Jason T Clark.net

After graduating from school this year, I’ve been looking for something new to fill in the void- the learning gap that remains now that classes aren’t taking up my computing time as they have been known to do.  I think I’m ready to (again) delve into creating mods using Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament 3.  I’ve used UT2004 in the past, but from what I hear UT3 is a bit different.  Not only do I have an idea for my own mod, to ramp up I’ve decided to help out on an existing mod by Dan Weiss, called “Unreal Demolition 2′.

As I begin documenting my travels on this journey, note that often times what I write will be notes to self.  If there’s anything that needs further explaination, don’t hesitate to drop me an email or message.  I’ll be sure to clarify where it is needed.  Be on the lookout for two new posts: “Hello UT3″, and “My First Mutator.”

Well, I’ve started working on my first Sketchup build.  As promised, I’ve decided to blog about it.  With no textures, I simply imported a topographical image from Google Earth into Sketchup, then used that as my basis for building out the foot print of my build:

As you can see, the building that I’m trying to make a build of is the *infamous* Cameron indoor stadium, the place where your illustrious Duke Blue Devils call home court.  Currently, the build has no textures applied, since finding outside pictures of the facility has been somewhat difficult.  But, my main dilemma is finding out the proper elevations for the building itself, in an effort to ensure that I’ve got the correct heights for the model.

So next steps for me is finding out how to effectively get reference points for the various heights of the building, and then applying the textures to the individual faces of the build.  If need be, I may just run over to Durham and take the pictures myself.

Stay Tuned!

Meet Verdelizaro.  He’s a dark green carnivore made by…well, me…in Electronic Art’s newest out of this world platform, Spore.  I created this being with the Spore Creature Creator: Trial Edition.  The UI was fairly intuitive, even though it didn’t have all the features that the full version has.  Now in my opinion, I think EA got this right.  For some virtual worlds, when you create an avatar, you feel like you are simply creating a representation of yourself, whether it’s a human-like avatar or not, you’re creating YOU, or as Morpheus would say “the mental representation of your digital self.”  In Spore, it felt more like I was creating a new inhabitant of a new world, but that did NOT represent me in that world- almost like creating a virtual pet.

Now here’s where the novelty comes in- from the Creature Creator you can create a video of your monsters, and upload them to YouTube- nice way to share what you done with the rest of the world. Here’s is Verdelizaro in all his glory, with one of his youngsters:

All in all, it’s worth the download if you have the time to play around.

If anyone here is interested in raising the level of immersion in your virtual worlds or online games, especially those that leverage bots and NPCs, then take a look at this post on gamasutra.com. I found it this morning as I was doing my morning sweep through the game industry sites (as usual) and this one stopped me in my tracks. It takes a look at the idea behind using dialogue and the various forms of communication that have emerged over time with respect to NPCs in games and virtual worlds.

One thing that I thought- environments like Second Life could use more NPCs and bots. Not everyone you run into HAS to be controlled by a warm body. Often times with environments like SL, that touts the idea that everyone you encounter is REAL, isn’t really a selling point for me. For example, there are plenty of virtual stores in Second Life, and upon entering them, you’ll notice that there is no one around, which leaves you to experience that store’s products and services through menu driven screens and text-based dialogue boxes. IMHO, the NPC element adds a level of “warmth” to an otherwise ghost town-like environment, that isn’t very inviting at all if no one is around; breathing or not.

MMO designers get this, but the mission is a bit different from social marketplace environments like SL. Quests are given from NPCs in MMOs, that allow you to experience what the game has to offer on your own to a certain extend. Shop owners are often times NPCs too. This is where I think SL can borrow from. I mean, even in real life, the customer service employees of certain establishments have scripted communications with is customers. This seems to translate well in the metaverse I think for very specific social and business related communique.

But I digress, check out the post if you’re into it…..and by the way, we do cover a bit of this in the Platform Second Life book as well…sorry, shameless plug

Welcome to July everyone…

It’s a been quite a few days since my last post, and it probably will be a few more before my next meaningful blog entry, just because I’ve been heads down on a couple things so allow me to brief you on what my next few posts will be about:

Experimenting with Multiverse Part 4

When this entry posts, I’ll be covering my experiences with creating my own custom world for use with the Multiverse platform.  This is simply a way of informing you folks on how I began getting familar with the asset tools that accompany the server application.

My First Sketchup Build

I really like Sketchup as you can tell from my last post about it.  Next is to try something cool.  And if I can, I’d like to build something worth of uploading to Google Earth.  There are a couple of simple builds that I think are worth of trying out, so be on the lookout for my next post on this.

Unreal Modding again with UE3 and Kismet

Ah yes, back to a familiar form of homebrewed game development- modding.  Since the guys over at 3DBuzz have come out with their next installment of the Unreal modding book which covers modding with Unreal Engine 3, I’d like to get a couple posts on this as well.  I was thinking about this last night, and I have an idea for a level that should be interesting to hammer out…..so be on the lookout for that post in the next few weeks.

iPhone 3G First Impressions

I’ll be getting the new 3G iPhone sometime this month as well (woohoo!), so I know I’ll post something on that too, especially my experience with one of the games for it, like Monkeyball or Spore, so look for that as well.

That is all for now guys.  To the batcave…….