglas442. It's a big file,
10.7 MB total, and it contains a lot of new models, textures, and sounds.
There are serpents, metallic drones, and a lava monster for you to fight,
and you get to take a short trip in a submarine. The level is called
The
Fortress of Unreasonable Darkness.
I can't upload many big levels like this because there's only so much room on my MNInter.net account. If someone else could put this level on another server and I could just link to that file, that would be great. I'd ask Surreal-News, but they wouldn't take the level because it's over 2 MB, and they seem to have abandoned the task of uploading levels altogether.
I'm making use of one of the
parameters of the mountain sky object in JtA2 that's not often used.
Normally, the sky tracks along with the camera no matter where it goes,
but I've made it so it changes height vertically. I had to make it
14 times as big, but it works! I made sure to make the sky scroll
more slowly than the furthest polygons at the maximum fog limit, because
it would look really weird if the background moved as if it was closer
than the foreground. This solves both the problem of polygon pop-in
at ground level and the appearance that there are insanely high mountains
when you're flying. I also worked on the lighting inside the Guranga
underground, and so far it looks good. The primitive-seeming torch
lighting is mixed in with the artificial large blue crystal lighting, once
again creating the strange blend of styles that will be the norm for Azenera.
I found out what the problem
was. I had just closed down Internet Explorer, but instead of closing
completely, the program was crashed in the background with no windows open,
and it was hogging all the resources. Now Unreal Tournament and all
the other programs run fine, but I still think there are way too many programs
running at once on this setup of Windows ME. I haven't solved the
sound card problem yet. After a few days of setting up computers
in their new positions, I have continued with JtA 2, and now I have most
of the Kavoh village structures done. There are only five houses,
a castle, and a pool, but they're really big structures because they're
made with layers, and there's a big area of farmland and gardens near the
village.
Now I've been having problems
with my computer running slowly sometimes. It's a 1 GHz system, but
it has been running like it's an old 133. I just tried to play Unreal
Tournament, and the frame rate was awful even at 640x480 with the antialiasing
off. I tried the timedemo and it told me the frame rate was around
30, but that's a bit deceptive because it was really getting a rate of
about 70 but with pauses every fraction of a second. I think something
might be overheating, but that doesn't make much sense. Nothing is
overclocked on here, so it should work normally! I guess I should
try to find out how to check for overheating problems before something
melts down or stops working altogether.
I set up the computers yesterday
and now my family and I have to set up all the network stuff. We
started today, but we're missing a phone line connector so we have to get
another one. At least most of the work is done now. My new
computer is still having that problem where after I play for a while, the
game plays fine for a while but then starts freezing up for a few seconds
whenever a sound plays! I have a Sound Blaster Live card, and even
with new drivers, it has that problem. It's really annoying and I
wish I knew a way to stop it. I'll be looking for solutions.
Well, I've set up the computers
again and I'm able to update this page once more, with the new entries!
It's been a busy day so I don't have much to say right now, but I've got
the faster computer all set up and I'll be taking it to college next semester.
Meanwhile, I've been trying to think of some good games to get. I've
been thinking about No One Lives Forever, Black and White, or Serious Sam.
I guess I should try out the NOLF demo that I have with me somewhere.
Some of the links on my Drakan page don't work because Surreal-News rearranged
its file directories, so just go to the Surreal-News page if you want them
and I'll upload the files to this site later.
On Wednesday, I had three tests
to take, and an interview test yesterday, so I've been busy studying instead
of working on this page. I also have finals coming up on Monday,
so I have to study for those, and I have to move out of here on Tuesday
so I'll be packing and getting my room cleaned as well. It's kind
of dirty right now and I have a lot of old papers and boxes lying around,
so I have to clean up a bit and figure out what needs to be thrown away.
I've been working on Azenera level 2 some more, and now I have a better
screenshot.
There's a real outside sky now. The alignment and placement still needs a little adjustment, but I think it works well in this situation. I've also textured the mountains using the walkable elements method, which I think works a lot better than doing it by sight because it shows places that are often missed otherwise. This picture shows the new ice secondary attack, which is a weak but rapid-fire ice attack which doesn't drain energy like other breaths. It's meant to be used while recharging your breath, so you're not stuck with no defense. If you miss the homing secondary, and you don't like the poison breath from Drakan single player, you'll be glad to know I've replaced it with a completely different weapon: the flare. The primary flare fires fast missiles of light, and the secondary sends out sparks and a homing flare that latches on to enemies. The mountains still look like tall, thin ridges though, but I'm going to keep it that way because it saves space, it's internally consistent with the landscape so far, and it's not completely unrealistic. I mean, those thin mountains wouldn't necessarily have eroded away by now, would they? Not in Azenera!
I knew it was too good to last.
My FTP access was cut off again, sometime between April 28 and 30.
I'll be bringing this computer home from college so I guess I should kep
on writing this. You'll get to read these updates on May 15 or 16
or whenever I get back home and get this computer all set up again.
There's only a 56K connection there, and I can't be connected to it all
the time, but I prefer a slow connection to the totally arbitrary access
situation the college is giving me. I miss my server access!
You won't be able to read this
right now, but it's still something I think is important to say.
I don't want Journey to Azenera to be hyped at all. This page is
the only place where Azenera news should be, because it's sort of my log
of the whole thing, and if it's hyped up like Daikatana, people will expect
too much from it and be disappointed when, or more likely if, I ever get
it finished. It's been really hard to get motivated to do much of
anything lately. Today I just walked around looking for gatherings
of people, and I found one at Springfest near my current dorm but the rest
of the campus was pretty much deserted. There weren't even the drunken
bums asking for change and cigarettes under that tree in Library Mall like
there were during Earth Day. I've just been doing texturing work
in Guranga Hub (Subterra) on level 2. But on the plus side, I found
an easier way to determine where the textures border between grass and
rock in the huge mountain area outside Guranga Hub.