96 replies to this topic

[Monophobe]

Thanks animejosse.

Unfortunately, disaster strikes again. The coder who has too much work on his plate and can't give this project the time it needs. So I'm looking for another. I've put a post on Gamedev.net in the hope of finding someone. Anyway, I'm just going to keep on producing the assets and I can atleast make some mockups of how its visuals.

Word of the NiGHT: Bugger

[Monophobe]

Latest:

After yesterday's turn of events I thought sod it and just cracked on. I've got a hell of a lot to do so I can be searching for another coder as I do it.

With that mindset, I figured I'd best start deciding exactly what the level will be. I've had the thought to recreate Spring Valley exactly at times, but not that I've decided it's going to be a score attack game, I figure why not put my own spin on things. It will still resemble Spring Valley in a lot of ways, but doing my own thing gives me a lot more creative freedom.

I'm not going to tell you what any of the set pieces will be, but one of them will basically give the player 2 paths and should work quite nicely if my sketches are right.

With my basic plan on paper, I've started laying out where the "optimal flight path" will lead the player, so that I can start to build my world around it, and work out how high the ground and ceiling will be.

All I can hope is that it plays out in a fun way.

[Mattvideo]

Latest:

After yesterday's turn of events I thought sod it and just cracked on. I've got a hell of a lot to do so I can be searching for another coder as I do it.

With that mindset, I figured I'd best start deciding exactly what the level will be. I've had the thought to recreate Spring Valley exactly at times, but not that I've decided it's going to be a score attack game, I figure why not put my own spin on things. It will still resemble Spring Valley in a lot of ways, but doing my own thing gives me a lot more creative freedom.

I'm not going to tell you what any of the set pieces will be, but one of them will basically give the player 2 paths and should work quite nicely if my sketches are right.

With my basic plan on paper, I've started laying out where the "optimal flight path" will lead the player, so that I can start to build my world around it, and work out how high the ground and ceiling will be.

All I can hope is that it plays out in a fun way.

If only i knew how to code, i would help you out in a heart beat!

This is the greatest thing ever!

[Monophobe]

Blimey, this is a thread resurrection and a half, but for good reason.

Since I last posted I've now been working in the games industry for 2.5yrs and finally feel like I have the skills to re-attempt my plans. Progress will be slow, I have no doubts about that, but I will be reworking any assets I made and working with UDK (Unreal Development Kit) and attempting to do everything by myself (no doubt with the help of answers from a million and one forum posts all over the net).

I only opened UDK for the first time tonight, but so far I've got my old NiGHTS model from 3ds max into the engine with my custom rig and animation working on it. Ignore the artwork as I never did rig it properly, but like I said, since it's the kind of work I now do on a daily basis, that's something I can fix up quickly.

Once I've got a good amount of assets made, I'll make it into a sidescroller on a flat plane (more like a standard platformer). After that I'll aim for flight, and moving on from there, work on making the plane through the level a 3D circuit.

Nothing too exciting to show but thought folk might like to know that I'm back on the case.

[viperxmns]

Welcome back What kinda games you been workin' on? I can't help but be curious.

[Monophobe]

Welcome back What kinda games you been workin' on? I can't help but be curious.

Check my portfolio site linked in my sig I'd rather not turn this into a thread about my professional stuff.

[Ozcrash]

Very good looking model.

I am an animator and a basic-modeler. If you need any help, give me a hola. And hola here means private message.

http://www.youtube.com/OzcrashSoNiC (you can watch my videos im pretty good at rigging and animating)

I can model objects, i can model enviroments too but I haven't examined NiGHTS environments enough to remake the level.

So yeah. That's all. Good luck with ur remake! Btw, it can be really cool if you make a sequel in the style of the real NiGHTS game.

[Noctourne Wonderland]

Hooray! That's great NiGHTS model.

[Monophobe]

Just a little teaser to say that some real progress has been made tonight on the core mechanics of the game. And now that it's 6:45AM o_0 I should get some rest. Thank god its the weekend

[Monophobe]

Well, 4 hours sleep and wierdly I feel ok. Can't leave it at just that comment Hmmm, a shadow? On an elevated surface..... What might that suggest

[Monophobe]

Ok, I know I just posted that pic, but now that I've done and Idle and fly forward anim I can't resist teasing just a bit more.

[Nemoide]

!!!

[Noctourne Wonderland]

Looking good! I don't mean to sound rude, but are those rocks or clouds?

[Monophobe]

Those are rocks from a test level someone else made for tutorial purposes. Plus it's a really cropped view of just NiGHTS shadow.

[Monophobe]

*ahem*.....



(Would like to point out that nothing in terms of visuals I'm showing here is final , and there is lots of use of assets that come with UDK. I'm just showing my proof-of-concepts really. Once I know them game works, then making it look awesome is the fun bit for me).

EDIT: Just realised that might sound like these are just pre-vis type clips. What I mean is that the art will all be new, but what you are seeing is the code I've altered running, and me controlling NiGHTS with a 360 controller.

[Nemoide]

Seriously high-quality stuff!

[Noctourne Wonderland]

That's really well done! It reminds me a bit on Sonic in the Genesis days with a lot more polish.

[iLLViLLAiN]

In before SEGA shuts you down because you're better than them. No, I'm just joking. This looks really cool. The shadow gif is really hypnotic.

[DiGi Valentine]

When i saw someone had posted in this topic again so long after 2007 i had presumed it was just some random n00b coming in to leave a "omg cool!" comment and then bugger off. So this was beyond a surprise to see that you've revived production on this game again.

And needless to say but holy sh!t it looks good! Keep up the good work

[TRiPPY]

Looking really good It's nice when people get past the whole talking thing and actually get down to the hard work. Very few people ever do, so I'd like to encourage you to keep going with this.

One thing I will ask/beg of you is that I've seen very few NiGHTS fan (or recent official) animations of him with the proper gravity in his leg joints. I haven't got a clue how it's coded or anything, I'm just a picky artist >_> But it would be great to see his foot bobbing flappy swimmy thing he does with his toes when flying around so he doesn't stay so rigid. Some swingback weight in his legs if that makes any sense? In the Saturn version he moves about quite a lot while just flying in a straight line. What you have so far is beautiful though and If i could be of any help I'll see what I can do. I'm always really busy but I'm tired of seeing half done NiGHTS projects because people drop off teams or teams dont come together at all. One person can't be expected to make an entire game unless theyre some scary kinda multipurpose genius XD haha So yeah if you want help holler.

[Monophobe]

Know what you mean TRiP. The anims were very quickly done just so I could see that my idle and flying anims were working separately. Any decent reference of what you're getting at is welcome, but when I come to finalise things I'll just load up the Saturn/PS2 versions and take note of what they do. And multi-purpose genius? I think I've proven I am

[Monophobe]

TRiPs post got me thinking about how I can do more than just one anim whilst flying, and all the niceties that the original did. Tonight I've got things set up so I can have as many anims as I like which will get picked at random as you move around. I've also got a bit of slippyness in (so you dont come to an abrupt stop when you let go of the control) and also a downwards drift (a lot harder than just using gravity with the way I've got things setup). I've also got my drill dash in and edited all the controller bindings to use it properly. The only thing really left for the absolute basic movement is self-righting when you don't press anything. This one might take some time :S Still, it's all good. I've gone from never having used UDK about a week or so ago to knowing rather a lot of it

[Noctourne Wonderland]

Having no understanding of game prgramming, this all blows my mind. As the other have said, so much progress on a NiGHTS projects (and in so little time since restarting!) is simply amazing.

[Monophobe]

Hooray! Thanks to a nice chap on the UDK forums and lots of value tweaking, my character now self rights (as in points up) when you don't press a direction. I also fixed the problem I hadn't noticed I'd caused myself. My faked gravity meant that the character was never technically Idle, and so wouldn't play the anim. Instead he would slowly drift down, but play flying animations. So, long ultimately not that productive night, but those things were doing my nut in.

Something more fun next time I work on it I think.

[viperxmns]

Uh, when this is done, I don't suppose there'd be any.. Mac.. compatibility..

Keep it up, that 'level' glimpse is great, and I'll also say I hopes you get NiGHTS's bobbing animations in, as well as the idle stance where he crosses his arm and brings up his knee. *would totally wanna help but is currently useless for 3D stuff*

[iLLViLLAiN]

If my system is unable to run this I will literally build a new PC.

[Monophobe]

Uh, when this is done, I don't suppose there'd be any.. Mac.. compatibility..

Heh, only as far as "use bootcamp and run it in Windows". Other than that no, UDK is Windows only.

Keep it up, that 'level' glimpse is great, and I'll also say I hopes you get NiGHTS's bobbing animations in, as well as the idle stance where he crosses his arm and brings up his knee. *would totally wanna help but is currently useless for 3D stuff*

As I've said, ignore any visuals you've seen. All placeholder whilst I get the gameplay working. Yes, both of those will be in to the best of my animation skills.

If my system is unable to run this I will literally build a new PC.

Blimey, that's a lot of faith to put into my ability. Shouldn't be too intensive, but then I could go mental with it. Way too early to tell, lol.

[iLLViLLAiN]

Blimey, that's a lot of faith to put into my ability. Shouldn't be too intensive, but then I could go mental with it. Way too early to tell, lol.

Ha ha. I get caught in the moment too much.

[Monophobe]

Little update. I now have collectable chips in which add to a counter when collected

[Monophobe]

Feeling really ill today and off work so not much being done. Some minor edits to materials. Background now has a scrolling cloud layer. Post Effects added - Bloom, Depth of Field and a slight purple vignette.

[DiGi Valentine]

You're really going for this, ain't ya? XD This is coming along really nicely.

[Monophobe]

You're really going for this, ain't ya? XD This is coming along really nicely.

Like I said, I've wanted to do this for a very very long time. Piecing together the code is what's taking the real time as it's all new to me. I've had scoring running through my head and figure if I can implement star pickups which give a score, and chips add to the score (I like the idea of seeing how many chips you got as a separate value) and then get a timer in, atleast I have some kind of gameplay. After that links shouldn't be too hard which will be worked into the scoring equation. Not going to worry about hoops for now, but in theory they're just another pickup type.

[Noctourne Wonderland]

Would the rings be done in two parts, one half behind NiGHTS and one half on top? If that's the case, it would just be another pickup item, albeit with extra steps.

[Jof]

This is really amazing looking stuff mate. I hope you're in this for the long haul

[Monophobe]

Would the rings be done in two parts, one half behind NiGHTS and one half on top? If that's the case, it would just be another pickup item, albeit with extra steps.

Not sure what you mean by this.

[Noctourne Wonderland]

Not sure what you mean by this.

Sorry! Reading back, it does make no sense.

I was wonder how you'd do the rings that NiGHTS flies through. My guess is that there would be two sprites involved, one on a layer below NiGHTS and one above, so the two halves come together to create a feeling of depth. Does that make any more more sense?

[Monophobe]

It does... except everything is 3D apart from the HUD There are no sprites, so they will just be 3D objects like everything else

[Noctourne Wonderland]

I knew NiGHTS was 3D but for some reason I thought the backgrounds weren't. I have no idea what logic I was going by there. You deserve extra support for doing all the modeling!

[Monophobe]

Stars and orange rings are in. At the moment they all just add to their own counter, but I'll get around to sorting the scoring out soon (that's probably the hardest code to come :S) Please remember it's all placeholder / first pass artwork, just getting the basics in place. Currently the rings just vanish like the chips and stars, but I'll work out how to add in the animated collapse/expand effect further down the line

[TRAViS]

Oh my good LORD! It's looking great so far, even with the placeholder graphics! I'm a big fan. As for the expand/collapse animation, you could probably just do a simple realtime scale (assuming it's treated as one object/model) and destroy it when it reaches a minimum size threshold.

...I don't suppose you'll be bringing this project open-source?