I met with my dad for dinner a couple nights ago. He's worked construction all his life in one form or another. His work has been featured in architectural magazines. He co-wrote the test for the masonry contractor's license for the State of California. He's also read about every fantasy and sci fi book ever written and plays World of Warcraft more than anyone I know. I was telling him more about the Dawnshine project, the culture, the building materials, etc. He's going to help me a lot with the building concepts. He knows a lot about ancient history and construction methods. So it was a helpful talk. I just wish my dad didn't talk with food in his mouth. That bothers me so much. But what can you do?
So I'm finishing up a temporary gui for the Character Creation process. I'm happy with 90% of the classes, but we might end up tweaking one or two of them. We won't be announcing any of them until they're working in the engine and we're happy with their advancement customizations. Some of them are unique, most are very unusual, and the ones that are similar to what's in other games, still have a lot of interesting twists. Still, my concern isn't that people will steal ideas from us. My concern is that we promise to have feature X and struggle and struggle with it, and either can't get it to work right or we come up with a better idea and don't want to feel constrained. My word is really important to me, so I'm really careful about making promises.
With that in mind, the crew at Loki's Planet want to announce their teaming up with us. So I have to write a press release about Dawnshine. That's harder to do than you might think. We're not announcing many features at this time. And although it's incredibly awesome that Dawnshine will be the first ever MMORPG released in the Hard Fantasy style... um... most people don't even know what Hard Fantasy means or why that's a cool thing. Hard Fantasy is an amazing genre, but it's really, really rare. Really rare. It goes against everything that is the core of what fantasy is, so to most people, you explain it to them, and they give you a, "uh, what?" expression.
In simple terms, the elements in sci fi that cause science fanatics to argue about Warp Coils and Tachyon Beams is what makes for good Hard Sci Fi. But no one argues about similar mechanics in Fantasy. The reason why is people just shrug their shoulders and say, "It's magic. The whole point of what makes it mysterious is that you don't know how it works." That's the whole point of fantasy. In Hard Fantasy, there is no mystery. Everyone knows exactly how magic works, or at least the highly trained do. Thalos and Lokana are both Gods in Dawnshine, but even they could be killed if done in a specific way. Their magic is also highly restricted to the same laws of the universe that binds everyone else.
This is counter productive to what most people love about Fantasy. But, in exchange for giving up the ability to hook people with unpredictability, Hard Fantasy offers a stable platform which makes it easier for a story to center around characters rather than events. Magic is no longer the central theme to the story, but rather a back drop to it. This way, we get to focus on a character's personalities, goals, conflicts, struggles, etc. If magic in the story is unpredictable to the reader / player, it can keep them from getting invested in that character. After all, who sits on the edge of their seats knowing that any danger the heroes get in will just be solved by some new magic spell that the author just maked up on the spot? Well, in Hard Fantasy, the reader / player already knows all the tricks the heroes have up their sleeves because it's been established and the author can't break their own rules or it's not Hard Fantasy any more. It's a subtle difference that makes Hard Fantasy a very unique genre--and one, I think works fantastically as an MMORPG genre just waiting for someone to create.
Will most players care? Probably not. But that's why we plan to make Dawnshine a really fun game just in case.
Aside from that, here's what we're working on:
Programming
Half the programming team was out of town this week, so it was a short meeting. The team is working on getting the camera to move to different scenes depending on which faction you select during the Character Creation and Selection screen. That way, you pick the Neg Wath and you see a forest scene, pick the Sawkarans, maybe you're outside a sun temple or something. I noticed the camera's really messed up in the engine right now. I'm guessing a programmer tweaked with it, broke it, and decided to figure out what's wrong with it tomorrow.
Art
We're getting a ahead of the concept artists, so the modelers are going to start modeling basic stuff that doesn't really need concept art for--bowls, rocks, simple tables, etc. To be honest, everyone's moving faster than I planned they would, so people are getting ahead of me. Plus the team keeps growing by a couple new people each week on average. I'm spending a lot of time scrambling to keep up with everyone.
Writing
Nothing to talk about right now. I need to clone myself so I can manage the project and get all the writing done I need to do. I really hope we can start posting some Dawnshine fiction and lore a month from now. I can promise you guys are going to see a freakish amount of details about the game lore--far more than anyone's ever heard of from an MMORPG. Dawnshine is definitely a game lore nerds and role players will love.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Middle of Week 3
I went to high school in the late 80's. Now, I'd been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was 10. My parents bought me the original red box starter set when it first came out in an attempt to encourage me to read at a young age--which obviously worked. But the stigma associated with people who played D&D at that time was grossly inaccurate and very negative. So when we used to play during lunch in high school, I was always the kid saying, "Hide the books!" when a group of girls would walk by. My friends would respond, "Huh? What?" totally oblivious. It's nice to see the social acceptability of being a game obsessed nerd change. Today, it's not nearly as embarrassing to wear a World of Warcraft shirt around, for example. But still, I'm old school and I still carry around a bit of that hesitation.
As just a coincidence of how things turned out, most of the artists on the Dawnshine team are women--either recent college grads or graduating seniors. I still remember the first meetings I had with each of them separately and later as part of the group. I was a little nervous about how to bring up the Neg Wath. So the Neg Wath are this ethnic group. They're sort of like the Celts, but far more cannibalistic. Even more disturbing, they use necromancy to preserve the bodies of the dead. That's a fancy way of saying they raise zombies, then eat those zombies when they get hungry. Yeah, pretty gross. So how do you bring that up in a conversation with a young lady that you don't know that well without coming across like a total weirdo?
Well, turns out the exact opposite happened. The artists on the team love the Neg Wath and have pushed the concept to even more disturbing levels. We had our art meeting sunday and they're drawing up concepts of Neg Wath with human bones weaved through their hair, of armor made of human bones, and all sorts of disturbing things. I announced to the team something like, "You're all sick puppies and need help."
Seriously though, I'm really happy with how the Neg Wath concepts are coming along. The art team is doing a fantastic job. We're getting really close to starting to model some concepts and having our first 3d art assets in the game.
On the programming side of things, we're mostly testing the engine and seeing what we can do with it. We don't have much of our own systems working yet, just the default HeroEngine stuff. Last night, I recruited another programmer with a 4 year Game Programming degree from Devry. He's going to have to be the last programmer I recruit on the team or else the programming team is going to be too large to manage.
As just a coincidence of how things turned out, most of the artists on the Dawnshine team are women--either recent college grads or graduating seniors. I still remember the first meetings I had with each of them separately and later as part of the group. I was a little nervous about how to bring up the Neg Wath. So the Neg Wath are this ethnic group. They're sort of like the Celts, but far more cannibalistic. Even more disturbing, they use necromancy to preserve the bodies of the dead. That's a fancy way of saying they raise zombies, then eat those zombies when they get hungry. Yeah, pretty gross. So how do you bring that up in a conversation with a young lady that you don't know that well without coming across like a total weirdo?
Well, turns out the exact opposite happened. The artists on the team love the Neg Wath and have pushed the concept to even more disturbing levels. We had our art meeting sunday and they're drawing up concepts of Neg Wath with human bones weaved through their hair, of armor made of human bones, and all sorts of disturbing things. I announced to the team something like, "You're all sick puppies and need help."
Seriously though, I'm really happy with how the Neg Wath concepts are coming along. The art team is doing a fantastic job. We're getting really close to starting to model some concepts and having our first 3d art assets in the game.
On the programming side of things, we're mostly testing the engine and seeing what we can do with it. We don't have much of our own systems working yet, just the default HeroEngine stuff. Last night, I recruited another programmer with a 4 year Game Programming degree from Devry. He's going to have to be the last programmer I recruit on the team or else the programming team is going to be too large to manage.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Middle of Week 2
I looked back at some of my older posts and cringed at a few typos. A lot has changed. The team has grown quite a bit. A few instructors at the Art Institute have been talking to me about some of their students and asking what roles I need filled. I've had so many programmers want to join the team that we just can't fit any more. I think we're at around 15 people, with more I'm scheduled to meet with. We'll be recruiting a lot of animators and modelers soon, though there's not much for them to do now.
Where we are in development?
Programming
I had planned to spend a month with the programmers just learning the engine, but they're moving faster than I thought they would, so we're already putting in the combat system. It's not done or working, but some of the stats are in. One of the programmers I recruited was only in his first semester in college and had never programmed anything other than some simple class assignments. I was obviously hesitant to recruit him, though I could tell this was really important to him. But he's already gotten a part of the combat system working, so I was right. This really is what he wants to do and he's adapting fine.
Technical Art
The technical artists are testing polygon limits of the engine, animation importing, and setting some standards. I made our two technical artists the gate keepers. Not a single art asset gets into the engine without going through them to make sure it's imported and working properly. When I start modeling some assets, they'll be telling me how many polygons I can use. If this is too technical, I'll explain it this way. The better the graphics, the more it slows down your computer. So we need to work within our limits to pack the best amount of graphic quality while ensuring good performance on as many machines as we can. We have two technical artists on the team that know how to find that balance at different parts of the game so they're in charge of that.
Concept Art
We're working with some widely varying schedules from some of the concept artists, so this has been a little rough. We have some initial concepts of the four playable factions from one of our concept artists that makes every meeting. I like them so far, but I want to see what some of the other artists have so we can mesh some ideas.
Business
There were several business people I was talking to about the project, though none of that has materialized, so I've been handling that on my own. We've partnered up with Loki's Planet and they're using their marketing resources to lay some ground work for us. They haven't even launched yet, and they're already getting over 10k hits a day. They're doing something right. We're getting 20-200 hits a day right now. I've also been made the Editor at Loki's Planet, so I'll be recruiting writers looking to write game reviews. Btw, writing for a game magazine is an excellent way for writers to break into the game industry, so any writers interested in that, email me at brian at lokisplanet dot com But back on topic, so Loki's Planet wants to start using their promotional prowess to help us out. There's some other things in the works, but not anything I can talk about at this time--hopefully something that turns into something cool. We'll see.
Also in business news, last night I went to a meeting being presented by the project manager of SARTA. SARTA is a non profit organization whose purpose is to develop the tech industry of the Sacramento region. They were founded by venture capitalists and angel investors who are looking for tech companies struggling to get off the ground. Stigma Games is exactly the kind of business SARTA would be interested in and they seemed pretty interested in the Dawnshine project when I sat down with their Project Manager after the presentation. Does that mean that funding is right around the corner for us? No. No, it doesn't. These investors want to give us too little money and take too big a percentage of our profits.
But laying the ground work now and starting these connections can possibly lead to the right deal for us. In the mean time, we need to get the concepts down to where we're happy, start building 3D assets, then work on putting out a demo.
Once the demo is out, hopefully we start attracting Likes on our FB page. That will show investors that we have a marketable game worth investing in.
Audio
Not much to report there yet. Our composer on the team is working some things out. I can't wait to hear what he has so far.
Writing
I've been getting behind on this. I want to start posting some fiction about Dawnshine. The brief descriptions on the site right now are not terribly interesting. Nor do they mention anything about the characters struggling in the world--which is the bulk of the story. Quests are going to be character driven rather than event driven. In other words, you're doing quests because this person did that, not because some event happened. It's a different approach. It's subtle, but I think players will find our quests a lot more interesting even if they're not sure exactly why.
I think Star Wars does a good job of this approach. With my Sith Sorcerer, I wanted to collect the Artifacts because I wanted to know why they were so important to Zash. Well, now I finally know and I wasn't disappointed. BioWare's writers did a fantastic job.
Web Development
There's a web guy that I've talked to. Not sure what's going on with that. It's not a big priority. But I've had a few people politely tell me that our website sucks. Yeah, I know it does. Don't worry. It will look pretty cool one day. Right now we're low on 2d artists, so I can't justify telling them to stop working on concepts (that we need before we can start building graphics for the game) so they can work on the website that's not really important right now.
Ok, that's it for now.
Where we are in development?
Programming
I had planned to spend a month with the programmers just learning the engine, but they're moving faster than I thought they would, so we're already putting in the combat system. It's not done or working, but some of the stats are in. One of the programmers I recruited was only in his first semester in college and had never programmed anything other than some simple class assignments. I was obviously hesitant to recruit him, though I could tell this was really important to him. But he's already gotten a part of the combat system working, so I was right. This really is what he wants to do and he's adapting fine.
Technical Art
The technical artists are testing polygon limits of the engine, animation importing, and setting some standards. I made our two technical artists the gate keepers. Not a single art asset gets into the engine without going through them to make sure it's imported and working properly. When I start modeling some assets, they'll be telling me how many polygons I can use. If this is too technical, I'll explain it this way. The better the graphics, the more it slows down your computer. So we need to work within our limits to pack the best amount of graphic quality while ensuring good performance on as many machines as we can. We have two technical artists on the team that know how to find that balance at different parts of the game so they're in charge of that.
Concept Art
We're working with some widely varying schedules from some of the concept artists, so this has been a little rough. We have some initial concepts of the four playable factions from one of our concept artists that makes every meeting. I like them so far, but I want to see what some of the other artists have so we can mesh some ideas.
Business
There were several business people I was talking to about the project, though none of that has materialized, so I've been handling that on my own. We've partnered up with Loki's Planet and they're using their marketing resources to lay some ground work for us. They haven't even launched yet, and they're already getting over 10k hits a day. They're doing something right. We're getting 20-200 hits a day right now. I've also been made the Editor at Loki's Planet, so I'll be recruiting writers looking to write game reviews. Btw, writing for a game magazine is an excellent way for writers to break into the game industry, so any writers interested in that, email me at brian at lokisplanet dot com But back on topic, so Loki's Planet wants to start using their promotional prowess to help us out. There's some other things in the works, but not anything I can talk about at this time--hopefully something that turns into something cool. We'll see.
Also in business news, last night I went to a meeting being presented by the project manager of SARTA. SARTA is a non profit organization whose purpose is to develop the tech industry of the Sacramento region. They were founded by venture capitalists and angel investors who are looking for tech companies struggling to get off the ground. Stigma Games is exactly the kind of business SARTA would be interested in and they seemed pretty interested in the Dawnshine project when I sat down with their Project Manager after the presentation. Does that mean that funding is right around the corner for us? No. No, it doesn't. These investors want to give us too little money and take too big a percentage of our profits.
But laying the ground work now and starting these connections can possibly lead to the right deal for us. In the mean time, we need to get the concepts down to where we're happy, start building 3D assets, then work on putting out a demo.
Once the demo is out, hopefully we start attracting Likes on our FB page. That will show investors that we have a marketable game worth investing in.
Audio
Not much to report there yet. Our composer on the team is working some things out. I can't wait to hear what he has so far.
Writing
I've been getting behind on this. I want to start posting some fiction about Dawnshine. The brief descriptions on the site right now are not terribly interesting. Nor do they mention anything about the characters struggling in the world--which is the bulk of the story. Quests are going to be character driven rather than event driven. In other words, you're doing quests because this person did that, not because some event happened. It's a different approach. It's subtle, but I think players will find our quests a lot more interesting even if they're not sure exactly why.
I think Star Wars does a good job of this approach. With my Sith Sorcerer, I wanted to collect the Artifacts because I wanted to know why they were so important to Zash. Well, now I finally know and I wasn't disappointed. BioWare's writers did a fantastic job.
Web Development
There's a web guy that I've talked to. Not sure what's going on with that. It's not a big priority. But I've had a few people politely tell me that our website sucks. Yeah, I know it does. Don't worry. It will look pretty cool one day. Right now we're low on 2d artists, so I can't justify telling them to stop working on concepts (that we need before we can start building graphics for the game) so they can work on the website that's not really important right now.
Ok, that's it for now.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
First Meeting
Tonight was the first step of our journey. We mostly talked about how things have been going with the engine and what we need to establish and work on. I had NDAs for everyone to sign and gave everyone a peek into the story of Dawnshine. I had typed up about 12 pages of the history of the world and each faction, as well as each of the four classes of each four factions. That's 16 classes total that will each play fairly differently from each other along with the back story on how each class fits in with lore of the world. The concept artists want even more information from me, so I'll be preparing design documents to detail the culture, religion, and goals of each faction in much greater detail. Wow, this is going to be a lot of work, but this is exactly what I love doing.
At the meeting, we started some of the delegating. It's a little scary to give people I don't know that well complete control over something. But it's also inspiring. All of the people working on this project have the skills to be at a traditional, well funded game company doing their thing, but would never be given that chance--not right out of college, or while still in college atleast. So we're the outsiders. There's power in that.
I think it's important to stress this. Yes I started this project. Yes it's based off a stories I have been working on for over a decade. But it's important to realize that I'm just putting in one piece of the puzzle. The story of this effort is not about me, but rather a story about Sacramento and making our own opportunities. We want to make the games we all grew up playing and continue to play. That's what we went to school for. That's what we spend most our free time doing.
We still have some pitfalls. I don't have a character modeler recruited, and although we don't need one right now, I'd feel happier knowing one is lined up. We also don't have an Art Director. This is something I'm concerned about. I'm a "I know what I like," kind of guy when it comes to art. That's not good enough. The Concept Artists on the team need better feedback than, "Hey, that looks cool," which is all I can really provide for them. I can say what I like and don't, but we're not making a game for an audience of me. So whether I personally like it is a little irrelevant. I'm really just concerned with if it fits culture of the civilizations or not. In the meanwhile, the hope is that the Concept Artists on the team can collectively decide what they like and don't like and work out a consistent style from there.
All and all, a way more productive meeting than I thought the first meeting would be. This is really exciting. I can't wait to start posting some stories and concept art for people following this project to check out.
At the meeting, we started some of the delegating. It's a little scary to give people I don't know that well complete control over something. But it's also inspiring. All of the people working on this project have the skills to be at a traditional, well funded game company doing their thing, but would never be given that chance--not right out of college, or while still in college atleast. So we're the outsiders. There's power in that.
I think it's important to stress this. Yes I started this project. Yes it's based off a stories I have been working on for over a decade. But it's important to realize that I'm just putting in one piece of the puzzle. The story of this effort is not about me, but rather a story about Sacramento and making our own opportunities. We want to make the games we all grew up playing and continue to play. That's what we went to school for. That's what we spend most our free time doing.
We still have some pitfalls. I don't have a character modeler recruited, and although we don't need one right now, I'd feel happier knowing one is lined up. We also don't have an Art Director. This is something I'm concerned about. I'm a "I know what I like," kind of guy when it comes to art. That's not good enough. The Concept Artists on the team need better feedback than, "Hey, that looks cool," which is all I can really provide for them. I can say what I like and don't, but we're not making a game for an audience of me. So whether I personally like it is a little irrelevant. I'm really just concerned with if it fits culture of the civilizations or not. In the meanwhile, the hope is that the Concept Artists on the team can collectively decide what they like and don't like and work out a consistent style from there.
All and all, a way more productive meeting than I thought the first meeting would be. This is really exciting. I can't wait to start posting some stories and concept art for people following this project to check out.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Christmas Status
Merry Christmas everyone. So I've met with several people in person that have told me they're following this blog, so I'll try and do a better job keeping things updated and not ramble on about my cat or something.
So we've picked the big day--January 7th, 2012 for our first meeting. I've recruited about a dozen people so far and in about two weeks, everyone on the team will meet each other and we'll finally get started making this game. Strangely, I thought programmers would be the most difficult to recruit and 3d modelers the easiest. The opposite has been true. I've been unable so far to recruit a single 3d modeler. I'm not terribly worried about that at this point. I wouldn't have anything for the modelers to do for a month or so while we work out concepts. Still, it's nice to have all the bases covered before we get there. I've worked in a professional setting as a modeler--doing commercial 3D renderings for architectural concepts for a drafting company, so I could fill that roll if needed. However, we're going to need a lot more than just one person in that capacity, so I'll definitely need to recruit.
I'm pretty happy with the concept artists we have on the team. Officially, we have 2, but there's 2 others I've either met with or will meet with soon that are also really talented. Because we will be constantly rolling out new art assets through the pipeline, we'll always need concept artists, but if for some reason they get caught up or bored and want to try something else, I can move them to design. Dawnshine is going to need more level design than most MMOs and it's going to be a whole lot different than any other MMO, but I feel more comfortable getting the artists on the team doing that. Dawnshine instances are going to be a lot more story driven rather than boxes with monsters in them and text to read at the end that passes as a story. The instances are going to be a selling point for the game--what sets us apart. So level design is going to be a very important position. I realize level design is an entry level job. Anyone that can play the Sims can be a level designer for most games. But still, I like the idea of the artists taking a break from their main roles and doing something different, though related. So for now, I'm not recruiting any designers.
What else? So the Art Institute of Sacramento had their first Game Art and Design graduates. I met both of them at the AI's portfolio show. The portfolio show is sort of like a graduation party where the graduates set up a booth showing off their work. The employers go booth to booth in a sort of reverse job fair. The two graduates were showing off their building modeling skills through the Unity engine. I talked to them both quite a bit. I didn't really make a big push to recruit them since I won't have anything for them to do for a while, but I at least made some inroads there. We'll see. I also got to talk to the career counselors at AI a little more. They're good people. I'm glad I've been able to form a partnership with them. Good things will come from it.
Stigma Games is a good deal for them as well. The game industry is really hard to crack into. Most graduates won't get in. So for us to be able to bring in new grads and current students to give them real world experience might be just as important for them and their resumes as going to college itself. There are a lot of skilled and talented people in this town that aren't getting a chance otherwise. I have to admit, I have a lot of fun recruiting. I like the idea of finding hidden talent and giving people that shot no one else will. I just wish this was a funded project and I could also give people the earnings they deserve as well. But on the other side of things, if it was a funded project, then I'd probably only be recruiting experienced professionals because I'd be swamped with applicants.
I've had a few other interesting meetings, though it's still too early to say how those will pan out. I'm networking with the people from Loki's Planet. I'm going to one of their office meetings soon to talk more business. They seem like really good people too.
Oh, and I got an invitation by the president of Rocketeer Games to check out their studio. I met their president, John, years ago. He's a 3D Modeler that used to be a director of sorts at the Art Institute. He does absolutely fantastic modeling and texturing work. I'm definitely honored to check out his studio.
Several people have asked me when we're going to start needing testers. We can bring in testers when a character model is built, textured, rigged, and animated, the combat system is working, many of the attacks and spell abilities are working, the character creation system is working for Dawnshine characters(as opposed to the default system now that comes with the engine for making Hero's Journey characters), and there's at least once instance or zone people can run around in. Right now, none of that is done or even started. There's 4 classes and 4 factions. That's a total of 16 classes that should all play very different from each other. It's not going to be 4 classes in 4 different flavors each. They're not going to have equivalencies cross faction. Such variety is going to take a huge amount of balancing, so I'm going to want to bring in testers early.
Next post should be on Jan 7th.
So we've picked the big day--January 7th, 2012 for our first meeting. I've recruited about a dozen people so far and in about two weeks, everyone on the team will meet each other and we'll finally get started making this game. Strangely, I thought programmers would be the most difficult to recruit and 3d modelers the easiest. The opposite has been true. I've been unable so far to recruit a single 3d modeler. I'm not terribly worried about that at this point. I wouldn't have anything for the modelers to do for a month or so while we work out concepts. Still, it's nice to have all the bases covered before we get there. I've worked in a professional setting as a modeler--doing commercial 3D renderings for architectural concepts for a drafting company, so I could fill that roll if needed. However, we're going to need a lot more than just one person in that capacity, so I'll definitely need to recruit.
I'm pretty happy with the concept artists we have on the team. Officially, we have 2, but there's 2 others I've either met with or will meet with soon that are also really talented. Because we will be constantly rolling out new art assets through the pipeline, we'll always need concept artists, but if for some reason they get caught up or bored and want to try something else, I can move them to design. Dawnshine is going to need more level design than most MMOs and it's going to be a whole lot different than any other MMO, but I feel more comfortable getting the artists on the team doing that. Dawnshine instances are going to be a lot more story driven rather than boxes with monsters in them and text to read at the end that passes as a story. The instances are going to be a selling point for the game--what sets us apart. So level design is going to be a very important position. I realize level design is an entry level job. Anyone that can play the Sims can be a level designer for most games. But still, I like the idea of the artists taking a break from their main roles and doing something different, though related. So for now, I'm not recruiting any designers.
What else? So the Art Institute of Sacramento had their first Game Art and Design graduates. I met both of them at the AI's portfolio show. The portfolio show is sort of like a graduation party where the graduates set up a booth showing off their work. The employers go booth to booth in a sort of reverse job fair. The two graduates were showing off their building modeling skills through the Unity engine. I talked to them both quite a bit. I didn't really make a big push to recruit them since I won't have anything for them to do for a while, but I at least made some inroads there. We'll see. I also got to talk to the career counselors at AI a little more. They're good people. I'm glad I've been able to form a partnership with them. Good things will come from it.
Stigma Games is a good deal for them as well. The game industry is really hard to crack into. Most graduates won't get in. So for us to be able to bring in new grads and current students to give them real world experience might be just as important for them and their resumes as going to college itself. There are a lot of skilled and talented people in this town that aren't getting a chance otherwise. I have to admit, I have a lot of fun recruiting. I like the idea of finding hidden talent and giving people that shot no one else will. I just wish this was a funded project and I could also give people the earnings they deserve as well. But on the other side of things, if it was a funded project, then I'd probably only be recruiting experienced professionals because I'd be swamped with applicants.
I've had a few other interesting meetings, though it's still too early to say how those will pan out. I'm networking with the people from Loki's Planet. I'm going to one of their office meetings soon to talk more business. They seem like really good people too.
Oh, and I got an invitation by the president of Rocketeer Games to check out their studio. I met their president, John, years ago. He's a 3D Modeler that used to be a director of sorts at the Art Institute. He does absolutely fantastic modeling and texturing work. I'm definitely honored to check out his studio.
Several people have asked me when we're going to start needing testers. We can bring in testers when a character model is built, textured, rigged, and animated, the combat system is working, many of the attacks and spell abilities are working, the character creation system is working for Dawnshine characters(as opposed to the default system now that comes with the engine for making Hero's Journey characters), and there's at least once instance or zone people can run around in. Right now, none of that is done or even started. There's 4 classes and 4 factions. That's a total of 16 classes that should all play very different from each other. It's not going to be 4 classes in 4 different flavors each. They're not going to have equivalencies cross faction. Such variety is going to take a huge amount of balancing, so I'm going to want to bring in testers early.
Next post should be on Jan 7th.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Getting Lawyered Up
Today I meet with lawyers. This is an important step in forming a company. There's three legal documents I'm going to need everyone to sign before we start production. We'll need an NDA. A Non Discloser Agreement is a promise that people on the project won't tell people outside the project what's going on. I'm not so much worried about people on the team telling their friends about the game or even letting them peek at their monitor to see stuff they shouldn't be seeing. I'm more concerned about people on the team bragging about how we might get an endorsement deal and have that spoil the deal, or talking about features before they're finalized--especially if those features need to be changed. Otherwise, I'm going to be a lot less secretive about Dawnshine than just about any other game dev company. Like I've said before, if it makes us look less professional if we're more open and people can see that we're just regular people, then I'm ok with that.
The second important document is the Contributor Agreement. People are going to come and go. It's important that the work people do on the project stays with the project. If a modeler creates a figure and several other artists rig, texture, and animate that figure, if the artist says they're leaving and taking their work with them, it could mean hundreds of hours lost from people that put work around that figure. The combination of NDA and CA also means people can't take their work and try and use it on another game, thus damaging the Dawnshine IP.
The third document is the one I'm having the most trouble with wording correctly, and what I'll need help the most with when I talk to the lawyers today. It's a Share Agreement, one that says if the project makes money, I need to pay the people that contributed to it. If I trust myself to do the right thing, you might wonder why I would need to have people sign such a document. But this actually protects me. It protects me from people having a reason to accuse me of potentially pocketing all the profits and not paying anyone. Much to the disappointment of my parents, money has never been something I cared about. I'm fine living pretty much anywhere and driving a beat up car. Even through all the years that I used to book bands at night clubs, I never took a cent of money for doing it. If there was money left at the end of the night, I gave it all to the bands. I do care about taking care of people that work with me whenever I can.
Let's see, also recruiting programmers has gone pretty well. Artists, not so much. I've been in touch with some really promising artists lately, ones that have sent me some great portfolios, though most of them seem to be pretty busy. I'm really hurting for environmental concept artists and modelers right now. I do know a few that are fantastic, and have worked on block buster, AAA games that might be willing to help, but they don't live locally. I'm really kind of burnt out on trying to work with people over the internet. Still, it's nice to have amazing talent as a plan B.
I met a few artists at the open house for Pride Animation. It's a studio that produces cartoon shorts featuring characters from the LGBT community. I'll be honest and say I was a little nervous about going to their open house, but they were all really, really nice. I was impressed by how dedicated they were to the work that they produce.
While I was there, I also met a few people from Loki's Planet. As kind of a side note, for the last 20 years that I've chatted with people on the internet, I've used the chat name "Lokana." Lokana is a fictional character I've been working on for the last couple decades and has finally settled into being an incredibly important character in the world of Dawnshine, but before that, it was my chat nickname. When I used to meet people off the internet at big IRC get togethers, I used to have people actually assume Lokana was my real name. For a long time people called me "Loki" as a nick name. So when I heard about Loki's Planet, I thought the name was a funny coincidence.
Anyway, so they launched about a year ago, had some management issues and re-organized. Now they plan to relunch in two months. Loki's Planet is a sort of Facebook for gamers. It's a place to talk about games and keep in touch with all things related to games and gaming culture. They also want to bring back lan parties, which sounds like a lot of fun to me. They were really excited about everything they have planned coming up so I'm eager to see how things shape up.
Oh, also, though this doesn't really relate to us, there's good news for another Sacramento game company--KlickNation. They only make Facebook games, but EA Games has decided to join the FB Game mix by buying out KlickNation and renaming them after the BioWare brand that they also own. So now KlickNation is called BioWare Sacramento. Though I don't know them, I'm still pretty excited to see a company that, just 2 years ago, were just a couple guys posting on craigslist looking for programmers and now they're owned by one of the biggest game companies in the world. That's pretty awesome to see what a couple guys in my hometown can do. It fills me with optimism to follow in their footsteps.
Speaking of EA and BioWare, I got into beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's supposed to be the most expensive game ever made. Since it also uses the HeroEngine, of course I was interested in paying close attention to how they did terrain detail and other things. The dynamic shadow map generation is still pretty blocky, and the terrain billboards for flora that HE uses still sort of creeps me out. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you ever play SWTOR, point the camera straight down at grass or flowers, then rotate the camera. You'll see that the grass and flowers don't turn with the ground, but stay fixed fully facing the camera at all times. Rift and WoW both use static meshes for their flora instead of billboards, and thus escape this problem. Static mesh doesn't get as good performance this way so they can't use as much of it. I think the HE method of billboards is fine as long as everything you use is tall and skinny. I bet most people won't notice either way, so it might not be an issue.
Aside from the technical aspects of SWTOR terrain, I was really impressed with the use of music. There's one quest, Man With a Steel Voice, in particular where I noticed it. So there's an old, dying man whose entire life's work comes down to one moment. You can either help him and hurt others, or help the others, dashing the old man's one chance to complete his dream. If you chose not to help him, he tells you(all voice acted), how you've robbed him of everything he ever cared about. And the music that played was really, really sad. I've never had a game really appeal to me on an emotional level like that. I thought, "I don't want to play this game. It's too sad." Then I got to run around blowing up people and I was ok again.
But it made me realize I've got to really lay out all the zones, instances, and quests in Dawnshine as soon as I can to give the composers on the team the best chance at really reaching people. Audio is a huge part of games, and one that has to be taken seriously.
The second important document is the Contributor Agreement. People are going to come and go. It's important that the work people do on the project stays with the project. If a modeler creates a figure and several other artists rig, texture, and animate that figure, if the artist says they're leaving and taking their work with them, it could mean hundreds of hours lost from people that put work around that figure. The combination of NDA and CA also means people can't take their work and try and use it on another game, thus damaging the Dawnshine IP.
The third document is the one I'm having the most trouble with wording correctly, and what I'll need help the most with when I talk to the lawyers today. It's a Share Agreement, one that says if the project makes money, I need to pay the people that contributed to it. If I trust myself to do the right thing, you might wonder why I would need to have people sign such a document. But this actually protects me. It protects me from people having a reason to accuse me of potentially pocketing all the profits and not paying anyone. Much to the disappointment of my parents, money has never been something I cared about. I'm fine living pretty much anywhere and driving a beat up car. Even through all the years that I used to book bands at night clubs, I never took a cent of money for doing it. If there was money left at the end of the night, I gave it all to the bands. I do care about taking care of people that work with me whenever I can.
Let's see, also recruiting programmers has gone pretty well. Artists, not so much. I've been in touch with some really promising artists lately, ones that have sent me some great portfolios, though most of them seem to be pretty busy. I'm really hurting for environmental concept artists and modelers right now. I do know a few that are fantastic, and have worked on block buster, AAA games that might be willing to help, but they don't live locally. I'm really kind of burnt out on trying to work with people over the internet. Still, it's nice to have amazing talent as a plan B.
I met a few artists at the open house for Pride Animation. It's a studio that produces cartoon shorts featuring characters from the LGBT community. I'll be honest and say I was a little nervous about going to their open house, but they were all really, really nice. I was impressed by how dedicated they were to the work that they produce.
While I was there, I also met a few people from Loki's Planet. As kind of a side note, for the last 20 years that I've chatted with people on the internet, I've used the chat name "Lokana." Lokana is a fictional character I've been working on for the last couple decades and has finally settled into being an incredibly important character in the world of Dawnshine, but before that, it was my chat nickname. When I used to meet people off the internet at big IRC get togethers, I used to have people actually assume Lokana was my real name. For a long time people called me "Loki" as a nick name. So when I heard about Loki's Planet, I thought the name was a funny coincidence.
Anyway, so they launched about a year ago, had some management issues and re-organized. Now they plan to relunch in two months. Loki's Planet is a sort of Facebook for gamers. It's a place to talk about games and keep in touch with all things related to games and gaming culture. They also want to bring back lan parties, which sounds like a lot of fun to me. They were really excited about everything they have planned coming up so I'm eager to see how things shape up.
Oh, also, though this doesn't really relate to us, there's good news for another Sacramento game company--KlickNation. They only make Facebook games, but EA Games has decided to join the FB Game mix by buying out KlickNation and renaming them after the BioWare brand that they also own. So now KlickNation is called BioWare Sacramento. Though I don't know them, I'm still pretty excited to see a company that, just 2 years ago, were just a couple guys posting on craigslist looking for programmers and now they're owned by one of the biggest game companies in the world. That's pretty awesome to see what a couple guys in my hometown can do. It fills me with optimism to follow in their footsteps.
Speaking of EA and BioWare, I got into beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's supposed to be the most expensive game ever made. Since it also uses the HeroEngine, of course I was interested in paying close attention to how they did terrain detail and other things. The dynamic shadow map generation is still pretty blocky, and the terrain billboards for flora that HE uses still sort of creeps me out. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you ever play SWTOR, point the camera straight down at grass or flowers, then rotate the camera. You'll see that the grass and flowers don't turn with the ground, but stay fixed fully facing the camera at all times. Rift and WoW both use static meshes for their flora instead of billboards, and thus escape this problem. Static mesh doesn't get as good performance this way so they can't use as much of it. I think the HE method of billboards is fine as long as everything you use is tall and skinny. I bet most people won't notice either way, so it might not be an issue.
Aside from the technical aspects of SWTOR terrain, I was really impressed with the use of music. There's one quest, Man With a Steel Voice, in particular where I noticed it. So there's an old, dying man whose entire life's work comes down to one moment. You can either help him and hurt others, or help the others, dashing the old man's one chance to complete his dream. If you chose not to help him, he tells you(all voice acted), how you've robbed him of everything he ever cared about. And the music that played was really, really sad. I've never had a game really appeal to me on an emotional level like that. I thought, "I don't want to play this game. It's too sad." Then I got to run around blowing up people and I was ok again.
But it made me realize I've got to really lay out all the zones, instances, and quests in Dawnshine as soon as I can to give the composers on the team the best chance at really reaching people. Audio is a huge part of games, and one that has to be taken seriously.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Recruiting
A couple months ago, I went to Pinnacle College to produce a local band. Pinnacle College is an audio school with a couple recording studios. I'd never heard of it, and I've been in pretty close to every recording studio in Sacramento at one time or another. But not one in a college. They offer audio degrees for recording music and for foley work for films. Their main campus in LA also does audio design for games, though I imagine the Sacramento campus doesn't have enough demand for it. Still, while I was there, I talked to their career counselor about hiring out some of their students for voice over work on a complete different game project I'm working for. Since I have no say or even heads up on that project, trying to coordinate things turned out to be difficult, so I gave up (no one's fault either way).
A few weeks ago, when I decided to create Stigma Games, I contacted her again with the news and told her exactly the talent I needed for our project. She was quite excited and put me in contact with some of her graduates a few hours later. I either met or talked to at length on the phone with all of them. Very cool people. And at this point, I consider the Audio team on the project to be filled out. I know like a billion musicians in this town, so yeah, that wasn't really going to be hard for me. But still, finding people that are driven to do sound and music for games is cool.
I'm still working on the Business development team, but I have some promising leads there. Luckily, it's not a priority right now. I'd like to recruit a project manager / scrum master. Though I don't want to use a pure scrum development model. Scrum is really, really annoying for game development for the creative types. I'll make another post to rant about that another time.
A couple days ago, I got in contact with the career councilors at the Art Institute in Sacramento. They invited me to come to their job fair today. It was pretty low key. They set me up with a booth for Stigma Game. Maybe 20 students came by, but it was still cool to talk about games and game development. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the staff at the school was really welcoming. In terms of the type of 3D games a lot of us have spent the last ten years playing, Sacramento is a game development dead zone. So the idea of setting up shop here in the city I grew up in, seems to be working out. Oh, and we also talked about setting up an internship so that AI students would be able to get college credits for interning at Stigma Games. Interesting.
One of the career counselors asked me to come to their portfolio expo show a month from now and be one of the speakers. I'm pretty comfortable speaking in front of a crowd--one of the weird things about me, I guess. I remember in one of my Anthropology classes, I did a presentation on Mayan uses of blood in rituals, and I was actually getting laughs. Hell, I killed with that material. I didn't call it my presentation. I called it my set. Anyway, I'm not really sure what to talk about. I like preparing speeches, but it's such a wide topic. I have a feeling students are going to want to know about breaking into the industry. I feel like I'm still trying to do the same. I still do a lot of projects here and there on the side. Though with Stigma Games coming together, I'm clearing my plate.
Speaking of other projects, one of them recently got sponsored by Dell Computers and Alienware and I might be getting a free Alienware computer out of the deal. I've always wanted one.
Recruiting programmers... in some ways this will be easier because there's not as many specialized roles. If someone knows how to set up class objects and data structures, they can pretty much apply that to anything. However, programmers on the team will need to learn a completely new language with a steep learning curve. The problem with the HeroEngine that I'm having as a programmer is the interface. Case in point, every website I've ever built, whether it was a simple html page or if it had php query calls to a MySQL database, I built in Notepad. Raw code. When I write programs in C++, it's all raw code. I like it that way. In HeroEngine, the different types of objects all have different interfaces where they need to go in. And none of it is intuitive. Still, this is a brick wall all the programmers are going to hit, and if I don't have it down, I'm going to have a hard time getting the rest of the programming team through it.
Still, I think I'm making progress on recruiting programmers. The main game programmer instructor at Sac State told me he was going to let his class know about Stigma Games and our project. I'm going to need to talk to an actual counselor there though.
This reminds me of something a friend of mine told me. So I was at E3 talking to my friend Brandii. She's the LA chapter lead for the International Game Development Association. She was telling me about how game companies locate to cities based on the talent quality of college graduates. So this is normal for companies to work directly with colleges to both develop the type of graduates they want and to base the products they release around what the talent in the area is good at. This is probably why games with 2d engines come out of the bay area, LA puts out graphically intense games, and Austin produces mechanics heavy games. In fact, since the programming colleges are better in Austin, game companies will often relocate there if they're struggling to find programmers or to LA if they need artists more.
What does that mean for me? It means if I choose to stay in Sacramento for the next decade or more, I might have a hand in shaping the game development curriculum in the local colleges. After all, my dad runs an architectural company and he's changed the design curriculum because of his input. All of this sounds like complete insanity to me right now. I'm just some guy that wants to make a game.
A few weeks ago, when I decided to create Stigma Games, I contacted her again with the news and told her exactly the talent I needed for our project. She was quite excited and put me in contact with some of her graduates a few hours later. I either met or talked to at length on the phone with all of them. Very cool people. And at this point, I consider the Audio team on the project to be filled out. I know like a billion musicians in this town, so yeah, that wasn't really going to be hard for me. But still, finding people that are driven to do sound and music for games is cool.
I'm still working on the Business development team, but I have some promising leads there. Luckily, it's not a priority right now. I'd like to recruit a project manager / scrum master. Though I don't want to use a pure scrum development model. Scrum is really, really annoying for game development for the creative types. I'll make another post to rant about that another time.
A couple days ago, I got in contact with the career councilors at the Art Institute in Sacramento. They invited me to come to their job fair today. It was pretty low key. They set me up with a booth for Stigma Game. Maybe 20 students came by, but it was still cool to talk about games and game development. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the staff at the school was really welcoming. In terms of the type of 3D games a lot of us have spent the last ten years playing, Sacramento is a game development dead zone. So the idea of setting up shop here in the city I grew up in, seems to be working out. Oh, and we also talked about setting up an internship so that AI students would be able to get college credits for interning at Stigma Games. Interesting.
One of the career counselors asked me to come to their portfolio expo show a month from now and be one of the speakers. I'm pretty comfortable speaking in front of a crowd--one of the weird things about me, I guess. I remember in one of my Anthropology classes, I did a presentation on Mayan uses of blood in rituals, and I was actually getting laughs. Hell, I killed with that material. I didn't call it my presentation. I called it my set. Anyway, I'm not really sure what to talk about. I like preparing speeches, but it's such a wide topic. I have a feeling students are going to want to know about breaking into the industry. I feel like I'm still trying to do the same. I still do a lot of projects here and there on the side. Though with Stigma Games coming together, I'm clearing my plate.
Speaking of other projects, one of them recently got sponsored by Dell Computers and Alienware and I might be getting a free Alienware computer out of the deal. I've always wanted one.
Recruiting programmers... in some ways this will be easier because there's not as many specialized roles. If someone knows how to set up class objects and data structures, they can pretty much apply that to anything. However, programmers on the team will need to learn a completely new language with a steep learning curve. The problem with the HeroEngine that I'm having as a programmer is the interface. Case in point, every website I've ever built, whether it was a simple html page or if it had php query calls to a MySQL database, I built in Notepad. Raw code. When I write programs in C++, it's all raw code. I like it that way. In HeroEngine, the different types of objects all have different interfaces where they need to go in. And none of it is intuitive. Still, this is a brick wall all the programmers are going to hit, and if I don't have it down, I'm going to have a hard time getting the rest of the programming team through it.
Still, I think I'm making progress on recruiting programmers. The main game programmer instructor at Sac State told me he was going to let his class know about Stigma Games and our project. I'm going to need to talk to an actual counselor there though.
This reminds me of something a friend of mine told me. So I was at E3 talking to my friend Brandii. She's the LA chapter lead for the International Game Development Association. She was telling me about how game companies locate to cities based on the talent quality of college graduates. So this is normal for companies to work directly with colleges to both develop the type of graduates they want and to base the products they release around what the talent in the area is good at. This is probably why games with 2d engines come out of the bay area, LA puts out graphically intense games, and Austin produces mechanics heavy games. In fact, since the programming colleges are better in Austin, game companies will often relocate there if they're struggling to find programmers or to LA if they need artists more.
What does that mean for me? It means if I choose to stay in Sacramento for the next decade or more, I might have a hand in shaping the game development curriculum in the local colleges. After all, my dad runs an architectural company and he's changed the design curriculum because of his input. All of this sounds like complete insanity to me right now. I'm just some guy that wants to make a game.
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