I noticed it. I liked it too, and I would like to see Tango Down arise with some of these features saw in Insurgency, like lethality of shots, and strategy-focused gamemodes.

Insurgency, good game, and just as easy to map for as tce, also a few mods and alot of custom content for it. I would describe it as TC:e on source.

Hi guys & gals,

Insurgency and Tango Down
Well, if you mean by lethality of shots, that you don't have to waste half a clip of ammo to
ice someone, then yes Place a well aimed shot in the head or upper torso and they're
gone. Insurgency has a very different mapping principle to TC:E as it has more open areas
and things are sized differently.

Tactics is also needed in the gamemode 'Stand your ground', one life gamemode that
compares to a SWAT raid I guess. Terro team must defend a part of a building or in case of
map 'The lighthouse' a complete building from invading Spec forces. Sadly for now, we only
got 2 maps for that gametype, but expect more in due time.

Prepping a few short video tutorials
Im keeping them as short as possible, so even the most A.D.D. person can follow.

1) How to make a basic building
2) How to make a building from floor plans
3) How to make an building with inner and outtershells
4) T and L shaped roofs, tips and tricks for modelling
5) UV mapping and telling it where materials go
6) How to put it into UDK
7) Map layout principles

I might do a little bit of the UV part in the first issue too.
I think from the perspective of a GTKRadiant user, it will be very easy to follow, well it's
explained so easy that you even could do it with no experience at all. Also putting in some
objects like door and window frames,rain gutters, stairs etc, give you something to start
with. A more extensive library can be found in the MDK we're releasing.

//* Dev update
Maps are getting along nicely, for some maps we have begun to put the game models in
already, meaning there's only 1 thing we still have to do and that's apply correct materials
instead of temp materials. Northport was the first one to be finished in terms of geometry,
it will also be the first that will be finished completely. Still, between Alpha and final we're
bound to detail it some more.

This weeks fun :
*Tweaking sunlight on Northport and Westport. Adding in the last game models on NP.

*Damage taking effect tweaking : when a nade hits, the effect should be different from the
one displayed when getting hit by a bullet.

* Irritated at the gloves....My irritation bought 2 new ones, didn't test yet

* Implementing new grafics for ingame menu for gun selection

As per request : Checking to import the original movements from TC:E into the Unreal engine,
rigged to our model. Also, yes the two different movement systems could coincide within the
game. Thanks for that suggestion

When a minimal Alpha launches
What in my eyes still needs to be finished before Alpha release :::
ALL selection menus, damn gloves, grenade effect, we could do with 3 guns I guess
and last but not least :::: animation + at least one map completely finished. All of
the beforementioned ready at final version level.

Full throttle ahead

+1

Progress report :::

Northport-Westport :
Still modelling @ big red shed and his blue brother (Westport), might even give them a green
sister too. Changing all surfaces with currogated metal to a model, also used the currogated
metal model to make two roofs and remodel a container (<-needs some work). Astonishing if
you actually count the number of surfaces that use this texture.

Started working on a map layout for a new map called ´Train station´. Have been looking for
a particular subway themed map, from tce 046-048 but haven´t found it yet. Thought it
might been one of KrazyDancerKone maps, sadly the one I´m looking for isn´t his.

The Northport - Westport - The Lighthouse combo made me think...
What if we do a combo series for each official TC map ?
Each combo map must be themed in the same settings like the official map. Nortport has
docks, Westport has docks, both of them overlook a lighthouse.... I think Liquid suggested
themed map releases once.

Began on a fresh install(both windows and UDK, time consuming arghh) and put a few guns in
I hadn't tested yet, conclusion is that the handguns were the most awesome I think I
also know why I feel the gloves/hands are off... time to remodel the girth of the fingers.
Time to reinstall Daz3D again, need to anyway else I can´t read the new player model in.
A female player model has been made for the intro, but haven´t had the time to check.

Due to the new installation I haven´t had a lot of time to look into the TC animation
conversion yet, but will put more time in it this week.

/* EOF

Hello there,

Finishing some HUD en GUI work for both Tango Down aswell as the adventure framework
we're working on. Do you remember those Sierra-online games like Larry or Spacequest ?
Well, they used to be made on the framework made by Sierra online and trying to get
something similar on the way. Originally I intended to setup the framework on Javascript-
Jquery, but first gonna do it on the UDK.

Ahoy, more guns came in, finished animation on 2 and doing some normal and specular work
on them this week. Remodelled the hands, looks better but need a few days to stare at them
and decide wether or not they are ok.

Damage taking looks a bit like Insurgency bumped into COD, but that's ok too, not done
tweaking it.

Gun selection menu : Gimping my ass off on this one, still not satisfied with the general look.
This is version 3 already and still kinda stuck on the team badges atm.


It looked familiar, started Googling it, couldn't find it, then thought perhaps because my COD
badge looked a bit like it. Started playing TC:E and TADAAAA: damned, it looks a lot like the
Terrorist team logo. Back to the drawing board....

Just remodelled one of the buildings on Northport for fun aka for a little tutorial (LOL, why
didn't I do a building we haven't got yet...) Just uploaded all 40 screen screenshots of a step
by step show and tell on how to model in Blender, but will post the text that goes with the
tutorial on the forum tomorrow.

Added the first of 6 tutorials

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2615&p=31663#p31663

Was going to post those later, with vids, but after a little talk with Dimstar yesterday
I decided to quickly make the first one already to show what's the difference between
GTK and Blender modelling. Next tut will be UV mapping and light mapping, so you can
import your building into UDK correctly. Will start on those tuts today

Nice work on the new maps, Dimstar.
Keep it up.


Grtz,
Caesar

Yay! I thought I'd take a look after a few months (as your gynecologist would say).


At first I didn't think much of it, but it really does remind me a lot on TC:E, too. I'll try it on Steam on a Free Weekend.

About dem tutorials though... I think it would be enough to just explain the stuff about importing into UDK. There's an insane number of tutorials for Blender and UDK. For basic modeling (complete with UV mapping, texturing and stuff) and animation (along with rigging) video-tutorials I recommend the old Blender Fundamentals from 3Dbuzz.com, although they can be hard to find on the internet. They have new, up-to-date tutorials for Blender too, but I didn't see those, so I have no opinion on them, but I'm sure they are good. I learned Blender, UDK and even C++ from them. I had only good experiences with 3DBuzz.
The new videos are for members only, BUT registration is for free, so basically all the tutorials are for free. You get them here after registration.

You can also try BlenderCookie They have lots of free, basic video-tutorials too, but I'm posting this here because of the advanced stuff. I learned the advanced stuff from them. The people here on this site are definitively professionals in the industry, although not strictly speaking teachers, like at 3DBuzz. They teach you some very special tricks in their videos (like mirror-mapping and stuff). I highly recommend these to anyone wanting to become a good 3D artist.

I also recommend using and entirely different program for animation. Blender is... not practical or fast, when it comes to animations. I recommend Maya LT instead. It's the free version of Maya and although it's missing a lot of features on animation that full Maya has, it's still a lot more comfortable than Blender.

The thing is most people don't want to spent a lot of time learning Blender
and only want to learn the stuff that's specific to (in this case) TC/TD mapping.
Then there's the problem that in a lot of tutorials, the author either speaks to fast
or distracts too much with unrelated stuff. That's why I'm making a few tutorials that
allow any person that never even opened Blender to learn the basics and import what
they made into UDK in a very simple way without having to watch hours of tutorials.
I think it also is more interesting for the people lingering on this forum if it's done with
examples that they know already in the game they play.

Also, 3DMotive is a very good source for UDK tuts btw, not everything is for free but
it's worth spending money on imho.

Completely agree that Blender isn't the most suitable tool for animation, but how did you get
Maya LT for free ? http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya-lt/buy I can only find a buy
option, you probably got it for free because you're a student ?

Could you PM me with links to your work (if available) or your UDK 'specialties'/experience ?
We need more people who know their way around on the Unreal Engine.

Todays dev update, my crappy deployment menu ;-(
Still have to implement the weapon attachments into the menu, gonna do that this weekend.
So, I guess this is the before picture. Def. need to resize the stuff in the right column.
Clicking the team emblem brings up the team loadout
Clicking on the primary gun in the right column brings up the primary guns,
Clicking on the secondary gun in the right column brings up the secondary gun
Clicking on extra in the right col. brings up the nades selection

Link seems to be broken, I can't open it. Could you fix pls?

EDITED: It is Ok now. Thx.

Mmm, I added <IMG> tags when I posted that.

Dev update :
Spent the last 24hrs on a single building, it defied all UDK rules for lightmapping....
Everything snapped to the grid, spaced correctly and still it wouldn't cooperate and give
lightbleeding problems all over the place. After turning the lightmap resolution down and
resizing a few elements here and there it worked, still baffled to how this is possible. The
building gave problems from the get go, also wouldn't work as aspected when I was
unwrapping it's UV.... I need to find out why this is happening or else were going to have a
lot of problems when we generate buildings from code (we also code how their lightmaps
should be made). Might also be very useful to understand the problem so I can put that in
the tutorials I'm doing, in case any of you run into the same problem.

Cleaning up some things here and there in the source directories for the maps, the source
folder for Northport has risen to 120+ Blender files because we saved a lot of stuff from
Westport there too. Making a package for each map now, where the models used in a map
will also be in a seperate sub folder of the map.

Need to redo the lightmap on 2 buildings and redo the UV of a remodelled oil barrel and these
things. No, you can't shoot the birdy Don't mind the textures I used. That tile always
gets used after re-import, to check wether or not the UV map is done correctly.
Will also try to get the text for the tutorial done today.

are you working with coro on that and if no why not ?

No, Coroner isn't working on Tango Down.

He still has CQB to finish and from the thread he posted in, I understand he's adding things
like old terminator game play and such. I do hope he's pushing it forward, tho. It's been a
while since the last sign of life, with the last post sounding more like he's giving up rather
than proceeding. He's also not familiar with the Unreal Engine (or not as familiar as with IDtech engines).

Additionally, many before us have tried to continue/revive True Combat and have failed so I
guess we first have to prove ourselves. I think it's also hard to give an opinion if there's no
playable Alpha yet. Then there's the difference aspect of dev, I might weigh different
aspects heavier than Coroner would and vice versa. e.g. I think you can ask Coroner the
exact time duration for animations in Arma, BF and COD.

When you spent hundreds, even thousands of hours working on something and someone asks
you to do it all again from scratch.... well, that would demotivate anyone. So, the chances
that True Combat will be remade on any other engine than an IDtech engine by the hands of
Coroner are slim to none.

Although our doors are open to suggestions and collaboration from Coroner or anybody else,
it's still my responsibility as head dev to interpret the many suggestions made in various
threads on this forum and find a way to balance between the old and new, without straying
too much from the original True Combat 'formula'. Personally, I think we're doing a rather good
job at this game, even without any help from Coroner. Now I think of it, how many remakes
really involve the original creator during the creation process ? If we're serious about
continuing the TC legacy then we have to proof that we can do that without him.

We might have different visions about this game, but our goal remains the same
True Combat will never die

I do hope you will ummm... "enhance" the maps. You know, foliage, decoration and stuff... Or create some unique ones (I'd love to play on something favela-like with vertical combat).

Vanilla tce maps are indeed the best though.

Well, things look a lot different tbh. I'll show it in the next few days with a screenie.

It's the screenie that's taken at the terro spawn side, with the back to the containers looking
at the ocean. I replaced and updated some things in that view, so need to dot the I's on
some things before I want to post it.

Northport is an one 2 one conversion, the 'only' thing that's different is the big red shed,
remaking that one with currogated metal models instead of using flat textures. Also roofs or
panels w/currogated metal that had those textures have been replaced with models. We
also intend to replace ALL rims like in the Blender tutorial I did, for models of rain gutters.
Sometimes it's small details like that do make a difference. Game models like wooden crates,
containers, trailers, barrels,garbage bags errr ...all those models have been replaced.
Foliage, trees and grass, bushes are one of the elements of a game that contributes to it's
total look. We do have a lot of Xfrog and Evermotion models and they look great.... but to
make them 'work' in UDK takes time. If we want foliage to be able to sway in the wind, we
need to vertex weigh leaves, branches and stems. We got over 3K models for foliage
alone....well, it's more sensible to look in the catalog first and then import the static model
and if it suits the scene to do the rest of the work.

We do got new maps, though : The lighthouse, Westport and The Yard are all maps that
'connect' to the Northport theme and we're also in early stages of a map with a train station.

Tango Down 2 has a chinese favela, but we cheated on that one: it's bought...
A Brazilian favela map will turn out just like Goldmann systems remake, huge as f*ck, though
it would really be a lot of fun to make. If you look at pictures of the Rocinha favela, then it's
rather modular with a fair share of repeditiveness. Seems easy at first sight, still many hours,
weeks and even months will go into a real elaborate one. Personally I'd think a favela is a real
good addition for another reason... 4 maps into one, where one forms the background of the
other, and the four still will be seperately played maps. Larger maps also allow for other sorts
of gameplay than bodycount/objective/CTF sorts.

Menu V3.... Yep, those buttons will do Tango Down title needs love in the Gimpin'


Proposed model for one of two female player models, still needs some work, final version
expected next week. The other one is a lot more difficult since she will be modelled of a photo ;-p