I just witnessed a beautiful moment. It was when I pressed the right arrow
on my keyboard, and my little model of Axel took his first steps forward, before
letting out a series of punches and kicks at a poor, floating gang member.
The Streets of Rage 4 project is coming along nicely. I probably haven't
mentioned it here before, but someone posted on the Wings board that they were looking
for modelers to work on a 3D updated version of Streets of Rage. A retro-remake.
Having spent many an hour kicking people in the face on those very same rageful
streets as a young boy, I offered my services after playing the working demo. I
made one model that was absolutely the most horrible looking thing ever (she's on
the WIPs page), but then fixed her up and made her look more Blaze-like.
Then I made Axel, and after weeks of horrible pain trying to get him exported
to Direct X, I finally had some success, and the ringleader and programmer of this
project, Andrew Vickers, did all sorts of magic that I can't possibly comprehend
to make it all work. It's my first attempt at any sort of low-poly stuff in years,
so the decent results I've managed are a big surprise. It would be nice if I could
make it all a bit more realistic, but oh well. Perhaps that will happen in the future.
I spent a few minutes fooling around with Axel's textures today and turned him into
a low-poly (and highly muscled) version of myself. Maybe I'll make it into the game
as a gang member.
This has brought me, at least slightly, back into the world of video games that
I used to love. I went out and bought Metroid Prime yesterday, which is so beautiful
and spooky that it makes me want to cry. But there don't seem to be many games out
there that let you beat a gang member to a pulp. Streets of Rage 4 will serve that
purpose.
by
Elvis Deane!
