Birth of Legends

Machinima Final

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:59:01 -0500

The conversion from mov to flv caused some odd aspect ratio stuff and added some black borders, but it still looks pretty good. This is my groups' final project for a Machinima class I took this term using the Half-life 2 engine through Garry's Mod.

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Movimento Take2

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:38:45 -0500

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Movimento Part 2 and Take 2

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:05:52 -0500

My final project last term for my Art of Animation class was Movimento Part 2. Sadly, once again the school's renderfarm gave me and my partner many issues. I'll let you determine these issues for yourself:

Movimento

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:34:42 -0500

This was my midterm project for my Art of Animation class. Parts of the movie are rushed due to us running out of time when rendering, but it's pretty good anyway. I'll have a flash version up here later, but for now you can download it here.

Music Fun Continued

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:08:50 -0500

After some input from over seas I expanded upon what I last posted to make version 2: http://birthoflegends.com/audio/First_Mix.mp3 Hope you like it! :) -Mark

Music Fun

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:30:22 -0500

Today I've been experimenting with music editing, so here's a nice little loop I made that sounds nice at 2:30am: http://birthoflegends.com/audio/First_Mix.mp3 -Mark

Karnevil Madness

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:47:08 -0500

I've been meaning to post this here for awhile now and just haven't gotten around to it. My final project for Intro to Game Design this past term was a fun collection of mini-games called Karnevil Madness. Basically your a kid who's trapped in a carnival-like place and have to defeat the evil clowns in various mini-games to escape. The game was made by me and two other students. All of us are considered "Tech" people, with little or no artistic ability, so remember to think about the gameplay more than the graphics :) . There are a few unresolved bugs due to us building our mini-games separately and then squishing them together with an interactive menu screen in the last 15 minutes before it was due (which I made and turned out pretty nice by the way). Also, we forgot to integrate the story line until the last 5 minutes before it was due, but hopefully you won't notice too many typos :) . On another side note, there is a small problem with this version. Version 3.2 had lots of bugs but the load/save menus still worked. In the final version, 3.3, they no longer worked for some unknown reason (we hadn't even looked at that code). What is actually in the download will not be 3.3 but a sort of 3.35, with no extra bug fixes but rather a change of the tier system since the murder-go-round had been a required mini-game to beat originally and suffered from the most problems (making it hard for most people to beat it). Hope you enjoy it! Download rar Download zip -Mark

What I wasn't doing during class...

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:54:46 -0500

Playing with the webcam in my mac is pretty fun :) . .mov download .mov download -Mark

Bursts of energy

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:47:18 -0500

I'm back! I haven't done much here for a while due to school and getting used to a new laptop, but now I finally have something to put up here: Energy Ball Video Flash video is extremely slow here at WPI due to the tech guys throttling flv files, so I'm going to work on some better way of doing this. Streaming web video to come. I'll write another post here later when I'm not in class...
No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac -Mark

Summer Update

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:23:17 -0500

When you have a job it becomes increasingly difficult to find time to do the things you want to do. This summer I've had little to no time to work on games, but I have had some fun with wiimotes. More recently, I've been working on making a movie for this year's Echo Lake Film Festival. I can't reveal much about the movie until after the festival but I can show off this render which will become part of the NorthWest Studios Logo this year: It's early in the morning and I need to start working, so until next time I remember to write something... -Mark

Back to Reality

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:54:58 -0500

Over the past year I've set many deadlines for when certain parts of BOL would be complete. Each one has come and past, some multiple times, and only small progress has actually been made. So, this past week, I looked at what really has been done and what really needs to get done still and found that BOL, besides being a long way from completion, won't really be able to progress until I can get some help from a 3D artist (or artists). Basically, I can't just use placeholders for things anymore because all of the general code is done. So what I'm I planning now? Well, until I can get help from someone else BOL will have to go on a partial break while I work on improving the graphics engine, make more content creation tools so it's easier for people to help me, and figure out where to go now. If an artist steps up today I'd be happy to work on finishing the game. As that seems fairly unlikely, it may be a while. For now I've created a progress page that I'm still in the process of finishing that tries to go into more detail as to what is missing and where I need help. So, where should I go from here? Honestly I'm not really sure. The past few months due to school and other distractions I've spent very little time actually working on BOL. From here I'd like to improve the game engine, make some smaller games, and have something new to show every week. I'm still considering what I want to do with the current BOL update and whether or not now is a good time to release it. If you have any thoughts or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or email me. -Mark

Content Status

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:33:32 -0500

Currently at: ~5%
I'm sure this number will surprise many people, at least it surprised me, but there is really very little that I have to work with. Most of what I do have right now can't be used in the final game because of copyright issues. I currently have about 25-35 good object models (mostly weapons and shields), no good character models (that have rigged skeletons and animations I mean), and a few landscapes that work great by themselves but aren't connected and only make up about 10% of the main continent. The biggest problem as far as this is concerned is that I'm not a good 3D artist and I need help to continue. If anyone wants to help feel free to email me. What I could use: -Concept art -A New Logo -Creature/Character models -Common objects (beds, tables, books, etc.) -Buildings -Animations for characters

Progress

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:23:12 -0500

This page monitors BOL's progress as well as helps me to be more organized and focused in the making of BOL. All percentages and statistics on the current level of progress have been made up and may or may not be good estimates as to what's actually happening. Current Stage: Pre-alpha Currently at: 60% Content: 5% Design: 82% Programming: 53% -Engine: 70% -Client: 35% -Server: 60%

Something to Play/Test

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:23:52 -0500

[Edit 2: I'm sorry for people who downloaded it earlier but I found out at school today that I forgot to include some dlls. They are included now. If you want just the dlls you can ask for them either by commenting here or emailing me. ] [Edit: It's done, you can download it here or at the link to the right. Disclaimer: This is not the game, this is was a test for importing terrain/plants/water. It won't snow at the beach in the actual game, terrain will be smoother, and other stuff... I probably know all the bugs you'll encounter but tell me anyway. Also, if for some reason this doesn't work for you tell me. ] So a few minutes ago I received a phone call from Caleb begging for something to play. And, since I just so happen to be working on maps and new content I thought I'd finally put something up. This is an offline demo because I haven't gotten these maps onto the server yet. This is just a test client, missing many things but there are still all the dev/gm commands (If you want a list of them type "/help" in game). It hasn't been uploaded yet because the folder on my computer is about 3.5 gigs, so I'm still working on getting just a few maps in one folder and working. I'll update this post when it's up. -Mark

Almost Here

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:02:25 -0500

[Edit:] It's not ready for today. I got the client and server to talk to each other again but the character selection page isn't working as planned and it's still crashing randomly at a few points. Maybe tomorrow. [/Edit] The game is almost ready! For alpha testing :) . I figured out that the client is sending the wrong thing to the server, which is in turn sending the wrong thing to the client, which is in turn crashing. But it's really not all that bad. I'll I have to do now is talk it over with them until they can agree. In other news I made a new world map (I found it in a folder today, edited it a little, and then put it here). You can click on it to see the full thing. I've also figured out a working workaround for the whole not having models thing, which you'll find out later. -Mark