Started to go a bit nuts hanging around the house by myself today, got some good work done this morning but after the big work party late lunch I couldn’t face any more code, so I fired up Max and started plugging away at a model for the escape pod idea I’ve had on the back burner for a while.

This is a pretty good start, there will eventually be an actual bike, it’ll do for a rough implementation to see if the idea is any fun to play.

What was intended to be a quick session to knock up a placeholder model for the Truffle Hunter (a large flying pig that incessantly hunts down the player currently holding the Truffle) turned out an almost complete model. Still needs some texturing but the model turned out better than I planned.

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m going on about… The truffle itself starts out on the track, the hunter doesn’t swing into action till someone accidentally or intentionally runs over it. The truffle can be passed on to another player by ramming their car.

It should add another layer to the racing game play.. now back to the code so I can see it in action!

I present to you the first draft of Dark Dirchie (He was going to called Dirch Vader or Darth Dirchie but I’ve got no idea on the legalities of doing a parody so I figure I’d better air on the side of caution).

He’s going to the number on Dirchie to beat, I’m going to pump up his AI’s elastic banding to the best racing line and boost his karts weight so he’ll be a formidable opponent.

Code wise I’ve added AI Dirchies to fill out the party in single player mode (optionally in multiplayer), this streamlines the game design to only the party mode which narrows the goal posts for me completing the game, but puts more emphasis on me getting the AI “right” to make a compelling single player experience.

I also woke up with a “eureka” moment, as I realised how to solve a bug I introduced into the collision system with my garbage collection optimisation.

We’re getting there.

If anyone has any more suggestions (the sillier the better) leave me a comment?

While I’m waiting for my machines to catch up I thought I’d blog this little doodle from the other night, each character/head type has 3 main art assets, the model and texture as well as a 2D splash.

I’ve been keen to get back into some pencil artwork to get off the computer for a bit so the splashes are going to be like the following, a slightly rough pencil sketch scanned into photoshop for shading and then a splash of colour.

This is what it looks like in Photoshop, you can’t really see it but there’s a slight blue tint to the face, that is to mask the face off from being coloured.

I’ve got a custom pixel shader that tints any part of the picture that is pure gray scale with the Dirchies selected colour.

This is what it looks like in game, I think it has a certain charm to it.

If anyone has any ideas for characters I’m all ears, I’m currently working on a Dirch Vader and Afro Dirchie, I’ll need at least 8 all up.

Over the weekend I took some time to start replacing some of the placeholder graphics for the base Dirchie and Cadillac models. You can see in the screenshot that I’ve still got some smoothing groups to sort out (the outline shading is a bit corrupted on the engines) and the texture res is a bit high (the leopard skin aliases pretty bad).

This is the start of a 6 month push to finish it, time to knuckle down!

With getting up extra early today I finally managed to find some time to sit down for a session with 3DS Max 2010.

This is the result, obviously not textured yet, this is going to replace the place holder Dirchie head in Dirchie Kart. It’s a lot closer to the original concept in my head.

Feels good to finally start replacing the crappy placeholder art… plenty more to go.

Here’s some in game shots of the complete Rim It track, I’m pretty happy with it seeing it’s my first attempt, best of all it has set a strong visual style for the rest of the tracks. It’s quite fun to play, fast and furious, chaotic slidey action.

Unfortunately the AI can’t quite handle the slippery track, they still finish but aren’t very competitive, I might have to add a fiction coefficient element to their algorithm so they rubber band to the best line a little more.

I’m going to try a make a track a week, might be a tough schedule to keep but I’ll give it a crack.

Here’s a progress shot of the Rim It track model, it’s more Sarlacc pit and less anus now, perhaps too much… it’s a fine balance.

It’s early days yet but I started roughing out the first original track for Dirchie Kart this afternoon, it’s a slippery circular track called “Rim It”.  That pouting thing in the middle is going to get teeth and tentacles like the Sarlacc, so people don’t confuse it for something else.

I need to develop a more cartoony style for my texturing, it’s been a while since I’ve done any 3D modeling so I’m sure it’ll all some back to me soon enough.