AVALANCHE is a third-person action game, set in the Final Fantasy VII universe,
and featuring music from Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream.
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AVALANCHE is a third-person action game, set in the Final Fantasy VII universe, and featuring music from Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream. |
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2:00 am (CST): AVALANCHE v0.6 is now available, along with a new SDK release. Download them both from the download page. For release notes, check here. 10:30 am (CST): The new version of AVALANCHE is here! Download it (and the new SDK) from the download page. The full commentary and list of what's new can be found here. 4:00 pm (CST): From now on, please use my new project web site for news updates on AVALANCHE. I've already made a post on the status of the next update over there, right here. 5:30 pm (CST): We have a new host for the forums now, so they should be available to the whole world again. I am, at present, down with the flu, and working on my commercial iPhone thing. However, assuming all goes as planned, I should have a new AVALANCHE release out by early to mid February. This is going to be a pretty huge release, and there is a big focus on modding and flexibility (now that I actually have some people doing real mods, which should also be coming after the next AVALANCHE release). I'll be making the skeletal rig available for Tifa in the next SDK, in a couple different common model/scene formats (.max and .smd), and have tested re-weighting some models to the rig to make sure it all slides easily back into the game with the new model (and it does). So all of you wanting to make Tifa, Cloud, etc. replacement models will be able to go crazy with it. The non-commercial version of mesh2rdm (the one in the AVALANCHE SDK) has also gained support for quite a plethora of formats. A big feature is conversion both to and from .smd, which means at least third party support for just about every modeling suite out there. I'll also be including a modified copy of q3map2 in the SDK, with map sources, and batch files to compile AVALANCHE maps, as well as a test map and a box map or something. This is in order to demonstrate a good, free, viable pipeline for new level geometry. There are some pretty massive general tech items in the next AVALANCHE release as well, and a lot of work on lightmap support for the R-Cube-native .rdm format. So, in the mean time, feel free to post over on the newly-accessible forums. I'm very open to hearing any technology or more-modder-friendly requests that anyone may have before the next release. 7:00 pm (CST): I'm just updating to say thanks to all the people who continue to offer praise and thanks for AVALANCHE, through youtube, e-mail, and all of the other feedback outlets. I also continue to receive reports from people who are unable to access the AVALANCHE forums. Unfortunately, it seems to be a localized domain lookup issue with the hosting provider, and it's out of my hands. I'm sorry about that. But feel to contact me via e-mail, if you can't access the forums. As mentioned on my main news page, I'm working on an iPhone contract project, so AVALANCHE development is on hold at the moment. I will probably be coming back to it in the coming months, and continuing to use it as a foundation for new gameplay prototypes. Thanks again to everyone for all the support and feedback. 11:30 pm (CST): The new version of AVALANCHE is up on the download page, version 0.4. Here's what's new in this version:
 Endless Battle There is still a small 1MB patch file that will upgrade you to v0.4, from v0.1, v0.2, or v0.3, as well. A new SDK version is also out. Check the SDK's included readme for a list of files modified from the last version. It also includes an Arial sample font with the full range of characters, which can optionally be used by mods. On that note, there is also a new mod on the download page, called "Arial". It simply replaces the game font with the Arial font. 12:30 pm (CST): The next AVALANCHE version is currently in development. Mostly bug fixes. I've also added a routine to export out any truetype font to the R-Cube font format, which will allow modders to create new fonts easily. This was done largely with the Italian translation mod in mind, this will allow them to export a new font with all of the proper extended ascii characters including the accented vowels. Examples of impact and comic sans being used in the game:  I will probably be doing a release sometime in the next few days here. So, if you have any requests for features or fixes, go post them on the forum before it's too late. 5:00 pm (CST): There is a new version of AVALANCHE up on the download page, version 0.3. Here's what's new in this version:
11:30 am (CST): A lot of people have been reporting joystick calibration issues, and I managed to reproduce this with my PS2 USB pad. AVALANCHE v0.2 is now available on the download page. There is also a small 1MB v0.1 to v0.2 upgrade file for those of you who have v0.1 and don't want to download 300MB again. This new version should resolve issues with other non-360 analog controllers, and it also has an engine config option to bind joystick buttons to emulate an analog slider (for cycling inventory items). Oh, and there is a little tech demo mod on the download page as well. A little known fact by most people on the user end these days is that given most modern hardware, whether a model has 1,000 triangles or 50,000 triangles, it will still render at nearly the same speed because everything is bound by fillrate and draw calls, not vertex/triangle counts. Performance numbers and bottlenecks are quite a bit different now than they were 10 years ago. So, since I can't have anyone thinking my technology isn't the fastest and most amazing thing in the world, I made a test mod that pushes draw counts and triangle counts to ridiculous limits, with around 1,000,000 fully animating and vertex-blended primitives, primarily for benchmarking. And for strange and disturbing music with floating heads that fly by flapping their ears. 11:00 pm (CST): News of AVALANCHE seems to be spreading very slowly through word of mouth. I hope those of you who have tried it so far have enjoyed it. I thought you might enjoy this beautiful experiment with gravity balls and tonberries:  It's my new desktop wallpaper. 9:00 pm (CST): The site is live, and the first release of AVALANCHE is finally available. Get it here, and while you're waiting for the download, check out some screenshots and videos here, or read the online AVALANCHE Instruction Manual here. 10:00 pm (CST): I had to engage in some last-minute multiplayer bug fixing. Tomorrow is probably going to be the day. 5:00 am (CST): Final AVALANCHE testing and feedback adjustment is underway. The site will be completed and going live shortly. All images and original media from Final Fantasy VII are copyright their original owners. AVALANCHE is not supported by Square Enix, and is not officially related to the Final Fantasy franchise in any way. You alone are responsible for any damages which you may incur as a result of this web site or files related to this web site. |