Ed is On Point: Slush Fund Dev Blog

After 3 months of development I can say with absolute certainty that Slush Fund is finally in an Alpha testable phase. It’s not fully textured but just about all the necessary lighting (read: you can see what you need to) and all of the game logic is in place. With two months to go before the end of the contest I have a lot of confidence I’ll be able to get it all detailed, optimized, and personalized (naming the capture points for one thing) long before that. At least I hope I can considering it took 100 minutes to render the map with VVIS and VRAD at full, which means there’s a lot of room for optimization.

As always, here are some screenshots:

BLU Spawnroom. Lockers were added after this screenshot was taken.

Looking out of the leftmost doorway of the BLU spawn area

Lower Level of RED Base with a sign pointing to the next capture point

Bank Vault Interior looking back towards the Bank.

Another look at the interior of the Bank Vault

Upper Level of RED base with stairs and a sign

Tunnel exit into the upper level of RED base

More of the upper level of RED base

Bank Capture Point under new management

A successful test of the capture points.

Start me Up: Slush Fund Dev Blog

I finally implemented the setup gates for the BLU side as well as gave them a functioning spawn room. This pretty much means the layout of the map is almost complete for testing. All I have to do now is finish setting up lights, add some resupply lockers, some on-map items (health and ammo) and then finish setting up the control points and get them working.

The only obstacle I seem to have to this is that Hammer seems really crash-prone now. Just today it crashed about 4 times in the span of an hour.

Anyway, here are some screenshots.

BLU Spawn. Currently untextured

BLU Spawn gates open

Interior of the Warehouse in the middle of neutral ground.

Interior of one of the houses in the map

Mining Tunnel Entrance

Startup gates with visible "no entry" overlays barring RED from entering

More Lights: Slush Fund Dev Blog

So I had put up some more lights in Slush Fund a while back but never really took screencaps of them, I’m rectifying that situation right now. Here you’re going to see lights done for the interior of the bank, plus lights done in the RED base stairwell. I also re-did the lights in the mining tunnel so that there’s less of them. It’s still kind of bright but I’m not really complaining.

Bank Exterior; in dire need of a sign

Interior of the Bank, which surprisingly lit up pretty well

Mining Tunnel, now with half the lights

Looking down from the top of the RED base stairwell

Looking up from the bottom of the RED base stairwell

Post-PAX East Image Dump

So PAX East was pretty fun. Saw a lot of interesting stuff, like the first footage of LA Noire and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and missed out on some other stuff I wish I had the time and patience to see (Brink and the Nintendo 3DS).

Anyway, here’s a gallery of the few pictures I did take while I was there.

Quick Lighting Update: Slush Fund Dev Blog

So here’s another update, this time showing some areas with lights in them.

The mining tunnel all lit up

Lighting in one of the houses

Lighting in the RED Spawn Room

Lighting in a RED Base Hallway

I think it’s coming along well. Granted some spots could be brighter (spawn room) and some could be dimmer (the mining tunnel) but this is mostly just to get the map playable at this point.

Downsizing: Slush Fund map dev blog

So I went in and made some adjustments to the size of certain buildings and areas in Slush Fund. It looks a lot better now, and that’s not just because i’ve added environmental settings like the sun and so forth.

A shot from inside one of the houses

Exterior shot looking at a house and warehouse

Just outside BLU spawn.

I’d provide some shots of RED base but unfortunately there’s no lighting installed just yet (working on that now along with getting all the game logic in place). Also there’s been a slight hiccup regarding areaportals and a certain door model. So I have to figure out how I’m going to fix that. My plan is to have the map playable, but not necessarily fully textured, in a couple weeks.