Charity Game Jam (miniLD) + Thoughts on the IndieSpeedRun

Two weekends ago I participated in a (very spontaneous) mini ludum dare. It was the 48th MiniLD and a bit of a special one. Organised by McFunkyPants (Christer Kaitila) this MiniLD was also a charity game jam for the Make a Wish Foundation. It was amusing to see both of the goals surpassed a good 12 hours before the LD even began. The reset higher goal (when the LD did start) was also surpassed by the end of the weekend, which was even better to see!

I haven't participated in a miniLD before, they never really appealed to me as much as the more major LD's do, but the mixture of having that weekend (for the most part) free, the charity aspect, the epic theme (NES style) and the buzz surrounding the LD, I couldn't resist entering.
The theme for the miniLD was 'NES', as in the retro Nintendo Entertainment System. I've been pretty keen on retro/pixelated games lately, so it was certainly something I felt excited to get into.
The day before the LD, I started working on the template. There was a 2D overlay provided for anyone using flash/html5/unity, but nothing (of course) for the BGE which I was pretty keen on using (as per usual). So I went about making my own template for the 'Funkytron' (made-up retro console & monitor for the miniLD), and since I was working in Blender, I figured Id might as well attempt something more 3D.
The results of the 2D template to 3D conversion:

With the template sorted I then had the challenge of setting up a game to run on the screen of the Funkytron monitor itself. The BGE VideoTexture module seemed like the obvious (and seemingly only) choice to make this possible.
The plan was to create a low-res/pixelated type of game (with 3D elements) to be played as a 2D game via projection onto the 2D screen of the 3D monitor in a 3D scene (which would also have interactive elements)
Adding to the complications... I wanted to have the game playable in-browser using the Burster plugin which I hadn't ever used. 

The final game I manged to put together over the weekend (missed out on a good 14 hours of the LD due to a friends going away party) turned out ok. It was inspired mostly by GTA2, ie the 'mini-game' is a top-down game based in a city, with a player you can control to run around and cause havoc, I've named it 'Super Theft Auto' for now, but will probably change the title in the future.

What went 'badly'/wrong:

• There were a couple of features I didnt have time to implement, like a proper car system (including being able to steal & drive a car - kinda important for a GTA2 clone!)
• Spent too much time working on the city level, should have simplified to allow more time to focus on other important things
• The graphics went a fair bit beyond the NES theme/restrictions, I wanted to keep it closer but it just didnt work out in the end
• Rushed a lot of the road textures, resulting in lots of bad seams - theres a lot of texturing to completely overhaul 
• Using modules Id never used in combination before - caused a lot of grey areas to pop up, taking a lot of time to solve (or in some cases not solve) - ie trying to get a shader to work on the videotexture output - which didnt work out in the end, costing me an hour or two
• Burster - the plugin worked well for the most part, but due to security issues it doesnt allow the use of external modules, file I/O or various other functions, this generally complicated a few things and required me to re-write/re-structure a bunch of code which again took time! There was also the fact that mipmaps cant be disabled using Burster, so all textures had to be scaled up a large amount in order to get them to be 'crisp' - more time gone!

What went well:

• Overall I actually got the basics of a game working, you could shoot people and so on, adding to your score, it was something playable at least - and being able to play it in-browser is also a huge plus
• The 2D sprite system works very well and was easy to modify (thanks to SolarLune for that)
• Some neat NES tunes quickly made by AniCator 
• The 3D Screen with 2Dish game projected onto it worked much better than Id expected, its a very cool effect and I hope to take advantage of it to make this game more 'unique'
• Got the basics down for a game Id like to work on developing!

So heres a link to the game page (which has been updated since the miniLD version): 

http://www.delta-edge.com.au/SuperTheftAuto/

You can play it in-browser, but will need to first download the Burster plugin and install it. Theres links and instructions on the page and its a small download. 
Theres also a template available, listed on the page I just linked to. The template is the Funkytron setup and mini game test scene I initially made, all setup to work using the VideoTexture module and Burster plugin, would be a good basis for anyone wanting to achieve the same effect. 

As far as plans for Super Theft Auto go, I'm certainly planning to develop it further. Its the kind of game I was initially trying to make back in Highschool, I remember attempting it a few times using Flash - but of course faking 3D elements in flash is tricky and I had no luck at all being a complete beginner. 
My main issue currently with the game is trying to do something 'unique', I dont want to end up with a boring clone of GTA2, but I want to keep some of the elements which made GTA2 such a good game. 
I've been undecided about the main '3D scene' which the player and computer reside within too, it seems pointless right now and just adds a level of abstraction from the player and the mini-game, not to mention some brain-numbing effects if you move the 3D camera while trying to focus on the game on the screen. 
But (thankfully) a few nights ago I had an 'epiphany' which solved all the main issues/concerns and produced one core idea/concept the game could revolve around. It effectively gives the 3D part of the 'overgame' a strong and relevant purpose - which is exactly what I wanted, rather than having to remove it due to being pointless/problematic. 
I'll develop this idea futher... So no details right now, but its got me pretty excited about the future of this game!

On Indie Speed Run:

Seeing a ton of negativity in the game-jam/Indie community regarding the recently announced Indie Speed Run being run by the Escapist. 

Cant say as I agree with *most* of it.

I'll quickly address a couple of the more popular opinions/perspectives about it which I disagree with and find the most concerning:

"Indie Devs who are in debt and trying to start their careers, pay $25 to have Escapist make money on your game!",

"You Have to pay $25 to take part/enter"

The idea of paying to enter a game jam, to many, seems to be offensive for some reason. Lets be serious here, its $25. It might be a lot for some, understandably, but whats the worst case scenario? - You choose to not participate. Some evil corporation isnt trying to force you to do this, theres no gun to your head. There's other game jams to be had anyway, and currently there seems to be several happening every month, I know I cant keep up with every-single-one going on at the moment. But I would argue that the $25 entry fee could be worth it for many, depending on the benefits which could potentially come from the game-jam, Indie Speed Run is no exception in this case, theres several benefits which Im yet to see coming from something like Ludum Dare.

The idea that this whole event is all about Escapist making money off your game is just unreasonable as well. They clearly outline the rules and rights you and your game have. If you dont agree with it, again... No gun being held to your head, you can make decisions for yourself about whether or not its something you want to enter.

Also clearly, if you're in debt and struggling to pay the rent, Id hope you'd be trying to make the right decisions - ie not spending that $25 on a game-jam (or that extra bottle of wine you probably shouldn't be buying right now) Its all just common sense when you get down to it. 

"Commercializing game jams is just completely wrong and missing the point.. please don't participate in it!"

This seems to be a typical overly-dramatic response, not particularly based on anything other than something about 'missing the point' (further addressed below). I'm not going to bother with the 'commercializing game jams' part, that's just completely over the top... 

"It goes against the ideas/principles of a GameJam"

From my understanding, the idea/principle of a game-jam is to make a game - 

"A game jam is a gathering of developers, artists, and other creatives over a short time during which a collective effort is made to make one or more games."

Whether or not you have to pay to enter, of if there's a panel of judges instead of a community voting scheme, there's no judging at all, the game-jam is run by some larger corporation or company who offer a cash prize (or any other prize for that matter) - the fact is, you're making a game! Nowhere is it stated as some 'global law' that any of the above cannot or should not happen. And we've see it happen already, this isn't the first time any of the above mentioned has happened in regards to a game-jam.

Think back to the 'shitstorm' that surrounded the Kongregate post-LudumDare contest during LD24 earlier this year - all completely unnecessary amounts of drama and negativity. If anything, I would argue the response was damaging for both game-jams and the indie game-dev side of the industry. Will we see another contest like Kongregate contest (or anything similar) happen alongside a Ludum Dare or similar game-jam in the near future? -Doubtful, after the outpouring of anger and close-mindedness we saw last time I wouldn't blame a company for shying away from the idea, just to save themselves the backlash.

To me it feels like a loss of opportunity. There's chances in these kinds of things for little known indie game devs to get more publicity, to be seen by those already established in the industry, to enter into healthy competition with others and potentially win money for a game they've put time into - a horrific thought, I know. 

"The winners get a cash-prize"

I know some people are probably going on with the argument 'the prize for a game-jam is the game you make, the experience you have and ultimately the self improvement'  - and I get that, its the reason why I participate in game jams. I'm yet to even enter a game-jam or anything similar which offers cash prizes, or a panel of famous game devs to ponder over your game. But I can at least can appreciate the value in this kind of a game-jam and I'm sure its just a matter of time before I participate in one (I'm pretty keen to enter this Indie Speed Run if I have the time later in December). 
They go against the norm of what we're used to seeing with a game-jam or similar event, but because of that they offer benefits beyond the norm and I feel disappointed when people respond with close-minded fear-mongering attitudes which generally get no one anywhere.

Its about time to let the indie game dev/jam side of the industry open up and mature to these kinds of opportunities. 

/rant

September - October 2012 [Updates]

Not much has been going on other than University the past two months. Next week is the start of end-of-year exams - so holidays are in sight. I guess this post will just be a roundup of the past 2 months worth of random projects & works.

So as far as current projects go, I've felt a lot of motivation towards this sci-fi horror game, to the point that I've put plans in motion to have it appear at the Indie Games Room at AvCon 2013. Every year I go to the IGR I end up wishing I entered a game, bout time to step up and actually do it. At least 1 game is the goal, if anything decent comes from a Ludum Dare I'll consider throwing that in as well.
Some old & new screenshots of some SciFi level assets:

A mockup SciFi hallway with experimental shader(s)

 

Staircase section

Modular floor panels with added
details (such as spinning fans)

Ludum Dare 24 was missed, due to a pretty heavy workload at Uni that weekend. But Ludum Dare 25 is almost a month away, nicely placed before the Christmas New Years rush. So all going well I'll be enjoying 48 hours of madness starting on the 14th of December.

On the 3D printing front a new (and pretty major) order has been placed, theres some interesting non-Minecraft items in this lot, including a Raspberry Pi case I've been wanting to print and design since my Pi arrived. Theres also a few other interesting items which could lead on to some more business opportunities  and of course a couple of new Minecraft figurines. The Enderman has been requested more times than I can count...

Solar flyby - ingame

I also started working on a Millennium Falcon mod for Kerbal Space Program, inspired by some images I saw a while back where people had imported full 3D models of ships from Aliens and Prometheus and so on into the game so people could fly them.
I didnt want to just import some model and set it up to be pilotable, instead Id rather have a set of parts to build a ship from, not to mention the ability to spontaneously de-assemble. Its much more effort, but Id say its worth it - especially for a ship like the Millennium Falcon.
At this point in time the low poly is done and imported into the game (which took a ton of work to setup all the node positions), I'm now working on the high poly mesh for normals, AO and texture baking. Once exams are over its one of the projects I want to focus on and wrap up first.

Armour Platin'
Greebles ahoy

Ludum Dare Results + Current Projects

As the Ludum Dare results unveiling date approached I thought a lot about how well I imagined my game 'Darkness Creeping' would fair in terms of overall position etc.
I had a hunch it would do well, and potentially score highest (out of all the categories that is) for the Mood category. I thought Id get into the top 50 for Mood - at least.
And if I did, Id be satisfied and happy about my first complete Ludum Dare entry.

So I was pretty shocked when the results were finally announced, to find that Id scored 5th position for the mood category. This meant that for one of the categories Id actually made it into the top 5. This was way beyond what I expected!

Overall I placed #125, which was also surprising when you consider there were just over 1400 entries. This put me in the top 10% of entries overall, very please with this result!
You can see for yourself at the main results page here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/

So with that out of the way I look forward to participating in Ludum Dare 24 in August.


[snip]


So Ill soon have a month of holidays before the next semester of uni starts up and Ive realized I have a ton of work I want to get done during that time. In summary I have this major project to 'manage/maintain' and improve, a WIP game to continue working on (the failed Ludum Dare entry from mid-2011), a Zelda animation I'm super-keen to finish and (hopefully) a Kerbal Space Program video series to start at some stage. Im also considering entering into the next Operation Moonfall contest as well... Throw AvCon + normal life ontop of that, and July will be one busy month....

-Thats all for now.



*Edit*
I did just realize I had another large-ish project go public earlier this month (also 3D printing related), and I completely forgot to write a post about it.
So I will cover that one here soon enough.

2012 so far

2012 has been a busy year so far, Ive been trying to focus a lot more on uni, and so this blog has suffered because of that (was hoping when I started this blog, to be posting at least once a week!)

I have been working on one major project however, late last year (December I think) I dropped all other projects to pursue this 'secret one' which Id been working on since the final months of 2011. I don't want to say too much about it until its closer to being ready - for fear of being caught unprepared, but it is Minecraft related and involves 3D printing - a LOT of 3D printing.
The whole thing should be 'public' early May (fingers crossed). I initially aimed to have things done by mid April and was on track until some computer issues arose...



My laptop GPU nuked itself for a 2nd and final time (the first time it went bad I pulled the whole laptop apart & ended up putting a bolt through the motherboard to hold the heatsync down... That amazingly worked (initially), and it kept my loyal little laptop running fine for another week or two)

Either way, I have a super modern and exciting (not to mention expensive) laptop on order, which should last out the remainder of my studying years at uni, and should arrive before this weekend - just in time for.......

.....Ludum Dare 23
In my last post I talked about Ludum Dare 22 (and the failure my 'attempt' of a game was)
This time round I have 2 other LD's worth of mistakes under my belt, and a more structured plan of attack. It will be interesting to see what theme it will be this time round, as of writing this post, round 1 voting has started. Theres been some interesting themes in the first round, and I feel like I'm leaning towards making a horror or creepily atmospheric game this time round, so hopefully the theme will be geared towards that initial idea/plan of mine.

I'll be screen-capturing the whole thing this time too (for a full 48 hour timelapse on my youtube channel)
So, third time lucky??



Previously, in March, I also finished a Minecraft based video - 'Minecraft [Real Life] EPIC Creeper Explosions' which I filmed and then spent a week editing in both Blender and After Effects. The video itself was a test for various things leading up to my bigger Minecraft project mentioned at the start of this post, plus it gave me an opportunity to tap into the Minecraft community and get some more Minecraft based subscribers on board.
The video was featured on episode #50 of the Minecraft Monday show (@ 8:08) [link], and the Minecraft daily show #217 [link]

(we'll be seeing more of the Minecraft Monday show with this other project as well, more on that in the near future)

On a more technical note, the video also provided an opportunity to test Blenders newly implemented camera tracking module. The results weren't as good as Id hoped given the amount of time I had to spend on the video, but it was good to finally do some camera tracking in Blender!
I also discovered that as of Blender 2.61 there has been a AE exporter built in, so this project gave me a chance to give that a spin as well - and it worked exactly as Id hoped. I was able to track a shot in Blender, insert 3D elements and render it out. Then using the script I imported the camera data into AE, and continued working on the shot from there. Its the first time Ive used Blender and AE so closely together, and it was great to see the process made so efficient with the inclusion of this script in current and future versions of Blender.

The finished product:



The node rendering setup:


Camera tracking:


Creeper footage breakdown:


Intro footage breakdown:




I had a couple of other things to mention, but since this post has already become quite large I'll save it for another later this week (I'll be trying to get back to posting a blog update at least once a fortnight from now on)
So that's all for now.

New YT Video - BGE realtime slideshow

Mid semester break from Uni is into full swing, one day in and I've already got a new youtube video up demonstrating a recent project from uni. The project was associated with a speech I had to do a couple of weeks ago, I chose to use BGE for the visual side of the presentation instead of a powerpoint slideshow. The topic of the presentation was something I'm very interested in: Nuclear Fusion.




Using BGE made the project into something interesting and motivating to work on, rather than several boring hours making powerpoint slides. It also gave me an opportunity to have a mess around with videotexture, something Id wanted to use properly for a while.
And of course theres also the advantage of having a presentation which engaged people more directly than what boring PP slides with a few pictures could do.


If I have time over the next couple of weeks Ill be working towards finishing a couple more projects, most which have a large percentage of the work already done, just in need of some finishing touches.

Mars

Ive had a lot of uni work to do lately, so not much time has been spent on blender projects.

This morning however I thought Id do one of the new tutorials over at Blender Cookie, just as a break from the uni work. The tutorial was the planet/space scene one found here: http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/08/24/creating-a-scene-from-space/

Heres the result after following the tutorial:


And the current node setup:


Considering the amount of time it took to setup, its not too bad. Theres still elements Id like to improve on however. Mars itself looks too clean, it needs some kind of subtle atmosphere. Also the lens flare needs obvious work. Im also trying to find a higher resolution texture map, the one I used here was 2K but it doesnt seem to be enough. A normal map would also help...

It was good fun to set up though and I learnt several new tricks with the node editor, I'll be trying to do more BlenderCookie tutorials in the near future I think.

The Past Month

*Warning - Massive post*

Ive been meaning to post at least once a week, apparently not for the past 4 weeks. Time flies :/

Over the past month a few interesting things have happened. Heres a summary:

----The first ever Blenderheads meetup took place in Adelaide.

I got to meet some very cool people who Id known and talked to online for several years. This included Ben Dansie who worked on Sintel, and Lee Salvemini who runs CGMasters (http://www.cgmasters.net/)
It was also great to catch up with the guys who run Monkeystack again (I did work experience with them at the start of 2010), they were very kind in hosting the event in their studio.
We had a pretty relaxed dinner and chat initially, then some people did presentations (including me) about work they've recently done or a particular area of Blender.
Lots of interesting things were discussed and my only issue with the night was that it ended so quickly, I felt like we all could have talked for days (even though the meetup went for several more hours than planned)

Theres a thread for organizing the event on Blenderartists here. This is where all future meetings will be organized.
Blendernation Post

On the forum thread Ben did a nice writeup about the events of the night, he explains:

The recent Blender User Group meeting in Adelaide was a great success. Big thanks to Michael, Lee, Duann, Alex and Levon for sharing and again to Monkeystack for hosting.


After a pleasant round of chitchat and greetings, I got the ball rolling with a demonstration of the Cycles renderer with an emphasis on characters. (Slightly embarrassing side note, my drivers weren’t actually up to date for CUDA on the night so “only” showed off the CPU rendering.) Michael then continued on by showing some very high res Cycles renders (up to 7k from memory!) and talking about his findings as he pushes Cycles in its current form.


Lee gave an overview of creating the trailer for the CG Masters Rigging DVD – animation, rig controls, adding titles and the sequencer. Also of note were his recent efforts in talking to local schools about the potential to use not only Blender but the growing training material as well. This is certainly something I’m keen to keep an eye on.


Duann then shared about his work with Shapeways and gave a general overview of what the company can offer artists. Some really cool examples were shown including a very neat little walker. After some further questions and discussion, Alex shared his experience with getting a Shapeways print made and painting it. Neat trick – simulate the model falling in the BGE to see if it will stand on its own when printed!

To cap off the night, Levon shared some of his work on various projects and those of us who were left (rather long but enjoyable night) had a quick chat about future meetings.

Further meetups are more than likely going to happen, we all agreed that 2-3 months between meetups was a good amount of time.
My presentation was pretty unorganized and was on the topic of one of my current projects (the one hinted in a past post with a node setup) - it involved some 3D printing testing, Id only finished getting the presentation video together the morning of the meetup, next time I hope to have something more detailed prepared.


----Space Shuttle Atlantis launched - The end of the era of Space Shuttle flight

Might be a strange thing to mention here, since its not *really* related to my current work. But I did have a trip to America planned for this year - at the start of July - to see in person the final space shuttle launch. Unfortunately exams and money became an issue, so I wasn't able to see it in person, but I did watch it live online which is better than nothing.
Id planned to do some kind of mini documentary on the space shuttles, their history and my trip to America and back again, using a lot of footage Id take myself. Im thinking of doing something different now however, perhaps a 3D animation of some sort as a tribute to the 30 years of Space shuttle operation. We'll see...


----Ive purchased an 'Eleven'

Which is basically an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed and produced in Australia. Very nerdy, very cool, very fun.
Its a rather powerful little device, which lets you program microcontrollers. I have several little projects planned, and some larger ones. I might take on some graphics related projects with it, but a lot of them will be electrical engineering and programming based. Ill probubly end up posting stuff about it on here as well. One project relates to the next topic Ill mention below:

----I attended Avcon

Avcon is the Adelaide Video Game and Anime Convention. It happens once a year and is pretty much one of the only events in South Australia for geeks to get their geek on.

It was a pretty interesting weekend all round, lots of *interesting* cosplayers however (some terrible of course, but some surprisingly awesome)
This guy took the place of one of my favourite outfits for the event, it was something I was looking to do, but didnt have the time (and couldnt be bothered anyway)

SSSSssssssSSssssssss........

All that aside, I plan on definitely coming in costume next year.

Another highlight of Avcon was the indie games room (pretty much the main reason I attend the convention), its a place for indie developers (or even hobbiests) to display their games, and have them played for pretty much 48 hours straight by thousands of people. Its a great place to network, and I met several people there over the course of the weekend who were good to network with.
Next year I hope to have something to display in the Indie games room. Something to work towards...


----Operation Moonfall began


This one kinda came out of nowhere, but Im not surprised. In an interview only a couple of days ago, Eiji Aonuma stated that if fans made enough noise about it then Majora's Mask would be remade for the 3DS (MM3D) like Ocarina of time (Oot3D) was.

This was quite exciting to be heard, coming right from one of the top guys at Nintendo, the fact that theyre actually considering remaking Majoras Mask.
This is a game which has firmly sat in my top 3 games of all time, ever since I played it way back in the 90's on my N64.

I had plans myself, before hearing of any of this, to make it heard that MM3D needs to happen, and many other fans have been voicing this since Oot3D was announced as well. So to put it simply, I need to get my plans up and running a lot faster now, since now is clearly the time to make as much noise as possible.
Either way, Nintendo will be recieving a message from me in the near future, heres a sneak peak at part-of-something-to-do-with-it:

I should probubly drop the link to the main site as well while Im at it. So here it is - http://operation-moonfall.org/
Theres a petition to sign, and a facebook group to join + twitter feeds to follow.


Thats about it for the wrap-up of the past month. I have done the occasional 3D work, but not as much as I had planned and Im back to Uni as of this week as well, so finding time for this stuff is even harder again.
The Ludus Cinematic is still not 100% finished, hit a snag when all my file allocations messed up in Premier Pro and I effectively had to re-import everything to the timeline again from scratch (very frustrating)
The problem was caused by the way Id imported the files, and the way they were named after being dumped from UDK.

Hopefully this doesnt happen again...

New Series Intro Progress

Bit of progress over the past few days working on the intro for my new series.
Just been looking for reference images and styles and I think Ive got a good idea of what the intro should look like. Its based around a bunch of 'glass' looking slides with a certain theme to them, most of these themes will be cgi related, for example one slide is about python programming, another about Blender, and so on.



Ill probubly do a couple of other random ones with games I like and other interesting things. Its not overly important though, the slides are mostly just there for detail and to look 'technical' and loosely provide glimpses at the types of things that might be involved with an episode at some stage.

Heres a quick render I made to see how it was looking with all the moving parts. The video is unlisted so its pretty much a sneak peak for anyone following my twitter/blog or going to my website
(I want to do more of these in future!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5LPQ5ax4B0



This will probubly be tweaked a lot more soon, but its a good start for now.

And I think I'll save working more on this until next week, I want to spend the next couple of days finishing the Ludus cinematic once and for all, keep getting distracted! Gah.


*Edit* Ill change the little thumbnail images to the full images when my internet starts behaving itself again and I dont have to use Imageshack....

Exam Fortnight (arrrghhh)

One week of exams left, Ive only had 2 exams this semester which is nice, but it still means lots of sitting around in the dark corner of my room for days on end doing last minute study.



My first (and most difficult) exam was yesterday, my final exam for the semester is this upcoming Friday, and after that I have holidays till August (Hurray!)

I have, however, continued working on polishing up the Ludus cinematic (not too much longer!)
And Ive started blocking out shots for my secret 2nd project which I hinted to in the last post. At the moment I have just over a minute of blocked out shots finished (with a couple of the shots being pretty much final - odd at this stage but theres a couple of non blender things going on here as well)
Looks like full animation will be ~4mins, not including intro and credits. Havent posted anything that long for quite some time, but its nice to have a substantial animation in the works. Also due to its nature it *shouldnt* take too long to produce. I cant say much about why that is, cause it would give a lot away. Just got a couple more characters and environments to *restore* and rig up, then some animation and Im on my way.


Ah, and I really need to get this new video series on the go as well (I think 99% of all the people who follow my work wouldnt even know about this blog yet, the first video of the series will be about news and updates etc so thatll point people here as well)
Im in the process of designing the HUD for the series currently...

-Yes this series is so serious that it requires a HUD.. D:

Back to Blender [finally]

With exams on the horizon I havent been too active with 3D work(s), but thats not to say I havent done anything.

The Ludus project is coming to a close (finally! Im seriously about to boot the whole thing out the door) and now Ill have time to focus on finishing my other 2 current projects, plus starting a third.


Not sure if Ive mentioned this anywhere, but Im trying to buckle down with projects at the moment. Leaving myself with 3 running at one time max, so once one of the 3 is complete I can take on a new project. This means that I cannot allow myself to get distracted with other projects (lack of productivity lately has forced me to try to rework my project and time management to try and help get more projects finished)
Any other projects I come up with get written down in my notebook and are pretty much forgotten, to be started when Ive completed some other project.


Either way, the Ludus project is finished, I completed the A2 poster for it a week ago, its pretty simple with a wide view of the cliff as the basis, the Ludus perched on the side in the lower right of the poster. The whole bottom of the poster is a 'making of' section which describes the process of designing the level and theres a few other interior shots thrown in around the place as well.




Heres a final shot of everything together:


I still havent finished the cinematic, but will continue to work on it over the next week or so before uploading.

And finally, I havent mentioned anything about my 2nd current project, the screenshot below is a sneak-peak, many people should know where its from, and what it is.

Final week progress

Got less than a week remaining for this project to wrap up (at least the major cinematic part, theres still one part of the project to do later but thats not so much 3D related)



The ludus is coming together well, Im just about finished making assets now, and the level has been rebuilt a bit for some extra rooms and the staircase connecting the ground level with the top, plus its all pretty much furnished as best as I can with the remaining time Ive had to work on it. Im starting on the new camera angles now for the full cinematic which will be rendered using Manitee.
I also spent a bit of time yesterday making a ton of decals. They should liven up the bland walls and texturing. Soon we'll be seeing walls with damage and chipped away surface, or the occasional stains, grime and blood splatters.

Last night I also got around to making a full 360 terrain object complete with mountains, which really adds to the overall environment. The terrain was modeled in Blender in about 10mins (would have had a migraine trying to do it in 3dsmax, Ill get to that in my next post)
Then I slapped on some rocky texture, which didnt really cover it properly (lots of stretching) but it doesn't matter because all of this will be in the distance, and UDK's DOF blurs the distant mountains anyway.


(thats the Ludus in the bottom right)