Mod DB profile is up

Hi, I've finally created a mod DB profile for the mod, you can check it out here
Hopefully this should help me form a team. I hope ....

Anyways, I've re-scaled the arwing 1/10th of it's size, and soon I'll re-scale everything else, so this way levels will be bigger. That's a tip I got from the nice folk from the Eternal Silence mod team, who were kind enough to share this with me.

Also, currently each time I run my maps with the arwing on it ( in debug mode ), I trigger an access violation in the physics engine...
Not cool, since I don't have the source code for that lib so I had to step by step debug until I stepped in the code right before the crash, which turns out to be  the code creating the physic model. I'm still working on it

Merry Christmas, guys !

December already! I'm almost done with my schoolwork, I'll resume my work later this month :)

Woops, I'm a little late for my monthly update, sorry.

I'm at 3 weeks from my school project deadline and I'm 30% done, so I'll have to put the mod on hold for a month at least.

Anyways, not much stuff this month, I've been coding a few little thing with the source engine to keep me up to date and keep my skills sharp. At least I've got a good new, Tony Sergi (I hope I spelled it right) the (ex- ?)"source sdk guy" for valve, recently posted in the hlcoder mailing list saying that he was working on a port of the source sdk  template mod to the newer Alien Swarm sdk, but he's doing it out of his free time so he may or may not release it. But it would make my life so much simpler!

I think I'll create a mod on moddb, and post a couple of 3d stuff I've made. It seems that the "don't go public too early" advice from the valve developer community wiki isn't a very practical advice. You can't just go recruiting people like that without any proof you're actually getting some work done. And a moddb profile is probably one of the best way I know of to vouch for my mod.

Not much to say this month, September was incredibly busy for me. But I still try to write at least a little something each days. This way, I won't chicken out on my modding.

College has started once again, and strangely I'm more productive than ever, I mean with the mod, not at school :). I switched my focus to writing, and rewriting some more, instead of pointlessly implementing vague, poorly defined elements. So far, I'd describe my progress as this:

• 20% Story and concept done.
• 2% models and textures done
• 0% levels done
• 5% coding done
• 1% sound effects done
• 0% voice acting done
• 0% Soundtrack done

Anyways, that's a reasonable progress for a one-man team. On the same note, if you want to give me a hand and join the dev team, please send me a e-mail if you're any of these :

• Can read/write English fluently, has some experience in writing (ex: fanfics).
• Can design levels, and has tried lots of different techniques with hammer, or if you're simply somewhat experienced. 
• Can make 3d models and wants to try low poly modeling.
• Can Animate, and/or model high-poly humanoid characters.
• Have experience coding with source, and wouldn't mind giving me some pointers, and or joining the team, and or simply implementing a couple of things.

Just send me an e-mail, if you're interested.

Oh, and you should notice that I made the blog a little bit more visible to search engine, and etc...

I'm stuck with a tough decision. With the release of Alien Swarm, I could make the mod freeware, not requiring any half life games, with the same graphical quality as an orange box mod. Moreover, the user interface would benefit much from switching to Alien Swarm codebase. But, this would mean more work to create basic props, textures, and sounds, since we won't be able to use those from hl2's resources.

Both Alien Swarm and Half-Life 2 Ep2 run on the source engine, which mean that porting is very easy.  However, I don't know the limits of the codebase for Alien Swarm yet. I don't even know yet if I'll be able to use the multiplayer feature of ASW, because of the quirks of the current release of the sdk.

I guess I'll have to find out by testing ASW's limits.

I'm currently completely rewriting my concept docs. I wasn't happy with how vague some things sounded. Because, when I tried to implement those same things, they turned out very badly, because I hadn't thought about every little details like I should have.

Another problem I've got is, I tried to do lots of unrelated parts of the project at the same time. That was a very bad idea. I thought I would be saving time by doing multiple things in parallel, but it turned out that the little I had completed needed to be redone or dropped because I found a better way of doing something.

Oh well, at least I've learned something. I think I'll start from the beginning this time.

By the way, the last source sdk update during e3 pretty much got me stuck for 2 weeks, all this only for Mac compatibility!

Yay, summer vacations

All right, I will be honest with you, I haven't even looked at the mod for over two weeks now.

But, during those last two weeks I was basically living at school, trying to get that stupid matrox image recognition library 7.5 thing working!!! And I was choosing my final project, for next year's computer exposition thing, and let's say my project wasn't easily accepted by the teachers.

Anyways, nothing new, but for now I'll be able to put much more time on the mod!

May update

I'm a little late, but I had to make a better banner! :) Even if the damn layout doesn't like it, inserting a margin on the left of it >:( .

I'm still experimenting with the arwing's controls and on-rail shooting and all-range transition, and made satisfying progress, however I'm at in the last weeks of college before summer, so I'm really busy.

I haven't recruited any team members yet, and I'm wondering if I should submit the mod on moddb, to be more visible for recruitment purpose, however that would essentially make the mod a little too visible for it's current stage. I mean, in most post mortem I've read from other mods, they all agreed it was a mistake to go public too early, and generate unwanted (at this stage) hype. But they all did that mistake and turned somewhat successful...

April update

Added a little pic in the media section. Currently fixing the fighter entity, because of alignment and control problems.

March update

Nobody's reading this, its all right, anyways this blog is mostly a test for now. I've got the basic ship code working but it need some polishing. I completed an important feature wrap-up document. So it's progressing nicely.

Moved

My old host Extrovert host seems to have removed my sfr website from existence. It was only a matter of time given the fact that I signed up back when they offered free accounts... So I decided to create a simple blog here, it's easier to maintain anyways.