Offbeat Geek

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After being rebuilt not once, but twice, DM-HOLP-Takk finally sees the light of day.  This is a Harcore Oldskool Low Poly style map with 1on1 in mind.  For those who don’t know (if there are any of you out there), this is a  custom Unreal Tournament 3 level.

Takk, Norwegian for “Thanks”, is dedicated to the community members who helped to keep the HOLP2 Portal Site alive this time last year.  Personally moved,  I created this map to immortalize these individuals.  So today, it’s Thanksgiving Day! I give you DM-HOLP-Takk!  Enjoy!

Edit: This post was meant to be published automatically on the 26th at 12pm GMT but typically wordpress decided to ruin my day and not publish it.

After about two weeks the new and improved DM-HOLP-Takk is almost ready for public consumption. It will be released before or on thanksgiving.  This will be my first map with custom audio effects and uses more decals than all of my previous maps combined. The picture above (larger version) is a teaser of the prison cells which were created as a thank you to the individuals who helped keep the old HOLP 2 website alive.  Stay tuned for more info on on DM-HOLP-Takk!

I was browsing a few sites and came across these three videos. I will let the content speak for itself.

Like I said…. HOLY CRAP! There are some seriously talented folks out there. Thanks to pixelfader for the find.

Sam Rockwell (“Galaxy Quest”, “Hitchhiker’s Guide”, “Jesse James”, the upcoming “Iron Man 2″) portrays Sam Bell, the lone employee serving on the Lunar Industries mining base “Sarang”. He is serving the last couple of weeks of his 3 year contract before returning to earth. Though he is the only human crew member he does have one companion, a machine named GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacy.

When Sam crashes his moon rover after a hallucination things start to unravel. With the startling discovery he makes back at the crashed rover he doubts his sanity and very existence. I don’t want to give away anything, not that it would really spoil anything. The real meat comes from the character’s resolution of the situation. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. Yes, even for someone who is not a science fiction fan.

The musical score, by one Clint Mansell, is perfectly fitting and ranks right up there with K-Pax, and Solaris’ scores. I have been listening to the main theme on repeat for a while now and it just does not get old. It is one of those tunes that has great depth and works well throughout the movie’s varied emotional states. Clint has proven yet again that he is not a one themed wonder like other notable composers around these days.

All in all Moon is well executed and enjoyable.

Three weeks ago we were treated to the first part of the live action Assassin’s Creed: Lineage shorts. Since then there have been two more.  Over the weekend, all three were combined into one full mini movie.  Check it out below!

Assassin’s Creed  2 is due out this Tuesday (Nov 17th).

Well we finally have the answer to what was happening on epicgames.com a couple of weeks back!  That’s right, Epic have released Unreal Engine 3… for free! You will even be able to sell your own games via a steam-like app. That will be worked out later. For now Head on over to the new and swanky site for all the juicy details (http://www.udk.com/)

For the last couple of days I have been locked away working on the bits and bobs for DM-HOLP-Takk. It has been a VERY long time coming but the wait is almost over.   I am hoping to have it done before a certain game is released this month. The video footage is also progressing along nicely and will be ready in time for release too.

I took a whole new approach to the way I built the level.   You will get to see it as I release the VTMs about the map’s construction.  Hopefully they will prove useful to some of you out there.

For those of you here for Industry news, I know I’ve been lacking somewhat. Sorry. For now this map gets all the free time I have. I’ll be back with more industry updates and news again soon!