Brick and Blade: Status update.

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July 19, 2008, 06:54:12 pm

[Dain Ironfoot]

Brick and Blade is a mod currently under development by myself and Stefano. It will transform M&B into a lego fantasy world, heavily based off the classic castle sets. Expect to see Royal Knights, Forestmen, Black Falcons, Vikings and the Wolf pack battling it out in a plastic world! Due to the nature of Lego and the enormous resources available online, we can also add whatever we want really! Lego versions of River pirates and other M&B favorites will also appear.

At the moment, this mod is still very much in the early art development stages. I've experimented with fitting the minifigure to the M&B skeleton and am convinced that we need a custom skeleton, therefore I'm eagerly awaiting the new BRF edit to let me have a hack at bringing these models to life.

FACTIONS:
Royal Knights
Forestmen
Black Falcons
Wolf Pack
Vikings
Bandits

Here are a preview renders though












World map preview.
http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/~tarini/tmp/newmap/lego/legowip1.png

a selection of helmets to be worn (and plate armour to be worn by minifigures) and hair. Obviously there'll be colour variation and things


 a selection weapons to be wielded. Once again there'll obviously be variations in colour and loads of different shield designs. And possibly shiny weapons if I can wrangle it ingame


a selection of horses to be ridden.


Now for the most important bit: the minifgure, pictured here with the M&B skeleton. He is now totally rigged up (the cloak as well) and ready to go ingame. However as you can see, he doesn't fit the M&B skeleton. However, a new skeleton shouldn't be needed. What I should be able to do is grab the root dummy (or bone 0 as M&B calls it) and shift the whole skeleton down, so his feet are on the ground. Unfortunately the current brf edit can't do this. However it should be possible to do it in a future version. after which it's just a hard slog of fixing all the animations. Oh and me working out how to replace the body head and hand meshes entirely Curse my lack of scripting.



On another note in the design, the legs meshes will go in boots slot. Heads, hands, torso and legs will be separate pieces, so you can customise your character as you would with real lego.

Anyway... still looking for any volunteers to help, even if it's only with ideas and names for companions.


Obviously anyone who wants to help with any aspect is more than welcome  These show a small example of the variety of weapons and armour that will be in Brick and Blade. Expect to see more soon. Anyone who wants to contribute scene props need only download http://leocad.org/ and try building a few things. The export is horrible but I'm sure we'd work around it.
Credits so far:
Stefano
Yoshiboy
mtarini
Anthony Sava for the excelent torso stickers and a great reference site

[Dindi]

wow they look awesome, well there be new factions? also will you be turning the whole world into lego bricks so when fighting the grass is like a large base mat with all the bumps on? and lego trees?

[Dain Ironfoot]

I'm really not sure about that particular bit as I'm unfamiliar with M&B terrain generating stuff...

All this is pending on getting minifigures (And lego horses) working ingame.

[Dindi]

ah ok, but those models do look great indeed, good luck with your mod!

[Highlander]

Great stuff! I'll see if I can constribute a few things.

[Ursca]

This is such a great idea. 

This is a good resource if you want references for lego armour. Especially this page.

I suppose one of the advantages in a mod like this is that you only really need one armour model, and reskins would be incredibly easy.

I'm really not sure about that particular bit as I'm unfamiliar with M&B terrain generating stuff...

If you replaced the grass texture, with (say) a plain green texture with the appropriate normal map and then did the same with the others in varying colours, you would have a good lego battlefield. It wouldn't be flat though.

Tree models could be replaced with lego versions quite easily too.

[Dain Ironfoot]

Oh that is an excelent site. I have been using the classic castle fansite as they have actualy PSDs of torso stickers to use which is really handy, but refs for the whole combo have been tricky to find (peering at pictures of sets)

Thanks!

I should mention that most of the credit goes to Stefano for getting this started with his minifig model. I've basically just been remodelling/converting Leocad models which is another great reference.

[Miclee]

Glad someone is working on this.
I'll help when I can.

[Tiberius]

I will enjoy killing a lego and seeing that it has the same face it had before I killed it

Like:

*cuts the throat of a lego*

*The lego keeps smiling after death*

[Boosh]

Looks great! I can't wait to see the final product.

[ekoms]

this is gonna be awesome. i might be able to help either with modeling or skinning. but im pretty bad at both ATM. ill PM when i think ive messed up enough of my own work

good luck!

[Miclee]

I'll help with scripting/coding.

[lord of the sith lords]

Not to be nit picky but the arms look a tad too long.

Still a good idea if you can impliment deaths like when they die and all their pieces scatter that would be cool.

[Dryvus]

Any chance of being able to build stuff with blocks?

[Miclee]

Phhh you keep asking that. It's possible, but INSANELY hard. And annoying. You'd need like 100 different scenes.