Benerdin's New Installment 2001

This is the new and improved site design for Benerdin's New Installment. The reason for the change is ... well, non-existent really. Early in the morning on 6/4/2001 I figured out all sorts of 3D rotations and transformations for my first major Direct3D demo, which was a great accomplishment for me. And since I was so inspired from my success, I had some leftover programming left in me, and I decided to redo my website. Of course, I hadn't updated any of the pages in about a year, so I figured it was time to start from scratch and see if I could still create some neat animations and interactive pages with DHTML. So far, so good.

Latest news from Benerdin...

12/14/2001 - With the development of my new Adrenaline Burst MOD for UT, I decided to go back and make some updates to my Capture Skaarj Heads MOD. Click here to view the updates.

11/24/2001 - Lots of updates in the last two months (listed oldest to most recent):

Max Payne "All-Out War" MOD renamed to Benerdin's Map Pack. It's only three levels now. The third one is very experimental and feels undone, but my interest with Max Payne editing has decreased throughout the semester.

Started working with the Anachronox Programming Environment A.P.E. I haven't done anything major yet, but I hope to do some excellent work for the Avatar Chronicles MOD that's being developed.

Going to try my hand at game development with a MOD group, called They Might Be Mapmakers.

Started developing a new Unreal Tournament MOD, called Adrenaline Burst. I've definitely been enjoying it and making lots of progress, but currently I've run into a problem that I can't figure out. Hopefully, I'll figure it out with some more time or someone will have some insight for me to help me get moving again. You can find out more about it by clicking:
Menu >> Games >> < MODs >

9/12/2001 - Uploaded a demo level for Max Payne entitled, "The Experiment." Go to the < Files > section to find out more.

In other Max Payne MOD news, I'm performing the final touches on the second All-Out War level. I've altered the first two levels to have different main characters. Max Payne, himself, won't be featured in the MOD at all. Each character I use for the levels will obtain all of Max's abilities though.

I'm also part of a MOD team to develop another Max Payne MOD, called Mr. Black Gets Payback. A website should be up in the near future after completion gets underway.

8/24/2001 - For the most part, the first level of the All-Out War MOD is finished. It's a doozy!
Next up: Mystic Hallways

8/23/2001 - I've been developing the first level for the All-Out War Max Payne MOD. I uploaded 4 screenshots to the Max Payne MOD page.

8/19/2001 - I uploaded an initial version of my Max Payne Nerd-Out MOD. The MOD contains 2 houses of fast action, close-quarters action.

8/17/2001 - Working on the second map for the Max Payne Nerd-Out MOD. There are 4 new screen shots linked to on the MOD page.

8/14/2001 - Created new pages for my UT and Max Payne MODs, as well as adding more Max Payne level screen shots. Go to Menu >> Games >> < MODS > for links to the new pages.

8/12/2001 - Been doing some modeling using the Max Payne level editor. I'm working on a small MOD for some friends and myself. The levels consist of sections of each of our houses. I uploaded two screenshots from the first house:
Screen 1
Screen 2

8/4/2001 - Redid the color scheme and menu interface for the site.

I've also stopped programming with Direct3D for the summer, and am focusing the rest of the time to designing MODs for the game Max Payne.

7/19/2001 - I took a ton of screen shots from all my programs this summer, including some new ones from my .x files testing.
View them here

7/18/2001 - This could be the best day of my life. My 3D engine has been tweaked and altered and now I can load models made in 3D packages like 3D Studio Max and bend them to my will! Sometimes it's the simple things... and to think, before the beginning of the summer I only got one simple 3D program to work ever, where a triangle rotated in 3D space!

7/15/2001 - I see I haven't updated for quite a while. Well, I just uploaded my latest two 3D scenes: Hover Craft and Corridor Race. One reason for the delay is that I took a week off to play through Anachronox -- quite a game. Actually, it was kind of the inspiration for Corridor Race, since they had so many cool cut-scenes with a hover craft car chase.

I'm moving back to my book to learn about .x files and Quake III models, so I probably won't have anything new for a few weeks again, and then, of course, Max Payne comes out and that will occupy a lot of my time I sense.

6/27/2001 - Night Search has been uploaded! Check out an aircraft perform a cool night time perimeter check.

6/24/2001 - I uploaded 3D Summer Landscape, which I changed to Alien Artifact.
I also re-uploaded my other 3D programs today because I made some changes to the template application from which they're all based

6/20/2001 - 3D Summer Landscape Demo now contains sky, 2 mountains, atmospheric fog

6/19/2001 - 3D Summer Landscape Demo contains grasslands, running stream, sunlight

6/18/2001 - Lighting Test uploaded

6/18/2001 - Pyramids Demo v2.0 uploaded with the newest enhancements (fog, transparency, lighting, simple water)

6/15/2001 - I'm currently working with a new Direct3D 8.0 book. It's very good, dealing with all sorts of new features from DirectX 8.0. Therefore, this site will be idle from new features for a while.

6/12/2001 - Capture Skaarj Heads MOD has been uploaded. Go to Files!

6/11/2001 - I uploaded [Benerditators.zip].

6/9/2001 - I am bypassing the CGI version of the cage diving, so you can view the page as it should work without having your personalized name on the page. Go to Games/Website/Nulid,

6/8/2001 - Received my new Alienware PC system!! It's a beautiful piece of machinery with 1.3 Ghz AMD Thunderbird processor, 256 MB DDR-RAM, GeForce3, SoundBlaster Live! Value, and Klipsch THX speakers. The system is quite powerful, to say the least. Also, I never understood how effectively games could utilize spatiality with sound. I'm definitely a happy nerd right now.

Nulid is back! The pet shark from the previous version of this website has been resurrected. I figured he was too big an accomplishment to just trash because I wanted to redesign my site. He's the biggest result of my DHTML learning, so to honor him, I decided to upgrade his code, giving him different behaviors, reactions, and stats. Go feed Nulid some chum and keep him calm in Games/Website.

Current Projects...

Unreal Tournament MOD: Adrenaline Burst

Anachronox MOD: The Avatar Chronicles

Possible Future Projects...

Past Projects...

Max Payne MOD: Benerdin's Map Pack

Max Payne MOD: "The Experiment" Level

Max Payne MOD: Nerd-Out

Loading models made from 3D software packages (i.e. 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, etc.)

Corridor Race

Hover Craft

Night Search

Alien Artifact

Lighting Test

Pyramids Demo v2.0

Nulid, cage diving

Nulid, home

Unreal Tournament MOD: Capture Skaarj Heads

Unreal Tournament Mutators: Benerditators

Pyramids Demo v1.0

Files...

Max Payne Level: "The Experiment" - This is a short level including most of MaxED's features, including: particle lights, projectiles, decals, and a cut-scene. It has a really creepy atmosphere that I still feel every time I load it up. There are no enemies in the level, it's just a level I created to test out some new MaxED skills. It did give me an idea to do a total conversion MOD for the future though.

Max Payne Nerd-Out MOD - this MOD only contains 2 levels, one of Kevin's house and one of Matt's house.

Screen shots - the directory listing with screen shots from each of my programs created between 6/1/2001 - 7/19/2001. Enjoy!

Corridor Race - This program shows 2 vehicles flying through a hexagonal corridor track. The camera can follow either vehicle or fly through on its own pre-determined course.

Hover Craft - This program allows the user to drive a hover craft vehicle over a simple terrain with scattered plateaus. The hover craft is tracked by a blue tile that highlights over its current position. The hover craft will move over plateaus and it casts a simple shadow on the flat land.

Night Search - This program does some basic animation of following waypoints, yaw, pitch, roll rotations, and some spotlight lighting effects. This one is pretty neat (a.k.a. my favorite until the next one ;-), it displays a small aircraft take off from a hangar and do a perimeter check with a search light. The hangar is connected to a prison. Originally, I was going to make the aircraft hunt an escapee, but I didn't feel like I was ready to try and render a character. Give me some time.

Alien Artifact - This is a small scene with a running stream, mountains, 2 weather conditions, and the ruins of an alien structure.

Lighting Test - This is a small demo that uses 3 Direct3D lights to illuminate a diamond-like object. It uses 2 directional lights and 1 spot light.

Pyramids v2.0 - This is a small scene of pyramids, with a small fountain of water in front of the main pyramid. It includes colored lighting, fog, and transparency.

BenerdinCSH.zip - This is an Unreal Tournament MOD, called Capture Skaarj Heads. The goal of this game is to kill the most skaarj, thereby capturing their heads. The player who hits the head limit first wins. You can specify the number of skaarj to maintain in the level in the Rules window, along with the head limit and time limits. All HUD messages have been altered to make the game seem more like a hunt than a tournament.

The rules for the game are as follows:

Kill a skaarj, gain a head

Get killed by another player, lose a head

Commit suicide, lose 2 heads

Get killed by a skaarj, lose 3 heads

To install the MOD, unzip -BenerdinCSH.u- and -BenerdinCSH.int- to the -System- folder under the Unreal Tournament root directory.

Benerditators.zip - This file contains the following Unreal Tournament Mutators:

Death Charge - Allows you to press jump while in mid-air to rush forward, gibbing anyone in your path.
Enforce This! - Makes the enforcer a really powerful weapon, taking off 35 damage every hit. I love this one. Having double enforcers has never been so much fun.
Double Jump - Allows you to press jump while in mid-air to jump to higher ground.
Fun Messages - Displays humorous/vulgar messages each time a player is killed.
Bots Suck - Makes humans invulnerable to bots. This one is more entertaining than useful, although you could use it for online games.
Health Bonus - Adds +5 to your health for every accurate shot.

To install the mutators, unzip -Benerditators.u- and -Benerditators.int- to the -System- folder under your Unreal Tournament root directory.

The_Sweeper_2_23_2001.zip - this is a funny, little game my friend Bob Trego and I made. It's a 2D game, where you control a housemaid, who only has a certain amount of time to clean six rooms of the house that are littered with garbage.