OpenKatana

[hogsy]

Some more music!

We have some other big stuff on the way soon too

[MadGypsy]

..if NIN (or maybe Ministry) was an middle eastern band - this would be their hit

awesome job

[hogsy]

Not sure if anyone would be interested in this but we recently decided to make our old change-log public for those that are interested in the development of the project.

This change-log is pretty outdated and near the end we started to switch to a better method of logging our changes which is why the changes listed become less frequent.

I hope at least someone will find this interesting and I hope it shows how much time we've dedicated to this project so far

Download

[MadGypsy]

I read the entire thing and I can definitely see the dedication. Good work.

[hogsy]

The Laser Turrent

This is a work-in-progress preview of the laser turret which the player will encounter when fighting their way through Mishima's prison in episode one.

[hogsy]

Sorry I haven't posted for a while but with so much time focused on OpenKatana it's often hard to find the time to update so many different sites with information on the project. Here's two posts I've made on Inside3d for those that haven't seen them.

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To start off with some updates I spent quite sometime last night working on the geometry of E1M3 and redoing/rethinking various parts of the level. Here's a few shots though these are pretty rough, and may I also beg you to ignore the missing textures here and there.


Originally this part of the level was much darker however I felt that as this was the opening to the prison it would make sense if it had a lighter tone compared to the inside so that the player would be led to think "oh this looks alright", until they finally get inside that is... The geometry still needs to be revised a bit more here but I think the lighting is much better than it was. The texture also used for the light here is incorrect and will be fixed soon.


This is the control room where the player would open the gate to get into the prison. The ammunition/supplies were originally hidden in Eukos' original revision of this part of the level however I decided to change his control panel to a shelf and place the ammo there in-front of the door that players come through, which obviously means that they'd immediately see it before entering. There's also a hidden secret in this room but I'm still contemplating what I'll put into it since the room is still a fair distance from the actual enemies in the level and most of our powerups have a time limit... Armor perhaps?
The cables here are a little lost right now, originally they were hanging from the ceiling rather randomly, and now the ceiling has been revised so they're just hanging there for now. Again I'm contemplating on how I'll add them into the level, but considering that the lights at the top would be made of a glass-like material it could be possible to have it smashed up with the cables hanging out of it but I'll have to think about it.

As you can probably see we've also redone a huge number of textures in Openkatana. Eukos recently went ahead and spent his time finishing up a lot of the work we started doing towards replacing the old textures.

Anyway that's all I have to report on for now! Thanks for reading

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More screenshots are on the way soon guys!

I've spent most of today bringing more stuff over to Linux, it was great splitting everything up into seperate modules when we were on Windows and all comfy with Visual Studio but now it's ended up making it more of a pain, though this hasn't been a huge issue. While bringing most of our code to Linux has been pretty damn easy so far, I must admit, I wish there was more documentation for Linux (perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place?) :x
Either way our Platform library, Game and tools have been brought over which just leaves the engine. Honestly I'd think given another few days I could have all this up and running so that'll be pretty sweet!

Also we've certainly been having a large number of puzzles to solve with the engine as of late, I've been swooping down on a lot of bugs lately since I didn't want things to pile up and there's certainly some stuff which has me scratching my head. I'm sure we'll get them sorted soon but that's why we haven't had any other updates for a while, at least from me anyway since Eukos is always messing around with the game-code and adding new stuff (which often in-turn gives me even more things to sort out). We had planned on doing something commercial after OpenKatana but I think you'll probably see us throwing out quite a few small things after OpenKatana is released so we can get everything a bit more mature here and also help us develop ideas for our next project.

Anyway that's all I can report on for today! We'll throw some more screenshots and videos up soon.

[gdiddy62]

Good to see this is still in the works.

[nahuel]

i never played daikatana!! open katana seems awesome!!

[Baker]

I've avoided saying this thus far, but keep in mind Linux as a percent of the desktop user-base is less than 1% and although I am knocking Linux a little the statistic is accurate.

However, multiplatform programming will make you STRONG. And Linux is a valuable first experience. You'll quickly learn why Linux is 1% and there is much to gain from dealing with the toughest programming environment. [To any contrarians who disagree: Either you can code or cannot, I can. If you can't, I'm uninterested in hearing your Linux coding opinion, to be quite blunt because a non-coder can indulge in whatever fantasy they like but an actual coder has to work within in it.]

"Microsoft only" programmers are the most myopic dorkwads that ever disgraced the field of programming. I can't stand their ignorance, I couldn't 5 years ago, and 5 years ago I was telling them all their faults and today a Microsoft-only programmer is viewed as niche so I was dead-on accurate and do I gloat? You betcha.

My point: Remember your audience. Linux is hard, it will teach your valuable lessons and you SHOULD experience it. After it kicks your ass, make sure the lessons you learn are the right ones. The correct lesson: do not code on the Microsoft island, be multi-platform. The correct lesson part 2: Linux caters to idealism --- an idealism that we need --- but it isn't 1% of the market today and it certainly won't be tomorrow. Take what you learn and become a Android programmer or any other platform really, once you code platform neutral and non-Microsoft the sky is the limit.

[gnounc]

"Microsoft only" programmers are the most myopic dorkwads that ever disgraced the field of programming.

While I certainly will extoll the virtues of multiplatform and allowing yourself principled freedoms, calling microsoft only programmers myopic disgraces is a wide fucking margin shy of the mark. The word you're looking for is "practical".

If you're looking to produce a workable product in an environment people will actually use without shooting yourself in the dick trying to get things working for a myriad of tangled clusterfucks, windows isn't the worst you can do.

[golden_boy]

I agree with gnounc; the short version of my opinion is:

If you're maintaining an existing multiplatform project, then keep it multiplatform.

If it's your project, ie you forked it or whatever, then do whatever you want. And this seems to be the case here.

I'd like to see Linux support, but it's not my place to request it.

[hogsy]

I think I should clarify but we're still developing and targeting OpenKatana primarily for Windows since we already understand that's what most people out there are using, and to be fair we also had someone working on a Mac OS X port too but it seems he lost interest.

That said there's a few particular reasons as to why we're putting the effort into getting everything over to Linux and we'll certainly be focusing more towards that platform in the future with other projects, but so long as a large proportion of people are using Windows then of course we have no plans to stop supporting it. As Baker also said, venturing into supporting something like Linux can help prepare us for porting to other platforms such as Android too (not that we have any plans to do so for OpenKatana).

[Zaric]

Very cool looking project. There are many directions (including not at all) that this could go and I'm interested to see how this progresses.

I see a lot of back and forth... They are somewhat right, the more platforms you can run on the better it will be regarded. Still above that, gameplay is priority 1. If you can make it cross-platform you should, but don't let that get in the way of making a good game if you don't feel up to it.

[Seven]

Hello hogsy,

I thought I have read at inside3d, that you actually have project issues, like quitting team members and others.
It sounded that the project *could* be abandoned to me, but I am sure my bad english fooled me and everything is fine and on track...

That is what I hope, because I would love to see this Remake one day

All the best,
Seven

[hogsy]

I see a lot of back and forth... They are somewhat right, the more platforms you can run on the better it will be regarded. Still above that, gameplay is priority 1. If you can make it cross-platform you should, but don't let that get in the way of making a good game if you don't feel up to it.

Because of how we work, my work towards porting everything to Linux will not effect the work on the game itself since that isn't really my department anyway. Eukos is responsible for most of the code and content focused towards the game while I'm responsible for the engine and various base systems on which the game-code is built upon. Usually my work doesn't effect his.

I thought I have read at inside3d, that you actually have project issues, like quitting team members and others.
It sounded that the project *could* be abandoned to me, but I am sure my bad english fooled me and everything is fine and on track...

You're not actually the only person to be mistaken about this, though I think it was probably my fault for not being clear enough. We've had a lot of issues during development which have slowed things down but they're certainly not going to stop us since we're still more than capable of working on the project ourselves.

Basically we have no reason to abandon the project.