Another robot

Lately, I've been working on a character I call the Raider.

He may be built like a garbage can, but he can move fast when he needs to.

I've built two different cannon arms for him – one with a retractable dagger thing, and one with two barrels.

Also, a rocket launcher.

The Raider has roller-treads for feet. Like roller skates, only with treads.

And they're rocket powered!


I got the idea for the rocket boots from a video game called Cybernator.
In Cybernator, you pilot an extremely well-armed giant robot.

The Cybernator (of course the game would be named after the robot) walks pretty slowly, but when you need speed, you can dash.

What's nice is that you can change what direction you're going while dashing. You can pull off some satisfying maneuvers – like sliding backwards away from an enemy while shooting – with this ability.

Cybernator also happens to be the most explosive Super Nintendo game I can think of at the moment.

I got some inspiration for the Raider's design from the earlier Megaman X games.

I have a new computer, by the way

My old computer was falling apart, so I took it out to the pasture.

My new one...runs a bit faster.

Before, I was lucky if my project ran at 20 frames per second. Now, I can get about 200.

Below, you can see an incomplete portion of my demo environment. It looks so much better textured~!

At the very highest render quality, I get at least 60 frames per second. And look at those real-time shadows! Fantastic. Not that I'll be using them to this extent in the finished product – I'll be using light maps to shade the environment.

Fighting Luchador Robots

Luckily, a blog isn't a physical room, and doesn't take a lot of effort to clean up.

When you last heard from me about a hundred years ago, I was working on this guy.

He's a wrestling-themed robot with a TV screen for a face.

Said TV screen can 'mold' itself using normal maps.

I can combine one of the color textures (left) with one of the incandescence textures (center) to create a face, and use one of the normal maps (right) to give it shape.

Among the many faces you see is a Luchador mask (bottom right on the color and normal map) and a demon face (three down, four across on the color and normal map). These faces have multiple associated incandescence textures, so they can be animated to a degree.

I also gave the Bruiser a Stand (think Jojo's Bizarre Adventure) for so reason.

Ignore the fact that it only has one arm.

Oh yeah, almost forgot I had a blog.

WHAA~AT is this! This place is so dusty! There's cobwebs everywhere! Is that a tumbleweed!?

Grah, give me a few minutes, I need to do some spring cleaning.