Jet Force Gemini: Resurrection

Thanks for your commendations and your critisism

I tried to make a webplayer build several times, but I always got a memory error during build I think it crashes during the compression process of 4096 x 4096 textures Maybe that's gone when we buy Unity4 license in February but my system is also 4 years old... And due to the fact that a lot of people don't like downloads in .zip format in this forum I never released a download, but maybe I can provide a one room demo to get a feel for the gameplay, AI and combat system.

Thanks a lot I'm glad some of you can now actually see the elements of the N64 version. This was not the case when we released our Spawnship-Trailers and maybe it was a mistake to release them as first look. Basically because the original Spawnship was nothing more than a fat hull with violet and blue/green lights in it with a little bit of water and a few chains hanging from the roof... If the level wouldn't have been called "Spawnship" you would have had no idea that Drones should be produced there - and so we took the Spawnship colours, made them a little more sinister and put a lot of technical stuff in there which - we admit - diverged a lot from JFG because you've never seen elements like this in the game (not even on the Battleship Sekhmet). But Goldwood is bright and colourful and also got its underground tunnels like the original but even there you'll find a lot of new stuff

The player char was our first real model and our first try of animation but we get better with each model - and the head is build from a photo, that's why he looks quite realistic too. He will get a quite big overwork when we proceed in the game. We now start to make the last level of his path and maybe after that our main char "Nash" is getting the overwork he deserves... I personally never used crawling and rolling but I thought about implementing it. What you can actually do now is, when you are in "aim mode" you can do a salto to the side to evade shots very fast and I force you to use it especially during
bossfights to evade missiles or lasers.

Nice idea as well, this was an awesome game as well, but it got indexed in germany as far as I know and you had it to get via Austria or Switzerland to play it

But always remember this shall be a JFG sequel and no remake! It continues the JFG story with a new plot, new protagonists and also new worlds

Speaking about new stuff - the third level of our male human protagonist Nash will be a world which never appeared in the original JFG... The working name for this planet is "Echidna" according to a monster of the greek mythology and hopefully it will give you chills...

 

Good work! I have always been a loyal N64 and RARE fan, can't wait to play your demo, this truly brings back memories

Coole Sache, Parker!

 

Damn it man, I still have the memory errors during webplayer build The "StackAllocator.cpp" still crashes although I have Unity4 now. Oh but at least the "for educational use only" watermark is gone now and the license isn't limited to one year anymore I think I will upload a .zip file then and the guys who don't want to download it are unlucky then, but I can't change it... sorry!

But at first I want to finish up two new enemy types. The air units are now able to follow a waypoint path while attacking instead of flying to a fixed position and stay there and I've also implemented those purple enemies from JFG with the big guns, but my version has a gatling gun and uses the same AI and animation rig as the brown Missile Drone. The only difference will be that the Gatling Drone uses a curtain and permanent fire technique to defend itself instead of firing single missiles.

 

Wow, we've finally done it. After a lot of requests we finally release our first playable Demo of Jet Force Gemini: Resurrection and you are allowed to test one area of the second level Goldwood.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW:

- download and extract GoldwoodForest.zip, run GoldwoodForest.exe and press the right mouse button on the title screen to enter the game. (I explained Unity crashed during WebPlayer build --> StackAllocator.cpp causes memory error)

- use W,A,S,D to run around, press and hold left shift to walk

- Show or hide your gun by pressing Q or the mouse wheel. When your gun is visible you can fire unprecisely by pressing the left mouse button or you can enter the aiming-mode by pressing the right mouse button. In aiming-mode you can shoot precisely.

- Use the mousewheel to scroll through the weapons. 2 are included: Pistol and Machine Gun.

- In aiming-mode use A and D to strafe

- Press Space to jump

- End game with Alt + F4

WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE'RE ABOUT TO FIX:

- Plasma Gun isn't integrated in the Demo, it's not finished yet

- Jumping is jerky, will be fixed

- You don't slide off steep edges. I hope I can somehow fix this but it has my attention

- Camera isn't behind the player when the game starts. This does work but I missed the right configuration before upload! Sorry!

- Drones sometimes walk through obstacles or stop and turn around their own axis very fast. This is an error in the AI which I still have to search and fix.

- Air units are coming out of the wall instead out of the treetops. False axis configuration. Will be fixed.

- Do not try to enter the door again through which you enter the level. The game will try to perform a scene change, but since only one scene is included in the demo you'll only recieve a black screen.

- Health and Ammo are incredibly high. Yap - extra for you so you can do a very intense and relaxed testing without getting killed very fast.

- The second life force door doesn't open. Demo ends here and is limited to only one area


...

Constructive critisism is welcome and please keep an eye on your FPS counter and tell me which value you reached. Then I know how well the game runs on several systems.

Hint for ATI graphic card owners - if the FPS is very bad try to turn off Catalys AI in the Catalyst Control Center/driver settings. Unity doesn't seem to like it.


Well then: Happy Shooting!


https://www.dropbox.com/s/ceua0tcpk51hazv/GoldwoodForest.zip

Oh and just a few little news:

Plasma Gun works on several enemies now. You can charge up your shot and fire a constant beam with no delay which splatters your enemies when it's charged up!

 

VIVA LA MAYHEM!!!
looks really cool
i noticed you haven't change the running animation since you first created it, so let me suggest something:
the legs movement is nice, but the torso should tilt forward a bit and get "bumped" with each step - an up and down movement.
I think that only this will make it look much much better.

 

Thanks! Glad you like it

Would you mind to tell me how much FPS you've reached and what system you have?

As I said the first of our two main characters will get a serious overwork. He was our first real model and our first try of animation and I also haven't even touched Mecanim yet. I have Unity 4 since 2 wekks and so this stuff is still to come. Main focus is on world generation and gameplay mechanics at the moment and I will see how much I can optimizie graphics when it's time.

Thanks for playing!

 

The Jet Force suffered a bad setback. While saving I got a memory error in Unity (after applying occlusion culling to the scene) and the whole echidna section is completely gone because the crashed saving process simply deleted the scene data. Bad day.

Then I successfully recovered half of the level from the previous Unity 3.5 version and my terrain data (which even includes texturing of the terrain) is still there. I also have the plasma gun and the gatling drone saved seperately so these assets are also still avaliable. But I have to place tons of models and waypoints again so there's a lot of stuff that has to be redone.

I also have a job now which starts at 11th of March, so don't expect a lot of updates in the next months, I will see how much I can do while I'm a full-time worker... the lazy student life seems to be finally over now.

But hey, you still have my Demo to play, don't forget to download and test and please tell me what your hardware configuration is and how much FPS you got. Instructions and known issues are listed a few posts above.

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ceua0tcpk51hazv/GoldwoodForest.zip

 

After loosing my Echidna level because of a crash of Unity while saving and my defective graphics card one week later I'm back in the work flow now.

After a removing every removeable part from my broken ATI 4780 X2 and a short baking session in my oven (200° Celsius, 10 minutes) the error LED doesn't glow anymore and everything seems to work normal again...



I've finished recreating the first area of Echidna which I lost through a crash in the save process. A few things are different now and I would also say they've been improved and are better than before - especially considering performance but also gameplay. I just have to add the snow effect and a bump map feature for the terrain and then this area is ready to be played again ...



Oh and don't forget to download and play my demo!

 

Dude, source control! A basic Git repo runs just $7/month (free if you're willing to go open-source). I don't know what your time is worth to you, but it's got to be more than $7 for all the work you lost.

 

So, I got myself a new graphics card, just installed it and it works like a dream. I reworked the first part of Echidna level which I lost because of an Unity crash while saving, but it got even better than before. Thanks to rumorgames for the tip. I also started working the second area of Echidna a few days ago and Jan made a very small teaser for our second playable character... Just for you to see which direction we're heading ...



Happy Easter days to you all!

 

"ARGH! Screw you, damn snow storm! I can't see my enemies properly!"

I finished preparing a windy and foggy valley with lots of enemies... Echidna is gonna be a really dangerous place!



Jan is still working on the concept of our second character and he'll hopefully finish it this week. Due to a lot of work at my job, my personal progress is slower at the moment - and the last two evenings where I had a little bit more spare time were dominated by Bioshock Infinite...

Well but I've started with a model for an ice cave which will come directly after the valley and will provide a lot of ways to go through. A little snow labyrinth if you like - and a little reminiscene of the green tunnels on cerulean.



The 3D layout is done so far... The floor is very rough and bumpy. I gave the structure a very dark blue/green ambient light and I will start to add 3D details, obstacles and enemies now. Wall texture is still to come of course.

 

As a big fan of Jet Force Gemini I don't think the new school graphics and higher quality models fits with this. The old school graphics and models made the game a million times better and more interesting. If you were to not tell me what this game was a sequal of I would of never been able to guess or have the slightest guess of what this is. Not trying to bash the game but I feel like it does not deserve the title of Jet Force Gemini.

 

Bitbucket has free git repos, even for eh.. closed source

 

Okay now, so I've talked about an ice cave and I almost finished adding details to the first section. I also will get the enemies to work in this area today. Maybe I'll have to play around with the lighting when the wall texture is done, but at the moment this is how it looks like right now:







The second part of the cave is still to come and I will post my progress when it's done.

Jan unfortunately hasn't been able to finish our second character on one cool picture until today - mostly because we had to figure out some weapon systems out which fit to the character and his body parts. But I am able to show you 3 out of 4 weapon concepts and the character will hopefully be revealed next week.







Notice that our characters in contrast to the original JFG have only the standart gun in common. They will have 3 personal weapons each to avoid snatching away upgrades like it was possible in the orginal. If you hadn't pushed Juno to his max. ammo values the final fight was a real pain - and I guess every normal guy pushed vela...


We've also regarded the situation and listened to YOU and your suggestions consindering the male char. HE WILL GET A COMIC LOOK! OKAY!
I've had a long and intense conversation with Jan about that because it was our formal aim to give JFGR a more mature look - and in some way it will stay because the enemies look good the way they are. They are supposed to be more dangerous and that's why their look will stay BUT we're planning to make a reunion with some well known chars from the original and you can't have a realistic guy next to an anime figure... And we're not planning to change original figures... So yeah, you all were right at the beginning and we're definately gonna change the look of the male char.

Have a nice weekend!

 

Ladies Gentlemen... Have a look at the finished concept art of our second protagonist "Orion".

Nash's animal partner is less than half in size and will move much faster than his human counterpart. In contrast he carries weaker weapons. In combat, the two form a perfect symbiosis of a quick attacker / scout and a strong fighter with heavier weapons.
As already mentioned Orion uses different weapons so you don't face the problem of snatching away upgrades like it was possible in the orginal.

In contrast to Lupus, Orion is a real cat which got its mechanical implants after an accident and due to the technological advance over time he also received a translation module so he can communicate with humans and vice versa.

 

Okay, so the last area of the ice cave is finished. It's unwrapping time now to fill the walls with colours! Oh and by the way - the third boss isn't far away. Time to collect some concrete ideas on that fight.



In the mean time the Ice Cave has been completed and has got its wall textures right now.



I'm also preparing the Boss area right now, as you will recognize by the big mizar logo - and yeah, Echidna has got a small colony on it which will contain a very special establishment you've also seen on Ichor...

 

Ok, this might sound a bit harsh at first. But, you have a great chance for a great game here and I think so far visually you haven't cashed in on that opportunity.

Forget about the new style vs old or mature vs cartoon. The fact is that the original had a charming visual identity, that people can recognize. Mature, cartoony or not your game visually just doesn't have that. It looks decent enough, but it doesn't stand out of the crowd. First the textures are average, they lack artistic technique like, pores in the skin,the details of the exoskeleton of the bugs,shading (lack of value, allot of one color textures with one mid-tone and maybe a highlight.There should be a range of values, definitely in a mature styled game. cartoony however you can get away with less tones depending on stylization).

You could stick with the mature style however, that doesn't mean you can pick up visual cues from the original and translate them into the mature style that you want. Or you can make up your own visual style and just keep working on tweaking the textures. But if you do you should at least reference reality, what do real bugs look like how do they work? ( For you a pray mantis is a good reference point to start: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2478/3982639804_e2110f2fb4.jpg , http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01779/Flower-Praying-Man_1779748i.jpg , http://www.google.com/search?q=pray...Msrc4AP39oHgDQ&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=1011 , the diamond shapes in the eyes the edges of the exoskeletion picking up the light, the somewhat see though skin etc). what does human skin look like close up? http://www.google.com/search?q=pray...1,d.dmg&fp=4957670956675721&biw=1920&bih=1011 .

Also reference other games that you like visually for inspiration, http://www.google.com/search?q=worl...s4AP3ioCQDg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=1011 ( I picked this one because it is mature but it has a cartoony influence). http://www.google.com/search?q=worl...1,d.dmg&fp=4957670956675721&biw=1920&bih=1011 .

However you have allot of good ideas, like the kitten with the turret on it's back, lol !! and the big blue bug boss on pg.2 he/she is awesome. Also some of the environment work has great mood/atmosphere. Keep up the hard work I will follow this thread to see your progression .

 

@Clearrose thanks for your constructive criticism. I will get into it tomorrow because I haven't got a lot of time to write you now Sorry. And sorry for keeping you waiting so long - there was really much to do in the last few weeks which hadn't anything to do with my project ...

...and so there wasn't too much time for modelling... But we've also brainstormed a lot, have a pretty idea for a bossfight which we will reveal soon AND I promised that you'll have a special establishment on Echidna which might be familiar in its style - yeah right: in the middle of the small space port there is a CLUB!

And we dedicate its name to some guys which ran a great JFG website that doesn't exist anymore... too bad because these guys also came up with a JFG2 idea and tried to use the unreal engine... Unfortunately they disappeared into nowhere and we never saw any results... R.I.P. Jet Force Gemini APEX!



The area around the Apex Club is getting some shape. This will be a neat little space port. I've also established a connection between the boss area, the club and the landing pad so you can finally walk through the whole area. The Club model still misses some details, the space port buildings haven't got any doors right now and the terrain also needs some painting. When this is done I have to set up the big security door which separates the club area from the boss area. Then I will take on bringing our boss to life!

 

Hey Clearrose, sorry for keeping you waiting so long. At first I want to say I appreciate your way of construcitve criticism and a lot of people, especially (those on youtube) could really learn a lot from you.

Thanks for the advice with the textures, I will forward the info to my artist and see what he can so. At the moment I just can say we will approach a more cartoony style for the main chararcter.

In terms of quality in total... what can I say, we aren't able to provide a graphical novum here. We were just 2 random guys which followed some kind of dream and started right away to see where it ends - and we are even proud of what came out until now and this mainly because of the fast paced gameplay and the intelligent enemies. We might overwork some models (like the main char in some time) when everything is set but now we are firstly busy with creating content, worlds, levels, weapons and gameplay mechanics to get a completely playable game as soon as possible. I know what you are trying to say in terms of style and I apprechiate the references you sent, this is truly helpful to understand but I just don't feel like it's time to "polish" this already.

Don't get me wrong, I also think that sometimes it lacks graphical quality, models could be more detailed and textures could be too but due to the fact that two people that are full time workers create this in their spare time we can't hold-up ourselves with detail work right now... This game will mainly be made to entertain you with a quite a interesting storie, some jokes, intelligent enemies, a lot of green bug blood and hopefully epic boss battles. It will also develop itself from a linear TPS to a "metroidvania" TPS with backtracking just like the original. Unfortunately we will surely have to cut back graphics to get this done in this life

But we also have some news right now:

Currently creating some kind of horizon to fight the Echidna boss on a big plane of snow. (you'll be far away from the horizon while fighting and the horizon will be much wider than on this picture)



We're also discussing the direction of the Echidna Boss and are developing designs for some kind of Snow Worm which attacks the small Space Port.

 

Well a lot of small things have happened to JFGR in the last few weeks... Due to the fact that I'm still waiting for my final piece of art for the Echidna boss I can at least show you some of the updated which make JFGR hopefully more like JFG.

But at first, some updates considering the brainstorming of the bossfight:



First idea of the fight:



And the final 3D area where you will fight:



I also played the Goldwood Level again and thought that the break of the area where King Jeff's hut stands and our canyon area is just too rough and we would need more of that "orange" rock instead of our used brown tones, So it now looks like this and most of our followers were happy with that colour choice:



I also added more detail to the tree trunks on Goldwood:



... and we tried to create more depth in wide areas with fog and background structures:



I currently prepare some stuff in the Apex Club again and I also tried out the mecanim animation system on a test model. Took quite some time but this could be quite handy and we will build every new Player- and NPC-model based on the desired bone structure of the system. Speaking of NPCs... what would be a club without a DJ... and I think every JFG fan knows this guy here...



New stuff will come soon!

 

Okay now, new stuff as promised - and unfortunately it's completely untextured. Why? Because my texture artist has to procrastinate JFGR tasks due to other, more urgent projects at the moment. That's why I have to work alone at the moment and I am doing a lot of modelling stuff.

Firstly we have DJ Fishface completely rigged and ready to rock the APEX. He already found his place on the turntables



Secondly I started to work on our second player character Orion who, you remember, looks like this:



Here's the process how he's coming to life:





I already modelled all 4 weapons for this char, so here's the player model with the Small Standard Gun:



Here's the Laser Turret:



The Sniper Rifle:



And the Homing Missile Launcher (will be more grey when finally textured):



Weapons will be attached on the plate on top of the weapon arm and carried in the chest.

Orion now has his full bone structure and is ready to move. I also added a cover for the weapon arm which only opens when the arm is moving in and out. It has a gap for the roll which controls the angle of the arm so it's still able to move.

I also added bones to the face for hopefully achieving facial comic expressions and at least maybe a VERY rough lip synch in cutscenes...



Really curious how he will look ingame...

 

I remember both of those and Jet Force Gemini. I twas an amazing game back then. Perfect Dark and Smash Bros were just games that stole spotlights imo. I loved both of them, don't get me wrong. But I remember so many other games that were just as good with less recognition. I also remember some game that reminded me of Starship Troopers but I can't remember it's name. It didn't do too well, but boy did I love it.

Anyways, good luck on this remake. Looking forward to see the completed product.

 

Thanks man, although it's not a remake, it will be a sequel if we ever get it completed. But as you can see we're still working hard on it!

Since Orion got his run-animation and a test fur and I almost needed half a day just for that run cycle (why do cats move their legs so irregular!?) I needed a pause from animating and switched my activities to the Unity NavMesh System.

Within one evening it was possible to get rid of our two level waypoint system (lvl one for cover detection, lvl two for avoiding obstacles) and reduce it to a one level waypoint system because the NavMesh system is now responsible for avoiding obstacles - and it works like a dream. When NavMeshes are baked correctly no enemy should ever walk through obstacles again right now, even in groups.

In combination with the NavMesh system I also achieved that Missile Drone and Gatling Drone are now walking far enough around the corners to really hit the player when they are following him instead of (sometimes) shooting against the wall or standing still. The problem was to get the muzzle far enough around obstacles.



Orion is now running around on the battlefield for the first time! I also optimized the jump function which is still not perfect but better than before and I solved the problem that the camera also centered the player while performing a jump. Now the char can jump without camera up&down-movements and the camera will smoothly follow if the char stands on an higher/lower platform after the jump/fall.




Orion also got his first two weapons attached and you can move the guns on the weapon arm. It's also possible to move the weapon arm into the chest now and the tail has an idle animation which lowers itself when the weapon arm is folded out. Very comfortable.

And since Jan is back in business now - and hopefully will be for a while - I finally recieved the final art for the Echidna Snow Worm. He is a natural inhabitant of Echidna which has been caputured and drilled by Mizar's troops. Now he attacks the small space port and the APEX club.

You will encounter two of these beasts at the same time!

 

Several small improvements have been made again!

The second Character Orion is now fully textured and equipped with all 4 weapons which are fully functional!



I have also played around with some facial animation of our killer kitten.



Sniper bullets and Homing missiles are both able to blow enemies into pieces when their health is below zero. The Sniper Rifle is also able to zoom.

Homing missiles can either be controlled by moving the mouse/crosshair around or by locking onto an enemy by pressing the "Lock On" button which is currently defined as "y" on the keyboard. You can lock or unlock on enemies on the fly, which means you can set the missile to automatic flight towards a chosen target or to cursor control while it is already on its way. Pretty handy!



The newest 'feature' is that exposions now harm enemies even if you don't manage to do perform a direct hit with missiles. The reduction of the enemy's health depends on how many body parts are in range of the explosion.

 

Quite some time has passed since our last update - so what has happened so far?

At first, we completed the Apex Club (at least from the outside)



The 4 pillars are changing their color rapidly and the giantic half mirror ball on the roof rotates! So come on in - the red carpet is rolled out!

Then I begun to work at the Echidna Snow Worm Boss and here are two WIPs:





In contrast to the concept art we added some spikes to the single elements of the worm to increase the level of detail. The guns are a little bit thinner, the head has been improved, we now have the tail part and the "tube" which holds everything together. Guess I'll be done with this quite soon...

 

Well... now we have 2014 and here is our next Trailer for the ice planet Echidna!

Within the last year we've implemented our second playable character, the cat "Orion", we developed new weapons, massively improved the AI of drones and air units, created the new enemy type "Gatling Drone", the new Boss "Snow Worm Twins" and we revived "DJ Fishface" and also "Vela" for a guest appearance. We've also created a reminiscene to the "Big Bug Fun Club" manifested in our Disco "The Apex" (in memory of the biggest JFG Fanpages ever made) and well - crafted a complete new level which is almost completely ready to play!

So now: Have fun with our new video a happy and successful 2014!

 

Hope you guys enjoyed our new trailer and had some surprise moments while watching

After a few problems with the framerate due to parenting meshes to other meshes bones (now solved, parenting an empty game object to the bones and adjusting position and rotiation of the other mesh to the game object via script works just fine!) and doing some additional animation I could finally start programming the Echidna Boss fight. Damn time is running fast again... and Dark Souls consumes too much time because you die THAT often. Well... JFGR won't be that hard.

 

Nice looking game!!!

 

It was relatively hard to figure out how to time 2 boss enemies so they won't interfere with each other but I think I am on a good way. Big laser guns, ice blocks which burst into fine icy clouds which damage you instantly and also an attack from below the snow surface makes these guys quite a challenge.



Well, the boss fight for Echidna hasn't been finished yet because other things just consume too much time at the moment.
But we have a rough map concept and the first textures ready for the next area... can you guess to which place this plate belongs to?

 

Yeah there was a time where I did just nothing due to other priorities and a lack of creativity considering further areas and also further attacks of the Snow Worm Twins which fit the exact timing the fight requires to work. But now we managed to complete another step of the fight and motivation is back.

So the Snow Worms are now spitting green slime which contains little exploding maggots - in a reminiscene of the ichor boss fight where they dropped from the roof...



Basically the Echidna Bossfight is completed... I've integrated two different death animations because you have to kill one worm first - so according to the mantis boss in JFG you'll see one enemy die during the fight without a cutscene. Since our worms are either jumping or rear up in front of you, you can kill them in the air and watch how they nicely crash into the snow - or you can shoot them in front of you and see how they slowly collapse.



I also wanted to replay older levels lately and I recognized some errors which came up during the Unity Updates (by adding Shuriken and Mecanim) so I had to tweak our existing two bossfights and get them back to work and additionally the creation of NavMeshes for all areas which are not part of Echidna are still to do.

Nonetheless, new content is created permanentely and therefore we present the "meeting point" of our two characters in the middle of the map, where a great story progress will be set... Welcome to the ruin of Mizar's Palace (the picture shows the extracted courtyard of the N64 ROM, so we are improving/reworking original assets here).

 

While beeing on vacation on Bali I finally wrote down a more detailed version of JFGR's storyline and also brought more characters from the Original JFGR game into the plot. Having more than plenty reasons to call this title "Resurrection" I say it one more time that this game here is NOT a remake! If we are ever able to finish it you will get a 100% self-contained sequel which expands the JFG timeline and universe through a new characters, new locations and an interesting, humorous plot whith a lot of reminiscenes to the original. I think and hope something like that has never been done speaking of fan games. I saw remakes, I saw games where you played your famous hero again maybe in new levels, but a fan game where you only reference the original game and extends the complete universe is hopefully something new...



I then started to roughly craft the desert landscape of the outskirts of Mizar's Palace ruin. This is going to be the place where our Characters Nash and Orion meet in the middle of the map.



And started to remake the coolest video game boss ever (except for the fact that there was a S***ty little fluffy bear behind all this!)?

Thanks to the work of the Jet Force Gemini APEX Fan Page years ago who ripped the original Mizar Model from JFG Rom I was able to increase the number of its polygons and craft a newer and more detailed version out of it. He will get a few tweaks before I actually use him, but yeah ... Mizar now really has resurrected.



And because I was in the mood for character modelling I gave in two more... You should recognize the left one.
The right one with the ribbon is supposed to be be the "sister" (as far as you can say this when you talk about robots) and she owns the APEX Club - Welcome Diamond and Ruby Geezer!



We also came to the conclusion that drone eyes need to be black instead of red for nostalgic reasons... so we implemented the eyes from the original JFG ants for our advanced drones...

 

A lot of time has passed since my last update.

This has multiple reasons. The first one is that both of our team now have full time jobs and less time in general to work on this project here. The second one is that we somehow recaped a lot of stuff and realized that this fan game more and more finds its ways back to the original JFG. Especially in terms of style a lot of guys were trying to push us into different directions because we were trying to develop a much more mature JFG. In a lot of cases we earned much hate for this approach and so we decided to get back to a more comic-driven style which is geared to JFGR's predecessor.

You can see this back-to-the-roots development at our cat Orion, our overworked Drone eyes, Diamond and Ruby Geezer are going to look like in JFG and Mizar will also have his well-known colorful appearance. Still Nash is our biggest concern, especially due to his stiff animations. But he will also get a "comicfication". Since my own head was the pattern for his (software-generated) head, I decided to put a picture of my face into an online-face-morph-tool and let it create an anime character. This picture might be a good reference for a future Nash...



Next step was to push Mizar's Palace forward so I began to extract N64 geometry from the ROM



This, along with the court from the last post, is almost the complete geometry of Mizar's Palace (Juno's way) and it will be combined with the ouside area we created ourselves.

And just recently I did the same for Lupus' way which will also be slightly modified to make a way for Orion through the palace.



Because my teammate also hat to relocate for his new job, he unfortunately had almost no time for texturing, but slowly and more consistent, color and life is coming back to the environments as you can see here in the lobby:



... or in the court:



The outside area of Mizar's Palace is almost completely playable and got its enemies and decorative stuff. Unfortunately you are still walking through an almost 100% grey environment at the moment. Same goes for the Lobby as well as Orion's path through the palace.

But as soon as there's more color we will show it to you.

 

September 2014 was my last post? You must be kidding...

Okay, still have a lot of work at my job, moved into a new flat in the mean time and well everybody knows the christmas days aren't as relaxing as they're meant to be... That last quarter of the year passed so fast...

So now for the news:

We will also bring back one generation of Shield Drones! As you can see here ...

http://jetforcegemini.synthasite.com/resources/drone17.jpg

Shield Drones had red shoulder pads in the Original - In my first approach I've constructed a device which is wrapped around the drone's neck (this is NOT the final texture!). It was a combination of the shoulder pads and a construction for holding the shield - so drones can use both hands for aiming and always protect their heads - except for when they're looking down - and that's the moment when you want to strike!



But somehow I didn't like it so I went back to the old "ok-hold-the-shield-in-your-damn-hand-then" thing



Then tried fighting those guys in the narrow passages of Mizar's Palace catacombs. Ain't easy at all! (not textured yet, but already filled with detals and obstacles and ready to play)



Also tried the first playthrough through the lobby with Orion and discovered some minor issues - but we already have lava in the pillar room and... A bridge? Yeah of course, because NO F***ING HUMAN/ANIMAL CAN WALK THROUGH F***ING LAVA! That's the only complain I have considering the original JFG btw...



Also began to set up the Chasm Area - and Even cats can have mirror effects!



And without a lot of words I show you the finished outlands of Mizar's Palace - besides considering the next picture...

Mizar's Palace now got some more colours and details and I exchanged the strange symbols on the courtyard wall with a short writing, done a font which should be very familiar to oldschool DOS gamers...





You can see (and enter) the small pyramid where Juno's path started in the original JFG. So maybe Nash follows Juno's trail without knowing it!?





When the outlands were finished I went inside the palace... first stop - the Lobby:

I tried to catch the mood of these church-like windows ... the windows were even hard to recognize in the original but they were there... you can also find some random hieroglyphics and the small scarab symbols on the walls...



Already in the new year I finished the main hall...



And the next stop are the halls on the side...



Hope you enjoyed watching this bunch of pictures and the news... the project continues no matter what.
Thanks for reading and your patience

 

Is the project abandonned ?

 

2.58? why not 2.76? Either way, I use blender and would be more than happy to lend a hand with animation!