That's right, we're going UDK. Why? Why not, instead of doing the whole thing as a mod for UT2004 which while still very cool and popular on the gaming scene, it is outdated as a engine. WIth the UDK groups, and people can start thier own endeavors whether thats a full blown game or a simulation of sorts?

The tools have finally come to the playingfield and peoples dreams are finally seeing the light they deserve. http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=707020&highlight=create+game+UDK Here shows the highlights and bases touched when developing a game. The thread itself shows many answers to questions that seem to have meaning behind them. Also people wanting to do Videos? http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=707437 is a great thread to read in regards to doing it. Camera angles, lighting, effects, GUI's the scripting examples and such. Have to thank Joseph Hayes, one of our assistant mappers for helping out with the links. They are quick useful.

These are the discussions that are coming out since the UDK came out recently. Those at http://moddb.com are doing backflips for those on the UTE end of things with UDK out it places them in that postion of do we or do we not go towards the light? Pending on teh progress and stage they are at. Anyways, this was the best way to go after discussing this at length as a team and as individuals.
[Submitted by MaestroDaVinci]

It is my extreme pleasure to announce that Jade Phoenix has finally a coder worth their salt. I am introducing the latest member of The Jade Phoenix team, Randori. I met Randori at BuF one the more noted and famous Unreal Series Communities on the net today. His skills were what drew me to him and asking him to join the team.

He has a vivid mind with a remarkable talent with unreal script being applied with his knowledge of Visual Basic and the recent knowledge he has acquired in unreal script. Now if him being fresh to the field this was a prime opportunity not just for us but for him as well to apply his skills to the architectural design to Megatokyo itself in various places within the map and the buildings putting to use his elevator project within various buildings on the map.

We’re very excited to have him on board, and this should prove to be a unique experience for all of us as a team as well as individuals. So we welcome Randori to The Jade Phoenix Team and a learning experience and fun time to be shared by all.

[Submitted by MaestroDaVinci]

These guys are great it's why I am doing what I am doing for them. Donations goes to support thier servers and the gamers community for Stargate fans out there in the world. They've done so much so far by even setting up a hosted server service. SO give if you can... it helps everyone out in the long term.
[Submitted by MaestroDaVinci]

Stats:
Tris Count – 52454
Production length in total: 28 Days

Production:
Production for the K9 unit model started out as several NURBS roughly shaped into different body parts of the character based on the design drawings. After that was completed satisfactorily the next stage was to convert the NURBS into polygons and begin stitching body sections together to make a one complete model.

The eyes will be made separate from the body as this will make it easier to animate. The process of stitching took a while to complete, making sure everything fits together and creating a half way decent topology. After this the model was smoothed to get a more sharpened look.

Then the fun part began. UV unwrapping. I can tell you this was no piece of cake, this thing has so many parts that needed cut and flattened to get a flat face to make it easier to texture. This was probably done in just over a week, the map was then opened in Photoshop and then the color texture, bump map and diffuse maps were made then added to the model. The Eye’s were simply a shader with a glow effect added to it.

[Submitted by Ms. Charlotte Wills/Galatea ]

I'm working and trying my best at the Mega Tokyo map so I do hope you like it.

The map is in the process of bing scaled to be a little smaller to improve game play since very big maps need large amount of players to cover the whole area. The textures now played to the map are a simple test just to preview a little better the architecture forms. Still there is much to do but I think that this is developing at good pace.

Listed below is a Updated WIP Video.

Please leave some comments and ideas or suggestion. All will be looked at and taken under consideration.


[Submitted by Paulo Tempus]

Today marks 10 Years of the release date of Unreal. Circa1998, Epic Games brought out a game that woke up the PC Gaming community and had the attention of gamers since then. Unreal also opened up the door wider than other games when it came to level making and mod designs, player character ideas and overall game enhancements.

Also thanks to The Epic Unreal Anthology release? People can play for the 1st time ALL the games in one menu type gui. Steam always has to be thanked as well for having such a great deal for users out there to be able to d/l and install and not having to worry about keys and such for thier games.

I remeber playing unreal with my neighbor across the street (at the time) and having him teach me the tweaks and fixes we could use to improve netplay and how we pwned our buds at the local LAN fests we'd have here. 10 years......has it been 10 years already? I don't feel that old for some reason. Unreal always makes me feel I dunno ...young is the only word I can express atm.....Anyways Happy Birthday Unreal, and thank you epic.
[Submitted by MaestroDaVinci]

Paulo has come a long way on this from the start. He's flying thru but being quite through about his work on the City. He's atm working on the traffic transit side of it as well.

We also have a clip of the "2nd" map in progress for the mod as well as the new testbed to some of the mod's assests.its the interior of the Hughs Geit Corp Offices from the inside Quad and give us a birds Eye view of inside the building. Look at the footage here.

Comments and feedback are indeed welcome.
[Submitted by MaestroDaVinci]