OpenKatana

[metalseed]

It could only be better

[Timmah]

Sounds exciting, can't wait! Funny how I find this after discovering Daikatana recently.

[hogsy]

Thanks for all your comments guys. If you have any questions then feel free to join our IRC channel (or send us an email) if you want to ask or know anything about the project or hell even if you just want to chat!
The server is quakenet.org and channel is #openkatana

[hogsy]

Pardon the double post but I just wanted to let you guys know that we've released a few new shots though it's nothing too exciting.

[Timmah]

Looks like it's coming along well! I bookmarked this thread for the sake of checking on it once in a while, lol. Good luck!

[Seven]

Hello hogsy,
I like your monster models a lot.
It is clear to see that you want to keep it faithful but with a personal twist.
The first screen reminds me very much of "Heroes of might and magic" series.

[hogsy]

Glad you like them. The models shown there however are from the 1997 alpha of Daikatana (which our project is partially based on) so we can't really take any credit for them.

There's a lot to talk about that's going on with the project right now but we're trying not to show too much until we have something a bit more solid. A lot of the engine is being heavily revised, a lot of the game-logic is still being written out (which I'm a little ashamed of considering how much work we've been putting into this over such time) and I've been trying to put some more effort into the tools lately as we now have a dedicated level designer on the team. Personally my focus is on three main things, the engine, tools and monster/AI platform though I've still had my hand in writing out most of the game-logic myself since a lot of that is coming along slower than I like but then when you have only two programmers on the team, one is focused mostly on the engine and the other is also focused on working things other than the code it sort of makes sense why.
I think one thing I'm proud about right now is that it's much easier to work with the code now than back when it was written in QuakeC (providing you understand C). I've revised most of our weapons platform so that we can very quickly implement new weapons without having to write out special cases for each different weapon and it ends up only requiring to add one new line to get a weapon in the game which really does speed things up a lot for those who know how much of a hassle it is to add in new weapons for Quake through QuakeC. My focus has been the same with the monster/AI platform but most of that is all being rewritten with the focus on having AI far more advanced than Quake's, nothings solid yet but each monster will have his own simulated emotion based on current events, if he's standing around then he'll get bored which would stimulate his urge to wander around the level or if he's being attacked he'll get angry or even scared depending on his situation. Each monster also has a set of different states and setting relationships between each monster is also a lot easier but as I said a lot of this isn't 100% solid yet so I'm sure I'll end up going over things or throw things out. There's also a simple navigation system for monsters but that's also not 100% solid yet so it's probably not worth talking about that either.
I guess while I'm at it I should talk about the menu a little. Quake's menu was fairly simple but made overly complicated in how it was written, the new menu code I'm writing out is object-based so each menu is treated as a different element. Each element can either be a simple interactive image (such as in Quake) or it can be a virtual window that can be dragged around the screen and resized. I've had less time to work on the menu code than I have with everything else so currently while all the basic stuff is written out it's not actually currently in-use. The plan is for OpenKatana to have a menu using 3D elements for both the menu background and option selection but I'll work on implementing all that when everything else is done.

If anyone would like to know anything else about the project then feel free to ask.

[Spiney]

One technical thing I think could benefit mappers is the ability to use more agressive overbrightening. Quake games tend to be quite murky and dark and Daikatana is no exception, a lot of it is in the textures but going from 2* modulate to 4* modulate can allow for much more atmospheric lighting. For example, look at Unreal engine 1 (double) vs Unreal engine 2 (quad), the difference it can make to the overall appearance is quite big. I also know MH has written a lot on his blog about HDR lightmapping in Quake.

I'm just suggesting this because early in development stuff like this is more easy to consider.

[hogsy]

I will certainly look into it when I have the time. It would be nice to hear a few other things people would like being done to the engine/tools/editor though I can't promise I'll get round to doing everything before OpenKatana is released as there's a lot I'm still currently focusing on.

[hogsy]

An update...

Old but it's better than nothing...

MSAA support


Also if you're curious then the level there is the new E1M1 which is currently being worked on by Wakey who's doing an incredible job on it despite the fact that we hardly ever see him
Believe it or not the level is being based around the original E1M1 from early 1997 which was a fairly interesting level due to the fact that it was fairly large and lacked any clear path. I wish they had kept the layout for the final game and constructed other levels in a similar fasion but sadly they ended up much more linear in the final game. There's also some incredible brush work in some of these earlier levels...

Overview of the original map with my scruffy arrows to show the main path the player would probably take.

There's even an entire subsection underneath that main area the player walks into from the start!

Very little progress on the "game" itself as of late since I'm now working on getting some issues resolved with the engine while everyone else is working on getting content done. Fun...

[ninjamonkeyz]

looks amazing so far I am looking forward to trying this one.

[hogsy]

Thanks!
We're currently looking for an extra programmer and modeller to help us out so if anyone is interested then feel free to send me an email. You can contact me at [email protected]

[hogsy]

Thanks to those that have shown at least some interest so far as it's really been a boost for us.

There's been a new post on our blog by Eukos who is our modeller (I'll probably post something up soon I guess). You can read it either on the website here or read it below.

OpenKatana is slowly becoming the game that we want to achieve, hogsy is busy working on the AI for most of the time and I’m working on additional tools and giving motion to all the characters in the game. If you take a look at our AI you’ll be surprised at how unique its setup is. We give them emotions and those can have advantages or disadvantages depending on the current situation. Take a prisoner from the first episode of the game, imagine what would you do when suddenly the door of your cell-block opens. is there a guard waiting outside, or is the way free? Does the prisoner fear anything? Will he stay inside or run outside of the cell? These emotions are not controlled by scripted events, the AI does the thinking.



While busy working on all this, I’m already writing up documents of what I want to do with our next project. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s not going to be an Action game, or an RPG or RTS related game. But keep in mind that we are just making plans right now and are throwing ideas around and that nothing is official at this state.

If we start working on this project I can promise you a lot of content and customization, the game is designed for you to create, but before you can do that you have to work for the stuff that you want. I’ve been missing games where the player feels proud of the stuff he has worked for, nowadays these elements just seem missing or way too easy.

Expansions will obviously take part in the game after it’s released, I wouldn’t want to put every single entity in its own DLC really or do any small DLC’s at all. I’d rather want the players to have the opportunity to create stuff by themselves and distribute it over the web. I hope this all works out because I’m sure a lot of people would love to see the idea of such a game being made.

I can't comment on what he's said about our next project as currently I have nothing to do with it. Anyway thanks again guys and feel free to ask questions

[MadGypsy]

I actually have great interest in this although I have never truly expressed it. I look forward to the updates that you post here and on your site. I almost applied for the modeller position, but I know I would have flaked at some point. I have a project of my own going and I can barely keep up with it, let alone adding another to the mix.

[hogsy]

That looks great! But yeah I can understand that but appreciate the thought. Still if anyone is interested in helping out then we'd really appreciate the support right now

I was going to leave this reply until I had written out my own blog post today but meh I can write something up here and then post it on my blog later when I get home.
So as Eukos stated I'm putting a lot of work into the AI right now though I regret that I didn't initially plan it out better when I first started working on it, but that said despite having no plan it's interesting how the code has slowly come together overtime. There's still a huge amount of work that needs to be finished on the waypoint system and I still I have a lot of plans for it (monsters being able to lay out and refine their own paths overtime) but that's also slowly coming along though when it's close to being done I might go over and rewrite some of it. Uh... The emotions are an interesting "feature" if you want to call it that, though there's more I have in the works around it that won't be seen in OpenKatana mainly since it's a fairly pointless feature for OpenKatana due to the games fast-paced nature. The idea came about since we were discussing having a pet or such in our next project (he was called Snibbles) and we spent a week experimenting a little on that, I can't say I had any huge success over it since at the time most of the monster code still wasn't really solid at the time but I decided to keep it in there and integrate it with the current base code for the AI. All that said however the emotion stuff isn't necessarily anything too interesting but when it's brought together with some planned mechanics then it's going to get pretty interesting.