CarBall

There has been much speculation and comments about the "features" of CarBall3, and whether the quickflip is staying or going, alt fires, etc. I am going to take a second to make several clear statements.

• Nothing has been 100% decided. Yes all of the dev team members have specific opinions on whether the QF or alt fires stay, go, etc. However no decision have been made one way or the other. I have been concentrating on the core gameplay (pickups, inventory system, scoring model, etc). The code is a complete rewrite of the CB2 code (which was kinda a mess tbh), and although the code can support multiple firemodes (i.e. "altfire") because I tied into the UT3 inventory system, we may or may not use it.
• Quickflip will not be in the alpha version, simply because I have been concentrating on other things (it may be there in the beta version if it is decided to keep it). Core gameplay stuff had to be done first so our mappers can get a feel for the first couple of maps. IMO no maps [at least initially] should have to depend on the QF anyway -- especially if we are going to try to attract new people to the mod. THere is also a question of whether it is even possible to implement the same way as CB2 under the new engine.
• There won't be a secondary fire mode in the alpha version; we may decide to add secondary fires to some of the pickups in time for the beta, but again, I have been concentrating on basic (and necessary) gameplay features.
• There is no stunt mutator in UT3 to tie into, so the jumping and spinning you are used to won't be there right away either. That was all native C++ code in UT2k4, so we will have to look at how we can implement it later after the core game is up and running.

I am very close to getting a working alpha version (but temporary HUD graphics). The inventory system is done and working (took a lot longer than I thought), but I still need to tweak the actual firing of items a bit. Once that is done, the alpha version will ready for the dev team mappers to start really testing out the first few maps. I know we have been taking a while to get CB3 out, but I have been working on the code solo in my free time, so I apologize as I know you guys are anxious.

I made some good progress this month. I didn't have as much time to spend on CarBall as I would have liked, but I had to make an emergency trip to Idaho (my nephew had to have emergency neurosurgery for a brain tumor - he is now recovering nicely).

I do have a skeleton game working using a modified Scorpion. You can push the ball into a goal and score, the round resets (ala Warfare style minus the cut scene), and logging the scorer/assists work. I have boost and cloaking capabilities working, although I haven't done the pickup support yet; I currently have them hard coded to fire and altfire. Next up, I will be working on doing some cleanup and implementing pickups and the inventory system. All the UI graphics are currently the CTF graphics, but hopefully we will get that stuff customized in the new few weeks.

At the moment, I am pretty much working on the game solo, although now that I have the skeleton working, our mappers can start working.
On a side note, I think we may still need a graphic artist familiar (or will to familiarize themselves) with UT3 and it's new assets packaging (.upk). If anyone is interested, drop me a note via a private message or post here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3898 (please don't post here regarding dev team interest).

/homer

-This weeks map is Holdem

-Captains, do a better job scheduling matches

This weeks matches are
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs Team Threeve
noobs got skills vs 2girls1cup
BEEF vs Frequency

The 3v3 draft league starts this Saturday. Captains get your matches scheduled ahead of time. Make sure you post a topic in the "League Match Results." You can view the schedule and team listings here.

http://carball.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=3995

Also, this weeks map is CB-Hockey

Well, I wish I had better news... I am currently stuck. I cannot for the life of me get the ball to register touches by the vehicle. All suggestions I have gotten so far have not panned out. I was hoping to get the basic game working using the build in Scropion model, however nothing I have tried so far works. I am thinking that there is some sort of collision model issue, however Epic has "cooked" all their included in packages, so I can't even export the Scorpion mesh to play with it. So I think we are going to have to get a custom car working in game so we have the ability to adjust collision in order to get touches working. I Individual scoring/credit isn't going to work correctly unless we can register who touches the ball with their vehicle.

So, I am still working hard to get a simple playable demo ready soon, but have a few challenges to overcome until we get to that point.