Characters

Welcome to 2015

Characters, Customization, Gameplay, Level Design, Programming, Website

If you are still with us, and why wouldn’t you be…. welcome to 2015 with BlackFoot Studios! We have a feeling its going to be a really great year around here so we hope you keep hanging on and enjoy the ride. It’s going to start gaining some speed here soon. 😉

John starting working on the official Ground Branch Steam store page today! That is actually a pretty important milestone as it signals the start of moving into more of a public phase for Ground Branch. On that note, we are looking for some professional (either actual experience or work quality) to help out on the graphics side of things for the page. It’s going to be important to start off with a professional appearance so I’d like to do it right. If you think you would be able to help for reduced rates or even barter a bit, let us know as soon as you can.

We have also got around to setting up a public bug tracker so people can help out by submitting bugs once the demos are available. That is getting tested out by a private group as I type this.

On the game side of things Kris has been busting ass with getting things stable and features more completely implemented. He has also got the first pass of character and weapon configurations in and working. This includes the in game UI and saving/loading out actual constructed configs.

On the art side the existing training maps have received one more pass for visuals and some more detailing work. John has also started working on the main demo map that will be used to show off various gameplay features to get people interested in the upcoming Early Access. Sort of a ‘try before you buy’ for the Early Access. It’s a reworked version of the warehouse map that was shown in the UE3 screenshots and videos. We will use this map as a “proving ground” for gameplay types and features throughout development.

So we hope everyone had a great holiday and safe New Year. It’s time to get back to work!

John & Kris

Ohhhh ahhhh…….

Characters, Gameplay, Weapons

We started working on some nighttime items recently, among many other things, so I thought I would post a quick random screen grab while firing in game at night.

One interesting development thing is how moving to UE4 has been so worth it, but how doing so also takes a lot of time when developing some things. One example is how we pretty much had to completely rebuild how we are doing night vision. The systems engine systems used are so different between UE3 and UE4 the only thing we could move over was the base material. That is actually a good thing though because UE4 allows us to make these systems much more robust and feature rich. It also allows us to make things much easier for modders to add more gear and functionality on top.

The future is definitely bright!

-John

Quick update… leave us alone, we’re working.

Characters, Customization, Gameplay, Kickstarter, Programming, Website

Excuse the lack of updates, meow, but we’re busy and lack the time to do a proper vid/update due to reasons, none of which I will go into right meow.

Even if you have been living under a rock, you should meow that Takedown: Red Sabre is due to be released any day meow. Whether you supported the TD kickstarer or meow, it is great to see a new game in the tactical FPS genre make its way to release meow. There is a discussion on TD currently on meow forums here.

Anyways, as I said, busy, so I don’t have the time right meow to show off anything related to GB. Maybe next week, I can show you something meow.

Also, meow.

-Kris

Achievement unlocked!

Characters, Programming, Weapons

A quick look at some of the new animation and bullet penetration work. Animations are continually being added and refined as well as the transitions between them. This will be an ongoing process until we have everything working perfectly. There is still A LOT of animation work to to, but things are getting there.

Bullet penetration gets some refinement and feature work as well. It still does not take the material into account, but that is coming very soon. The bulk of the work is dealing with the object type (bsp, staticmesh, skeletalmesh etc…) and thickness right now. For characters, player vests will certainly be factored into possible bullet penetration, but we are not exactly sure about pouches and other gear just yet.

Thanks for the continued support…..See you next time!

Smooth and sultry

Characters, Customization, Weapons

A not so quick in-game vid to what we have been up to. Both Kris and John give it a go this time around.

Kris talks a little about packaging the build up to something that isn’t developer related as well as some initial work on patches and bullet penetration code. It’s all rough developer stuff but should give you a taste of where things are going.

John gives a peek into how we are now using a Physically Based Rendering technique inside of Unreal Engine 3. This is very similar to what Unreal Engine 4 and the new Metal Gear Solid Fox Engine use. It’s just a quick intro and not an indepth examination of the technique, so we encourage you to do a little research if you are looking for some more information.

That’s it for now!

Welcome to 2015

Ohhhh ahhhh…….

Quick update… leave us alone, we’re working.

Achievement unlocked!

Smooth and sultry

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