Holy shit!

I found a modeler. Actually, he found me. I checked out his work… he’s WAY overqualified for doing this project! He’s worked on Age Of Empires II and a couple other games doing the models and animations for the cinematic sequences, does broadcast TV commercials (I’ve seen one of them, where the basketball player comes in for a slam dunk, the backboard shatters, and then the PLAYER shatters, revealing that he’s actually a Terminator-style robot inside.), etc. He’s also worked with motion capture, really really high end animation systems, etc. I talked to him, explained that this is probably outside of his normal work area complexity wise and probably pay-wise.

However, he took the job. Fun thing is – I’m actually getting TWO modelers for the price of one! His son does part of his rough work, and he does the final polish, culling, and skining type work. So I’ve now got an INCREDIBLE modeler working on Trajectory, and if Jumpman 2 happens, I’m probably going to hit him up on that too (and mentioned the project up front.)

I got a screenshot from the level designer last night. First screenshot looks WONDERFUL. It’s a desert area with pyramids in the background, and THE most realistic sun – I mean, it literally makes you want to squint looking at it. The place LOOKS hot and sandy. I was impressed. He expects to have the level done by tomarrow. Wow – fast worker!

I’m starting to have a REALLY good feeling about Trajectory. It may seriously put Midnight Ryder Technologies on the map. When I look at the work being done from all fronts, this game isn’t going to be as trivial of a game as I assumed it would be. I just wrote a new mutators system (ala Unreal Tournament) that allows server admins to make tweaks to the game weapons, replace weapons, new scoring modes, etc. without having to edit the actual game scripts (which I want to be a no-no anyway) The mutator system is already up and running to a certain extent – it patches the game scripts on the fly, and loads ’em. I’m setting up the UI for it right now.

This is turning out to not be a simple test game with the Torque engine that has a little commercial possibility. It’s turning into a contender for games that are actually out on the shelves now, and breaks a little bit of new ground.