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2007.08.20:
A few new pictures.
2007.10.09
Good bye... for now.
I failed to recruit a dedicated team, and I can't continue developing the game alone. I had to realize that I can only expect proficient and reliable work if I pay for it. Looking back now, I feel quite naive...
Still, several people offered help, so a big thanks is in order to them. Special thanks goes to SolidSnake, whos help was invaluable, and to Bojana for her support and inspiring artwork.
So now I stop working on MetaBall 2 before I slip deeper into the pit of irrational escalation of commitment. Maybe in the next few years I can save some money for this hobby, and can pay freelancers to help me finish MetaBall 2.
I feel bad about disappointing the fans, so I prepared a bunch of pictures as a "farewell present". Obviously they are not the same as a playable mod, but I hope you like them anyway. :)
I mentioned earlier that on Evacuation maps, enemies might kidnap Tinies. Here is a snapshot of the event: the evil Meatball drags the Tiny (trapped in a ball) toward the nest of the meatballs. These enemies behave much like zombies: they are not too clever but persistent.
Fortunately the player now has the option of switching balls: The EvacBall can drag trapped Tinies to the exit pedestal, and the new SpikyBall can fight enemies by stomping on them with extruded spikes. While the spikes are out, the ball sticks to the ground (wall, ceiling, moving platforms, etc) and can not roll. Also, one must be careful because the Tinies can also be hurt by this ball.
And this is how it looks when the SpikyBall and the MeatBall meet. Well, actually this is just one way it can happen. If the player is not careful enough, then the meatballs might consume him/her.
By the way, I got the idea of Meatballs when a few fans told me that they misread the name of the game at first. :)
MetaBall 2 is a family friendly game, so it will be possible to change the gore and blood to something more presentable to the young audience. For example the meatballs became "left in the fridge for 3 months" kinda meatballs, squirting bluish juice when hit.
Here are the renders of the high poly objects, made with modo 203.
And finally a few stereoscopic images. They were prepared for crossed eye viewing. The technique can be tricky to learn, but there are a few tutorials about it like this, this and this.
IMPORTANT: To avoid eye fatigue and discomfort, rest a few minutes between images.
So that's it. See you later guys and gals. o/
Zoltan
2007.10.08
Interview
www.unreal.fr interviewed me a few days ago. You can read it in english and french.
2007.08.20
Playerstart, Balltar, Evacuation point
I decided to unify the design of the common gameplay elements. This is the playerstart/exit.
These are the high poly renders. As soon as Modo 301 comes out (any day now) you can expect ingame shots of the baked, low poly stuff with the proper particle effects.
The Balltar behaves differently now. Instead of pushing the "Use" button in front of it, you change balls by knocking the one on the pedestal. You instantly jump over, and leave the old ball on the Balltar for future use.
Evacuation mode has changed slightly too. There are only four Tinies to save, and they don't disappear until all of them are on this pedestal, or the time is up. Some maps focus on enemy waves trying to kidnap saved Tinies. Fortunately there is a new, offensive balltype available to overcome those enemies. Stay tuned for details.
2007.08.19
A new UE3 tutorial
Here is a new UnrealEngine3 shader tutorial I wrote: Anti-tiling techniques. It assumes certain familiarity with the shader editor. For great beginner tutorials on this topic visit Hourences tutorial page.
You can find a few other Modo/Unreal related articles in the articles section of my website.
2007.07.27
MetaBall 2 prototype sneak peak #2
I've made a video on basic 2D gameplay:
Basic 2D Gameplay (22.7 Mb, Quicktime)
All multiplayer and certain singleplayer maps will be in this (or a top-down) 2D mode. I also planned a "map builder" game mode where players can build simple 2D multiplayer maps, share with others and play on them.
Unfortunately it turned out that I am the only one left working on the game. While I can more or less manage the art and design side of the game, I simply don't have the experience or the time to make the code myself. So I'm looking for a coder to take over the programming tasks. Although this is a no-budget project, I can offer some $$$, but most importantly I can help out with art and design tasks on the coder's other projects.
If you are an experienced unreal scripter and interested in
this "you help me, I help you" kind of barter, please drop me a mail: zoltan19780512(@t)gmail(d.t)com
2007.06.02
Busy, busy, busy...
Sorry for the late update, but we have done many things in the past two months: we have our first milestone, a few more guys are helping out, got a developer forum, a wiki, SVN...
Today I have two short movies for you about the first version of our weather management and skydome:
Weather matinee (12.5 Mb, Quicktime)
Daily cycle matinee (4.9 Mb, Quicktime)
2007.04.04
New SunIcons
This is one of our prototype levels. Here we test new assets in real life situations.
We have an art director on board, who will supervise the consistent look and feel of the game. The main direction is still steampunk, with medieval bits and pieces.
2007.03.01
A few images
The team size has doubled in the past two months, and we are working restlessly. Let's see a few images.
Without disclosing too much from the story, I can tell you that the following fellow will play a critical role in the game:
We started using xNormal, and excellent object baker application by Santiago Orgaz.
High definition model, rendered in modo:
(99K polygons, 6x2K textures)
Low resolution model in Unreal 3:
(2222 polygons, 1x1K texture)
2007.01.29
MetaBall 2 prototype sneak peak #1: Dexterity mode
We've released a sneak peak of the prototype we are working on. It runs on a modified version of RoboBlitz. Everything was built inside UnrealEd, not a single line of code has been written yet. It lacks the bells and whistles at the moment, but hopefully gives an idea about the dexterity mode. There are two versions, a longer tutorial walkthrough one and a shorter, teaser style one.
Short version (11 Mb, Divx)
Long version (70 Mb, Divx)
2007.01.08
MetaBall 102 without installer
The plain zipped version of 102 can be found in the downloads section.
Ebuild for Gentoo Linux
Paul Bredbury updated the installer script for 102. Thank you for that, Paul. :)
2007.01.06
"Speed maps are full white" fix
If you play Metaball on Linux or use OpenGL drivers on Windows, you will notice that Speed Challenge levels don't work at all, the screen is totally white. There is a solution that might help you: in
/Your_UT2004_Directory/MetaBall/System/metaballUser.ini
add these 2 lines at the very bottom of the file:
[MetaBall.MBallPlayer]
bUseMotionBlur=false
Of course, if you already have a [MetaBall.MBallPlayer] section in your .ini just add the flag (bUseMotionBlur=false) to that section.
2007.01.01
Happy new year to everyone! :)
It has been a long time since the last update, but a lot happened in 2006...
For starters I lost my job, which generally sucks, but on the upside I have time to work on MetaBall2: The four seasons. The result can be seen in the media section on the left. The images there are mostly concept renders, because until recently I had no access to the Unreal 3 engine. Fortunately in november I bought RoboBlitz, and started to move the assets into the engine. Even without any script support I was able to ducktape together some gameplay, which shows why U3 is a big step forward. Forget offset mapping and HDRI. It's the workflow and asset management that kick ass. Hopefully soon I'll be able to show you a short gameplay movie from the prototype.
At the moment we have the team of two: Indy and myself. The roles are as usual: Indy will be coding the game and additional tools, and I do everything else. Unfortunately at this rate we'd finish MetaBall 2 around 2010, so we'd like to hire fellow game developers. We are looking for the following experienced people: an animator,a character artist, an environmental artist, a GUI artist, a sound engineer, two coders and a web designer. Since this is a non profit project we can't pay THAT much, but I'm sure we can reach an agreement when it comes to that. If you would like to join the team please drop me a mail.
What else is here... In the "About" section you can read about MetaBall 2 in detail and under "Downloads" you'll find MetaBall 1.
That's all for now. Stay tuned.
- Hyena -