Category Archives: 3D/if

Vespers: Adventures with NPCs, Part IV

By Rubes | Published: March 20, 2008


This is the fourth installment of my blog series introducing the six NPCs in Vespers, detailing the development process from text to functioning 3D characters. The three previous installments can be found at Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Once again it’s time to resume my efforts to bring our NPCs to life, beginning with bits and pieces of text from the IF version of Vespers and ending with a modeled, animated, and voice-acted 3D character. It’s been a while since my last entry, which described Lucca, the youngest monk at St. Cuthbert’s. This time I discuss the development of Ignatius, perhaps the most mysterious of the brothers at the monastery, and the one most distrusting of the Abbot at the start of the game.

Ignatius: From Concept to Character

Each of the characters in the game has their own challenges, and Ignatius is no [More...]

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Vespers Update 2/18

By Rubes | Published: February 18, 2008

Time for another update, the first since starting this blog. There has been some progress in a few areas, although perhaps not enough to warrant one of my more extensive blogs like on GarageGames.

Characters and Animation

Happily, we’ve finally replaced our previous animator, who left us for more prosperous opportunities. In his place we now have two individuals helping with the character animations, James and Matt, which I hardly have to say is a real gift. Progress on the new characters has been slow so far as we get those two up to speed and comfortable with the art flow. We’ve also made a few adjustments to what we were doing previously; in addition to entirely new character rigs, we’ve also been experimenting with a system to provide some pretty nifty lip syncing to go with the voices.

The lip sync process uses a software program called Magpie Pro, [More...]

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Implementing an IF interface in 3D

By Rubes | Published: February 12, 2008

Most of today’s graphical adventure games eschew text input and output for more streamlined, symbolic interfaces and visual feedback. The typical IF game is somewhat unique these days in that it relies entirely on text for both purposes. There are advantages and disadvantages to each interface type, but what I want to know is, could a hybrid IF-like interface work in a 3D graphical game?

Rather than going into the why, I thought I’d discuss the what, so at least you’ll have an idea what I’m talking about and how it might work. Cue the screen shot.

This is a shot of the kitchen, which is still a work in progress. The cupboard is to the left, a table is straight ahead, and a locked hatch in the floor is in the back to the right. At the bottom of the screen is the text output window. Here’s a [More...]

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Catching up with Vespers

By Rubes | Published: February 5, 2008

Although The Monk’s Brew is a new blog, I’ve been blogging for some time on my progress with Vespers over at GarageGames.com, the makers of the 3D engine I am using (Torque Game Engine). I thought the beginning of this blog would be a good place to collect those initial reports, in case anyone would ever care to go back and review my development process and progress. All new blogs from this point will be posted here on TMB. Here are the links to the blogs, in chronological order:

Chasing Windmills?
11/8/05
In which I first discuss my decision to pursue a hybrid of interactive fiction and a first-person 3D engine.

“Vespers3D”
12/30/05
In which I discuss my initial attempts at creating a text parser within the Torque Game Engine, and my enlistment of Jason Devlin and “Vespers” as the experimental game.

Vespers3D: The Adventure of Text Parsing
3/9/06
I which I discuss [More...]

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