New mission in the works.

[Ben K]

Takes months between updates. hehe

I'll resume work on this fairly shortly, got a model to bake onto a low-poly for Sirius and then we're on to this... it's going to be an interesting project to manage because the end result isn't going to play much like Descent but it'll be a good step into the complexities required for the UT3 engine.

I did finally get the forcefield texture working along with all the other textures of the base shell, except for a large screen that I'll build some states for in Photoshop once I know how the scripting is going to work. First up I'll just put together some doors and static objects, then continue with getting the shells done for the other levels. I figure if I work up from there, we'll have something playable sooner rather than later, and I can start building robots and player ships while we have D2 placeholders to work with on the gameplay side.

[karx11erx]

You are building a Descent mod for the Unreal 3 engine?

[Ben K]

That's the plan, anyway. If a better engine comes along in the meanwhile then we can use that.

[karx11erx]

Need a coder?

[Ben K]

Yes, and hopefully sooner rather than later. D2 levels used to be so much simpler before I started using cubes like this.

Started working on this again. I have to get with Sirius regarding the makeup of this thing. With Year of the Tiger we came to the conclusion that static objects should be used very, very carefully.

[karx11erx]

If you will be going to create a Descent mod based on the Unreal Engine and you need a coder, you can count me in.

[Ben K]

It has been a fair while since I've checked in on D2X-XL in general. Nearly three and a half years since I actually completed any designs for it, with the exception of a tiger hybridised into a totally different animal with a sex change.

At this point in time, I think the chances of completing the solo project I started soon after TEW are gone. I had a little more free time then - I was only working occasionally. Three months after TEW came out, I managed to get a job with regular hours and have been studying part time as well. That's not the core of it, though - I still have enough time to do a robot model every two days, easily. I just have no interest in doing so today. I don't play Descent anymore, and of the few of my contacts who have even heard of Descent, none of them are talking about it anymore either. So, it's dropped off my radar.

Making things for games has been a hobby of mine for a while, albeit a neglected one recently. I'm looking at where I go to next, and the plan was always to finish off this one last D2 set first.

It was always going to be fairly ambitious, though never completely out of reach. I planned to do something that could scale as I went along - I had a plot sketched out, seven levels that could be completed, textured, and populated by robots, and then if I was still up to the challenge I'd carry on to make new models with new textures, give the whole level set a different weapon balance, change the player ship, throw in some triggers that haven't been seen before in D2, add mission objectives and messages like D3 had, and if I got through all that, maybe even animate the briefings. All within my ability, given time.
But, despite starting at the very bottom, that hasn't happened. After initially making good progress, I've got to the point where I open up DLE-XP and I'm already bored. I'm no longer looking forward to the finished product.

Solo projects tend to run that risk, I think. It helps to have people to work with and keep things fresh, but what I planned to do with this set was so unusual that I didn't think it'd work - I'd just end up confusing them and making more work for myself.

Well, at this point it's irrelevant. Question is, do I leave this behind and start dabbling in other games, or do I open the project to the community like TEW and see what happens?

[darkflamewolf]

Open it up, with guidelines on what you 'wish' to see happen to it. And then let the community decide/figure it out. I'm sure we would all be respectful of your vision and try to match it the best we could within our given abilities.

[karx11erx]

Pretty rhetorical question, eh?

Open it up, of course.