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Exceptional Journals (in no order): [Eliwood] [Steve Healy] [Ravuya] [Mark the Artist] [Scet] [Ysaneya] [Mayan Obsidian]
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| Wednesday, April 29, 2009 |
  Pictures tell stories. | 
Posted - 4/29/2009 10:14:42 AM | After a nice visit back home, I'm back in Waterloo and getting ready to start my next co-op work term this Monday. I'll be returning to Sony Creative Software, a smallish subsidiary of Sony that focuses on multimedia related apps. Heard of Media Go? [Probably not, but] That's what I'll be working on once again this term, striving to boost the overall awesomeness up another few notches. 
As for my own projects, my efforts have been focused on more adventures in 3D modeling. More specifically, trying to create a decent handgun for Cyberspawn so that I have some material with which to test items, inventory, and of course weapons fire.
   
For the curious, the hand was most certainly the harder of the two models. In particular, trying to rig up the bones and wrap the fingers around the gun model in a way that looked good was especially challenging. I'm not 100% satisfied yet, and I will almost certainly redo the hand and its grip on the gun, but it's a passing grade for the time being.
Until next time, devout readers.
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| Further isometric pursuits. | |
Posted - 4/18/2009 12:19:24 AM | Between studying for final exams and other diversions (such as the lovely weather), I was in the right mood to sit down tonight and produce a few more pieces of art for my little isometric game project. A couple of new walls (with and without a light), and a grainy wooden floor.
I'm still generating the wall/floor images using Blender, and then using KolourPaint to chop that final image up nicely and do any final touch-ups. The overall process for creating a new tile still feels long and tedious, so I'm becoming very keen on writing some scripts to automate some aspects.
All of the game content works through a definitions system, which simply reads a text file containing text like the following:
[TileDef]
name=Brown Wall Lit
type=Wall
image=wall_brown_lit
base-x=29 # x/y location in image of where the base of the tile is
base-y=86
offset-x=16 # x/y/z offset in world coordinates of the tile
offset-y=0
offset-z=4
flip=true
index=4
Most of it is probably self-explanatory, but the jist is that the game will read in these tile definitions from the file and create an internal representation. The base x/y specifies where in image coordinates the centre of the 3D object's base is. This is used to ensure that the image is drawn in the proper place. The offset x/y/z are in world coordinates and specify an offset for the tile or object. For example, an object like a mounted picture frame might want to be offset upwards in order to appear to be hanging on a wall. The other item of interest, 'flip', denotes whether the game should generate a second entry at load-time containing info for a flipped copy of this tile. Since walls can be aligned in one of two ways (look at the screenshot carefully..), this prevents me from making flipped copies of every wall by hand. I'm not totally satisfied with my solution to the flipping problem, but it works for now.
As I've been creating tiles, I'm getting a better and better feel for where I want the art direction to go. Heavy influenced by the Crusader games and System Shock, I'm interested in taking a mix of industrial, mechanical, and office-like decor. Perhaps the game will take place in some sort of large mysterious complex.
Finally, for anyone curious, the last screenshot I took of my workspace for the project looks something like this:
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| author++ | |
Posted - 4/5/2009 8:50:19 PM | Thanks, GD.NET
Just the other day I received my copy of "Advanced Game Programming: A GameDev.Net Collection" from the publishers. Several months ago John Hattan approached me with interest in adopting my metaballs article into their book. Naturally I was quite thrilled just to be able to see my name in print, but they ended up also offering a small but generous work-for-hire payment as well. Thanks guys for making me a part of this!
A Very Isometric Journey
My initial burst of interest in Cyberspawn has once again dwindled since I finished implementing lightmaps. My main quip was that making content that looked good in-game was very difficult, since creating a in-game model is a matter of modelling the object, creating a texture/mesh for it, applying it properly onto the object, and then trying to get it to look as nice as it did in the editor in the game engine. Given my inexperience in artistic endeavors in general, it just felt too far beyond my abilities.
However, I was still really keen to expand my artistic horizons. I had been using Blender all this time, and I've been getting pretty comfortable with it. Remembering all of those wonderful games like Diablo, Fallout, or the Crusader series, I considered the (hopefully) simpler task of producing pre-rendered isometric art for a 2D game instead. So far, so good; I have the basics of the art and the engine started.
The floor and wall didn't take too long to make. The hardest part by far was getting the camera set up at a consistent and correct isometric angle, generating the renders in a size consistent with world scale, and then adding final touches to the final renders to make them interlock with eachother in an aesthetically-pleasing manner. I really like the way it turned out, and am confident that I can maintain an art style of this level for the rest of the needed content.
More about this new (again!?) project and its direction soon. Maybe I can take a page or two from O-san's delicious isometric work.
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"Good night, Monster Land."
"Good night, brave warrior."
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