Here’s a new run-through of the game in the Blender game engine, this time with the music playing in the game, 4x antialiasing, and a decent frame rate. There’s also a multiplayer demo at the end. ENABLE HQ after pressing play.

Seen the massive surge in BGE projects and development after Apricot? We’re trend setting rockstars.

1st Prize to Moraes Junior’s Nut LevelMoraes’s level is really involved with a catapult, ziplines with baskets, lava waterfalls that makes up quite a challenging puzzle. The aim is to collect all the sheep in the level onto a counterweight that enabled a catapult to launch you to the levels end.
2nd Prize to Bruno Franci’s Lighthouse Level Bruno’s level is set on a stunning island with interesting areas explore. The goal is to get to the lighthouse were the game finishes.
3rd Prize to Bradley Wabbersen’s Underworld Level Underworld an example of what you can make with existing props. While its small and not as advanced as the other 2, I’m glad a level like this got in.

Download (complete data files including new levels 180mb)

Or separate levels that can be copied into the existing YoFrankie data files

1. Nut Level (11mb)
2. Lighthouse Level (9mb)
3. Underworld Level (0.1mb)

Installing the separate levels
Extract the zip and enter the directory, copy everything (levels, textures, etc) into the original YoFrankie BGE folder released on the DVD or downloaded on-line.
You can start YoFrankie from the menu and these levels will be available from the small level selector world.

These levels will be included with the next release of YoFrankie which will be updated for Blender 2.49.

Bugs
All the levels have some glitches that need to be resolved. Since this competition is for level design, I accept that level logic and scripts will need tweaking, this can be worked out before inclusion in the next release.

*Update* Created a list of things to fix in the levels.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Org:Bf-institute/ApricotTODO
If anyones interested in helping with these edits and general level maintenance, please mail me ([email protected]).

*Update* The levels are now in the subversion repository with all the other YoFrankie files.
If you have svn installed grab them with “svn checkout https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/yofrankie”, or with tortoisesvn on windows.

Thanks for the hard work guys!

Its close to release and were finalizing the levels, cleaning up the files and removing smaller glitches. however there are some things that we didn’t post about because we were too busy.
Behind the exciting GLSL shaders, along with the funny animations and pretty scenery we did manage to get some gameplay in.
Here’s a video of the game Chris and myself recorded, showing some of the gameplay you can expect to see.

It might also come as news to some of you that you can play a second player – Momo – Thanks to Moraes Junior ‘mangojambo’ for making the character and all animations to match Frankies.

For more information on gamelogic and examples the DVD will include , see the ApricotBgeLogic Wiki

Apricot Gameplay

Download the OGG Theora (32meg)
Youtube video

As on special request (thanks for the hint Bart!) I decided to organize a small party for the last Apricoters (Chris & Pablo & Brecht). Just intimous, for those who were involved and dropping in regular anyway! But nevertheless, it was awesome and give the team the right incentive and drive to make the final presentation a perfect premiere!

In the vimeo clip you can see a complete 6 minute walk-through the main  game levels. This, plus more goodies is going to be finalized on the DVD. Hopefully in 2 weeks it’s ready for print. End of september we then can ship it to everyone!

by the way! you can start pimping your desktop with our quick-made wallpapers :), check them out!
This is PSP sized, needed to do it 🙂

Wallpaper: 800×600
Wallpaper: 1024×768
Wallpaper: 1280×800
Wallpaper: 1280×1024
Wallpaper: 1680×1050

Chris flies back tomorrow, Pablo the day after…. <sob>. Thanks Chris, thanks Pablo, you’ve been great to work with! Good luck!

-Ton-

So.. the project is coming to an end. 🙁 Today is 10th, Chris’ flight is August 30th, and mine is 31th, that makes 20 days of work from now, we made a daily schedule till the very last day.

With the time we have from now, we managed to split it in a way we could continue wrapping up the game, and still have enough time to invest in the most important aspect of the Apricot Open Game Project, Documentation!

Basically, on my side I will be working one more week (next one) in the game itself, then move completely to work full day on Tutorials/Documentation (the week after), then the last week will be for making the design for the DVD and content. On Chris’ side, he will work on the game for a bit more, since now there is mostly work to do in the Logic/Python and special effects, something he is very good on 🙂 with the online help of Campbell who is working from home back in Australia, he’s the most busy of all of us i think, among all the additions to Blender and fixes, he made literally magic with the logic, making the gameplay a charm, oh and by the way he already got the BlenderPlayer to work! So Runtimes are possible now with GLSL and complicated Python stuff (Mathutils), all in one double-click-and-run file! 😀

So, as said before, the most important aspect of the project is Documentation, because “ok.. is very nice to have this little game and characters and everything, now you say we could make our own levels and expand the game with more episodes, but how do you expect us to do that?”, and not only that, because you, the people, the main sponsors, need to have something back for your support, not only the finished game but a lot of documentation and tutorials up-to-date with all the new features in Blender, and clear instructions in how to proceed to make new stuff.

At this point, thinking about the DVD content, what is the best way to keep this project as open as it is now? and make it *more* open?, let’s ask them what they want to have in the DVD!, we are not making it for ourselves, we are making it for them!.

So here is the list of tutorials we have in mind till now, tell us what you think about them and drop any suggestions for new ones. We have scheduled to work on them the week after this one, so there is time to think about.

Me (Pablo):

• Lighting: Baking Lightmaps, AAO, Shadows..
• Characters: Pipeline, how to make from scratch the modeling, texturing, simple rigging, shapekeys (ipodrivers) in real time, linking. Tips.
• Overview through new features (there are so many! in UV editor, mesh editing, animation wise, GLSL and sooo on). Tips & Tricks.
• Logo?

Chris:

• Trees: *huge* topic in Game development, making trees from scratch, texturing them, optimizations.
• Extend YoFrankie!: Explanation in what you need to make a new level, put all the assets on, enemies, power-ups, making ledges to grab on, loop-the-loops, and sooo on.
• Overview through new features in the BGE, GLSL, splatting, etc.

Campbell:

• Overview of Frankie’s logic – Explain each state, property and object in frankies group.
• Break Frankie’s logic into 5-10 blend files each with an element of frankies logic, so its not as confusing.
• Tutorial on adding a new action – we have tailwhip, kick, throw, you might want to add another
• Enemies, overview of their logic – how to use the same logic for multiple enemies, adding some variation.
• New features in logic bricks and python api, and now we used them.
• If this doesn’t take too long Ill go into details for the enemies and do some screencasts too.
• There is some overlap with game logic and level design, Chris and I will share this.

Now is your turn to tell us what you think about this list, and don’t hesitate in leaving your suggestions for more tutorials/documentation.

On the Crystal Space side, Dariusz and Frank already made tutorials, that you will find in the DVD, covering Scripting (main character, NPC’s, interaction), Linking, Shaders making, and so on.
But feel free to suggest/request CS-related tutorials anyway. There’s some chance Frank or Dariusz might have time for them.

Is your DVD! you choose what to have inside, and if it is still not yours, go grab your copy here! and support this project, by the way the new Yo Frankie! t-shirts are already in the e-shop, among with the brand new design for the Blender ones. 🙂

That’s all folks! 🙂
venomgfx

PS: First picture: my schedule, slowly starts to get more annotations on it, next to it is my Pocoyo toy I got back in Barcelona, and the reason why I’m awake most of the time.. Coffee!, Red Bull and the nice caffeine gums I got from the guys in Denmark (yes, they are legal).