Watching “The Man from U.N.C.L.E”
Patterns appearing :
– Woman sidekick changes every episode
– Woman sidekick looks subtly exotic
– If the woman sidekick is a native, Indian, Eskimo, Arab, she’ll fell in love with Illya.
– Whatever place they try to infiltrate, UNCLE agents are spotted by the enemy, instantly
– Illya Kuryakin gets the dirty and/or annoying tasks
– Thrush guards are weak and badly trained, they barely resist to the famous karate shuto technique.
Recently, I became sort of addicted to the competitions organized on www.tigsource.com
Those are short contest (1 month), on various topics, aiming to create a game.
Some games are made with GameMaker, some in Java, some in Flash/AS, some with custom C++ engine, etc.
My contest entry depicts a ship’s cockpit, and more precisely, the Bridge Deck. The view is entirely in realtime 3D, including the cockpit.
All the visual assets in the game were modeled in a more or less accurate way, technically speaking, to focus on the immersion & visual appeal. Zelda Wind Waker was my main inspiration source.
I wrote my game with a friend’s engine, that covers all what it takes to create indie games. The engine was written in C++, but my game is enterely scripted.
The final delivery almost looks like a “game”, with interactivity, and stuff to do.
Now for a short sequence of credits : I did the visuals & scripting, Maf (maf464.free.fr) gave me some Amiga mods I could use, and Mazami Tanzi (www.tanzi.jp) did the (short) Japanese translation.
TO PLAY THE GAME, read below
I included all you need in the archive.
Right click here to download the game.
Choose your language with the left & right keys, select with [CTRL] or [SPACE].
Press spacebar on the title screen to launch the game.
In game controls : <- and -> to control the aim, CTRL to shoot boulders.
Destroy the ships on your route, bit hitting them with the boulders.
If you don’t destroy any of them, they will hold you back and you will never reach the island.
Use the compass to find the direction of the Island.
Lately, I spend some time watching the experiments of some blokes making pixel art with the very own palette of the original NES. This palette is quite limited, thus it forbid absolutely the nice & soft gradients our eyes are accustomed to …
Therefore, I noticed some nice contrasts of blue / orange, in such experiments, nothing revolutionnary, but it reminded me two things :
I checked the facts, and indeed, there IS a violent and gorgeous contrast of blue and orange, especially in that Morimoto’s anime. Then I decided to conjugate these visuals with the so-called “NES Palette”.
The result was beyond my expectations, ‘looks like it was made for it :
And Yet, no tweak at all !!!
Then I tried this palette on my 3D. It required some tweaks, but looks nice :
I have to work with this palette. Period.
I finally put the [Finished] stamp on this thing I had started for the “Bootlet Demake” TIGSource contest, on tigsource.com
It’s all but finished, anyway, I mainly wanted to emulate the very original rendering of a Vectrex, and make a small and playable game. I think I more or less succeeded, so let’s settle on something else.
Credits :
Code / Graphics : Astrofra
Music : Rez (Chiptune.com)
Engine : nEngine (pre-GameStart3D)
To download that thing, click on the link below :
VipeUt-install.zip
Tech Notes:
It should run on a PC, WinXP or Vista, with a rather recent 3D card. Vista users : make sure the UAC is disabled, the engine won’t like it.
During the install, u’ll be prompted to deploy OpenAL. Please install it, unless you already have it, otherwise, the game won’t probably start.
The installer creates two shortcuts on the desktop, one using the full featured renderer (OpenGL 2.0), the other one using a more consusual rendering method, not as pretty but fairly ok.
Controls : use the arrow keys. Up = accelerate, Left & Right to strafe, Down = brake. The paddle is not handled.
The ship have a certain amount of energy, that decreases when colliding against enemies. Then it blows up.
Catch some bonus, that will drive the ship for you (autopilot), or increase your energy (power up). Just drive till the end, for 6 laps, and you’re done
Press ESC to quit the game.
ENJOY!
At long last, I finally managed to get something with this scene. After having almost re-modeled everything, and UV-unfolded the meshes properly, I found how much it was easy to paint the textures in Modo.
Here is it, realtime screenshot, directly from Barr’s nEngine :
Thanks to Jibifaak for the helping hand on Modo.
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“Coin Locker Babies” contains some of the strongest visual evocations I came to read in a novel. Probably because I’m from that generation who experience a morbid fascination for urban ruins and waste lands. Is it the Island where Kiku and Hashi are raised, its abandoned mine and deserted town ? Is it this flat in Tokyo where a crocodile is locked in ? Or probably this solid and wildly dyed vision of Toxitown ? Wikipedia mentions some interesting side facts : “Coin Locker Babies” was the original name of this grand group “The Pillows”. The authors of “Silent Hill 4” might have found they inspiration is the novel. |
Related links :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_Locker_Babies
http://www.urban-exploration.com/
David Ghodsi photography
Yop, nothing to add. That’s all I wanted to say, in rememberance of the nice hours we spent with some friends, dueling in Stunt Car’ with two Amigas linked by a serial cable …
Subsequently, I quickly made a 3D track, remotely inspired by STR’s tracks.
Here’s how it looks like, screenshot in nEngine :
Ain’t it cool ?
Wouldn’t it be nice to make a simple Gravity Force clone, in 3D, with the latest & top-notch 3D/Physic engine ?
The main ship would look like that :
Just made a prop for Panzer Planet : a Steam Mainframe, ie a steam operated large scale computer.
Where’s the steam ? Where’s the computer ? No idea 🙂
Screenshots directly from the 3D engine, btw.
our.sun.is.dying
we.shall.escape.to.survive
please.lead.and.protect.us
to.the.exodus
