http://www.pocketsizedanimations.com

There have been quite a few new additions since the public version of Black Sierra was released. These new additions consist of a new usable item for players to light up their surroundings for not only their selves, but for those around them too. Upon that, we’ve added in some new areas to the mines, and a handful of improvements to the overall map to allow for greater replayability and challenge, and of course as promised we’ve even updated the player model its self with a higher-quality one.

So the first addition I am going to talk about are revisions to the campaign’s mining map, where new paths have been added to the map. In this new path that’s been merged into the old one, players reach into a darkened room where players have to start up a generator that’s been flooded with water to raise a gate as waves of monsters come into the room. Apart from the new section in the map, the map has had it’s difficulty (mainly in the amount of monsters that spawn) that make Black Sierra a lot more of an action packed game than previously.

Another addition that has been added is a new item for players to use, players now are able to find and pickup flares to use in brightening up rooms. Players can pick up and carry two flares which they can then light, and drop on the floor which will provide an aura of light for everyone around. These flares last for roughly 10 minutes.

The player model is a major improvement from the last which features redone animations, model, and textures. It has a few new selections so players can customize their player slightly (which is being planned to be added on to in further updates) with a few selections such as a helmet, goggles, and a mask.

For those of you who have had any issues with v0.18 we’re happy to announce that some of the annoying bugs from the previous version have been fixed, such as you can adjust your video settings properly now, first person arms show up even if you don’t select a character, and it’s a lot easier to use objects this time around. If you haven’t played Black Sierra already, I would have to highly suggest that you do. If you have, well play it again! Black Sierra won’t release another public build for a couple of months as MSU goes on and we dive hard into working to make sure the next build is very polished and has a lot of content to sink your teeth into. So as this version will be submitted into the Make Something Unreal contest, we hope everyone enjoys it as much as we do. It’s improved greatly since our last public build, since everything is better with more carnage!

Now that it’s downloading, here are a few things to take note. You’ll notice that in the title it’s called an “alpha”. Well let’s just make sure everyone understands that this is still a work in progress modification that is being worked on constantly, so don’t expect a commercial game….yet. Also, there are a few things you’ll notice, first off there are two gametypes to pick from. The first one is Scenario, and the second one is labeled Campaign.

(Campaign)

Scenario: This is simply a “survival” mode. You spawn off with no weapons, and you must search the houses in order to find one. Weapons spawn randomly, and they don’t respawn. So each time you play through there will be different weapon load outs so it’s best to search all over. You’ll have a few minutes in order to find these weapons, and find a place to bunker down (or roam if you are brave enough) before the monsters spawn. Then you pretty much get mauled, and eaten alive. If you happen to survive the timer, you win and get to do it all over again.

(Dusk)

Campaign: Currently Campaign is a little short, but it’s to give everyone the general feel of how it’s going to run out. Campaign is going to be one of the more main focuses of the entire game in updates to come, it’ll take you through a lot of objectives and maps throughout as players try and escape the mountain. For this release, players start at the top of the mountain, in the mining camp. Where they must find the elevator and head into the mines, where they then get attacked, and you get to kill things as you try and escape the mines.

(Campaign)

Player Models are currently an early version, and are also have place holder animations. They’ll be replaced in coming patches as unfortunetly the new model needs to have a redone skeleton/rig due to some issues with the last one. The monster is currently a Krall, which is a standard UT3 monster. This will also be replaced relatively soon, promise. Weapons, currently there are only 3 weapons available, the M4A1 Machine Gun, the Remington 870 Shotgun, and the Colt .45 Pistol. As you can imagine this makes for some rough randomization, as there isn’t enough weapons to go around to make it incredibly unique everytime. Along with everything else, this will also be fixed by adding more weapons, so chances of getting the higher quality M4 will be a lot harder.

(M4 Sights)

We’d also like everyone to know, that in order to get the game working chances are you’ll have to redirect the Black Sierra shortcut that is provided with your download. Just redirect the target to your UT3.exe, which is in your game installation, under Binaries.

We hope everyone enjoys this first release, and we look forward to all the input you’re willing to provide. And in order to keep this modification as enjoyable as possible, we encourage people to post any bugs they may find, and any input in general that pops up on our forums here.

(Dusk – Ammo Box)

And as one last final word, Black Sierra has an official Steam group, if anyone wishes to join us they may do so here. Happy dying.

Installation Instructions

Death System (AKA: Ghost System): When it comes to Black Sierra, we’re aiming for a more traditional style first person shooter. We’re not looking for crazy RTS stat building, perks and weapon unlocking/customization galore. So when it came to dying, we weren’t interested in making a regenerating, or reviving system to keep gameplay going. We wanted it to be like the old days, where you can, and will die. However we didn’t want to kill players off entirely, as maps can get pretty lengthy these days, and if you die early off it does sort of become a bore. So we’ve decided to try a new way of handling death, we call this the Ghost System.

Basically, what happens is everyone has unlimited lives, so when you die, you respawn. However; when this happens, you drop all your weapons where your previous body was, which can then be snagged by team mates, or you can retrieve them after you respawn. Players respawn in a checkpoint based system, which they unlock checkpoints as they progress. Now this is where it gets a bit funky, after you respawn you only spawn with a pistol and a few clips, so you have to find a weapon relatively soon if you wish to live, however after you die you’re marked as a “Ghost”. Now everyone only “lives” once, but can respawn an unlimited time. So once you die, you’re marked as a Ghost from that moment on. When everyone dies at least once to be marked as a Ghost, game over. And the map is reset and players have to start again. However; all hope is not lost as players are able to bring back their “Life” status through Medical packs found throughout the map. A bit confusing to explain, but this allows new players to keep playing as they get use to the game, without completely removing the fear of dying.

Smart Spawning System: This system is designed to keep items, weapons, and ammo random. This spawn system calculates the difficulty setting, all players load outs, their ammo count, as well as map specific restrictions a mapper may set. This allows for multiple things to happen, but most importantly it keeps things fresh. Players can’t rush for the best weapon spawn as it will be completely random, in fact it may spawn nothing at all. So players must keep searching even areas that may not have had anything previously in order to find weapons each new game.

Now those are the two biggies game play wise that’s been introduced lately, there have been quite a bit of additions but we’ll cover those another time. Right now we are planning a release, this week even. Hopefully no later than the weekend, however we don’t have an exact day just yet, we’re currently busy trying to polish some more things including adding in the updated player model.

However, as it stands for the very first release there will be no custom monster. Yes it is actually in the process of being worked on, and there may even be a few glimpses of it during the release post. However it won’t be in-game due to the fact that I wasn’t able to texture it, and then get a complete rig with animations in time for it to be coded, and tested properly. There will be only a few maps to begin with, a small taste of how the campaign will work out in it’s unpolished form, and then a “Scenario” type map where players spawn without weapons, and must search for them before the monster invasion comes running out to feast.

There has been an over-haul to our website. The “About” page has been redone if anyone is interested in a little more information regarding the game in general. Including features, story, and gameplay information not previously mentioned. You can find it here.

Last but not least, here’s a vid one of our testers created. Enjoy.

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

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/.

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.

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’!

I’d like to also mention, that even though our team is still getting things done, we could use a hand here and there. We are getting things covered, but production tends to bog down quite a bit at times, simply because we don’t have the time to do it all at a fast paced. But don’t let that bother you, Black Sierra won’t stop production, and it’ll continue forward. However, the positions that follow are still open.

Texturer – Player Modeler – Coder – Concept Artist