Have you ever met someone that's had bad luck with people? They tell you about how many times they've been burned and how they keep working with crazy people that are unreliable or drama queens. You get to know the person a little longer and become friends and you start to realize that all the people they don't like are actually good, decent people and it's your new friend that's the crazy one? I've been in that situation a quite a few times.
I've always been drawn to unstable, unique, and interesting people. I was friends with a woman for about a year who suffered from Schizophrenia, and although she was stable 95% of the time, she'd tell me stories of what life was like before the meds--stories of hallucinations of monsters coming to life and trying to kill her and her running through public streets screaming for help from them. I've been friends with quite a few crazy people, now that I think about it. I'm fascinated by alternative interpretations of reality. Such associations with people I've had generally ends pretty badly. Now, here I am complaining about all the crazy, unreliable people I've met and how I've been burned. Uh oh. *looks around*
That's my segue into saying that Loki's Planet and myself have parted ways. I have a lot to say about that, but it's probably best if I don't.
I've certainly worked on quite a few large projects run by poor and incompetent leaders in the past. It makes me question my own leadership style. Is there someone on our team thinking, "Man, Brian's an idiot. It's stupid that we're doing things this way"? No one on the team challenges anything I say. That really makes me nervous. I thrive on negative criticism.
I've admitted before that I'm not doing a very good job leading the programming team. But I've been wondering if the issue is more that I haven't been doing a good job recruiting programmers. I keep recruiting programmers that don't really want to be game programmers, but rather are just looking for something to put on their resume and get by doing the least amount of work for us that they can. I need to start weeding those people out. I've found, it's always better to have a small, dedicated team than a large unmotivated one. Unmotivated people sap the morale from motivated people. So even with an unfunded project like ours, recruiting "hanger on-ers" can do damage. I'm learning this stuff as I go along.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Week 23
So much to talk about. So our programming team has all but collapsed. We have one strong programmer on the team, a few that show up to the meetings every now and then but don't do much, and the occasional person that really, really wants to join the team, finds out it's actual work, and quits. I think I'm going to start going to colleges and talking to deans / career counselors to recruit people. With all the people that want to get experience in the game industry, recruiting shouldn't be this hard.
On the art side of things, we're doing really well. We have about 20 artists, some of which have experience working at AAA game studios, which is always nice. Only about half the team tends to make the meetings on a regular basis though, but Jared and Micaela are doing a good job keeping everything organized behind the scenes with the people that can't always make the meetings. So I'm pretty happy with the direction things are going in. I'm also really happy with with the look of the Neg Wath in terms of clothing, weapons, and hair styles as well as their building styles. We're close to uploading some of it.
Now, I'd said since the beginning that funding would be a long shot. I'm going to officially change that to "likely." I'm not going to get into too much details as to that publicly here, just to say that E3 had some unexpected surprises. In case anyone wonders why I have people sign NDAs before they can join the team--this is why. We're not going to be talking about it until it happens or it could spoil things. It's also likely it completely falls apart on its own. The skeptic in me is leaning towards the latter, but hopefully I'm wrong about it. I'll celebrate when the check clears. Until then we're just going to keep focusing on making a great game in our free time.
I've been pushing the team to send me their time sheets for the work they complete. I've had some interest from other studios about having work out sourced to us, so it might be very likely I can at least get the team some money doing work outside the Dawnshine project. This is tricky, because not everyone would be working on the out sourced project, so it will be a little weird when some people are getting paid and some aren't. The team doesn't seem to stress out about stuff like that, though I do.
Aside from all that, let's talk about E3 for a bit. So plans got changed. I was lining up interviews with game companies so I could cover their games in articles I would then write about, but Loki's Planet wanted me to interview game developers on their separate list on camera at our booth, so I had to stop booking interviews on my own. We set up an interview location at our booth with lights and a video camera. All that work and it only got used once, and not by me. That was a little disappointing since I could have lined up more off camera interviews had I known I'd have more time. I call this "Loki Planning." To be fair, Loki is the God of Chaos, so I've gotten pretty used to plans radically changing with them.
I did get to interview quite a few people there and I'll be writing articles on that soon. Right now, I'm stalling because next on my list is an article about a kids game that I'm not the least bit interested in talking about. But not everything I'm going to cover as a game journalist is something I find interesting. It goes with the territory.
Some of the stand outs: I got to ask the lead designer of Ninja Theory and Lead Producer of Capcom some questions about the new DmC coming out. Myself and the other journalists sat down in a press room to have it unveiled to us. It's a pretty cool looking game. I like the idea that you don't have to spasticly spam attack buttons to kill stuff. It's a rhythm game. You can relax and time your button pushes evenly and generate more stylistic attacks that way. I'll be finishing a full article on it for Loki's Planet in a little bit.
But before that, I need to get back to writing that kiddie game article.
On the art side of things, we're doing really well. We have about 20 artists, some of which have experience working at AAA game studios, which is always nice. Only about half the team tends to make the meetings on a regular basis though, but Jared and Micaela are doing a good job keeping everything organized behind the scenes with the people that can't always make the meetings. So I'm pretty happy with the direction things are going in. I'm also really happy with with the look of the Neg Wath in terms of clothing, weapons, and hair styles as well as their building styles. We're close to uploading some of it.
Now, I'd said since the beginning that funding would be a long shot. I'm going to officially change that to "likely." I'm not going to get into too much details as to that publicly here, just to say that E3 had some unexpected surprises. In case anyone wonders why I have people sign NDAs before they can join the team--this is why. We're not going to be talking about it until it happens or it could spoil things. It's also likely it completely falls apart on its own. The skeptic in me is leaning towards the latter, but hopefully I'm wrong about it. I'll celebrate when the check clears. Until then we're just going to keep focusing on making a great game in our free time.
I've been pushing the team to send me their time sheets for the work they complete. I've had some interest from other studios about having work out sourced to us, so it might be very likely I can at least get the team some money doing work outside the Dawnshine project. This is tricky, because not everyone would be working on the out sourced project, so it will be a little weird when some people are getting paid and some aren't. The team doesn't seem to stress out about stuff like that, though I do.
Aside from all that, let's talk about E3 for a bit. So plans got changed. I was lining up interviews with game companies so I could cover their games in articles I would then write about, but Loki's Planet wanted me to interview game developers on their separate list on camera at our booth, so I had to stop booking interviews on my own. We set up an interview location at our booth with lights and a video camera. All that work and it only got used once, and not by me. That was a little disappointing since I could have lined up more off camera interviews had I known I'd have more time. I call this "Loki Planning." To be fair, Loki is the God of Chaos, so I've gotten pretty used to plans radically changing with them.
I did get to interview quite a few people there and I'll be writing articles on that soon. Right now, I'm stalling because next on my list is an article about a kids game that I'm not the least bit interested in talking about. But not everything I'm going to cover as a game journalist is something I find interesting. It goes with the territory.
Some of the stand outs: I got to ask the lead designer of Ninja Theory and Lead Producer of Capcom some questions about the new DmC coming out. Myself and the other journalists sat down in a press room to have it unveiled to us. It's a pretty cool looking game. I like the idea that you don't have to spasticly spam attack buttons to kill stuff. It's a rhythm game. You can relax and time your button pushes evenly and generate more stylistic attacks that way. I'll be finishing a full article on it for Loki's Planet in a little bit.
But before that, I need to get back to writing that kiddie game article.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
End of Week 21
I've had a really busy week so far. Next week is going to be even more hectic. First, let's talk about the project. So I've added a few more artists to the team this week and one more programmer. First time this has ever happened, but I met with a guy that decided not to sign our NDA. He wanted me to give him access to all our game design information before he would decide to join the project or not. Obviously, I'm not going to do that. Maybe he's just one of those people that's spooked about signing things. I've signed quite a few NDAs, so it doesn't phase me. But maybe it's for the best.
So I'm going to start bringing in printed out design document stuff in to the programmer meetings so we can all look at things and discuss them. I've laid out the numbers and formulas on how our strange combat system will work. It's going to need a lot of testing and rebalancing. I think our combat system is going to really throw people off at first. We give people far more freedom than any fighting game has ever given a player, but I know players are going to die a lot until they get used to it. It's not arcade skill based. It's more fast paced strategy based. So more thinking and less button twitching. You will not be able to casually hit buttons while watching tv like you can in every other MMO on the planet. There's not a name for Dawnshine combat, because it doesn't exist yet, so it's hard to describe without laying it all out. But maybe we can start doing that a year from now when we might have game play footage to go with it.
I completely redesigned one of the classes: the Neg Wath Necromancers. They do summon zombies, but they're not exactly a pet class. They're closer to Elemental Shamans from WoW, only with death magic instead of natural. They have a lot more interactions with their zombies than WoW shamans have with their totems, but it's otherwise the closest in similarities.
We might be close to having the combat system working in the engine, which would mean we'd be able to start alpha testing soon. We'll fix the most obvious things first, then start letting our friends test. We have a huge number of people wanting to test, so that will come in helpful.
Aside from that, I'm going to be at E3 all next week with Loki's Planet. I've got some pretty big interviews booked. I'll admit, I'm not very familiar with console games, so I'll be interviewing developers that make games I've never played. That has me a little nervous. When I'm not doing that, I'll be hanging out at our booth interviewing people on camera. I've interviewed bands before, but not on camera. So this will be the first time I've ever interviewed game developers.
So I'm going to start bringing in printed out design document stuff in to the programmer meetings so we can all look at things and discuss them. I've laid out the numbers and formulas on how our strange combat system will work. It's going to need a lot of testing and rebalancing. I think our combat system is going to really throw people off at first. We give people far more freedom than any fighting game has ever given a player, but I know players are going to die a lot until they get used to it. It's not arcade skill based. It's more fast paced strategy based. So more thinking and less button twitching. You will not be able to casually hit buttons while watching tv like you can in every other MMO on the planet. There's not a name for Dawnshine combat, because it doesn't exist yet, so it's hard to describe without laying it all out. But maybe we can start doing that a year from now when we might have game play footage to go with it.
I completely redesigned one of the classes: the Neg Wath Necromancers. They do summon zombies, but they're not exactly a pet class. They're closer to Elemental Shamans from WoW, only with death magic instead of natural. They have a lot more interactions with their zombies than WoW shamans have with their totems, but it's otherwise the closest in similarities.
We might be close to having the combat system working in the engine, which would mean we'd be able to start alpha testing soon. We'll fix the most obvious things first, then start letting our friends test. We have a huge number of people wanting to test, so that will come in helpful.
Aside from that, I'm going to be at E3 all next week with Loki's Planet. I've got some pretty big interviews booked. I'll admit, I'm not very familiar with console games, so I'll be interviewing developers that make games I've never played. That has me a little nervous. When I'm not doing that, I'll be hanging out at our booth interviewing people on camera. I've interviewed bands before, but not on camera. So this will be the first time I've ever interviewed game developers.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Middle of Week 20
So I cancelled my SWTOR account about a month or two ago. There was so much I liked and didn't like about that game. For one, I'm a completionist. So I might be doing a story quest chain, but by the time I did the next quest in the chain after doing all the other side quests along the way, it could be two-three hours later. I think BioWare did a great job on the story lines, but the game play is so tedious, boring, and long, that by the time I got to the next quest, I didn't even remember what was going on.
I'm very happy for Blizzard that they found in WoW, a successful game play model. But if I wanted to play a game that had the same combat as WoW, I'd play WoW. I really do enjoy the story lines in SWTOR, and I normally just skip that in MMOs. I actually want to play just to find out if my low level Smuggler character ever gets her ship back, if my Trooper meets up with the former Havok Squad, if my Bounty Hunter finally wins the Great Hunt, and if my Agent... does whatever thing she was doing. I don't know. I got the Darth title on my Inquisitor, and found that quest line pretty enjoyable.
Oh, and I got Diablo III, played it for about 4 hours and pretty much had my fill. Pretty much every game I joined ended up being me running around killing everything while the one other person stayed AFK in town. In Beta, everyone was teaming up and knocking stuff out. Once the game launched, it was like all the good players got replaced by semi conscious people wandering around aimlessly. And for some reason, if you left that game to try and join another, it would keep putting you back with the same losers. There's something seriously wrong with that.
So, I played the Secret World beta this weekend. I can't say I found it all that fun. It's certainly a very, very cool game with an original "X-Files" theme that I really enjoyed. Funcom is a European game company. And I know many Europeans seem to think poorly of us Americans. So I was a little disappointed when the first quest area in the game was Kingsmouth, an American town where all the voice actors talk like over the top rejects from Deliverance. Maybe I'm taking that too seriously though. It's only a tiny part of the game so far.
The quests were either way too easy if other people were doing them too in the same area, or too hard, like when about a billion zombies jump out of the police car and kill that dog you're escorting and you're the only one around. Combat is the same boring WoW model. The animations aren't very good and you only start off with two attacks. There are no levels in the game, which I didn't like. I didn't know if I was supposed to be in one area or another, if the monsters were too tough or not, or if I missed something. I think the story line was probably good, but I didn't really understand what it was. I was sent there for some forgettable reason that made no sense, then told once I got there that fog came and turned the town into zombies... ok... alright... and then I had to escort a dog around without being told why. After getting killed twice trying to escort a dog with the only instructions being "follow Tango," I just gave up.
Aside from that, I'm not counting this game out. The graphics were a little inconsistent, but in many areas in the game, they were so good, I was stunned. Kingsmouth looks fantastic in most areas. It's very possible with some polish, the Secret World could end up being a great game.
I've been pretty busy on Dawnshine. We're recruited about five or six new modelers. I started this thing that I'll do each week where I write descriptions about unique characters and locations in the game to pass off to the concept team to run with. Something else I decided to do--not rely on characters from my novels. I think their stories might be interesting and complicated, but they don't lend themselves well to quest givers, villains, allies, or general NPCs. They have their own stories. Many might make brief cameos or be referenced, but otherwise, they won't be central characters in the game.
One of the mistakes that I think Lord of the Rings Online made is that they wrapped the game too much around the main characters from the novels. I really didn't care to escort Strider around or to learn about where they were taking the Hobbits. I cared about *my* character. What was my character doing? What was my character's story? So I'm going to be creating a brand new, and incredibly numerous, cast of characters that will revolve around what the players are doing. The whole point of an MMO is the story revolves around the player.
What else? I'm going to be heading to E3 in a week or two with Loki's Planet. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing. Last year, I just kind of wandered around aimlessly. This year, I'm press, so I'll be trying to get into press events and to cover as much stuff and meet as many people as I possibly can.
I'm very happy for Blizzard that they found in WoW, a successful game play model. But if I wanted to play a game that had the same combat as WoW, I'd play WoW. I really do enjoy the story lines in SWTOR, and I normally just skip that in MMOs. I actually want to play just to find out if my low level Smuggler character ever gets her ship back, if my Trooper meets up with the former Havok Squad, if my Bounty Hunter finally wins the Great Hunt, and if my Agent... does whatever thing she was doing. I don't know. I got the Darth title on my Inquisitor, and found that quest line pretty enjoyable.
Oh, and I got Diablo III, played it for about 4 hours and pretty much had my fill. Pretty much every game I joined ended up being me running around killing everything while the one other person stayed AFK in town. In Beta, everyone was teaming up and knocking stuff out. Once the game launched, it was like all the good players got replaced by semi conscious people wandering around aimlessly. And for some reason, if you left that game to try and join another, it would keep putting you back with the same losers. There's something seriously wrong with that.
So, I played the Secret World beta this weekend. I can't say I found it all that fun. It's certainly a very, very cool game with an original "X-Files" theme that I really enjoyed. Funcom is a European game company. And I know many Europeans seem to think poorly of us Americans. So I was a little disappointed when the first quest area in the game was Kingsmouth, an American town where all the voice actors talk like over the top rejects from Deliverance. Maybe I'm taking that too seriously though. It's only a tiny part of the game so far.
The quests were either way too easy if other people were doing them too in the same area, or too hard, like when about a billion zombies jump out of the police car and kill that dog you're escorting and you're the only one around. Combat is the same boring WoW model. The animations aren't very good and you only start off with two attacks. There are no levels in the game, which I didn't like. I didn't know if I was supposed to be in one area or another, if the monsters were too tough or not, or if I missed something. I think the story line was probably good, but I didn't really understand what it was. I was sent there for some forgettable reason that made no sense, then told once I got there that fog came and turned the town into zombies... ok... alright... and then I had to escort a dog around without being told why. After getting killed twice trying to escort a dog with the only instructions being "follow Tango," I just gave up.
Aside from that, I'm not counting this game out. The graphics were a little inconsistent, but in many areas in the game, they were so good, I was stunned. Kingsmouth looks fantastic in most areas. It's very possible with some polish, the Secret World could end up being a great game.
I've been pretty busy on Dawnshine. We're recruited about five or six new modelers. I started this thing that I'll do each week where I write descriptions about unique characters and locations in the game to pass off to the concept team to run with. Something else I decided to do--not rely on characters from my novels. I think their stories might be interesting and complicated, but they don't lend themselves well to quest givers, villains, allies, or general NPCs. They have their own stories. Many might make brief cameos or be referenced, but otherwise, they won't be central characters in the game.
One of the mistakes that I think Lord of the Rings Online made is that they wrapped the game too much around the main characters from the novels. I really didn't care to escort Strider around or to learn about where they were taking the Hobbits. I cared about *my* character. What was my character doing? What was my character's story? So I'm going to be creating a brand new, and incredibly numerous, cast of characters that will revolve around what the players are doing. The whole point of an MMO is the story revolves around the player.
What else? I'm going to be heading to E3 in a week or two with Loki's Planet. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing. Last year, I just kind of wandered around aimlessly. This year, I'm press, so I'll be trying to get into press events and to cover as much stuff and meet as many people as I possibly can.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Middle of Week 18
You know those Facebook reminders when your friend has a birthday? I must be getting old. One of my friends wished me a happy birthday and I thought, "Huh, I'm pretty sure my birthday is next week," but he was right. That's the first time I forgot my own birthday. Anyway...
So now that we have some concepts ready to model, I'm finding it more and more difficult to communicate with each person on the team to make sure they're where they need to be. We have 20 people on the team, and we're about to massively increase that as we add a 3D team: modelers, texture artists, and animators. Imagine if the team doubled in size. Trying to make sure 40 people have what they need, have clear tasks catered to their strengths, and are collaborating to make a cohesive effort rather than a jumbled mess--it's a lot harder than you would think. It's not like I had an idea for a game and got together a bunch of people and said, "Behold the plan I have constructed! Now carry forth!" and it just comes together. Yeah, not even close. And really, I wouldn't want it to work that way anyways. I like that everyone adds their little twist and that we work as a team. Still, having all decisions run through me is going to slow the project down a lot.
There's one programmer on the team that long passed me up in learning the engine code wise. I'm always asking him which tasks I think who can handle, how long things should take, his advice on how we should tackle certain systems. It just made more sense for him to coordinate all that and keep me in the loop.
Our two technical artists have been doing really well. One of them is more focused on environments and the other on characters, so I split them up and made them in charge of ensuring a smooth pipeline for their area. Technical artists are a good fit for this since they understand a little bit of every part of the pipeline.
I think this will work out well. I know one of our technical artists wants to open up his own animation studio, so this is a good opportunity for him to organize an art team.
So now that we have some concepts ready to model, I'm finding it more and more difficult to communicate with each person on the team to make sure they're where they need to be. We have 20 people on the team, and we're about to massively increase that as we add a 3D team: modelers, texture artists, and animators. Imagine if the team doubled in size. Trying to make sure 40 people have what they need, have clear tasks catered to their strengths, and are collaborating to make a cohesive effort rather than a jumbled mess--it's a lot harder than you would think. It's not like I had an idea for a game and got together a bunch of people and said, "Behold the plan I have constructed! Now carry forth!" and it just comes together. Yeah, not even close. And really, I wouldn't want it to work that way anyways. I like that everyone adds their little twist and that we work as a team. Still, having all decisions run through me is going to slow the project down a lot.
There's one programmer on the team that long passed me up in learning the engine code wise. I'm always asking him which tasks I think who can handle, how long things should take, his advice on how we should tackle certain systems. It just made more sense for him to coordinate all that and keep me in the loop.
Our two technical artists have been doing really well. One of them is more focused on environments and the other on characters, so I split them up and made them in charge of ensuring a smooth pipeline for their area. Technical artists are a good fit for this since they understand a little bit of every part of the pipeline.
I think this will work out well. I know one of our technical artists wants to open up his own animation studio, so this is a good opportunity for him to organize an art team.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Middle of Week 15
There's not a lot of news this week. Basically, we're a little further than last week and close to recruiting 3D Modelers now that we just about have concepts for them. We should have the male and female character model done and rigged soon, which means recruiting animators next.
There's a few other things I've been wanting to talk about. One, the Valve Employee handbook has been circulating around a bit on the internet. Valve is probably best known for Steam (a game portal), Team Fortress 1 and 2, and the Half Life series. What's interesting about the handbook for new employees is that it makes clear that there are no managers, no bosses, and no leadership in the company. Everyone is equal. They started as a small company and now employ hundreds, but they still let their employees do whatever they want. It makes a point about how each desk has wheels on it, so employees can pick where to move their desk to based on where they should be to do the most good, what needs to be done, and who they need to work with to accomplish it.
This is a bizarre way to run a traditional company. Most people hate their jobs and do the least amount of work they can unless they want a promotion. Most people have no idea how to do the job they're hired for and have to be trained and molded. Employers often complain about the enormous cost and loss of production it takes to train people and how they need that employee to make that money back for the company within a certain time frame.
But the game industry is different. It's an extremely competitive industry where finding very experienced and skilled people are much easier. And despite the fact that people in the game industry often earn less money for comparable work, game developers are often self motivated and driven to make the best product they possibly can. Because of these unusual characteristics, a game company need not operate the way others do. Though as a side note, breaking into the incredibly competitive game industry against people far more experienced and skilled, is a scary thought. How do you get experience if no one will hire you? You do exactly what we're doing.
Of course, I can't really develop Stigma Games into the next Valve right now. We don't have any funding, nor do we have a physical studio yet. So people stress out about their day jobs, paying off student loans, and all that. But we are getting close to that idea.
What else? This isn't really Stigma Games related, but I'm finishing up the game lore for another game studio--one that's actually paying me. And I'm going to pitch a game idea to Loki's Planet that I think will bring in a lot of traffic. I have no idea if Loki's Planet will pay me for developing it for the site. But again, I'm one of those self motivated people that just wants to make games so that's not as important to me.
There's a few other things I've been wanting to talk about. One, the Valve Employee handbook has been circulating around a bit on the internet. Valve is probably best known for Steam (a game portal), Team Fortress 1 and 2, and the Half Life series. What's interesting about the handbook for new employees is that it makes clear that there are no managers, no bosses, and no leadership in the company. Everyone is equal. They started as a small company and now employ hundreds, but they still let their employees do whatever they want. It makes a point about how each desk has wheels on it, so employees can pick where to move their desk to based on where they should be to do the most good, what needs to be done, and who they need to work with to accomplish it.
This is a bizarre way to run a traditional company. Most people hate their jobs and do the least amount of work they can unless they want a promotion. Most people have no idea how to do the job they're hired for and have to be trained and molded. Employers often complain about the enormous cost and loss of production it takes to train people and how they need that employee to make that money back for the company within a certain time frame.
But the game industry is different. It's an extremely competitive industry where finding very experienced and skilled people are much easier. And despite the fact that people in the game industry often earn less money for comparable work, game developers are often self motivated and driven to make the best product they possibly can. Because of these unusual characteristics, a game company need not operate the way others do. Though as a side note, breaking into the incredibly competitive game industry against people far more experienced and skilled, is a scary thought. How do you get experience if no one will hire you? You do exactly what we're doing.
Of course, I can't really develop Stigma Games into the next Valve right now. We don't have any funding, nor do we have a physical studio yet. So people stress out about their day jobs, paying off student loans, and all that. But we are getting close to that idea.
What else? This isn't really Stigma Games related, but I'm finishing up the game lore for another game studio--one that's actually paying me. And I'm going to pitch a game idea to Loki's Planet that I think will bring in a lot of traffic. I have no idea if Loki's Planet will pay me for developing it for the site. But again, I'm one of those self motivated people that just wants to make games so that's not as important to me.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Middle of Week 14
I tend to write these posts when I get some spare time. That seems to be happening less and less these days. Things are going to get worse. Cutting into sleep, kind of worse soon. But busy is always better than not busy.
The art team has been doing much better. I know we've spent three months on concepts, but it's really important we get this down so tight that players will instantly be able to recognize a Neg Wath building from a Sherite one. I want that sense of dread when a Kaynish player is exploring the forest and they round a corner, and see a Neg Wath building close by and know they might be in trouble.
The character concept artists still have a lot of clothing styles to design, but I think it makes more sense for them to move around faction wise. They work on pretty much what ever they want. What I like about that is they're able to build contrast. After all, it's hard to establish what something is without establishing what it isn't.
As for character models, we're still working that out. Our options are to take a low poly model, map it, smooth it into a high poly mesh and use that to get a normal map for the low poly, game friendly version, or start with a high poly model and retopologize it down to low poly. In either case, I'm hoping to get done with that in a month. I'd like to be able to start recruiting animators and replace the default characters the HeroEngine comes with.
Also in art news, I've been tinkering around a lot with the flora in the game. I went on a field trip a couple days ago to a nature reserve and took a lot of pictures of stones, sand, grasses, and flowers. Since a "green screen" wouldn't have made sense, I took a pink sheet of paper with me. For flowers and blades of grass, I'd put the sheet behind it, then take the picture. Once I got home, it was easy to go into Photoshop, select for the color pink and delete it. That's essentially how a green screen works. Now I have 2d pictures of plants cut out from a background. That makes it much easier to put in the engine to give a photo realistic look to the terrain. I'm still playing with compression types for .dds files and bump maps, but it's coming along.
Not much to report on the programming front. There's some things brewing on the business side of things, though it's hard to predict how it will all pan out. Lot's going on with Loki's Planet, but again, hard to see how that's all going to go.
I'm still looking to expand the writer team for Loki's Planet. I think it's a little frustrating. The game industry is incredibly difficult for writers to break into. I'm offering a way for writers to get some publishing credits and a journalism portfolio, plus have the opportunity to make contacts--what better way to get game companies to know who you are than to give them free publicity by reviewing their games--and it's still a struggle recruiting people. Game journalism is one of the best ways into the industry for writers.
Ah, speaking of writing, I got a little side job. No big deal. It's only about a day and a half of work, but it pays well. A new start up company is making an RPG in the Unity engine and they hired me to write the lore and back story for the world. Anthropologist / game writers are pretty rare. Most people don't care about writing lore that's the least bit realistic. So I was inspired by the fact here's a group of professional game developers with AAA titles under their belts that don't really know me, but wanted to hire me to write up a lore design document for their game to get the story off to a proper start. Is this part of a trend of game companies starting to care more about having stories that aren't stupid? I hope so.
I'm still uncomfortable with the "So, what do you charge?" question. The more you ask for, the better they think you are and more they want to hire you. I don't care about that though. I just like creating worlds. I'm happy to charge whatever the bare minimum I need to be able to scrape by as long as I can keep tinkering on game lore and story.
The art team has been doing much better. I know we've spent three months on concepts, but it's really important we get this down so tight that players will instantly be able to recognize a Neg Wath building from a Sherite one. I want that sense of dread when a Kaynish player is exploring the forest and they round a corner, and see a Neg Wath building close by and know they might be in trouble.
The character concept artists still have a lot of clothing styles to design, but I think it makes more sense for them to move around faction wise. They work on pretty much what ever they want. What I like about that is they're able to build contrast. After all, it's hard to establish what something is without establishing what it isn't.
As for character models, we're still working that out. Our options are to take a low poly model, map it, smooth it into a high poly mesh and use that to get a normal map for the low poly, game friendly version, or start with a high poly model and retopologize it down to low poly. In either case, I'm hoping to get done with that in a month. I'd like to be able to start recruiting animators and replace the default characters the HeroEngine comes with.
Also in art news, I've been tinkering around a lot with the flora in the game. I went on a field trip a couple days ago to a nature reserve and took a lot of pictures of stones, sand, grasses, and flowers. Since a "green screen" wouldn't have made sense, I took a pink sheet of paper with me. For flowers and blades of grass, I'd put the sheet behind it, then take the picture. Once I got home, it was easy to go into Photoshop, select for the color pink and delete it. That's essentially how a green screen works. Now I have 2d pictures of plants cut out from a background. That makes it much easier to put in the engine to give a photo realistic look to the terrain. I'm still playing with compression types for .dds files and bump maps, but it's coming along.
Not much to report on the programming front. There's some things brewing on the business side of things, though it's hard to predict how it will all pan out. Lot's going on with Loki's Planet, but again, hard to see how that's all going to go.
I'm still looking to expand the writer team for Loki's Planet. I think it's a little frustrating. The game industry is incredibly difficult for writers to break into. I'm offering a way for writers to get some publishing credits and a journalism portfolio, plus have the opportunity to make contacts--what better way to get game companies to know who you are than to give them free publicity by reviewing their games--and it's still a struggle recruiting people. Game journalism is one of the best ways into the industry for writers.
Ah, speaking of writing, I got a little side job. No big deal. It's only about a day and a half of work, but it pays well. A new start up company is making an RPG in the Unity engine and they hired me to write the lore and back story for the world. Anthropologist / game writers are pretty rare. Most people don't care about writing lore that's the least bit realistic. So I was inspired by the fact here's a group of professional game developers with AAA titles under their belts that don't really know me, but wanted to hire me to write up a lore design document for their game to get the story off to a proper start. Is this part of a trend of game companies starting to care more about having stories that aren't stupid? I hope so.
I'm still uncomfortable with the "So, what do you charge?" question. The more you ask for, the better they think you are and more they want to hire you. I don't care about that though. I just like creating worlds. I'm happy to charge whatever the bare minimum I need to be able to scrape by as long as I can keep tinkering on game lore and story.
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