I only have two things to say…..Pretty screenshots. And a freaking in-game video.

Screenshots

Our early build of the game, a WIP obviously. Nirvana – You Know You’re Right

And a test demo of how doors should work in Black Sierra. Pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Okay so I have more to say than just that. As we currently stand, we are aiming for a public demo around August of 2009 in order to enter for the MSU contest, as well as get valuable input from the community. The demo is planned to include 3-4 maps, a handful of weapons, and of course multiplayer coop madness.

On a side note, Black Sierra is now officially one year old, plus like a month or two depending on how you look at it. We were originally going to post a video for our birthday, but got side tracked and decided we’d wait to do it now (which just so happens to be voting time *shifty eyes*).

Now Go Vote! http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-sierra

Hey guys, this week we are going to mix it up some. While in the last post we showed more than enough, this month I’ve been really busy at coding in alot of the features that have me, as well as the team, excited.

Probably the greatest thing I’m excited about is the player count condition. This will allow us to change any of the events in a map depending on how many players there are ingame, and will change dynamically when players enter or leave the game. From the amount of monsters that are in a map, to the way a puzzle can be solved, to a whole other path opening, the possibilites are endless to what can be changed and suited well to the amount of players ingame.

Ammo Giving – This will allow you to look at another player and give them a clip from the weapon you are holding. Very useful when your “spray and pray” friend is always low on ammo. When your not looking at a teammate, the same button can be used to broadcast to everyone on your team the weapon you are carrying and how much ammo it has. Weapon dropping is also possible.

Location – The name of the room your teammates are in will appear on the scoreboard as well as the chat messages they send (much like UT2k4) so you have a rough idea of where they are at all times.

Voice notifications – When teammates are reloading or their health/ammo is low, among other things, they will shout outloud automatically to keep everyone in check.

Health – Teammates health will appear on screen when you look at them, telling you if they are hurt, dying, healthy, etc. so your able to heal them in time.

Medical Satchels – You’ll find many of these item’s scattered about maps, which can be used on you or your teammates.

Objectives – Will appear on the scoreboard so you and your teammates know what needs doing.

There are many other things we are working on to make the coop experience even better.
Aside from that, we are working hard at getting playermodels done, and plan on showing them when they are more complete. Mark has also been working hard at getting us sounds when needed.

Splitscreen Shot

We do need more hands, so if your interested in helping us we have positions open for:
Modelers – We need models ranging from lamps to machinary. Being able to texture them yourself and model vegitation is a plus.
Texturers – We need playermodels, blood and grime decals, as well as other models textured.
Coder – Someone who can code in the more advanced features and has a good amount of knowledge in AI.

Drop us a line on our forum: www.blacksierramod.com/bb/.

After a hectic two months from our previous post, we have finally come back to show you guys what has been going on lately. Even though we did miss last months post, we didn’t stop working. We’ve improved quite a bit of things. With Alex (our player modeler) preparing himself for college, he has sent me the model. After a bit of tweaking to the proportions, and adding some equipment (holster, pouches, radio, etc) myself I was finally able to rig it. And that took A LOT longer than I was anticipating. However; it is fully rigged, and just needs some tweaking to the weight before I can finally get it in-game and animated.

However; in the mean time while I was playing with all sorts of things for the player model. Corey has redone quite a bit of the original mines (now officially labeled: Descent), especially the transition between the natural caves of which the beasts of Black Sierra come from and the man-made-mines in which….were stupid enough to disturb the monsters….idiots.

Corey’s Map

Little Light Static – Micah (Yay!)

Ahem. And in our modding adventures; we’ve come across two modelers who have joined us and have been working hard since the beginning of last month to provide us with assets. Vi and Ryan have already created a variety of things for us to use, Ryan has created things from boilers to medical satchels, and Vi has been working hard on our very own Huey helicopter in which he’s in the process of texturing as of now.

Vi’s Work in Progress Helicopter

In-Game version of the medical satchel
Model/Texture – Ryan

To prove that I actually do things around here.
Animation – Micah

And that pretty sums up this news post.

So, even though Corey and I have been completely hooked on playing Company of Heroes (WW2 RTS) all this month (Who knew listening to British people complain about the rain in a game could be so much fun!) we have some way or another, managed to get quite a bit rolled out in the terms of content. Not only have we managed to improve the gameplay (thanks to a nifty sprint button and other changes), but we’ve also managed to grab ourselves a Player Modeler by the name of Alex. He’s fluent in both Maya and zBrush.

As you can see the model is still a work-in-progress, but the general layout has been handed down to me so I can start the animating process as Alex goes into a more detailed phase of creating the character.

With the addition of a player modeler, and summer getting closer (okay, Summer has nothing to do with it) we’ve put ourselves into a little higher of a gear and started producing more. With tons of improvements to our current map selection, Corey has managed to add a lot of creepier atmosphere and Tyler’s managed to pump out another shotgun (which ironically doesn’t need to be pumped). Added to the list of Black Sierra S.W.A.T weapons (being that it’s selectable at the beginning of the game, rather than findable) is the Benelli M1014 JSS automatic shotgun. Ranging around 4,781 Polies.

On a smaller note, we’d like to just thank everyone for watching the modification and giving such great support. With over 100+ watchers, forum users (you know who you are) and even everyone who’s been interested in joining the team, we’ve had tons of encouragement and support in general.

In our Black Sierra update this month, we have a couple things to mention. One of the nicest changes we’ve made; happens to be the new website we’ve moved to. Yes, yes, we took everyone’s suggestion and got rid of the freewebs site. The new website will allow everyone to access everything all in one easy ad-free environment, this will include all our updates that we have here on Moddb, and some more exclusive information that will follow along the progress of production more closely. In addition to a much cleaner website, we’ve imbedded a new and professional forum in the same place.

As for actual game updates, Black Sierra has fixed the way it handles map switching. We’ve managed to link all maps together which allows for a quick ingame loading time, along with keeping all the information about the player, such as points, health, ammuniton and weaponry thoughout a whole game. This puts players into a position where a more logical approach is required to finish the campaign, as well as giving players a better reason to use team work. If a player rushes into battles, and loses health, his low-state of health will transfer to the next map resulting in higher chances of death later on.

We have also managed to put another weapon in-game, it is an effective fully automatic primary weapon that can be selected at the beginning of the game.

And that pretty much sums up our post this month, we appologize that it’s a little small but we’ve been perfecting a few really big things this month that we’re just not ready to show off yet. However, I promise it’s actually a nice leap forward and it’s coming along very steadily. We are all very hard at work here, and we hope everyone has enjoyed this update. So until next time, keep BSin’!