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Thank you guys :)

After a year of development, Planetbase, the off-world colony builder, is finally out on Steam!!!

A video showing food production mechanics in the game

We've published the final trailer of Planetbase



Steam page for this game is also done, you can follow the game there; the countdown for the release (Oct 16th) has started :)

Thank you for so many mails!!! :), We've now given out all of the 100 keys for the beta of Planetbase. We might do another round in a couple of weeks.

We are finally ready to start the closed beta for Planetbase later this week. The plan is to stay in beta for about a month and then launch the game (so the estimated launch date is now mid October).

We will be giving away keys for the first 100 mails received, We expect some feedback and bug report if it is the case, and you will receive a copy of the final game when released.

If you are interested in participating please mail us to beta@madrugaworks.com, please include your system specs and also specify if you are fluent in any of: English, Spanish, French or German.

I've just finished all the art for the character variations for the game: we have various ethnic and hairstyle versions of every character, which will make colonists more unique and relatable.

This is the last major piece of art left in the game, we are now in the process of finishing some minor things and we will be launching a closed beta very soon.

Anyway I'll post here some more pictures of the existing art, as soon as I have some time to prepare the images.

We will be showing a live demo of the game at the Media Indie Exchange at the SIGGRAPH next week in LA, come around and have a look if you are there!

Planetbase has been greenlit in just one week :D

Thank you everyone for your support!!! We are now working flat out to finish the game and release it as soon as possible.

If you want to get updates on the progress you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook or on the new forum in our website.

                   

@Carl the Great: I spent 2 years of my life working on the stuff for the original Glest, that was a really good training to learn how to make videogames and thanks to Glest, all the members of Glest team got jobs on the game industry, but we keep supporting the community many years after the release of the Glest 1.0 version... finally we have decided to leave the community on the hands of the most active MegaGlest developers, who were the most active members of the community and they made a great job last years. I just want to say that we can't work on Glest indefinitely but I read this forums from time to time to see how the project keep evolving, I'm glad to see that the community is still active and gives to me good memories of the Glest development more than a decade ago.
I just posted about this new project here because I though that some members of this community (at least the oldest ones) maybe would be glad to see that the original Glest Team members are still alive and we joined again to develop a new project.

The sign of the sad face is the mood of the colonists, that sign is showed when they are not happy because they don't have enough distractions, bad food or too work,etc... your job as a player and colony manager is to keep your colonists happy and healthy, otherwise they will be less productive or even could get crazy.

@titi_son: Our main goal is to release the Windows version, which is the OS w¡th more potential gamers on Steam, but we don't discard to port the game to more OS, Linux included, of course.

Hi again, here are some pictures of the models.

One of the character models: the astronaut

 



A W.I.P picture of the biodome components, the models which I'm working on right now.



And one of the ships; this is the smallest one which transports new colonists and visitors to the colony

 

Thank you guys :)

What kind of strategy game is this? Still real-time or something else?

Yep realtime but more focused on the managing aspect

[Planetbase]

Hi there, it's Tucho, the 3D artist who made the art of the original Glest game; Martiño (the Glest creator) and me are currently working on a new game (a commercial one this time). We've just submitted it to Steam Greenlight.

I hope you like it, any vote or help to spread the project is more than welcome :)

I paste below the content of our Steam Greenlight page. Later on I'll post more stuff on this same thread, as soon as I have a bit of time to set up some pictures of the models, etc.

In the meantime you can find more pictures from this project on our website





Planetbase is a strategy game where you guide a group of space settlers trying to establish an outpost in a remote planet.



In the game you play the role of the base architect and manager, telling your colonists where to build the structures they will need to survive. You will have to ensure that they have an constant supply of oxygen, food and water to stay alive.



You will get them to collect energy, extract water, mine metal, grow food, manufacture bots, and build a fully self-sufficient base.
Even if the game is not intended to be a simulator, all the mechanics are plausible, and based on what the expected challenges of establishing a colony in an new planet would be.

   
• Three different planets with different conditions and increasing difficulty.
  

   
• Harness solar and wind energy (if available) in order to power the base's structures.
     
• Grow hydroponic Vegetables and synthesize Vitromeat to feed your population.
     
• Mine and produce raw resources, process them, manufacture goods, and establish a production chain.
     
• Carefully manage the colonist immigration flow to ensure you have the people with the right skills.
  

   
• Survive disasters like meteors, sandstorms or solar flares and defend your base from intruders.
     
• Mechanize your base by manufacturing your own bots that will help with the more arduous tasks.
  

• Grow your colony from a few initial pioneers to a vibrant planetbase with hundreds of colonists.
  

Madruga Works is a studio founded by Martiño Figueroa and Tucho Fernandez, two ex-EA and ex-Ubisoft veterans of the games industry, you can find more info about us at our website

The expected release date for the game is September 2015.

Thanks for your comments titi

As I said on the text of the campaign, the models will be available also in FBX format, Blender (and most of 3d programs) are compatible with this format.

I made this collection thinking mainly on developers which want to make profit with their projects, so I just think on a standard royalty free license.

I asked on several forums and many people coincide that the characters are still pretty expensive for indie developers or also some people don't find an immediate use for them, but they maybe purchase the models anyway if they were cheaper, just in case they need it in the future or just to make tests on their prototypes, etc. So I decided to drop the price of all the perks of my campaign; I'd need much more backers to reach the goal, but let's see what happen.

Thanks for your comments Tomreyn :)

The idea of release the models under CC license is interesting, but I'm afraid that I won't even reach the basic goal, so it doesn't make sense to ask a bigger amount :(

Hi guys, if you don't remember me (I haven't posted here in ages), I'm Tucho the 3D artist of the original Glest game.

I've started a crowdfunding campaign to create a collection of high quality low poly models for indie game developers, I know that some of you are indie developers, so I thought that maybe you could be interested on this campaign.

Click on the link to see the campaign: http://igg.me/p/715767

If you are not directly interested on this collection but know any person or team who could find it useful, please share this campaign, any help to spread this campaign by sharing it on social networks, forums, etc is really welcome :)

I also paste it here directly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nk3erwsQ_U

Hello folks, I'm Tucho Fernández and I am a senior game artist with 9+ years experience working for companies such as Grin Studios or Ubisoft. Last years I have also worked on many titles as a freelancer, some of them also AAA.

Below you can see some of the games on which I have worked - feel free to check out my full portfolio and CV on my website

Since I became a freelancer I was thinking on the idea of create a character collection for game developers (or anyone who need some good looking character models for any 3D project).

There are lots of models and collections available for purchase on internet, but most of them have a poor quality and the good quality ones are pretty expensive for indie developers. My goal is to create an affordable but high quality collection.

The thing is that I didn't find time to make it, because the work for my clients keep me totally busy. To monetize a collection like this, selling the models on sites like Turbosquid, etc. would take years of sales, so it is not an option, because at the end of the month I have to pay the bills as everyone.

I found that crowdfunding is the best option to start a sustainable business: If this campaign is successful, I'll have funds to maintain my business while I work on the models for the collection and the backers will get stunning models for a very good price.

I need the money to cover my costs during the time I work on the collection, but I've calculated the price for these models under my normal rates, because I hope to make some more money selling the collection once it is finished, so in this campaign I can offer a really good price for the models.

I'll also use part of the budget to contract an animator to create an animation library for the models. I'm able to model and texture with AAA quality but I'm not a good animator, so I prefer that this part is done by a professional, to keep the quality of the pack (models+animations) to the same quality standards.

I have made the first model of the collection as an example of the quality that I'm aiming for the rest of them; this should give you a clear idea of what we're talking about.

I have made polls on several developers' forums to see which kind of characters are in highest demand. As you can see, the winner was the "normal people" collection, but right behind it were the "medieval characters" and the "zombie" collections, so if this campaign is successful, I'll try to create new ones to expand this collection and create others.

The idea is that the models be as versatile as possible, so I make them pretty lowpoly (under 2500 triangles), which makes them suitable for mobile devices, but at the same time detailed enough to be used also on PC and console projects -or even on a render project if it don't need a close up of the characters.

Each character will have 2 materials, one for the skin and another for clothing. Each material will have diffuse, normal and specular textures.

Provided textures will be 1024x1024 or 512x1024, but they should work fine at half or even at a quarter of the original size, if the characters are not shown too close to the camera.

Each character will also include 3 color variation textures for clothing, and there are perks that allow you to purchase premium characters which will include also the layered PSD source files, so you can edit them easily to create as many color variations as you need.

The characters' heads will be interchangeable (within the same gender), so it will be possible to create different characters simply by changing the head and the clothing colors.

I created White and Black heads for this example, but I plan to create also Asian ones. Each character will include 2 head variations, and the whole collection will include 6 characters (3 male and 3 female) plus 12 heads (6 male and 6 female).

Keeping in mind that each character will have also 3 color variation textures, the number of possible variations using different heads + different clothing + different clothing color textures will be pretty high, so it will be easy to create a varied crowd using this collection.

For example, the crowd below was created using just 1 character and 2 heads, imagine how would look a crowd created using the whole collection of 6 character and 12 heads.

The collection will also include some props for the characters.

The models will be rigged with Character Studio, so you can animate them using any BIP mocap file, but anyway the collection will also include its own animation library. The exact number of animations will depend a bit on the rates of the animator that I'll contract for this job, but the library will at the very least include a minimum of basic animations like: idle, walk, run, etc., and some ones interacting with the included props: talking on the phone, walking with an umbrella, etc.

The models will be provided in both 3ds Max (source file) and FBX format.
FBX format is compatible with most 3D programs, so you can import the models on your favorite 3D program if you are not a 3ds Max user.
FBX is also usable directly on some game engines like Unity 3D, so if you are an Unity user (or an user of any other engine which supports FBX) you won't even have to export the models to your engine -you will be able to place them directly in game.

As I said before, the full collection will include 6 models with different clothing (3 texture color variations each clothing) and 12 heads (6 male and 6 female).
On the picture below you can see a sketch and a description of each character. The different perks allow you to purchase just the character or characters that you're interested on, or directly the whole collection.

The different perks allow you also to choose between the standard and the premium characters.
Standard characters will include the models in both 3ds Max and FBX formats, the textures in TGA format and the animation library in both BIP and FBX format.
Premium characters will include the same than the standard ones, but also the Zbrush and Photoshop source files. This means that you will also receive the highpoly ZTL model and the layered PSD file, which will allow you to modify the models and textures as much as you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVU7OrWlBJs

There is also a perk which allow you to put your face to one of the characters; I just need 3 pictures of your head (front, side and back) with neutral illumination

$5,500- Each character will include 3 interchangeable heads instead 2, so the complete collection would expand to 18 interchangeable heads (9 for male and 9 for female).

$7,500- Bonus characters: all the backers will receive the boy and girl characters, including 3 texture color variations for clothing as the rest of characters and 6 interchangeable heads (3 for the boy and 3 for the girl, White, Black and Asian in each case). They will include also a specific animation library.

$9,500- Bonus characters: all the backers will receive the chubby male and female models with 3 texture color variations and 6 interchangeable heads (3 for male and 3 for female, White, Black and Asian in each case). They will include also a specific animation library.

If this campaign is successful, indie developers will obtain a high quality and versatile character collection for a very affordable price.

These models will can be used for unlimited purposes, from games to architectural presentations, serious gaming or even render projects.

A lot of developers will find these models really useful also as placeholders, to create professional looking demos and prototypes and use them to get funds to develop the final projects, so part of these funds can be used to create specific models for these projects if necessary.

If you are not directly interested on this collection, but know any person or team who could find it useful, please share this campaign.

I really appreciate any help to spread this campaign by sharing it on social networks, forums, etc.

Thank you in advance!

Hi Titi, we added this feature in earlier Glest versions, but we finally delete it because the effect looks a bit weird, I hope you get to do it better than us.
keep up the good work
Cheers

my AI ideas are:

passive -the glestimal doesnt attack, no matter what you do to it

passive aggressive - it doesnt attack you unless you attack it, and will fight you in a small radius around it (the radius should be definable)

aggressive - it attacks anyone nearby, and will fight until either it or its target dies.

random - it switches between the three AI's randomly, making it rather unpredictable.

did i forget anything?

I'd add a 4th kind of AI:

evasive - it runs when there is someone nearby, like workers or units without attack (radius also can be definable)

I found this free tree pack on turbosquid, quality is pretty good and polycount maybe a bit higher for Glest, but anyway I think it could be useful for the map makers community.

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[img]http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/2010/12/04__21_30_00/treepack1_02.jpg4b4e15e9-48f7-4224-a826-5d116d24f1b3Larger.jpg[/img]  [img]http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/2010/12/04__21_30_00/treepack1_04.jpg4fac1f54-2057-4f84-b313-c106ae03f072Larger.jpg[/img]

I agree, screenshots would be cool for people that is not a coder :P

I guess this is no aplicable to the normal Glest, is there anybody with OGL knowledges who want to implement it on Glest, GAE or Megaglest?

I really think that this would improve a lot the Glest general look.

Cheers

[ing is the correct grammar]

Hi, I'd like to make a sugestion, I talked about it with Martiño a lot of years ago when we was working on 1.0 version but we never implemented it because there was other priorities in that moment.

As I see the awesome improvements that you are making on Megaglest engine I'd like to tell you my idea just in case you like it and you can implement it on Megaglest.

The thing is to make bigger textures for tilesets (512 for example ) and just one for each different kind of texture, instead a lot of 64x64 small tiles, but keeping the current pixel aspect ratio and the size of cells to make the blending between the different thextures (by this way all the old maps will keep working with the new system).

With this system, making new tilesets would be much easier than with the current system, and the visual look will be much better because the tiling will be much less evident than with the small 64x64 tiles.

If whe think that the ground is one of things that take up a considerable space on the screen when you play a Glest game, we will achieve a considerable improvement in the global visual Glest quality.

I'm not a programmer and I don't know how difficult can be to implement this system, but I guess that won't be too complicated, and the result will really worth.

I attach a picture just in case I don't explain it too clearly (my English sucks :-[)

Tell me what you think about this idea.

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[img]http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/3848/newtilesetsystem.jpg[/img]
Edit by Ultifd- Making is the correct grammar

Impressive!!! :D

Your tech tree looks better than the original magitech  :'(  ;)

I can't wait for the release :)

Awesome work man :D

We want a playable version!!!

Keep up the good work

congrats Hagekura! your models looks really nice.

This is one of the best Glest mods ever.

keep up the good work

Great work with the forum theme, congrats Omega :)