NEWS

Hey all, hope your having a fantastic Halloween, and if you don't celebrate it, we hope your having a wicked month!

The TA Team have been hard at work again, and we are so excited to show you some AMAZING screenshots!

First off though I would like to introduce you to some new members who joined our ranks recently.

• Welcome to Sampson who is another weapons modeller and texture artist who works so fast we can show you some of his work already!
• Welcome to SteathSilver who is a character texture artist, he has started texturing our characters arms recently, and I tell you... it's AWESOME!! - we have an extra special media update planned with our new player models in the future so for now, its our worst kept secret!
• We also welcome Destruct to our ranks. Another weapons modeller who also has some sneak peek shots to show off already.
• Say welcome to Unrated, a new texture artist, who I can't seem to get any texture work for since my TA team are working their socks off, modelling and texturing things (bad bad team! )
• We welcome Defeatist to our team, he is a Concept artist who is producing some awesome concept work for us for a Jungle map... did I just give away the theme of one of our secret maps?

We love to see new guys joining the ranks, but enough about them, it's about you and our media update!!

Introducing JUNGLE Well, it started as an idea, and a lot of the team wondering if it was even possible in the unreal engine (some of us even doubted his sanity) but lets take a look at the results... Teifi has provided us with the mother of all teaser screenshots (actual in-game shot) have a drool and show your mates.

Of course no jungle is complete without an AK So we had to texture it of course, this was a real team effort and we think that it shows the best of everyone's skills.

We were looking at melee weapons and we thought "What would be really cool?" So we thought, I know lets make an axe, well actually its a hatchet to be more precise

Just show us more guns already... Ohhh alright but a mac-10 will have to do. Loebedoe skillfully modeled the MAC-10 and Disaster finished off the texturing. It might look a bit puny but this thing has some nice firepower.

Did someone say badass Raging Bull?? Say "Sampson we love you" you raggy fans

Hey they do arms as well... StealthSilver took on the big task of texturing our first character model. This is a really important job as if its done badly then it will really show. This is just the start and we are now confident of some awesome looking characters.

When you have got nearly 40 members and you want more, you must be mad. Although we sound mad we want more of you... come JOIN in the fun and contribute to what is going to be a very good game, who knows where it could lead when TA hits the big time....

If TA made level props.. they would probably be the best level props in the world Welcome to some of our Environmental Modellers who have provided some samples of the things that will make our maps look truly stunning Since he joined us Hupie has proven to be a very adaptable artist, working in all sorts of different areas. This model demonstrates the importance of good texturing, it really takes environment props to the next level.

Come on stop talking rubbish..... Hupie also made us a wheely good bin.. for the competition maybe? (NO PUN INTENDED )

Does this man ever stop working?? Well we are told that he does sleep sometimes but he does work hard, this one looks perfect for an industrial setting... in fact we might just have an industrial looking map up our sleeves (stay tuned for updates on that one)

The problem is, it is all a bit hard to visualize What do all these objects actually look like in the game?  Might be a bit like this I suppose...

What about something a bit bigger then?? Well Rooster made us a building.. and Disaster painted it for him!

Then they normal mapped it too (we didn't see that coming) We hope that this is the sort of quality that will set us apart from other mods

Bins for all! Disaster also likes making bins.. (secret bin fetish going off I fear)

What even more props?? Enjoy the crane and the smoke towers too!

OK I WANT TO PLAY IT ALREADY!! Well it isn't ready for that yet... but we know the login pass and usernames so NER!!

PSST suppose we were close to a BETA release.. what would our site look like?? TADA (but no beta yet.. boo hiss naughty TA team!)

I hope that amazing collection of media was what you were looking for (see we weren't lying when we told you we were working hard) and I hope that you will continue to support the one and only TA... yeah that's us

Download all the images here
See you on the servers,
Your TA Development Team!

I think its probably about time for another update on our progress. In recent weeks as well as making more progress with maps and weapons we have been working hard putting our resources into the game engine. In fact we have been working so hard that we almost forgot to give you a news post to let you know how we are doing. Luckily this week a famous voice from TA has taken some time out to give an exclusive interview to Total Gaming Radio about Tactical Assault.

Total Gaming Radio is an online radio station dedicated to gamers and their games so when they asked for an interview we couldn't resist. It will let you know a bit more about our future plans for TA and a little about what we are doing now.

The interview will be broadcast on the Sunday the 19th starting at 20:00 BST It will then be repeated on the Friday the 24th from 23:00 BST (4pm Central Time) for all you US guys out there. You can listen to Gaming Radio from their site at http://total.gamingradio.net/ hop into their IRC and say hi, a couple of us will be in there too. Definitely a date not to miss.

Also keep an eye out, an awesome bumper media release has been spotted on the internal forums and it could be heading your way quite soon...

See you on the servers,
Your TA Development Team!

This week we have an interview between syphus and Loebedoe our lead modeler.

S: Hello Loebedoe!

First of all thank you for taking time out to chat with us today.

Before starting this interview could you please introduce yourself to the community!

L: Ok my real name is Pieter, I'm 21 years old, I have been working with 3D Studio Max for 4/5 years now, (learned it all by myself and some internet tutorials) this year I got my degree in publicity and illustration, next year I'm going to study Digital art and entertainment. I joined the team in January, after a few weeks I became the lead modeler, now I'm lead character modeler

S: Ok, today I want to talk about player characters, since this is one of your main roles at the moment in the team; I would like to start by asking what is it like to develop a character for a game engine like UT3?

L: Well, first it was pretty hard because I never modeled any characters before, I had to learn how to rig them, how the weight system works and also had to keep in mind that some parts need to be able to move right.
So this is all new for me and pretty hard. Proto asked me when I joined the team if I would like to try some character modeling, that's how I started on it and now If I can choose between modeling a gun or a character I would choose a character, I'm really starting to like it and want to go deeper into it, I enjoy a challenge!

S: A big challenge for you I can imagine. Well it is an important job, the quality of the characters will have a big influence on the feel of the game.

L: I think so, its one of those things that make the game feel polished and high quality.

S: Do you have plans about the way the characters are going to look? More urban, or military, gender balance etc?

L: Well I would like to balance it a bit, I'm going try to make some different looking characters, (would be stupid to make almost the same looking characters, waste of time) from a police agent to a swat, maybe even undercover,  I'm still brainstorming , sketching a bit how they will look like,

S: Sounds like we can expect a lot of variety in terms of choices wonderful! Will you take into consideration the characters size and style, as surely smaller characters would be a harder target to hit?

L: No, every character will be the same size, so its not that when you take a female you would run around with a character that's 10 or 15 cm smaller and you can hide more easily behind a box, it's not going be like that. The different characters styles are just for eye candy. Its not going to be an advantage to take a male , we are not going to make him stronger so you can carry more weapons, or a female that's smaller then the male.

S: Does this mean that players won't feel big differences between different characters in the game? For example in UT2004 some characters had small heads and were impossible to hit



L: Well every hit box is different for every character, but its going to be very small differences so when you play you wont notice.

S: How many characters will be present on the beta version? Do you have already an idea of how many will be in the final version of the game?

L: Well since at the moment we only have two people working on character models, it will take some time to make them, I think in the first beta we will only have 4 characters, SF male and female and TER male and female. For the full game we probably have about 10 - 12 characters you can choose. lets say +/- 10 characters

S: Are you also responsible for the development of the skins on each character? What influence does the skin have of the final look of the model?

L: Yes I'm responsible for how the skin will look, but I probably won't make them myself, I'm making the concept art of how I want it to look and I will give that to a texture artist, he will make a proper texture for the character. The texture itself is important, if it is done well you will hardly notice it but if it is done badly then it will defiantly show.

S: Ok, it seems like a big job, I guess that a process like this involves a lot of team coordination.

L: Yes definitely, the modeler has to communicate with the animator in particular. The model has to have certain properties and be modeled in a certain way to ensure that it is as easy as possible to animate it later on.

S: So what is the sort of workflow for creating a new character?

L: The whole process takes some time, first you need to have some ideas to start from, make a some drawings on paper, make a few different combinations, make a nice look for the character, for example, clothes, protection, mask/no mask, once this is done, you'll have a more clear look of what you need to model. Then you make a very low poly model in the shape you want and put all the small parts you would like on the model and than model the mesh you'll see in game, after that we make a very high poly model for the normal mapping

S: Creating a new character seems to be a lot of work indeed.
Could you show us some of examples of the character making process and tell us a bit about them.

L: Ok well like I mentioned before, I'm trying to make a wide selection of different looking characters, the character that I'm now working on is the 2nd SF character, the character looks a bit like a normal dressed person, not much extra equipment, a bit like a normal agent, no special clothing, just a bulletproof vest and some knee and arm protection and of course a helmet I'm still not sure about colors of the clothes, still trying some stuff out, trying how it looks like with long or short sleeve. It takes a lot of work, a lot of thinking to get a full good looking character.





S: Amazing work mate, I'm really impressed.
Loebedoe thankyou for taking time out to talk to us and to give our community a little view of the development behind the scenes. Good luck with the rest of the models.

L: No problem.