Constructions

This month was mostly about design and construction. I first designed the mission I wanted as below. It involves having humans ferry supplies to a rocket from the store house, and troops resupply to control points, to protect the humans, while the aliens attack.

In the screen about mid-way down this sketch you can see shields, humans etc. You need the humans to resupply your ammo and shielf depots, and also you need to stop aliens from grabbing your humans, otherwise the rocket never gets launched. I'll be interested to see how this plays out, as it will require some careful balancing. [MORE BELOW THIS PIC]

Next I sketched up a control tower and then proceeded to build it in Constructor. It's only just started and so I've placed a copy in the game for reference. There will be several styles of buildings and you will be able to enter them on foot (presumably so can the aliens). I'm going to use textures and objects from Dexsoft.

I've also been working on vehicles. I needed a space truck to ferry parts and troops so I sketched a few designs and iterated upon it until I had something I liked. I've only done the front, but the plan is to make it like a truck rig that can pull a bunch of different trailers, ranging from cargo to missile launchers.

Finally I had a paradigm shift in game design. When I saw the IAV pack coming out, I knew I should probably shift directions. I like conventional vehicles and weapons, so I want to model those now. So instead of space ships for the humans I'm going to make modern day stuff. Should be an interesting mix and pays hommage to Independence Day.

Here's the CV63 Kitty Hawk boxed modelled 1 hour in. I will post more progress over the next month as I have more time during the holidays to work on the game. It looks butt ugly I know, but what I've done is got the dimension accurate, and have started with boxes. I will iterate on them and add more and more details as the modelling progresses. I am going for a balance between realism, texturing to cover fine details and enough detail to satisfy a shooter, but also allow the player to land on it. More soon.