Welcome to the Outskirts: It's beautiful!

Welcome to both a Nite Note and WttO article, in one! Plus some todo-ness.


LOOK AT THAT PICTURE. Yup, the Launcher now has the first serious amount of 3D graphics featured in any of my games, in-game Lone does have some 3D on the East Bay Bridge, but still! The sky scrolls, as does the sea below. It looks amazing in motion.

SO WHAT THE EFF IS DONE?
A lot! The land layout for East Bay is complete. A good amount of the forest is done, the bridge is done, new lighting systems are done, Midtown subway overhaul at 50%, the Bay Street Pier is done, but unfurnished. No RV park yet, no campsites yet, no East Bay subway yet, and no Central City Ferry yet.

So, about those activities...
yeahtheywon'tbecominginthisupdate.
In fact they're pretty low on my list. Expect them in the distant future.

FFFFF, well, What was that CSI 2: Nations thing about?
Before CSI 2 Revelations I was working on CSI: Nations, the expansion pack to CSI: The Game. It was meant to be open world mayhem, a-la Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row, where you can run around, drive vehicles at your whim, shoot things up, and blow up whatever you want. Sadly the development of it was impossible past a certain point without the new taeHD 2 engine I'm using today. CSI 2: Nations is basically my second crack at it, and it WILL come out. However, a long time from now. Expect it in Autumn/Winter this year, or at least for the project to start then (hopefully the summer) It'll run Lone's taeHD 2 and is a prequel to CSI 2: Revelations.

SO HOW ABOUT THEM LONE GRAPHICS
I really should work on an update to lone graphics wise at some point, it seems like a weird halfbreed at this point, some parts look absolutely FANTASTIC (The Launcher, Bay Bridge) while others look pretty dang bad (Downtown) so I'll have to get to work on evening it all out at some point, not in this update though.

Some notes for the upcoming lone expansion!
I moved the Park's station to be more between the Park and Bay Street, as opposed to adding another station a few feet away. (Like I did with Midtown Station)

A ton of new lighting effects are hanging around spots, including streetlights!

I started working on the new Midtown Station's interiooor!

Street signs in a few places telling you locations, look forward to more.

The night is darker.

Weather can now be clear or rainy, real randomization is expected to be added at some point today.

The sky, when the weather is clear will be blue during the day and dark at night. :O

Really neat ambient effects have been added to East Bay Beach, including seagulls.

A lot of sound-related bug fixes, like driving your car and walking/running.

The player's walking speed has been lowered, but sprint has stayed the same.

There are some minor lag issues by the water on East Bay Bridg, but it goes away as soon as the water is out of scene, this is on my computer only so far so I need to do more testing.

The phone is pretty much complete besides the flashlight at this point.

Welcome to the Outskirts: DEAR GOD WEATHER

Yup, today I put WEATHER into Lone, it'll now not rain past the 30th minute of every hour, but will before it.
Chances are I'll add more randomization later on, but this was the easiest way to do it. Yay!

Welcome to the Outskirts: A new district.

The Bay Street Seaport District will be added in this update!
It's a whole new district in the city. Modeled after the South Street Seaport of Manhattan, you'll be able to get something to eat at a restaurant, hang out by the water, or catch a boat ride.

The boat may or may not be in this update, or a mini patch after release. We'll see.

There are no screenshots yet, but what will come with this district is more interiors, another subway station, and docks for a boat to be used out of. As well as many new NPC's to add to the atmosphere.

Welcome to the Outskirts: Dev news.

Busy weekend, the 3DS came out! So yeah, not much progress on the update. But here's some news:

Activities will be delayed for another update, it'd take weeks more to release if I tried to put them in now!
A yacht ride around the city will be added either in this update or a mini-patch after the big Outskirts expansion releases, you'll get on from the park (or something) in Central City and arrive when you want at the East Bay docks.

Welcome to the Outskirts: Far from home.

Welcome to part two of the Outskirts Expansion coverage, today we step across the bridge and take our first steps in East Bay Forest.


Some big notes today:
Car headlights have been removed due to REALLY annoying graphical errors. (something will be added to replace it... read on riiiiight now)
Major new app added to the ePhone: A flashlight app, with it on there'll be a small light ahead of you.

Alright, so on to the article.
You can enter the forest from anywhere, like parking your car on the road, or just driving into it, but there are plenty of dirt road entrances and exits from areas around the forest. These dirt roads will be a big network around the area, with plenty of turns and straights so you can drive all over like a rally track and have some fun.

even though it's a long ways out...

Welcome to the Outskirts: A whole new world.

Welcome to the "Welcome to the Outskirts." blog section, every day until this expansion is released, there'll be at least one WttO post, showing you the experience you'll encounter as you take your first steps out of Central City in Lone!


In this post: How you get to the massive new zone
After the break!

Outskirts Expansion: Progress report.

Good news, so far, the bridge is just about done, and bug fixes to the city as well as some improvements have already been made! The bridge even supports my first instance of Parallax 3D in use, so the ocean looks like it's moving and goes on far ahead. It looks great.

Now, other improvements you'll see... This update will include the 'ePhone'! At anytime in the game you'll be able to pull up a phone at the bottom right side of the screen, controlling it with the number keys. It supports 'Apps' and  that's the main feature of it. Right now, it's primarily just used for immersion, but I have some good ideas to extend it later on. It comes VERY EASILY expandable as a UI. It'll release with two apps,

'eEvents' that just highlights places you should visit depending on the time of day.
'Speedometer!' shows your character - or car's current speed whenever, mainly for development purposes, but it's still neat!

ALSO: The in-game clock showing the time of day has been moved TO YOUR PHONE. It'll always be displayed on the top right of your ePhone when you have it out.

NEED MOAR UPDATES.

Now that the Nightlife update has been out for a while, it's time to discuss the NEXT revision.

The Outskirts Update
 New:
Massive map extension, with the all new CENTRAL FOREST area! (You MIGHT have to cross a bridge to get there)
Campgrounds! (RV parking area, maybe with a few interiors)
Campsites! (Tents, campfires, etc)
Activities! Actually DO things, might include mini-games, quests, not sure yet!
A huge forest to explore! (and hopefully activities to do there)
Parking lots!
Graphics changes!
Bug fixes!
EVEN MORE NPC's added to the world!
Some sort of way to handle the city load time!

This'll probably take more than one night to make, so enjoy that Nightlife update!

In depth:
this update's goal is to add functionality on top of the tech demo that is lone. Things to do. Real exploration outside of a few spots in the city. While making it look a better experience to play. Expect texture updates to various objects and elements in the game, and the new textures. My idea is to have the player cross a bridge to get out of the city, or take the metro to the furthest station. The bridge will hopefully be the shining gem of lone.'s graphical experience, featuring some perspective angling (I hope) many layers of the bridge (for some depth) and the water below moving about. It'll be a big undertaking just for me (who, remember, sucks at graphics) to draw and animate all that, so thats why this update will most likely be released sometime after tonight, as opposed to the nightly updating we've had before. This won't be as much as a overhaul as the Nightlife update was (with the addition of tutorials, sprinting, a launcher screen, and many graphical improvements) but will be an attempt to build on that. I'm comfortable with the lone. Formula we've been experiencing so far, so expect more of the casualness. But first, activities. This'll be hard, too. Though not as difficult as the graphics, I'm sure. Lone. is a decent overworld and all but there's nothing to do as far as an actual game goes, besides your imagination. I'll find a way eventually.

What will the Outskirts area be like?:
Much different from the city, there'll probably be only one building, a lodge next to the subway station, and the rest of it is focused on the outdoors. You can drive out to the Center City Campgrounds, find a spot to park your car, then set out and explore the forest at sunset and stop at your campsite by the campfire and relax for the night, imagination! As for stuff going on in there, the answer is there won't be much going on. I might add caves and things later on, but right off the bat it's nothing other than a forest for the sake of exploring and letting the player camp out. Once you cross the bridge, you'll hopefully have access to a beach-like area where you can hang out, and NPC's will be around (including older-version NPC's at certain times of the day.) You alsos can expect some sort of swimming ability for certain bodies of water! (like the pond and the beach, later on hopefully a pool.)

The Outskirts are nice... but what's after that?:
The world will already be MASSIVE by then, and I don't want this to become another CSI Nations flop due to size. After this I'm focusing on three things: NPC's. Buildings. and A.I. as in more civilians, car traffic, and much more NPC schedules.

ALSO...
Your player should have a Phone by the time this is released. The CenterWireless "ePhone".
It'll support 'apps' extensions later on, but at first it will only have an Events page showing places to go at day or night, depending on when you use it.

The all-new lone.

okay, not ALL new, but mostly! IT'S A MASSIVE UPDATE.
The download will be posted as soon as the upload finishes, here's ya' log.

DOWNLOAD HERE!

Note: There are some bugs in this version that you'll probably encounter, there'll be a a bugfix version either later tonight or early tomorrow afternoon. But nothing breaks the game, so just restart!
NEW:

• Tutorial for beginners! Includes movement, driving, and sprint controls. (Everything)
• Launcher after the cinematic intro, with gamepage link!
• Many more NPC's!
• NPC 'schedules'. At certain times of the day they'll be one place, then later they'll be somewhere else. Moving throughout the day and night.
• A nightclub building, third one down, first row! (It's small)
• Sprint ability! Hold down shift when running to run faster.
• Headlights in front of your car at night.
• Ambient light emitted from populated areas at night!
• TREES IN THE PARK.
• MINOR GRAPHICS UPDATE: Vignette filter around the screen.

FIXES / CHANGES:

• Sound related fixes, rain in car SFX now playing.
• Volume changes depending on area more accurately than before.
• Driving a car under the lake is no longer allowed!
• Midtown Station has been moved slightly more into the MIDDLE of town.
• Texture and skin changes to various objects/npc's to promote uniqueness.

Time exclusivity in lone.

So in tonight's 'Nightlife' update. I'll also be adding... A nightclub! As a plus, it'll only be open after nightfall, unless I decide to go back on my decision later on.
What does this mean? Well, I'm kind of overruling my position earlier saying day and night will have no effect on gameplay. But... Night just feels sort of blah right now. It's exactly the same as daytime save for some lighting stuff. But this means lone will also need some Daytime-only things. Let's look at some ideas!

1. I might make the cafe closed at night.
2. Future businesses could be day-exclusive.
... Yes, I'm low on ideas here, give feedback!

ponderings of a mad man

Okeh SO. We have the Nightlife Update being released tonight at some point, hopefully before 6 PM's nightfall.
Let us recap what will be in it!

1. Buildings have been given more detailed textures.2. A new, more dynamic lighting engine. Populated areas will be light up in the night. Your car will also give off headlights now. Spice up the night!3. Second of the row buildings will hopefully be done.4. Vignette around the display, adding to the look of the game5. Sprinting! Returns from CSI 2. Hold down shift!6. TREES?!7. Adjusted Midtown Station location to be... more in the middle.8. A new room in the first building.9. Tweaked sounds and sound related bug fixes (rain in car sfx now playing, different volumes)10. Many more NPC's, let's make the world feel alive!
11. And probably more stuff.

 Yeah, it's pretty big. Bigger than the Monday Night update, I'd say. Now, what should be done after all this? Well here are my goals in order.

1. Some sort of phone, PDA, navigator, or whatever-like device the player can open up on top of the game, hopefully it'll have resources for various things in the game. Not sure of what yet...
2. Improve the graphics overall. My original goal with lone was for it to be my first 3D game, but that obviously hasn't worked out with the program I'm using to develop with. Might as well make the textures look nicer.
3. Of course, make the world feel more alive. This means NPC's, traffic, more furniture in houses, the whole nine yards. Look forward to a movie theatre showing something that I have no clue of eventually, or some sort of television.
4. Make subway stations cooler, like real life. Have vendors, gates, ticket booths, etc.
5. MAYBE a weather system, again, I love the rain and I'm still on the fence about this.
6. More things in the park to add to the exploration aspect, not sure yet.
7. Some sort of customization method in the players apartment.
8. A LOT MORE INTERIOR FURNITURE.
9. Some more floor textures, even though the game is already leaps and bounds ahead of CSI 2 in that department.
10. Performance optimizations. This game runs in one massive frame, where everything is loaded at once. This can be a bit problematic...

Now, some fun facts!
 - lone.'s city has over 500 objects loaded at all times.
 - The rain actually only has 4 frames.
 - Trees in the Nightlife update have some serious layer problems.

derp, Trevor signing out.

Nite Note: March 21st

Welcome to the second Nite Note! We still got a lot of lone coverage to deal with tonight.

First of all, updates for now on will have titles, and lone will not have any set version number, hopefully it'll constantly grow, constantly expand. So what REALLY is in the next update?

THE NIGHTLIFE UPDATE
1. Buildings have been given more detailed textures.
2. A new, more dynamic lighting engine. Populated areas will be light up in the night. Your car will also give off headlights now. Spice up the night!
3. Second of the row buildings will hopefully be done.
4. Vignette around the display, adding to the look of the game
5. Sprinting! Returns from CSI 2. Hold down shift!
6. TREES?!
7. Adjusted Midtown Station location to be... more in the middle.
8. A new room in the first building.
9. Tweaked sounds and sound related bug fixes (rain in car sfx now playing, different volumes)
10. Many more NPC's, let's make the world feel alive!
11. More stuff, check back as this develops.

And next up...

Here's the to-do list (or at least, things I want to do) with upcoming lone versions!

1. Subway is only usable every 10minutes (or 5) on the 0. (6:10, 9:40, etc) so it's like a subway schedule.
2. OF COURSE, traffic, and a lot more NPC's.
3. Bug fix involving driving your car into the water at the park.
4. Enhanced lighting for outside in the city at night. Maybe even headlights.
5. Sprint ability, copy-pasted from CSI 2 Revelations to make walking more viable, but the sprint will be slow enough to keep it as the least optimal transportation method.
6. More furniture.
7. More time in the game, as opposed to exclusively day and night. (Sunrise, sunset.)
8. Rain being randomized, sometimes it's on sometimes it's off (Even though I really love the rain. D:)
9. Some sort of 'phone'-like feature...?
10. Better textures on buildings.
That's about it for my ideas right now, tell me if you have any suggestions!
After the break: "What's the 'point' of lone?"

Monday Night Build of lone. in this post!

Click me to Download!
Here's the changesssss!

1. First building is in game, a cafe and your room.
2. Subway system with 3 stations! (Click on the map after entering the train to go there!)
3. Map extended, now with a park area.
4. Park Eatery building added (second building)
5. A LOT OF new sound effects and ambiance.
6. Fixed indoor lighting effects at night time.

It's epic, dawg.

Control review!

WSAD = MOVE! | On foot & In Car
WALK INTO YOUR CAR = GET INTO CAR!
F = EXIT CAR | In Car only.

WALK INTO THE TRAIN = Open subway map.

WALK INTO DOORS WITH DARK LINES UNDER THEM = Enter that building.

WALK INTO DOORS = Open the door.

Use stairs by walking into them, check this post again in a bit.

Sounds... lots of them!

It's finally starting to hit me just how large the ambiance .wav files can be!

In order to adjust to this... There will be a version of lone. Released without any sounds or bgm's. It'll really cut down on the size.

i love lone

MAY I JUST SAY, LONE LOOKS STUNNING IN FULL SCREEN.

Ahem, now that I've gotten that over with. It's time for the first nite note! A semi-nightly blog post on the game development for that day. In this one, I'mma cover the all-new lone.

I gotta say the game looks fantastic. Even though player shadows had to be removed, the game looks the best ANY of my games have ever looked, at least on my screen. I still need to do testing on other computers (and, uh... desktops)

The game runs in a wide window, but nothing looks stretched, even when in full screen from what I've seen. Everything looks crisp, bright, fun. I'm addicted! It's gotten me in that idea flow thing where you have no writers block whatsoever.

Read more after the breaaaaaak!

The first lone. Build everrrr!

Woot! Here it is, and what's in it...

Download here!
1. West fraction of the city overworld map.
2. The early rendition of the Lone. custom-made theme song! (Yes, I made it myself!)
3. TONS of sound effects!
4. Rain!
5. Main Menu!
6. Your car!

Alright! Now how to play...

WSAD = MOVE! | On foot & In Car

WALK INTO YOUR CAR = GET INTO CAR!

F = EXIT CAR | In Car only.

If you get stuck in a wall after leaving your car, press R to teleport back into your car.

Here's your lone. Update.

HOORAAAAY lone. is pogressing. Here's an extremely early screenshot of the game running taeHD v2!

The GamePage for Lone will be updated later today.
As you can see it's a much wider display, it isn't massive 1028 x 1780 or anything, it's just a bit taller and a lot longer of a window, so textures won't look nearly as upsacled.
The rain even has sound effects! As you can see, this is VERY early. There's not even any buildings in the background.

An update on the changes.

GamePages, while implemented already will have their pages complete later on, this week, most likely.
"lone." is going rather slow in production, so give it a while yet! Meanwhile, play some CSI 2 Rev? :D

Welcome to the new trevdev.blogspot.

Now accessible from "trevdev.tk"

Annnd we're back! Welcome to the new trevdev blog, featuring an awesome template now much easier on the eyes. Let's take a tour of the changes!

Everything is after the jump. Click the title of this post.

In other news... New trevdev Preview.

In addition to the epic "lone." data drop today...

trevdev is about to undergo a redesign!
Introducing some of the new features... (full list will be released after the redesign)

1. New theme: hopefully making text easier to read while keeeping everything minimalistic!

2. Labels on posts: quickly and easily find specific blog posts about things that you're interested in, say just CSI 2 information, just random jibberjabber, etc.

3. GamePages: Pages of information dedicated to certain games, these pages will also be integrated to Generation 4 games through a taeHD update, and Generation 5 games later on.

4. Twitter-ific: Twitter intergration on the Sidebar to every page or post, live information!

5. Cleaner site design thanks to a revamp.

Whats this? ANOTHER PROJECT?!

yup.
CSI 2 is on a slight break due to me just being burned out! Give it a week or two.
ARENA will take all of my focus, so work on that will start after CSI 2's 1.0 release.
So, meanwhile I will work on a thiiiiird project to keep me sharp on developing while also giving me a testing ground, or sandbox to experiment with new ideas in the taeHD engine.

But what is it...?
A reboot of my first game project, Mega Awesome Land Turbo! -- and my first relatively higher quality series, LoneLife.
"lone." is the game. It's 60% Minigames and 40% Exploration, and hopefully it'll be fun.

Unlike Mega Awesome Land (which I admit this game takes more from) it doesn't take place in some random village area without roads that happens to have go-karts, paintball, and a space station. It takes place in a city that will actually go from day to night in real time (thanks to your computer, play at night it's night. Play during the day it's the day) and will have weather effects, mainly rain. You'll be able to hop in and hop out of your car, have a house and be able to somewhat customize it, go out on the town and play minigames ranging from laser tag to over the top experiences (the cool little space station will probably return!)

The world will be (somewhat, I'm not that good at this!) as alive as I can make it. This means people walking down the sidewalk, cars driving past you, traffic, stuff like that. It also will support Co-op (I REALLY want it to be game-wide, as in able to explore the city together unlike the past game) but might be limited to minigames only.

This post is developing... check again later today!

NEW THINGS!

Currently I'm sidetracking a bit from CSI 2 and ARENA!

Since I love Minecraft, I wanted to try something a bit like it, here's a screeny.

See? Very simple and unpolished, but it isn't really meant to be polished. It's a tech demo of a terraforming style game inside taeHD. Although all it is right now is just digging, but I'll see where it goes. If anythng it might be put into a future game for the heck of it, but I can't see a game centered around it so far. I do have some goals  for this demo though!

1. Building things.
2. Digging horizontally (THAT WOULD HELP)
3. Running water.

I'd also be (besides that terraforming thing) a decent foundation for a future platforming game, I think.

THE COMPUTER RETURRRNNS!

Progress has resumed on projects. :D

What's up with the delay?

My laptop has been sent back to HP for repairs, and thats what I work on to make these games. Expect progress to continue again by the next few weeks, no more HP laptops for me, thanks.