Wherefore art thou Planetside?

Or more importantly, "Why did they bastardise thou Planetside".

Just recently, I decided to check out the Planetside universe again, for old time kicks, nostalgia and all that parp. I've played thousands of games, wasted countless hours, some not so wasted. Games come and go like bad lovers, and like bad lovers, are forgotten pretty quickly. But just like in life, there's always one you never forget, long to go back to and re-live the experience, one you compare current experiences too but is never beaten. Yes.. I fell in love once, with a game called Planetside.



For those of you who went through a stage of delinquency and have no idea what this game was all about, I'll briefly, and with a biased point of view, explain.

Planetside was an MMOFPS, you levelled up, and unlocked new toys, but when you killed someone, it was your personal skill that did a lot of it. No WOW stat bashing top trumps going on here. It was a universe at war, with tanks, planes, dropships, power-suits, nimble backstabbers, snipers, cars, bases shotguns... etc. Three sides fought for war over different continents of a planet, there were no winning conditions, and continents changed hands daily with a flood of people fighting at all hours. basically, Planetside was the balls...



This story doesn't have a happy ending though. Just when Planetside was losing a few players, Sony decided to spread the battlefields out even more with a shitty cave fighting environment. This turned major conflicts into smaller skirmishes spreading an already thinning populace out even further. Not the end of the world, us players still found fun ways to fight, and then. When just players started coming back, Sony dropped the final hammer blow... MANGA ROBOTZ. Giant shitty unbalanced Noob raping robots, stomped around the battlefields with shitty ainmations. Fueled with rage that Sony had defaced and raped my beautiful lover, I hopped on the band wagon... and quit.



The history of the game aside, I've been thinking a lot recently about the character and vehicle design of planetside, and how, at the time I thought everything looked amazing.

Of course, like any old game, when looking back, everything look pretty pants. But rather than pointing out flaws and handing out negative criticism, which does no one any good, wouldn't it be fun to re-design some of the characters and spaces? I'm finding motivation hard at the moment, so I'm going to combine this new angle with my work. Lets see what I can come up with.

A Just Cause?

10,000ft above a beautiful rainforest, I jump out the pilot's seat of my stolen harrier jet, and freefall towards the dense green canopy. As I sail suicidally though the clouds, I spot a civilian single prop plane flying below me. As I sail nearer to the plane, a grappling hook fires from my wrist, and within seconds I'm standing on the cockpit of the plane staring at the unaware pilot.
Without securing myself, I lift open the cockpit and throw the civillian out - Ha! Take that, as he falls towards certain doom.

I fly the plane towards a large city, the lights emmisive in the nights sky. I see tracers, balls, must not have lost that army chopper, it just took its time. I Jump out the plane, leaving it careering towards a built up skyline. As I fall I accidentally press the space bar and a parachute pops out of no where. Fuck, its a long glide from this height. I detatch the parachute, choosing to free-fall, after all, I've got unlimited parachutes to save some time, after all, I've got unlimited parachutes, its 3:00am and I don't have time to mess around... Wait, its 3:am? Fuck, I'm up at 9, I'd better save.


And that was my first exeperience of the far-fetched experience that is Just Cause 2. And this for me is unusual, as I'm a self-confessed realism geek. Someone once described as 'allergic to fun' choosing rather to simulate a long flight to Chicago, or get into a realistic firefight and shit my virtual pants.

Just Cause 2 is the complete opposite of the realistic games I've conditioned myself to like. For example, on one freefall session, I used 6 parachutes in one drop, but wait... My character doesn't even have a backpack! You come equipped with a grappling hook that will attatch to anything and ninja skills to go with it. You can hijack a commercial Jet mid flight, all in within 4 minutes of each other. And still have time to admire the scenery.


And here's one of the main sticking points of this game for me, the scenery. Some of the views I've experienced within the short time I've played this game have been absolutely breathtaking. Jungles rich with vegetation, sunsets that reflect across shallow seas. haze, fog, volumetric clouds. Its pretty fucking good.

The models look awesome, and the technical skill of the artists is un-disputed. Some of the Normal maps are fantastically sculpted. But I can't help but not quite like the style of some of the vehicles. Some very bland, some tasteless, some just look shit. Its a strange kettle of fish, by trying to make (espeiclaly the militairy) the vehicles unique from any in the real world, the designers have hit a barrier. The style can only be explained as rather boring, big chunky vehicles without many details, and laden with flat surfaces, liek real army vehicles? Hell no, real army vehicles are laden with bits and bobs. But then thats realistic, and this game? Ok so maybe it gets away with that one...



However lacking in taste some of the vehicles are, the game is a beautiful fun fest, guarenteed to keep you occupied like a child for a few hours, and well worth £26.00!

Teresa Green

Lately, I've been looking at... Trees.

After a very informative conversation with a codemasters artist, I learned that the most reliable way into the industry, is environment modelling. From whole maps, to awesome props, its all important, and all goes down well on a CV.

SO, in reply to this, I think it would be prudent to act upon what I've been told, and improve my environment work. And so, I've started with trees, as these are in my opinion, the staple to any environment.

I've spent most of the afternoon running around in Call of Duty, on my own, gawping at the trees and other environment objects, and I've documented some of my findings in the picture below:



As you can see, I've identified three texture maps on the tree (though I suspect there are two different leaf maps, which would bring it to a total of four maps.).
I've also noticed that there are a lot more branches than I usually use, this is a fault on my part, not a more efficient technique. I've also noticed that the artists really know their trees! The placement of the branches and leaves reflect this, the leaves being at the end of the branches, in clusters, and not in the centre of the tree (where there would be no light).
Finally, I noticed the way the artists very rarely used any planes at right angles to the x and y. Almost all leaf clusters are actually two planes at 45 Degrees to the X axis. This means that you cannot 'see though' the planes from the sides.

I've learned a lot from my solo cod game, and will make sure to employ these lessons in a tree project that I am setting myself.

What I'm working on and other good news

I've recently left a MOD team I was working in for about 5 years, in search of pastures new. To be honest, I was a bit fed up of world war 2.

So, sticking to the game engine I know, I've asked to work with 'Project UKF' (United Kingdom Forces). A modern era mod for ArmA2 that focusses on British forces. This is a fantastic mod opportunity for me as being in the TA means reference pictures are never hard to find :)

As my test model, I've been asked to model an HK417 (new 7.62 assault rifle used by the SAS). I've spent about two evenings worth of time working on the model, and here is a work in progress picture:


I'm moving back to uni tomorrow, and I've got to compile my 1st semester presentation, but I hope to get this baby finished as soon as possible.

On other good news, my very late Xmas present came today (literally, my only present... yeah that was a shit christmas). A nice shiny Wacom - intuos 3. Woot, and my goodness is drawing different with a decent Wacom (in comparison to my old Bamboo)/ I sat for a while earlier today and had a bit fo a shape and form experiment, and ended up re-doing the 2d vehicle project!
Here's a pic:


Its a form of future civilian transport, much like a single person car. Its powered by the thruster underneath, and also steered by this thruster. This means it can traverse almost all terrain; water, hills, even air!

...Oh did I say single seater... there are two seats, you just can't see the second... therefore it falls within the brief :P

I've also found some brilliant (IMHO) that really helps me concentrate when working, get a load of these guys, I bring you Ryksopp:



its safe to say I'm obsessed with this song, and this one by Mind.In.A.Box:


Right.. back to work on that 417

Progress on the Character

I've been working on my SelfPortrait character for ages, I've re-done the model twice, and was so transfixed with the computer screen last night, that I stayed up till the road went quiet outside, the birds started tweeting and drunk students stopped walking past the house... Hmmmm... something's odd, what time is it? 5:10AM!

I've never jumped out my seat, slammed the computer off button, and dived to the bed faster, and rather unsurprisingly, I didn't make my 8:30am wake up. Infact, I closed my eyes after turning off the alarm, and woke up at 4PM :(

This, rather frustratingly, means I missed my monday lectures. However, After reading the course structure, I'm going to spend the rest of the day/evening getting on with the relevant work.

But, what of this fabled character? Here is an image of the fella, for those that don't know, he is meant to be a pilot of my airship (vehicle project). Here he is:

Oh Snap! We were meant to be blogging this year?

Whoops

Kinda missed the boat on that one. Well, I'll try to keep this blog updated.

So, new year, new projects, new house, how's it going for me? Sadly I've made the mistake of fully booking an already busy schedule, I can advise that trying to complete a university course, play American Football, and fulfilling my commitment to the TA (Territorial Army), and keeping up with my fitness routine, has been more difficult than I planned (apparently, there are only 7 days in a week! Who would have thought! A week sounded like such a long time.)

HOwever its not all doom and gloom, I've figured out my priorities, and sadly, for now the American Football is going to have to suck an egg, I just don't have the time to be committed.

But screw the boring stuff, what of the course?

The course is coming along nicely, I've recently invested in some very good ZBrush tutorials (yes, thats right, I paid for something!!!) and I'm really enjoying the new projects we are being set, not to mention, I'm finding a love for 2D work, drawing is actually quite fun when you finally start getting better, I think its less stressful, and therefore more fun. I won't deny it though, I am slightly behind, though I have no one to blame but myself.

Right, I'd better be cracking on with some work, I'll talk back soon.

Halftrack WIP

Work has slowly.. much slower than I would like, but steadily been progressing on the M3 Half-track. I'm glad I'm doing this project as there is some rather complicated geometry going on, and its really like a puzzle game trying to get it all right.

Here are some WIP pictures:




On other news, I finally got my sketch pad out and started drawing the other day, which was fun... for the first few minutes, then annoyingly frustrating as nothing seemed to 'click'. A sign possibly, that I am trying to draw logically, rather than visually, something I will experiment with tomorrow evening if I have time.

I've noticed a certain aspect of my personality, a blessing and a curse in equal respect. I tend to experience everything, yet specialize in nothing. I base my actions on my mood, and my mood seems to change multiple times a day. For example, earlier today all I wanted to do was play cricket, sadly the great British weather was raining and generally shit, so I frivolously ate some biscuits and played a game. Before long my mood changed to wanting to work on the half-track, so a quick alt+f4 turned my game off, and I started 3ds max. the M3 loads... but I can't face working on it, I want to do a character, so, after following a similar impulse the previous evening, I load up a .max file of an American Paratrooper, in very early stages. Nah, that's boring, I can't be bothered, I want to do a British para now.

I spend the next 20/30 minutes quickly sketching up an orthographic image of a British paratrooper, but the inspiration has died, I can't even be bothered to scan it in. Oh snap, I just had a totally cool mission idea for ArmA2! I load up ArmA2 and pop into the editor and start making the mission, damn, its going to take ages to play test this, I can't even get past the first bit... I'm not even in the mood anymore.

The story. Sadly, goes on an on. However, there are some positives, this constant stream of 'good ideas' means that I have already done a considerable amount with my life. I've worked in America, then traveled from east to west. I've played just about every MMORPG in existence (but paid for none). I've played almost every game on the market, had flying lessons, and many more. I think its a general lack of a need for closure.

I've got friends, who play a game, and can't rest until it is completed, the need closure. I on the other hand, just want to try a new game to experience it, see what its like, then I'll move on to the next. I've completed a grand total of about 5% of my collection of games. Same goes for my early 3d models. However, I've since learned that finishing a standard model is more important than starting cool ones.

I'm suspicious that this behavioral trait is caused by a combination of tiredness, and waking up late (based on the theory that waking up late makes me lazy for the remainder of the day). I'll set my alarm for 8am, tomorrow, lets see if it changes.