[ 19.12.04 ]
 Because the mod is on hold, and I'll probably be migrating to the Source engine or Stalker, I have recompiled the latest working source files and uploaded a playable pre-alpha version of the mod in the files section. Enjoy!
>pospi

[ 8.12.04 ]
 Ahh yes, I am reminded that I haven't done anything on this mod for bloody ages. Well, the news is this: Somewhere along the line, I found other game engines to learn, more cool shit to do, and of course other things that dont involve being in front of a computer.

So, for now and ONLY TEMPORARILY (this is me stressing this), EscherSketch is on hold. I don't know what the future may bring, but migration to a newer game engine with cooler stuff I can fiddle with is a possibility.

I guess if you want to check back here every couple months to see if anything's happening you may get lucky some time soon.
>pospi

[ 17.08.04 ]
 Long time, no update. Apologies for that. I haven't actually done anything with escherSketch since i last posted, which is obviously a very lazy thing to do. Too much other stuff to handle right now. But it's alright because I still plan on finishing this one day, at least. In the meantime, I've made another small fun mutator to hold you all over, it's called 'Insta-BeatDown' and you can check it out here. Work *WILL* happen on escherSketch one day, it isn't dead, just give me a while to work out this other more-important stuff first.
>pospi

[ 29.06.04 ]
 As of now, I'm changing the name of this project. From now on 'grabin' shall be known as 'escherSketch'. Finally, I've thought of an actual name that goes some way to describing the game as well as (hopefully) sounding mildly interesting. And of course to reflect this there's a new logo up the top. I hope you enjoy.
>pospi

[ 19.06.04 ]
 I'm waiting on some website work, which means you get an update. 'grats.
A couple of things, some of my smaller (more shitty) mutators have been recompiled to handle the new patch, which means for all those who downloaded supermegaBULLSHIT or linkGrapple off fileplanet will have to do it again. Sorry guys!

Back to Grabin stuff, well it looks like i won't be releasing any kind of alpha soon like i promised, mainly because i spent ages adding new features instead of fixing up the bugs i still have left. Go take a look at the HUD in the images section, it's pretty wicked i think. Also I've been fiddling with gravity manipulation like i said, mainly because i really, *really* want to put in escheresque maps into this thing. At the moment i've got a spell where you can 'fly' around in the direction you're looking in. Except that it's actually controlled falling, not flying, and you can really kill yourself good with it if you aren't very careful. I'm having some success making people walk on walls as if it was the floor, but there's a lot of optimisation and jitter removal needed there still.

I've also added a new style of wall jumping to the mod, which hopefully will be more skillful, useful and fun to play with. Instead of dodging away from walls, you only need to press jump to 'push off' from them. That makes it a bit easier to do, for a start. When you push, you come directly away from the wall, which i think makes more sense. It also means an element of problem solving, to work out which wall to wall jump off to cross a gap. It also won't slow your fall at all like dodge jumping in normal UT2004 does, which means youll have to be a bit more careful with it. To offset the ease of wall jumping in Grabin, it becomes more difficult to do. You'll only jump off a wall if you were heading TOWARDS it with enough speed, so if you're falling alongside a wall you're going to fall down a lot and die rather than push off. Oh and finally and most importantly, you can wall jump as many times in a row as you like in Grabin, which makes some cool jumping puzzles possible, kind of like the ones you may have seen in Prince of Persia 4. Anyway that's what i'm up to with Grabin, sorry for the wait again but looks like that's all you can do. heh.
>pospi

[ 24.05.04 ]
 Man, you gotta love that heading colour. Ok, maybe not, but it's funny since it's really hard to read. Fine, I change it. Anyway I just wanted to say a quick thing about the movement system Grabin will use.
Basically, I have coded in proper jumping code, so that when you jump, the direction is taken from the normal of the surface you're standing on, rather than straight up. What does this mean? Essentially it means that in Grabin you'll have to use the landscape to your advantage - If you can find a forward - facing slope to jump off, you'll go much further. If you jump when running up a steep slope, you might actually go backwards. Also I added proper momentum to the game, so that jumping off a moving object will catapult you in the direction that object was moving. You know, like lift - jumping in UT, but in three dimensions. I am tossing around the idea of being able to push yourself off walls by jumping as well, a little like wall-dodging but easier to do and less powerful. If i add this in, Grabin could have puzzles where you have to jump back and forth between walls to get places. I'll keep you posted.
Oh, the other thing of note is that the prototype of this whole thing is due (as an assignment) in a couple of weeks. So depending on how complete / good it is, I might put an alpha version of the mod online for you all to test.
>pospi

[ 18.04.04 ]
 The gesture system (ie foundation of the mod) is fully operational and can recognise player gestures really easily. My flatmates and i had a bit of an alpha test on the weekend and it played really quite well. There were a few minor alterations needed of course, but overall the gameplay is solid. This is a great relief to me since i have been idly wondering over the last weeks if the game will, in fact, be fun to play. So i got lucky. I took a few screenshots of it all, but they turned out looking not quite impressive, so i may have to take some more. I'll upload them some time soon anyhow.

Also, i've stopped releasing source code on the progress pages. Sorry about this, but if i want to actually get down to it and work really hard at coding the mod, i need to not be distracted by these huge write-ups of what i've been doing. Everything i've written and released is still there though, and i released a final look at the code as of the alpha test. I'll still be writing down the new additions and alterations in the mod however, just shorter and less explanatory. After all, i need to keep track of what i'm doing. What's there should be more than enough to give anybody who is interested an indepth look at the mod as well as some helpful info on working with interactions, vectors, weapons, mutators, PC's, replication etc... or to say more simply, general uScript modding skills.
>pospi

[ 11.04.04 ]
 Grabin gets on the move! I've updated the website and made it all pretty. Aww. I'm going to add to the other pages whenever i get around to it so that there's a bit more enticing material hanging about. I guess this is a good indication that I'm actually serious about developing this thing, and that it will be slowly and inexorably working its way to completion in the coming weeks/months (years)?

So, to sum up where I'm at with the project right now: I have a working base to build the mod on. That means that all the important visual effects are ready and i know that it is, indeed, entirely possible to code the Unreal engine to recognise gestures and do different things based on them. The Grabin Sword is ingame and works just fine, I'm leaving animation until later though since hardcoding different sword swings by directly manipulating its rotation is going to be a pain in the arse. There *is* a reason for the stupid animation technique, i promise.

As to where I'm going now, the next steps are going to be to get gesture recognition coded in and have it generate some basic attacks since they are easy to test.. and animate the sword. In all honesty, once that part is done the rest should come relatively easily (:

Oh and, some nice trivia - that logo up the top there took 12 minutes to make! No, seriously. I'll do a better one someday. Maybe.
>pospi