Team Blog

It’s been some time since the last blog entry and the announcement of the new version of Architect. I’ve been working hard during that time, and now I can proudly present you the results. I’m not good in writing (especially in English :)), but if I make a list of new features only, it will be too little, so I will try to describe each of new things, so you won’t have impression that the things were easy do write and it took so much time because of my laziness :D.

So let’s go:
1. The most important change is the integration of the Scene support, but you know about that already, so I won’t repeat the description. All the following changes come from this one (there are other changes, but they are minor).
2. Script editor with syntax highlighting (also highlights non-existent commands), code completion proposals and automatic indent.
3. Advanced Script compiler, that detects many errors and unusual cases (and gives warning messages on them). For all warning and error messages you can go to the corresponding place of the code by double-clicking in the message (like in most common programming language compilers).
4. Scene Object properties panel that lets you edit the selected Object properties instantly.
5. Selection menu, that appears when there are more than one object under the mouse cursor. You can now select an Object even if it’s fully covered by other Objects.
6. Objects can be easily found with the “Find” button in the properties panel. After clicking the button the selected object will be centered in the screen and marked for a while with a blinking frame. No more browsing through the area to find the little object!
6. The way of Scenario handling has been changed. You can now open and save Scenarios as regular files, and the program can be in two “States” (strange name, I know, but “modes” have been taken already): “Scenario State” and “Grid+Scene State”. The States determine two things:
1. Ctrl+S shortcut action - In Scenario State it saves current Scenario, and in Scene+Grid State it save Scene or Grid depending on the Mode.
2. The dialog shown when user tries to close the program with some element unsaved. In “Scenario State” the dialog simply asks if the user wants to save the Scenario before exiting. In the “Grid+Scene State” the dialog is more advanced, providing the following options: saving the Grid only, saving the Scene only, saving both Grid and Scene, saving everything as a Scenario, not saving anything and cancelling exiting the program.
7. The “New” menu option (File menu) has been merged with the advanced opening menu. You can now select to create a new Grid in the Grid frame in the advanced opening dialog.

And for those who have no idea what I was talking about in the previous points, here are some screenshots to show the features:

And if you feel like some Grid or Scene editing, don’t hesitate and try it out: http://sacredcarrot.xesf.net/mantis/view.php?id=66

But be careful for this is beta version. I’m pretty sure it contains serious bugs. This version is released mainly to help LBA modification teams (including the Prequel team of course) to faster design their Scenes. But I’m making it available publicly because maybe this way people find more bugs in shorter time than I would do alone (and this is also a good way to actually show that we’re doing something about the Prequel :)). If you decide to try how the beta version and you find any bugs or have suggestions, report them in the Bugtracker.

Hi,
Here you can see some screenshots of our work with our comments to help you guys understand a bit better about what we’ve been working on during this hiatus. I know we promised this awhile ago, but it turned out to be pretty hard to get all the teammates together to work on one blog post simultaneously.
The screenshots are, in most cases, very large, and the site engine will downscale them to fit your screens. To see the full size, you will need to click a thumbnail, and when the image finishes loading, click the green arrow on the bottom of the screen.

From Lewi-G:
Sep has proven to be a challenge to model. Unlike projects I have worked on in my career, Sep has a unique limitation in his design. Unlike a human face, which creates creases when you smile, Sep needed to keep his ‘LBA style’ head whilst having enough expression to look alive. Early in 3D, games were limited by computer processing power; simple shapes like spheres and cubes were used and hence Twinsen’s egg-shaped head was born.

In the end, I came up with a compromise and reshaped the head slightly so it was wider at the bottom to give the impression that Sep had cheeks. In order to create facial expressions a face needs to have a certain layout of deformation lines in its model in order for the face to change shape. Even though Sep’s head now had cheeks it was still a challenge to make new expressions without blendshape errors.

Not trying to bore you with too much technical talk, but blendshapes are a series of models which use each other as reference and morph between each other to give the impression of expressions. In the case of Sep I had to create 20 blendshapes! Each had to be modeled to a specific design to prevent eyes being sucked inwards or fat lips being created by 2 shapes adding to each other and doubling the overall head size.

You should have seen one of my early tests… Sep had the mumps!

The body rig was quite easy once the head was finished. I added a flexible spine and bones to allow an animator to push realism a bit and have some squash and stretching. This squash/stretch technique has been used in cartoons for a very long time to emote life but only recently has it been adapted for 3D. A good example of this can be found in the movie Ice Age when the Sabre toothed squirrel is pulling his acorn out of the cliff face. His arms stretch a little to tell the audience he is pulling for all his worth! Sep won’t be pulling acorns but I promise you the overall animation will look better than the original LBA animations

The only part left to finish are the eyes. I need to develop a method of using the eyelids as eyebrows. Eyebrows are an important part of human expression but unfortunately (most probably due to the computer limitations I mentioned earlier) Twinsen didn’t have eyebrows! I plan to use the eyelid itself to emote expression but I need to create a simple method of changing between these eyelid shapes for animation.

Yep. The LBA Prequels cut scenes will be much more advanced than the original LBA ones but hopefully will still stay true to the original charm/style.

From Double-J:
This image of the tavern interior really shows what we’re working on as far as atmosphere in the game. While everyone knows we’re working with the original engine, we’ve tried to think of ways that we can turn the old into new. This tavern - a central place for information in the game - highlights “the little things.” Different interior styles, revised layouts and items, and island-specific patterns and architecture are all going to help make this game have an easily identified atmosphere. You’ll know which island is which simply by the appearance of its buildings, the behavior of its people, and other subtle cues. One of the things I disliked about the original game was that I’d easily get islands confused since many of them had the same style and layouts. We don’t want players of the Prequel to have this issue. When you think of Proxima, it will jump into your mind. When you think of the other islands, it will too. There won’t be any question.

From alexfont:
In a more technical aspect, we tried to change the LBA1 Tavern to look older and give it a different mood. The picture shows some important stuff we’re working on (the grid is completely done). I don’t forsee any kind of brick layouts or structure changes for the planned demo. We still have the secret basement, a little change and with a new and different passage, which I’ll let you discover for yourselves. Some developments were made in the scripts and some navigation between different scenes are working now. Not much yet unfortunately, due to LBArchitect development and other obvious reasons, but even with this we were be able to test it and implement as we can see on the picture. Our first disappearing celling grid (cube), and its working :P. As a side note, we can also notice the game running with LbaWin, which is our main engine to use; this is even working on the original one and TwinEngine.

From Double-J:
At the same time, we did not want to stray too far from the original formula. Yes, each island should have its own personality, but they are also the same islands that Twinsen will see down the line. How much could possibly have changed from Hegesippe’s time to Twinsen’s? These were the questions we had to toss around when conceptualizing how these islands would appear in the game. One of the subtle changes you’ll notice is how close attention we’ve paid to trees and plant-life from the original game. Our theory is that if a tree was full grown in Twinsen’s time, it should be smaller or perhaps even a sapling - when Hegesippe existed. Similarly, we had to think about the differences in technology from Hegesippe’s age to Twinsen’s. We debated the merits or electrical power versus candlelight, and everything from steam to firearms. Once again, we looked to the original game for inspiration. LBA 1 + 2 had the certain blend of space-age excitement (Esmers, laser guns, cloning, etc.) while at the same time, relying on ancient myths and magic as well. I think we’ve done a good job in setting the ground rules for te Prequel in that we have made sure that technology - and its presence or absence - makes sense in each scenario.

From Luke:
I felt that Citadel Island should be a sleepy, old world village, rather like the kind that you can still find today in the south of England. Time has stood still or, at least, slowed to a crawl, perhaps rather frustrating for a young whippersnapper like Hegesippe.

The island is rather self-contained, more or less supporting itself - other islands in the Southern Hemisphere are more integrated into some sort of trading network, which of course offers plenty of opportunities for pirates - and the addition of a clock tower seemed to suggest this (as well as give the place a certain amount of chocolate box charm). I’m not sure who I intended to live in the area labeled ‘house’ in the drawing (presumably someone hard of hearing, given the proximity of the clock tower); we since decided that that would be a better location for the school.

Initially my designs for the buildings were somewhat German-Gothic. When Double-J suggested that architectural styles vary over Twinsun’s various islands and towns, I felt that the buildings of Proxima alone would be best suited to the Germanic look. The architectural style on Citadel is that of the first LBA game, so the player begins on somewhat familiar ground before venturing beyond Hegesippe’s hometown.

From alexfont:
Looking at Luke’s concept and all the idea behind I came to formulate this scene. We can find some similarities with LBA1 but still its a lot different. The scene building structure shouldn’t change, but the outside look must be change to what Luke’s explained. Its not that easy to create such thing and for now it isn’t a priority in our vast to-do list. I also like to say this was a tricky scene to build because of some limitations we have in the engine; we need to take out the player from some specific scene angles to kind of “trick” the viewpoint. The clock tower won’t be as we originally thought (with that roof, etc.), but the clock is still visible, all because the scene height is cleverly modified. Unfortunately, the clock can’t be higher :/

From Zink:
This screenshot shows what I am working on at the moment. The new version of LBArchitect will be a very important breakthrough for the project, nearly as important as LBArchitect itself was for the LBA community. Those of you who tried some scene editing using the connected LBA Story Coder and LBArchitect programs most likely noticed that it was a pain to make anything advanced with it. Not only wasn’t it very intuitive, but also many bugs prevented adjusting coordinates of the objects precisely. The sad thing was that alexfont didn’t have much time to work on his Story Coder. Thus, alexfont and I made a decision to connect both projects, and you can see first results on the screenshot. What does the connection mean?
- One program instead of two: a more stable, more intuitive, faster, and more reliable environment.
- Possibility of new features that were very difficult to implement earlier. You will see some of the new features in the upcoming version.
- We have a lot of ideas for improvements that alexfont couldn’t incorporate due to a lack of time. I hope to have more time than he does currently, so I will be able to introduce many of those improvements as early as in the next release.

So what exactly can you see in the screenshot? First, there is the object information panel in the top right corner. It shows information about the selected object and allows the user to edit its parameters. What stands out is the little “Find” button. Its purpose is easy to guess: it allows you to locate the object in the grid. No more having to look through the grid brick after brick. You will be able to find what you’re looking for with a single button click.

The second important thing, not standing out on the contrary, is the zone-adding button (next to the track and actor adding buttons). Before, if you wanted to add a zone, you had to click “New Zone” button in the Story Coder, which created a zone with initial position and dimensions, and to move it to the desired position and give it the proper dimensions you had to change the parameters and see what was happening through trial and error. Add the bugs in the editing fields to this, and setting a zone up was an almost-impossible task. I tried once, and gave up after a while of getting more and more annoyed. With that little button, it will be possible to create the zone you want with a little more effort that one click of a mouse button takes. Just click on the grid where you want to create a zone, drag the mouse to set its dimensions, and release the button. Yes, it’s as simple as that.

The last important thing that can be seen on the screenshot is the script editor. Not much new here: highlighting colours have changed; some parameters are now text constants instead of numbers; but the really important changes are not visible here (not only for the script editor), and I’m not going to tell you about them. I must keep something to make a surprise. I can assure you, that the jaws of many of you will fall to the ground when you see these things for yourselves. ;).

From Bot13 (about the window frames):
The style I wanted to achieve here was very clear to me. In the history of the LBA Universe, things were different. Now, even LBA1 had a pretty futuristic look all over, so I tried to make it the other way around. We already established it would be wise to go for a really old look, almost 18th century-ish. Myself, I’m a big fan of steam punk style, so that’s something that will be present in my future works.
The production was pretty simple; establish the material, look and feel of the object in a quick sketch, work it out in detailed form with the help of 3D software, and lastly render it in the correct shape, perspective, size, color. It’s not easy to really keep myself between the limits of the engine, resolution and color-wise it’s all very low standard. Though that’s all part of the pleasure and it sure is one hell of a project where I’m still planning to put much of my creativity, time and effort into.

So, did you send out the search party yet?

Call the FBI?

Get yourself some saran wrap and duct tape?

Well, hopefully this post can help put things to rest, and explain a little bit about what we’ve been doing these past few months since the demo was delayed, where we go from here, and the future of this project.

The problems we experienced in getting a functional, thorough demo have been talked about before, so I won’t rehash it too much, beyond saying that we couldn’t have released the demo even if we wanted to because of some fatal flaws.Our coding program made it too difficult to implement some of the things we wanted to include in-time; not all of the grids/scenes were complete; there was no time to test for bugs. Obviously, the first two things contributed to the latter, but you get the point - we pretty much overestimated (and I’m largely to blame, so feel free to point the fingers at me) how much time it would take to get things going.

So, you know where we’ve been. Where do we go from here? Since the official delay, we’ve re-assessed some of the tools and methods used for the project, and came to the conclusion that some were either inadequate, or would need to be overhauled in order to achieve a quality result. We have (both the Prequel and TGR teams) been in contact with Frederick Raynal regarding some of our problems, and he’s been gracious enough to give us some advice and help, which is invaluable at this point. Among other things, most of us are also back full-time at Uni and work, which compiled the problem of time in the next few months. We’re about to turn the corner - I’m confident of that - so I’d say within the next two weeks or so, we will have a definite plan in place one way or the other. One option would be to try and continue working with Mr. Raynal’s advice and plug away at the LBA engine. The other? Exploring options outside of that. Whether that includes looking at another engine, or modifying the current engine, I can’t really say. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

As far as what the future holds for this project, I again apologize for being dilatory with this blog and with the emails. I’ve had zero time for myself - this is my first full day off in a few months - so I’m sorry that you guys have been kept in the dark. I believe in our team(s), and that in the coming weeks, we’ll be back on track with the new/revised direction of the project. I can’t give a timetable for much of anything right now - we have been working on everything during this hiatus, but it’s still slow - but we’re not dead, and we aren’t stopping our work on this game. I know that probably sounds like typical fangame fanfare (love the allusion, do you?), but it’s the God’s-honest truth. I’m not willing to let this project die, and I know my teammates stand with me in my resolve to make this game. Now that we’ve enlisted the best help of all (Mr. Raynal) for advice, I can’t see us moving backwards.

Anyways, I look forward to your comments and hope that you guys will stand with us as we turn the page on this unfortunate chapter in the project’s history. Again, allow me to take the responsibility for the delay, and I hope that you guys are willing to put up with us for just a bit longer until we can resolve some of these issues as a team, and move forward.

Best Wishes,
Double-J

… we just moved to another address. Please update your bookmarks.

Also, the transfer might broke some links. We’re trying to fix every single one as soon as we notice, but it is possible that we overlook something. If you find a non-working link, please tell us (you may do it in the comments).

Hey all. Firstly, I just wanted to thank everyone for bearing with us. I think you guys know we wanted the demo to be out as soon as possible as much, if not more, than the community, but good things take time.

I’d just like to expound a bit on what happened that caused the demo to be delayed, and what we’re doing to fix it. As I had been posting in the progress updates, we were nearing completion full steam ahead towards the first of November. Many of the big tasks we wanted to show off for the demo - namely the new layouts, player animations, and character models - were nearly completed.

The biggest problem we had encountered was the scripting and testing process. It was incredibly time consuming, and coupled with the fact that we were working up to the final days on the aforementioned tasks, we had left ourselves no time to test the game. As it was, the game script was barely finished, so the bugs and such would have probably been unbearable.

That’s not the kind of game we want to put out. There was some (heated) discussions in the days before the demo, as we debated continuing on with the release, or whether it would be better to delay for a properly finished demo. Both sides made good points, but we ultimately came down in favor of a delay. No one wanted the delay - we all were frustrated with how little time we had to work with - but it has been ultimately necessary. What we’ve been doing over the past few days since the delay has helped us flesh out the game and we’ll be much more suited to testing it so that there are no bugs in the demo.

In addition, the best part about this is that we’ll be able to include layouts and parts of the grids that were unfinished or not planned to be included in the demo. You’ll no longer be constrained to a few buildings and tasks - the world will open before you. We’ll try to include as many characters as possible, we’ll add more dialogue, and flesh out the demo tasks so that you’ll have plenty to do.

Again, none of us were happy with the delay, and we apologize for the disappointment of the community and LBA fans regarding this issue. While I can’t give a firm demo release date - it is coming soon - we hope that when it is finally released, it will make up for any sore feelings and disappointed fans.

Best Wishes,

Double-J

I know that many of you have been waiting a long time for the Prequel demo (maybe too long), and we greatly appreciate all the support and encouragement around the forums and via email over these past few weeks. Two months ago, I had given an estimation on a release date for the demo (November 1st). Someone asked for a date, and even if the date would have to be rescheduled later, I hoped that we would make it before that date. I’m not really sure why that date has been taken and announced as a deadline. To be clear, I am not trying to excuse myself, because I am also responsible for that delay. I just wanted you to know how came to that the date had been set and not kept.

It has not been kept because of one important reason: it was not possible to make the demo on time; we just overestimated our abilities, and underestimated the amount of work to do. Though there were several tasks at (or near) completion, there is still too much testing and other unanticipated issues that have come up over the past two weeks that have slowed us down considerably.

Because of the above reasons, we will not set the demo release date, simply because we are not able to estimate it at current point. We have discussed this, and have set a release date for our information only, but it serves as a guideline and schedule for the team itself. It will help us make the demo as fast as it is possible, but does not guarantee that we will manage to make everything on time. That’s why we will not say it publicly (and please, don’t ask for it). We will probably announce a date, but only when we are absolutely sure that we can make it and have completed all the necessary testing and packaging for release. I think the best answer we could give you at this point is that it is coming soon. Please understand that we are more disappointed than the community is that we have not been able to get this demo completed.

Also, please don’t think that we have given up on this project. On the contrary, we have been working harder than ever for the last couple of weeks, to be sure that we could meet the release date and put out a quality product. But that hard work was not enough, and we now see that it is not possible, and would not be possible, even if we worked harder. On the plus side, we managed to make really great progress during that time, so the demo will be made for sure. The progress is constant, but just a bit slow, especially given that many of us are at Uni and working full time :). We are committed to getting this demo out to the public. One benefit of this delay is the inclusion of several things we would not have been able to add with the November 1st deadline - including more character animations, more space to explore on the islands (which may now be fully functional and open, rather than closed off as in a traditional demo), more character models and layouts, and in general, a more full and robust demo, which is what this community really deserves. With the previous date, many of these ideas were simply pipe dreams that would have to be left on the cutting room floor.

We are very sorry to disappoint you at this time, and we hope that you won’t lose hope because of this slip-up. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience, and hope that you will continue to support us as we continue work on this game.

The LBA Prequel Team

First, I want to thank everyone who has helped us with the audio work. I know I sent out a rampage of emails yesterday to get people to send us voice files for our demo, and I appreciate the warm response that I’ve received from everyone. It makes our job that much easier.

• To update, the entire exterior grid of the “home” island is complete, save for one or two objects. Now we just need to tie up the loose ends on the interiors.
• The voice recording and remastering continues. I didn’t expect that some of the voices wouldn’t work properly during the conversion process, but luckily Dopey came up with a method that should resolve this problem (which is why I emailed all of you to re-record your lines :D). So this will take slightly longer than expected, but should be done sometime next week.
• Two more animations for Hegesippe done, another 4 or5 to go. Our goal for the demo is to show the most common Hegesippe animations, and hopefully, you guys will be able to tell the differences right away.
• The *technical* story coding continues. Alex had it finished, until I changed it on him (sorry mate!). But hopefully this should also be done by next week.
• We need one more movie for our intro, and that will tie up the loose ends there. Again, the music is ready to go.

All in all, it has been a lot of work, but quite fun to adhere to this deadline, making sure we’ve got everything done properly. I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Best Wishes,

Double-J

Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy.

We still exist (*surprise surprise*).

Sorry to be dilatory, but I just wanted to keep everyone abreast of what has been happening with the demo:

• The grid for Hegesippe’s “home” island is nearly finished. All that remains are small tweaks and changes, but it is functionally finished.
• The voice recording is nearly wrapped up. All that remains is some remastering and enhancement.
• The new model animations for Hegesippe (at least those that will be relevant to the demo) are also about 80% done, and should be finished within the next week and a half.
• The movies, logos, music, and other intangibles are 95% complete.
• All that truly remains is making sure the script coding is finished and works without error.

Obviously, as we get closer to the release date for the demo, we’ll be able to go more in-depth into the different sections and reveal more about what you’ll see and do. But for now, I hope this gives you all a short update to show that there is still a Prequel, and we’re working very hard!

Best,

Double-J

Well, with small delay, but finally I made the new release of the LBArchitect.

The new version has some new features which will particularly help in the game development. They are

• Builder and Factory now have completely new HQR entries description system. This system is based on HQR Description (HQD) files, which contain descriptions for entries. Descriptions can now be made by users and assigned to non-standard HQR files.
• In this version third program is added to the LBArchitect. This new program, called Designer, is able to create HQR files containing complete room and scene information for the game. The HQR files can be made of single entries as well as from HQS files, thus eliminating the need for arduous editing existing HQR files from the game. Program has some advanced optimization features that allow automatic creating of repeated entries and compressing entries that meet specified criteria. At the current stage the program can only create HQR files for LBA 1. Here’s a screenshot:
• Builder in Scene mode has now snapping feature, which will help positioning scene elements visually.
• Plus some minor bug fixes and changes

The latest version can be downloaded from here.

Designing the characters is definitely the most enjoyable task I’m having working on the Prequel. I think I’m more at home designing the various villains and monsters Hegesippe encounters on his adventure (thankfully, there are a lot of them), but the NPC characters in the game are also a lot of fun to design, because all the characters in the LBA games, even minor characters, have their own individual quirks, and caricaturing eccentric individuals is enormous fun. Jacques is a good example of a slightly barmy but nonetheless loveable character Hegesippe encounters on his adventure, and of a character whose design underwent a somewhat dramatic revision.

Jacques is definitely one of my favourite characters in the LBA Prequel. He acts as a sort of father figure to Hegesippe. Unfortunately, he can’t survive a conversation without going off on a tangent and talking about his journeys in the desert, and the enormous trouble it caused his knees. Double-J did an early recording to demonstrate the dialect and character he wanted. I first cast him as a rabibunny, giving him some hillbilly buck teeth.

I didn’t go back to this design for a while, but something told me that it wasn’t quite right for the character. He didn’t seem fatherly, and didn’t look like he’d spent years trekking across the desert. It was then I realised that he really ought to be a grobo, not only because Luc is a grobo in LBA2, but because grobos are more suited to be fatherly, authoritative types. Another grobo of this kind (if a little more sane) in the game is Varon, the benign wizard, though the grobos’ more aggressive nature is shown in characters such as the grumpy harridan and, of course, Captain Lucius. It’s been a lot of fun casting the characters to the right race.

For inspiration for many the grobo designs I looked at the sketches of Heinrich Kley, a German illustrator (whose pen and ink drawings would later serve as inspiration for many of the segments in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’). Kley did, among other surreal sketches, lots of drawings of animals – particularly crocodiles and elephants - acting like humans. What I like about his work is his ability to put human personalities into animal bodies. Below is one of my favourite drawings of his: an elephant with the gout. This specific Kley drawing was really what inspired me to redesign the character - this elephant is, appropriately, even clutching his leg in pain!

My initial designs for the new, grobo version of Jacques were drawn in a sketchy style, which tends to be an easier way to establish the character before refining the design itself. It’s easier to get an idea of personality in a less ‘clean’ style.

Double-J preferred this design to the rabibunny version, so I went ahead with the model sheet, making the earlier sketchy drawing a little more streamlined, rounded, and more LBA-like. You can see from Jacques’ costume that the Prequel is set in a period of Twinsun’s history previously unseen.

As you know, Alexfont has been doing a brilliant job modelling the characters and further developing the designs to suit the specific look of the game. Scroll a few posts down for his post on Jaques, the bartender.