Blood 2: The Chosen


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Updated: 4/30/98

Week 2:
Page 1

Page 2

Week 15
Rick Raymo speaks on the focus of B2 and other cool stuff

Week 14
Jay brings us up to date on Blood 2's development

Week 13
Schlegel teaches path-finding class

Week 12
Bill V takes us through level creation techniques

Week 11
Jay takes a tour through a Cabal meat factory

Week 10
Dan talks about the soundtrack using IMA

Week 9
Eric shows us how to paint happy clouds

Week 8
Greg talks about possibilities of weapon modifications

Week 7
Ernie shows tricks of motion-capture and texture mapping

Week 6
Ben shows a day in the life of a Fanatic

Week 5
Andy talks about the interface and menus

Week 4
Kev picks the Blood movie actors

Week 3
Schlegel talks about AI

Week 1
Jay gives a tour

One of the cool things we can do in LithTech is use a keyframer in the editor. This lets the level designers take any object and move it along a path in any fashion. I mocked up a demo of it and took some screenshots to show you what I meant. (I didn't want to spoil any surprises in B2 by showing you something from in the game… you'll have to wait until E3 for that!)

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Here we have my 3D view from the editor. You can see a road, with some points connected by red lines. The points are the key frames of a path which I'll make a car follow. At each point we can specify a new direction, rotation and speed for the object which is following the path. The engine will smoothly interpolate the model between the points. This is all basic stuff for a 3D-modeler, but the fact that this sort of thing is accessible to me as a level designer is pretty cool.

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Here's a shot of the car staring along its path. It's no Z3, but hey… Kevin's 70's automotive fantasies are his own! One of the cool things about our textures is their ability to contain fullbrights, like the headlamps and taillights on this car.

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Here you can see the car in mid-air, KITT-style, moving and rotating between two key frames. I placed a civilian AI in this little level too, with the hopes that the car might hit him. You can also see the cool curving road texture… Ben requested that one for one of his levels, and it works really well in my opinion.

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Sure enough, the civilian is toast! The car is finishing its jump, coming down to the ground at an angle. Looks like this poor guy is going to get all tangled up in the axels. There will surely be a lot of gore, limbs and screaming, and maybe even some explosions, but I'll let Schlegel do an update to detail all that cool stuff.

I'd have to say that roughly sixty civilians die per workday in my office. Speaking of which, I'm running a little behind right now! I'd better break out the minigun… see you next time!