I’m finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents’ house, and I can hardly believe it’s already December!  Where has this year gone?

Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today, the first being a duo of clips from The Simpsons, found earlier on Engadget (and which I assume aired last night), where Apple becomes the target of Matt Groening’s irreverent humor when the Springfield mall gets its first Mapple store.  The funniest part of the two clips is when Bart hijacks the audio system in the store and puts some (quite truthful) words into Steve Jobs’ Mobs’ mouth.  Good stuff!

Update - Well, the YouTube videos are down, but if you live in the U.S., you can watch for free on Hulu.

The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve’s original port of the game.  Normally I don’t get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa.  You can view the trailer below, and find out more about the mod at the official site.

I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I’m a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.

I’m glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight.  Sorry about the slow rain example, I’ll play with it and see if I can get something up that’s a little easier on the older machines soon as well!

That’s all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you’re not from the U.S.)!

Update - I’ve made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6.  The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.

You can download the new example here (1.26 mb).

One environmental effect I see many people have trouble with in Game Maker’s 3D is rain - how to create it and how to make it look like real rain (not just a bunch of textured walls).

I’ve seen some impressive rain in recent game releases, particularly Gears of War / Gears of War 2, and I wanted to try to create something like that in order to see if the effect is possible in Game Maker.  And of course, I also wanted to supply myself and others with a nice example.

After some fiddling around, I’ve come up with what I think is a good replication of the other rain effects I’ve seen in games like Gears, which runs reasonably fast, and isn’t too complicated under the hood.  My example uses large, moving 3D walls textured with rain, scrolling down repeatedly and rocking back and forth and side to side using sine wave-based movement.  The rain is composed of many objects placed around the level at the start of the game, and the camera disables objects dynamically as it moves around.  I’ve also thrown in a simple animated ground (could be better), and fake terrain backdrop (the same as the one in my night sky example), and a skybox (courtesy of Yourself).

The example also uses a rudimentary FPS-style of controls / mouselook as well, but I just threw this in there to help show off the scene, so if you find a problem with that, please disregard it.

You can download the example here (2.5 mb).

Note: This example, for whatever reason, if only working with GM7 at the moment.  As soon as I have a chance to figure out why GM6 hates it, I’ll update the link with a fixed GM6 file.

Please use this example for learning purposes only, and don’t pull anything directly out of it to use for your own work (including textures) without first asking me about it.  Anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy!

After spending some time reading a recently posted topic on the GMC asking about how to create a night sky in 3D, I decided I’d try my hand at making a simple example using a technique mentioned in that topic - using a model created as a pointlist to render stars.  I ended up liking the result very much, so I wanted to share it with everyone here.

Basically, at the start of the game (or more specifically, when the camera object is created), I’ve set up a script which creates models for a sky dome, a background pseudo-terrain, and stars.  These are drawn as you would draw a skybox, so they all appear in the background of whatever you’re doing in your game.

I’ve set up a simple FPS-style camera system for this demo, but it’s very crude, so don’t hold me accountable for that, please.  You can use your mouse to look around, and W, A, S, and D to move around.  F4 will toggle fullscreen mode, and ESC will exit.

You can download the example here (279 kb).

I’d appreciate it if this example were used for learning purposes only, and that you do not use any of the textures from it without first asking permission.  With that said, enjoy!

My apologies for the delay between this and my last post - I’ve been at jury duty for the last two days, was sick for about a week before that, and have begun the long, arduous process of moving all my material possessions from old apartment to new.

I’ve also been working my way through Fable 2 for a second time, having a blast playing co-op / horde mode in Gears of War 2, and slowly leveling Totino up to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King.

So yeah, I’ve been a little busy.

As I’ve made my way through all the new games though, I’ve been feeling more and more like getting back to some of my older projects and making them into something new, and better than before.  Chiefly, Hover Tank 3D 2 (as Yourself urges me to make a multiplayer mode where you steal resources from enemies to build up a base) and Falcon Squad, which I feel like I am almost ready to return to with a complete engine rebuild and graphics injection.  I’d also like to get that robot battle engine finished, so we can finally have a new competition over at Reflect Games.

I know I keep returning to these projects over and over, but one of these days…  well, you know.

Anyway, I’m going to get going so I can start moving more of my junk.  Just wanted to check in  and let everyone know that I’m not dead, just wasding through the mire of many planned, random, and seasonal events.  Thansk for reading, and I hope you are having a healthier November than I am!

I logged in and updated my games list to represent my recent game-buying spree.  I added the following games:

• Audiosurf (only $2.49 this week on Steam, thanks for the heads up, Xot!)
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Commander Keen Complete Pack
• Fable 2
• Gears of War 2

I’ve still got one or two more I want to pick up, and like I’ve mentioned before, a couple others I’m putting on my Christmas list, but I’m really starting to get progressively angrier at game publishers for this mess.  Seriously - I know everyone wants to have big sales for the holidays, but pace yourselves please!  We can’t all go out and buy a dozen games in one month, and many great games are going to suffer from poor sales because of this ridiculous overlap.

Penny Arcade summed it up pretty nicely here.  It’s eerie how similar this comic looks to my Google calender where I’ve marked all the upcoming games I’m interested in.

Oh well.  That’s all for now.  I’m feeling a bit under the weather and I need to recover…  which means less time spent blogging, and more time spent laying on the couch, complaining to my girlfriend, and of course, playing games.  Just gotta make sure I fit some rest in there somewhere!