specsowl

Hey guys, it's UPDATE TIME!!!!

What have I been working on? See for yourself:

Underwater Swimming is coming along, though the sea floor is a bit barren.

Hovering over the characters shows their names. If you're close enough to them, you can talk to them too! (Hovering over items will work the same)

WIP Beauty shot of Ga-Koro after going up the main ramp. You can see the Suva from here! Also, houses have no detail on them and are kind of messy. Need to work on them some more.

Shot of the...waterfall? Isn't there supposed to be a giant Kaukau there? (Soon)

Welcome to Ga-Koro, the ever growing city!

The city from up above. It grows more and more each year! I wonder what new locations will be here from the 2nd MNOG?

Thanks for looking guys! I hope to see you all soon with more exciting updates!

I continue to be amazed by your work and the time in which you've done it. I like you're explanation for a bigger Ga-Koro that is not exactly like the game. I feel like you can do something like that with every village if you needed to. It allows you to both stay true to the original but also give people the same feelings of wonder they received from exploring new areas in the original games. You have really captured the essence of MNOG with the rahi models. I feel like not including the holes in the liftarm pieces of the rahi is really reminiscent of the somewhat simplified versions of the rahi in set form that were characteristic of Templar's art style. I also noticed that I had never seen a ussal with those colors before. Are you using different colors for ussal crabs in different villages?

Thank you! Yes, not including the holes is EXACTLY what Templar studios did to make me fall in love with the art style. Gives them more substance in my opinion. Also the growing/changing village thing is what I want to include because some parts will feature a less than positive result of the nature around them. I want to show that Mata-Nui is WILD and not something that is really safe for the Matoran, but they make the best with what they've got. 

As far as the Ussal crab, I have two plans. 1. is wild ussal crabs. Each village will have ussal crab wildlife scattered about to match the rahi of that village. However, outside of the villages, I will have a small Ussalry huts that all of Mata-Nui is using for transportation. One thing I want to really push is cultural mixing. You go to Ga-Koro, and there will be Ga-Koro things, but you may also see an adapted Lava board or lightstone or even a Ko-Matoran walking around on vacation!

Hey guys! Got some [ugly] progress for you! 

Blocked out some of Ga-Koro, and spent a million years on trying to script the dialogue functions. I am currently working on an underwater functionality. Naturally, being a blockout, Ga-Koro looks less than beautiful...floating in this, erm, gray void, but I promise it soon will! First and foremost is the functionality of the game. I need to make sure the point and click functions work perfectly as well as the dialogue. Hope you like what you've seen so far!

You may have noticed that the map of Ga-Koro (right) looks a bit different than the Ga-Koro of MNOG or MNOG II. Well, Ga-Koro is a natural city. Every year the city grows because of the lilypads. In MNOG, the city was just a small village with a few sprouts. In MNOG II the village had grown quite a lot! I am hoping in MNOG 3D to keep the look of MNOG II but with a few new areas to explore in this ever growing aquatic city! Don't worry, the classics will be there, but a few sensible buildings are sprouting! 

These are some base models for the Takea, Ruki,  unnamed Ga-Koro fish, Ussal, and Tarakava. I still need to work on a few pieces and obviously texture them. Just a small update on how they are turning out!

My next steps are as follows: 

Program ladders and underwater functionality as well as picking up items (but not putting them into inventory yet).

Model houses and extra lilypad sprouts.

Animate walking, running, and waving.

This will be over the next week or so so keep a lookout! The ready to play Pre-Alpha is just around the corner!

 

Lots of excellent stories! I have an addendum to mine.

 

I recently decided to condense my collection by instead of keeping them all put together in tubs, taking them apart and putting them into individual plastic bags with the instruction booklet. Either way, it's fun picking up each one, remembering how great that particular set was, and taking it apart, knowing one day when I cycle my collection on my shelf I'll get to put them pack together again. Bionicle will always continue to inspire me, no matter how much I may think otherwise

Careful not to snap the ball joints!

 

So far so good . I'm pretty careful with them. The only sockets that have broken for me are the back legs of Fenrakk and the only ball joint that's been broken was Mutran, and that was when I FIRST bought him. The things that seems to break the most for me are the connections where the weapons go into the hands, and that's always incredibly frustrating

Here's my opinion. When I was younger on this site I was incredibly frustrated by not being able to see leaks. People would be discussing them, news posts would be saying "Don't do this!" and after all of that...I never got to see them when everyone else did. And I wanted to! I've always been THE GUY in the know about stuff. 

But these days, like a lot of people are saying...the internet is a much bigger place and contradictory to its size, so much EASIER to access information. The day the images were leaked you could find them on at least 10 different sites, namely image boards discussing toys, tumblr, reddit, et cetera. The point being, lifting the ban here would only defeat the purpose, not encourage it. 

Sure, people are going to see them, but I've always though of BZPower as THE PLACE to talk about Bionicle and having leaks just negates its exclusivity as a forum close to LEGO. To alienate LEGO's policies, why, you might as well just be reddit or 4chan, not that they are comparable or necessarily bad (hey /toy/ is a great board) but that they are simply all inclusive boards while this one is different. There's no containment board for ALL Bionicle because the whole place is Bionicle. I think we can all find something else to talk about here and discuss our exploding excitement about the specifics of the leaks elsewhere. 

It's decent but a lot of my pockets have ripped trying to jam Mirus and Pakaris in there and some are bent at the top from the Akakus. The only masks that fit PERFECT are the noble masks and the Hau. Kaukau even has some problems , Kakama is too wide as well. However, I really like it and the canvas is an excellent material. I only wish that they spent a little more time sizing the pouches

Lots of excellent stories! I have an addendum to mine.

I recently decided to condense my collection by instead of keeping them all put together in tubs, taking them apart and putting them into individual plastic bags with the instruction booklet. Either way, it's fun picking up each one, remembering how great that particular set was, and taking it apart, knowing one day when I cycle my collection on my shelf I'll get to put them pack together again. Bionicle will always continue to inspire me, no matter how much I may think otherwise

Looks promising  so far... I'm glad you're bothering to plan everything out instead of leaping in and giving up a week later like so many others.

Haha time and time again it happens to everyone. It happens to cool projects you see going on, it happens to you, and it happens to me. I have failed to complete many projects in the past. One thing though that I find comforting in this project is this:

1. I'm not in a rush

2. I'm working alone

3. I worked on this 3 years ago and am returning to it.

Now these all seem like factors that would mean that I am very likely to GIVE UP when really the case is that things like working in small unprofessional (meaning not paid or just with friends) teams is very likely to break up because of one person waiting on another type deal. Not being in a rush also is because I wont burn myself out over working on it. I don't have school to return to and my job is consistent so there is no real "I only have 6 month to do this...does anyone even care?"

Planning is hard and boring, but after many MANY failed projects it's important to know that planing is the glue to keep you from simply giving up on a project. Also it's really cool. 

I also understand that they wanted to make a representative of each color. Red-Tahu, White-Takanuva, Green-Gresh, Blue-Nektann, Brown/Yellow-Rahkshi, and Black-Skrall. However, they could've chosen better I think. Like instead of Skrall, which was the exact same as Atakus or Fero they could've used Rorzakh like mentioned above or made Takanuva the black representative with a lot of gunmetal and made Pridak or someone the white rep. Either way they could've had more interesting choices. I think that Tahu, Takanuva, Nektann, and Gresh were good reps, but Skrall and Rahkshi aren't special. Maybe two unique characters would be better

I have said this many times that I hated the Hordika build. It was different, sure, but it was the start of the fall of creative building. They were easy and not all that attractive. 

The lack of posability is a huge turn off for me, definitely. I remember getting the Rahkshi and saying "What is this" aloud. The 90 degree angles in the arms is what kills me the most. I can do with the legs just fine...but the arms. The Mata may have had no posability but they had nice angles and a tall form. However, I liked the Piraka because I felt that it and the Rakshi were closest to form (aside from Skrall released the previous year...seriously) but overall I think just the collectability of them makes them worth it. I mean even now they are still pretty cheap but the price is slowly rising. I think it might be worth getting them

Now BZPower, I know most people feel that the sets were kind of lame, but these days I'm kicking myself for not getting them and have been scrambling to pick them up. I now own only Rahkshi and Takanuva and am working on getting Piraka. Anyways, do you really think that are were a good idea, in retrospect, of showing some of the finer parts of Bionicle as a last hurrah. They weren't too expensive, small enough to not take up too much space but almost Mata size, and fairly aesthetically pleasing and all inclusive of each set's series. 

Anyways, let me know what you think!

Wow, amazing! Although to me the Pakari looks too narrow and the Huna looks too wide. Of course, those are tiny compared to the scope of the project!

Thanks! And yeah, I need to adjust the masks but I'll be working on that soon. 

Omg, it's new LOMN!!!!! You have to finish this. This is so good. Will it be like LOMN except with a Tohunga overhead view?

Please include the original Tohunga instead of the later ones!

Hey man thanks for the kind words! I was originally going to do original Tohunga but now I think I have a neat story I want to do with it so I'll be using the rebuilt Matoran. Besides, late Mata-Nui is so big and beautiful that I think the result will be pleasing. Also the camera is first person and will act as a FPS but with Point and Click Adventure mechanics similar to MNOG. I am currently scripting it now so I hope to release a pre Alpha of Ga-Koro soon for people to test out. Perhaps then you can let me know what you think

Also, UPDATE

I'll be updating the thread tomorrow with some more information on the game and some very preliminary screenshots of Ga-Koro in the blocking stages. It won't be beautiful, but I promise that with lots of work the result will be the same as Po-Koro! Also if I have time, Thursday I will release the pre-alpha of Ga-Koro where you can walk around, pick items up, and see how the game will be played. 

Just a suggestion for the hub world: 

the player could start off in a boat with a map. All six Koros are marked on the map and upon clicking one you travel there.

That way you wouldn't have to connect the Koros with each other, wich would save you a lot of time that you can instead use to work on some of the details within the villages.

One mechanic I want is being able to fight Rahi in the Wahis. Walking from place to place will be fine as Mata-Nui's size will be a larger MNOG rather than its actual size of ~300 miles. I will have boats to Ta-Wahi, Po-Wahi, and Ga-Koro but everywhere else will either be Gukko, Ussal, or walking. Walking will give you a more interesting sort of adventure with lots of encounters, Gukko will be like the boat as fast travel, and Ussal will work as a non driving mount, but you can get off at any point in between. 

Also Update!

Speaking of mechanics, I made blockout meshes for Ga-Koro and did some very simple scripting to get started. I want to try and get Ga-Koro explorable both above and below water and then, with base colors, I'll release a Pre-Alpha of Ga-Koro for people to play with. I project within 2-3 weeks I can have basic animations and functions of the game to be played including maybe interacting with other Matoran. However, texturing and more complex meshes will take quite a while longer but that will come in time. Keep in mind that the longer I spend on one village, the easier it is to make the others using recycled assets like tools, Rahi, et cetera. 

Haha thanks for the suggestions man. Trust me, I've watched every MNOLG video 100 times leisurely, and 100 times taking notes. I have notes on every crevice, screenshots of every corner, and watched all of the Bionicle movies, played the games, and even have some comics on hand just for research. I will make sure this is the coolest Bionicle experience to date!

The Miru looks a bit skinny, but other than that it looks good. And this whole project looks amazing! Are you going to be making it an open-world style map? And by open world, I mean the entire island of Mata Nui. Not key locations and paths between where you go to the edge of playability and it look like it goes on and you're like "Noooo! I wanna go over there..."

Yikes, I was afraid someone would ask this. The game will be semi-open world. I'm not going to claim "See that mountain, you can climb it" but it will be considerable compared to MNOG. What I'll probably do is make the villages first and make them playable and eventually connect them all in a sort of hub world kind of deal

Also, yeah the Miru and Rau are quite skinny and I never realized it! Resizing them will be effortless so I'm not too worried about it

I cannot STAND Matoran adventures on the GBA. I never even passed the Kuma-Nui. Ughhhhh it was so awful. 

Well...this might be a pretty ignorant explanation but Metru Nui was a combination of '1984' with the dystopia and Big Brother as well as the USSR. Look at the lettering and the propaganda. Look at how the Matoran are treated and those hella creepy Vahki animations. The spelling might even reflect the USSR/Soviet Russian pronunciation and spellings of things like that. The HK was a trope Bionicle already started: BoHroK and RaHKshi. So VaHKi makes sense. The NuuraKH, ZadaKH, KeeraKH however follow the more Russian pronunciations and spelling that are otherwise not found in Bionicle. Hope this sheds some light on your question.

Addendum:

The HK sound is softer than the KH sound. Tribal things usually have a softer more roll off of the tongue feel to them. Germanic, Russian, and even harsh and sometimes mean things have harder sounds like the KH. 

Think:

Honolulu

vs.

Reykjavik

One is tribal-ish and the other is very...not tribal

Favorite team...yikes. I'd say either Inika or original Toa Mata. 

Least favorite was the Hordika, hands down. Yuck I just did not like them. 

I have a HUGE collection of sets but nothing rare other than a level 9 Po-Metru disk...and is that even that rare? One day I'll try and collect the super rare stuff but right now it's just too much money!

I really enjoyed the 2nd one because Mask of Light has annoying voice actors and the Toa Metru just felt...right in that movie. I mean honestly none of the movies are good in any sense but the 2nd one is definitely the best. And I will say 2nd best is probably the one with the Agori and Mata Nui, though I didn't know much about the story to begin with, it seemed to have summed up some stuff pretty nicely. 

Very hard question. But honestly, Vezon and Kardas. That was definitely a set and if I wanted, I could take it apart and have 2 of my many favorite sets of all times! Not that I don't love Axonn but Brutaka and Vezon are amazing

Update! Worked on the Matoran bodies and put them into Marmoset 2 for a game-ready test for reusability. Meaning, the same body can be used repeatedly without worrying about a bunch of different models. Each body will be the same and just have different textures applied as well as animations. In essence, I made my life easy The Miru and the Rau aren't final. They need a few tweaks!
 
http://i.imgur.com/sgl1hyO.png
 
http://i.imgur.com/UVVSRrv.png
 
For those not in the know, the characters from Top left to right are Okoth, Kotu, Nixie, and Macku

Edit: Please link to images over 750 kB!

-Wind-

What are "Sand" colored items?

Metru Brown, sorry

I am using Maya and a program called Substance Designer for the texturing.