I haven’t used Blender in a while, but decided to make a render of my old “The Inquisition Is Ever Vigilant” poster. I also think I may have made a grammar mistake in the original, so the text has changed to “We are Ever Vigilant” instead.
I now have some models for the Phishers, and some basic animations for them. Here’s a screenshot of one popping out of a pipe to throw a spear:
And here’s a very quick video of their current animations:
So, in the last two or three weeks, I’ve been working on what will be the first actual level for Spamocalypse. I’m calling this “City Inbound” for now, and the player’s main objective will be to find their way to the backdoor into Tinterwebs Museum. However, I will add objectives, some loot to find, and naturally spammers that are lurching around in a quarantined city.
Here is an initial screenshot. The museum (at 1/2 scale) is in the background, and its main doors will be blocked off by firewalls, preventing the player from waltzing into the museum. That long road to the right of the museum leads to a back door into the museum that the spammers used to get in, and to prevent the player from just walking up to the backdoor, there will be more between their goal and their starting point. That starting point is marked by the selected light (Point Light 8), purely by coincidence.
I had originally planned this level to be half the width it is now, until I saw the full size of the museum model. After scaling that down, it was still too large, so I added the extra sections to the left. I also realised that this was all on one level, so I’ve added some dips and rises to the road to spread things out a bit.
It’s still a work in progress, as I have to add textures and detail to the buildings in the middle, between what I call Museum Street (in front of the Museum) and Loam Road. Most of the buildings between the starting point and Loam Street are still untextured, as I’m still trying to get my head around UV mapping in Blender. I also haven’t got any props or character models yet, but there’s not much point in doing them until I have this done.
I’m not dead, I’m just busy.
I’ve been working on the actual level for Spamocalypse. It’s an abandoned museum/art gallery, whhich I call Tinterwebz Museum. There are two floors and lots of dark corners to hide in. Here’s a screenshot from Unity, with the lighting turned off so you can actually see anything:
The player’s main goal in this level is the Huta Teapot, which the yellow spheroid in the centre and is definitely not based on the Utah teapot. Blender doesn’t have one, but has a model of their mascot Suzanne’s head instead, so I built one to go with it.
The main problem I’ve had, apart from learning how to unwrap UVs in Blender, was trying to get a graphics bug to work. Yes, I’m trying to deliberately introduce a graphics bug. This one is the result of Unity and Blender/3DS Max having different coordinate systems, combined with an object being scaled in a negative direction in Blender/3DS Max. Take any non-primitive shape – e.g. Suzanne in Blender or the Utah teapot in 3DS Max – and scale it in a negative direction, then import it into Unity. It will appear to be turned inside out!
The best way to fix that bug, if you wish to fix it, is to flip the scale of the object so that it is no longer scaled in a negative direction. But I’m planning to use this as a piece of artwork for this level, because it’s too funny to not use! I just need to think of some suitable arty in-universe explanation for how this came about.
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