As you may have heard, we have a very special announcement to make regarding the ongoing TAOC project.

This announcement has been a couple of months in the making and we hope is not going to be anti-climatic. First let me start by saying “Sorry, it’s not yet ready for release” as some may have been hoping for (including me!). The reason we wanted to make this into a big announcement was we felt the game had turned a HUGE corner in terms of development, graphics, performance and well, every facet really.

Let me begin by some way of an explanation about why this announcement came about and at this time. Myself and JK had been working very hard until July of this year, just plugging away. But I came to a very stark realisation (better late than never I guess) that the current ‘engine’ we were using was severely inhibiting our ability to do certain things such as the following:

- We could not achieve nice graphics

- Development time was being impacted by stupid processes and poor dev pipeline

- Engine performance was becoming unstable and unacceptable with long loading times.

- Much work was still to be done that we had no real plan for yet as the engine did not accommodate modules such as networking, input etc.

- The engine was never meant to be used for ‘next gen’ games, simple as that.

There are many more problems I wont list here, but suffice to say we felt it was ‘change or die’ time. We then proceeded to search the world for a better game engine that would best suit the needs of TAOC and our vision of where we wanted it to go. After much searching and trialling we decided upon the engine that would take TAOC to that next level and facilitate a faster completion.

So then we got to work migrating our current media and code over. This has taken a bit of time but we are ecstatic over the results to date. I wanted to list some of the major benefits we have achieved from this:

· Massive performance improvement – this means we can bump up the graphics and people can still get a lot out of their PC’s even if they are not ‘beasts’. In fact this engine is so highly optimized it’s just not funny. I’ve been blown away by the power of it. Loading time is a couple of seconds.

· Graphics – As has been our catch cry ‘TAOC was never about graphics’, the graphics to date have been ‘ok’ at best, with our main strengths being AI and physics and animations. We can now happily announce that graphics have been boosted to be much more in keeping with modern games. We were concerned enough that the old graphics were bad enough to detract from the immersion of the game, but this is no longer the case. The new engine allows us to make our existing models render much better, with seamless normal/bump mapping and superb lighting and dynamic shadowing.

· Granular graphics settings to turn on or off performance effects.

· Better physics – we can now have dynamic physics. What does this mean? Example: The stumps are set up so each component is a physics object – if you hit the left stump near the top for instance at a certain velocity with the ball the stumps will break apart realistically based on that exact collision spot (as seen in the video ) and the bails will fly as they should.

· Animation blending – we will be able to blend our animations so at last we will be able to have the batsman’s head turning to look at the ball, independent of which animation is playing at the time.

· 3D sound

· Networking built in – this is going to save me a lot of time and effort being able to use the built in API of the engine.

· Ridiculously efficient workflow – the new development pipeline allows me to accomplish the same thing in 1/10th of the time. I’m not exaggerating, it really is awesome. So I can now hold out hope of a much earlier release.

· Input – Gamepad / Controller support is now all integrated and can be user-customised with ease.

· I tested it on an old laptop (4 years old Dell with onboard gfx) and it ran not too bad on medium settings! On my Core2Duo it flies on MAX settings 16xAA full AF.

· Postprocessing effects supported such as Bloom, HDR etc though we are yet to implement it.

· Check out the grass and pitch

· Lighting – dynamic shadows rock. Makes realtime weather a cinch.

· GUI / Overlays – Now so much quicker to implement with a simple 2D dev pipeline. AbBh is doing some great work around this.

There’s many more I cant think of right now, but the reason this is a big announcement is because the game has turned a massive milestone. In a few weeks only myself and JK and our newest addition, AbBh have made some amazing advances. Expect some rapid progress from now as the full migration nears completion. JK is helping me with all of the animation implementation and with some scripting as well, whilst AbBh is helping with scripting menus and file input/output at the moment.

I never like to set target dates and stuff, but I have a definate aim in my sights for completion by end of this year – BETA testing to commence at the beginning of next year i.e. 01/01/10

I have uploaded a new video teaser, sorry is very short and is literally a ‘teaser’. There is a high qual and low qual version – I recommend you watch the HQ version if you can. The teaser is something I scripted in game, so what you see here is in fact the real deal. The only thing added afterwards was the sound – thanks to JK

LQ version - http://www.theartofcricket.net/videos/vidNEW-LQ.avi (~1.5MB)

HQ version - http://www.theartofcricket.net/videos/vidNEW-HQ.avi (~30MB)

Youtube Version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXfEFOUFJp4

* You will need the Xvid codec to watch the vids

I have also added some new in game screens – none of these are renders. We hope you will enjoy and I look forward to a new era of TAOC development over the next several months. Expect frequent updates and media in the very near future. I don’t believe myself or JK have ever worked this solidly on the game or have been this excited and motivated. We are now very confident that TAOC will indeed be the best cricket game ever.

High Quality Pix:

TGA Format -http://www.theartofcricket.net/pix/Pix-TGA.rar

PNG Format - http://www.theartofcricket.net/pix/Pix-PNG.rar

PS: couple of other minor things of note…..we were halfway through the fielding in the old engine but were getting some real major performance issues and all sorts of dramas. This will all be solved now. Also i know the bail flies a bit far in the vid, but please ignore that…i wanted to add some oomph for the vid so gave it extra power hehe

* Oh, and the crowd has not yet been fixed! But we can now have a great crowd, which will be coming up very soon

Cheers,

LM

Just a quick note…

We have a very special announcement for TAOC which we will post here in the near future and on the Planetcricket forums. This is probably the biggest thing to happen to the project since it began.

Also just wanted to clear something up:

TAOC is here to stay. We are simply laying a bit low at the moment with all the Ashes hype floating around at the moment…thanks again for your continuing support.

Cheers,

LM

things coming along nicely.  We are looking forward to showcasing the new player heights and different builds in the next week or so.  JK has been working hard on this and we’re pretty happy with the results so far!

I’m still plugging away at model limbs and bug fixing, working my way through my massive list.  Really keen to get some media out soon to show off some of the hard work we have been doing behind the scenes.

LM 

- Running Between Wicket
- Grounding the bat and slowing down to a halt
- Cancel Run
- Turn For Another Run
- Dive
- getting into position

once am through with these then will work on the following :-

- Kneeling Slog over Mid-on
- Baseball Shot
- Scoop Shot

after this, ALL the batting anims will be officially completed !

then will be doing the virender sehwag style off spinner action….
this will officially end the bowling anims too !

after this, minor tweaks and finishing of all the batting and bowling anims
which will never be touched again unless there is some major change !

then will be the turn of the umpiring anims……

am planning to complete this goal by the end of july / early august….
lets hope i succeed !

cheers

JK

Currently i am working away at the bowling animations - getting the new frames JK has done into the game and fixing up all sorts of glitches and bugs with the new bowling stuff.

Next on my agenda is setting up a rudimentary start menu to allow us to select various options for our playtesting such as bowler type, teams, stadiums, etc.

After that i have a long list of things to fix to get right back on track, then it’s back to the long untouched fielding which has quite some work to go.

JK is working away at the remaining batting animations so we can finally cross that stuff off the list.

So some really ‘boring but necessary’ stuff going on at the moment - unfortunately all of this needs to be done before we can consider releasing a video.

Cheers,

LM

obviously there has been an extensive absence on my behalf and a severe update drought.

Progress essentially ground to a halt, sorry to say, a personal issues affected me and prevented me being able to spend time on development.

With JK’s encouragement and support i was able to keep up the motivation though and have managed to pull through the lull.

Expect to see some major progress coming as of now as LM and JK are back into the full swing of things (pun intended).

More details to emerge soon.  Stay tuned.

PS: Thanks again to the undying support of the fans during the project’s darkest hour.  We do notice!

-LM

ok guys, this is a sample vid of the new bowling action and run-up. posting this to tell ya that the game aint dead ! ;-)

take a look :-

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?21gmenwd5tz

a few warnings :-

- wicket keeper and fielders are untouched. so dont be shocked.
- the batsman is idle as its yet to be properly implemented in-game.
- the ball gets released a tad early before the hand comes into place.
this is because the release timing is matched for the previous action.

comment anything and everything on the bowling but please ignore the rest.

also, have attached the previous/old action so that you can judge
yourself how drastic the change is ! 

LM on the other is busy with some personal stuff but hes expected to be fully back and with a bang with no distractions in the near future from next monday….

so….its gonna take some time for the new vid….
again, sorry for the delay…i know you guys are excited and eager but please bear with us for sometime….

JK

In ither news the stadium makers are pushing on and doing some great work - check out the forums to see the latest developments.

JK is working tirelessly on batting animations, the new strokes in particular, so will be looking forward to a much deserved break from animating!

LM

also, finished the bowler run-up in a combined effort by me and Paul !

this is the list that i had put up for the next vid….the ones in RED are INCOMPLETE !

1) NEW PLAYER MODELS

2) NEW REFINED ANIMATIONS - much smoother (WIP)

3) NEW BATTING SHOTS :-

i) Lofted Square drive
ii) Lofted Pull (Spin)
iii) Paddle Sweep
iV) Scoop Shot
v) Baseball Shot
vi) Lofted Slog (Kneeling)
vii) Leave Ball
viii) Duck
ix) FF DEFENSIVE BLOCKS (PACE)
x) Over-The-Keeper / Slips Flick
xi) BF DEFENSIVE BLOCKS

4) NEW BOWLING ANIMS :-

i) Fast / Fast Medium Bowler (Generic)
ii) Fast / Fast Medium Bowler (Slingy / Malinga)
iii) Fast / Fast Medium Bowler (Brett Lee)
iv) Medium / Medium Fast (generic)
v) Off Spin (Saqlain Mushtaq)
vi) Off Spin (Chris Gayle)
vii) Leg Spin (Warne)
viii) Leg Spin (Anil Kumble / Afridi Style)

5) LEFT ARM BOWLERS COMING INTO PLAY

6) NEW RUNNING ANIM

7) NEW BOWLER RUN-UP ANIM

cheers 

JK