more houses, new text game!

Alright right on time with a two week update! I finished a couple more houses with some very basic interiors and exteriors, but that can be spiced up with props and textures.

I have gotten to the point where I can do a model like these and map it within a day which is pretty cool. As for textures I will probably make or get an atlas at some point. For now a set of base models will do. A lot of neat things happening with that team so be sure to stay tuned to the AoA facebook page or forums for updates.

Next up I created a text based game with the help of a Udemy course. Their story did not have tons of endings, a shop, and four character paths though lol. Check it out at game jolt

A lot of the text parts were pretty easy once I got the format down. It was basically like filling in a text bubble. You had to check the space available and shorten things but each bubble could be connected in before anything was written. Knocked this out in about 4-5 days, but still probably some mistakes here and there. Let me know what you think if you got a few!

Anyways that is about it for this update, hope you all had a good thanksgiving and see you again in a couple weeks!

Work updates

These last couple weeks I have been working on quite a few things 3D model wise. I have gotten a lot faster and actually managed to get ahead of my work for the most part now. There are still a few items on the backlog, but I am going to wait on those and work on some programming courses in the meantime. What I want most of all is just to see more prototyping of the games I am working on. I know it can't be that hard because I have been learning how to code stuff and I can get at least some sort of playable game fairly quick... I think these teams focus too much on making really high quality work and just get nothing done because of it. Yeah quality is important, but getting something playable even if it fails or looks a bit rough around the edges will teach you a lot. If the base game is good support should be pretty easy to get. Anyways enough of my rambling and on to work screens! I took these in unity just as import tests... some other random buildings there too:

this is a old wood cabin model with some furniture. Worked with blender and Quixel to set it all up. Quixel workflow is actually pretty nice to let you know where everything is with color codes and also has a good library of textures to apply. Even has a normal map creator! I do not regret learning this program so far!

rocks, stumps, hospital sign. These will help fill out some scenes. They are in front of a church model that is still in progress.

some docks that finally got textured. For AoA, so the textures are supposed to be a bit less realistic here. We even got some ships to put around it! For more updates or screens of that game just go check out the Age of Aincrad forums or facebook page.

See you again in a couple weeks!

Whoops I went and forgot to post again

I tend to get busy and buried in my work and just general things sometimes. I really should keep this updated a bit better but alas correcting a should have is often impossible. At any rate lets kick this off with what I have been up to:

As you can see a lot of houses in the works. Just models to fill out towns and neighborhoods really. Quixel is making texturing a lot quicker, though we still have some kinks to work out of textures overall. However, I am happy to report that we are moving more towards a dev art mindset than having everything be perfect as we create. Graphics might not be top notch, but at least we can get an actual game in the works a bit faster hopefully. It only took me a couple years to convince them to try that approach!

We are also talking a bit about GDC but it probably wont be this one, maybe the next though. I would love to meet the team in person and I think it is a necessity at some point to do so! Things are still moving pretty slow, but hopefully with these new ideas of doing things we can move forward quicker and get a game produced! In the meantime I keep kicking out models and learning a bit of programming on the side. Sometimes I get a little burnt out and turn to the games or side projects, but I think breaks are important to keeping your head up and continuing to move forward.

Until next time.. hopefully not a month this time between posts!

This last week I have been learning quixel and I think I got the basics down. I can set a model up and use the program to apply textures quickly. Quixel is great for being able to change textures on the fly and add a lot of small details quickly with masks and a fairly good library of textures. Still I did run into a couple crashes and one annoying thing: it kind of sucks at updating a model. Like if you set it up a little wrong with material IDs and need to reload an update it tends to fail at that. The set up is key and I would say double check it.. but even if you have to reload applying textures is so smooth it almost doesn't matter time wise if you have to restart from scratch (as long as you haven't gone too in depth in making really unique materials). So I would definitely just keep textures in a draft form until the model is fully textured to make sure everything is working how you want before you get into the small detail work. So here is my first quixel result, with a couple of my own textures and some of the built in sets as well:

Other than that I have been finalizing Sundered Arvena and renamed it to Knight Quest just to make it a little easier to find and remember. Overall The game does not seem too popular. I think the main mistake I made was making it too hard from the start. You open the game and right away you are bombarded with enemies. Which would be fine, but I could see how it might get frustrating pretty quickly. From my standpoint I like the challenge, but I suppose a lot of people might find it very discouraging. The other theory I have is maybe the combat just isn't fun enough. I mean you tap and stuff dies but that is about it... I don't have any cool skills or powerups. So that aspect may be too simple. Even Mario has to hit an enemy a certain way to defeat it or have a certain powerup.

That is about it for this update. I am thinking of some other game ideas to try and implement and also keeping up with my other two projects. See you again in a couple weeks!

It starts with a single game

Alright, been a bit since my last post, here is what has been happening: Tried to get feedback on my game and didn't have a whole lot of luck; though I did get suggestions that I successfully implemented. It has been an adventure optimizing and updating the APK to have no issues with google play but looks like everything is set. I can't say it has been a successful project, but I did learn a lot and it is a game out there which is farther than I ever went before. The first time I attempted to launch a game on the app store it was a few years back and it never got past a prototype stage (a lot of that due to a programmer bailing on the project and me not being in the right state of mind to learn programming at the time).

So in short it seems the game is a success and failure at the same time. For me personally it is a big success, but in terms of the world at large not so much hah! I did upgrade it to production recently, and had to change the name due to an issue. You can find it here: Sundered Arvana
please click on some ads if you get the chance!

After I finished that journey I decided it was high time I learned Blender. It may not be industry standard, but it just fits my needs as an indie dev on a budget  better. I tackled a heck of a first project for it though: Goddess statue
I am fairly happy with the progress, and have since started work on textures.

Future plans are probably to focus more on my own personal projects/learning until I see more progress from the people I am working with. It seems working with people who have a lot of other stuff going on is a lot of stop and go in terms of game development progress. It gets a bit disheartening to toss hundreds of models at a project and see not a whole lot in terms of an actual game. Ah well time to put this book to a close, stay tuned for more on the journey to becoming a pro game developer/3D artist!

New game released!

Huh I thought I was posting a bit early but turns out it isn't far off the mark! So to get right down to business I would like to present my newest game: Sundered Arvena.
Feels good to say that... I have something that works people can play it! Hopefully the start of many. Yes I know it a good bit of issues to sort out still, hence why I put it beta for now. Hopefully I can work it out and make it a full release fairly soon. The last couple weeks have been spent mainly testing and getting it working as well as I can at my current skill level.

Rest assured.. despite some issues this game IS winnable. There is a start and a finish! Hope it doesn't frustrate too much. I meant it to be a challenge but I might have gone a bit overboard.

More creations!

Lots of project jumping these last couple weeks. I am close to just putting other work on hold and finishing my own game but the teams are important too. So I do the whole juggle bit hah! Anyways on to the pictures of progress!

We saw the church exterior in the last update but this is some of the interior roughed out with some placeholder textures and materials. Still a work in progress as I need a bit more info about it from the project lead to finish it off.

Next up is some more AoA stuff; a lot of small stuff rather than any buildings or characters:

These are market stalls and overhangs meant to fill some spaces and give the city in progress a bit more life and style. feel free to head on over to facebook for more detailed information on the teams work thus far on said city!

Finally I even got some work done on my own game. The base game is almost done, after that it is just a bunch of polish work and maybe adding some extra features like a death counter, maybe a compass drop. Here is a pic of the final level before you enter the last dungeon!

Just a couple more monsters and the dungeon and that game is basically done and playable. After that it is making a good icon, title page, polishing up anything that looks off, then researching a bit how to add it to the play store and maybe put a windows version somewhere as well.

See you next time in the usual two week update!