For a while now we have been close to being able to release a playable demo and I’ve been itching to get something online that shows the gameplay coming together since its really fun to play Franky here in the studio and videos don’t cut it anymore for an open, interactive project.
Chris made a small test level for playing Franky, with a range of asset that can be used as modules for making your own levels too!
Pablo (VenomGFX) is working on animations and characters and I have been learning blenders game logic to get Franky to a playable state as well as a few bugfixes and logic brick additions.
Special thanks to Brecht for his amazing GLSL shader work and Benoit Bolsee for writing a new game logic state machine. Thanks also to Mataii for optimizing Franky’s mesh and removing ~1700 triangles .
The response from the last post was overwhelming, We wanted to include peoples wacky animations but I’m afraid this would have set us back yet another day so we will have them included by the next update.
If anyones interested in making their own levels, this is not so hard, just edit the existing terrain, or add a “ground” property to any mesh and use the existing blocks to jump on.
Playing the Game
For this test level you collect and throw nuts, climb up the ledge, glide and run around.
This demo requires a modern graphics card (for Nvidia, 6+ Series for GLSL to work), Blender Apricot-Branch revision 15389 or higher – grab one from www.graphicall.org
Keys
Up, Shift+Up to walk, Pressing Up while hanging climbs.
Left/Right – Turn or Shimmy when hanging.
Spacebar – Throw when you have collected a nut.
K – Kick (no kick objects in example level yet)
Z – Jump, Press twice to double-jump, hold to glide.
Armature driven ShapeKeys in the Game Engine (Thanks to Benoit)
Blenders Shaders in the GameEngine.
Game locic state machine to separate groups of logic into states (more on this later).
Linked Set Scenes from external files to manage game logic in one place.
Simple Camera system that detects obstacles.
Whats Missing
Loop the loop, Climbing tree’s
Enemies
Water
Interactive objects to jump on
Group Instances dont work in the game engine yet
HUD Has to be merged with the new state machine logic
Blenders Bullet physics library needs updating to get anisotropic friction with the ground to work right. Now were working around the problem but side effects are you can run through walls.
Optimizations, Level of Detail
Wont run the the Blender Player yet because its missing Blender.Mathutils module
Sounds haven’t been added into the game logic
Testing on different graphics cards and hardware.
Notes
the franky in this demo has rotated wrists, please use THIS rig for animations.
Their are reports of the game engine crashing with ATI cards, we need to look into this.
As of revision 15426 improvements made by Benoit break jumping. Next test demo will have modified gamelogic to support this.
UPDATE: Tomorrow there will be an update with those animations we’ll be including. Thanks for all the contributions, you guys are doing awesome, keep going! There’s also been a few questions, and here are the answers..
1. Yes you can use 2.46 to animate. To view Frank with glsl you’ll need an apricot build though. You can get one from graphicall.org
2. There is no deadline really
3. You can modify any animations you’d like, even ones that appear finished, if you think you can make it better, but please don’t change anything on the skeleton.
Here is Frank, in all his glsl shaded glory. Pablo has pretty much finished his textures and one of the tricky parts was the tail. I created the tail with the shell method, which means the tail mesh is duplicated multiple times and fattened(alt+s) so that it’s slightly bigger each time, with each outer shell having an alpha texture that is a noise pattern colored by the base color map.
Now, here’s how you can help out. Frank has some animations that haven’t been made yet. We considered working with a few externals like Peach had done, but thought it would be more fun to release Frank to the community and see what you can come up with.
So the deal is, download the blend file here, make some animations, then post a link to the blend file in this post in the comments below. We’ll look at all of the entries and if your animation is awesome, we’ll include it in the game and you’ll get a spot in the credits. We won’t be able to be the director to everyone making animations, so only animators whose work we include will receive a reply. When you post your work, be sure to leave your name and email address. All work that’s sent to us and is included in the game will be released under the same license as the game, Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution.
Some animations we have are placeholders that need to be redone, so look through the actions list in the blend file and find one you think would be fun to redo, and do it. Here’s a list of some of the animations we really need though. As far as style for animation goes, we’re looking for fun and exaggerated animations.
Idle(fun stuff, scratching his ass, etc.)
Jump
Double Jump(front flip, wing flap for boost, etc)
Getting hurt(minor damage)
Getting hit(impacted, rammed into)
Shimmy left and right while hanging on ledge
Falling(dropping down from a high place)
Throwing nuts
The event is a platform and a meeting point for the European games community. NLGD is one of the sponsors of the Apricot game. The NLGD offers a platform to the strongly upcoming game-industry. Too often one tends to think about games as merely games for the youngsters. The NLGD shows by means of activities, publications and events that games and the game-industry have a huge social, economic and cultural impact.
Blender Institute will give short demonstrations on Thursday and Friday in the Expo Village. If you are interested please pass by and on the artists or main developers will give you a demonstration about Blender and Crystal Space. Also Ton Roosendaal will give a presentation on Friday in the Central Museum, de Refter, from 10.45 till 11.30. For more information about the venue, route description and speakers download here the pdf.
Campbell (ideasman42) | 
07 5th, 2008 
