Lots of new stuff going on over the last couple weeks.

This first set of things is a set of supplies for a game project I am working on with a group. Just some tools and food that a player can pick up.

The other project I am working on has re-tasked me to creating a wolf model of which I have almost got the basic model hammered out:

Next up with that is cleaning up the edge loops a bit and simplifying the model to cut the poly count. Lots of stuff to do! I find myself looking back and being pretty impressed with what I can do now vs what I could do when I started with these projects. Still a lot of things to learn and improve but even flipping back a few pages in this blog and then coming forward again it is cool to see what changes.

Will try to keep the progress updates coming! See you again in a week or so!

Whew tons of birthday stuff going on. People ask you: how does it feel to be whatever age this year? Pretty much like any other day, aging is slow enough to be hardly noticeable to the person aging I think hah. However, I do wake up and wonder where all that teen or even early 20s energy went sometimes. As for work, just working through lists with similar assets to those in the previous posts. Hopefully I will create my own library of that stuff, back it up, and just be able to re-use some of it later!

My friend dropped by and hung out for a bit, we brainstormed some game ideas. It is pretty easy to come up with some silly ideas, implementing them is the challenging part; since most of us are more programmers or artists and not often both. There are tons of tools out there to help, but it still is a daunting task to take on alone at times.

Overall a slow couple of weeks, but at least projects are still ongoing at this point!

This week I continued practicing textures and creating more stuff for the interior of one of my projects.

But what is really interesting to me is the talk of creating games in one of my facebook groups. A game called Wizardry Online shut down in the US a year or so ago, and ever since we have all kept in touch and tried to find another game to play together. Thus far that goal has not come about, so there is now talk of perhaps creating our own game. I warned them an MMO is probably a rough place to start, but it is an ultimate goal of mine to create one, especially if it is inspired by Wizardry Online which is basically like Japan's take on Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I have discussed my thoughts on this in a previous post, but I feel that a lot of dungeon games are missing something these days. Dungeons feel like stepping stones and not really an integral part of the game one visits frequently, especially in an MMO like world. Wizardry got around this by making the dungeons the only place to go outside town. Whats more, you often go back to previous dungeons to help friends or do quests that might be needed to change your chars class. You might even run into an old enemy doing the same which adds spice to the whole thing. On the flip side the lack of a truly open world has its own effect of confining chars to closed in dungeons and dark places. Still, I do like how it was set up overall.

Anyways, hopefully we can bring something similar to Wizardry back in the US for this group. If nothing else at least we can have fun trying and designing.

Some more random stuff this week:

Lots of random furniture basically. I am actually pretty happy with how fast I can create this sort of thing now. Still not quite as fast as the videos I watched, but compared to before I can map a lot more efficiently and make something that works pretty quick. Most of the projects I join may not seem to amount to much, but I have been learning better modeling/texturing techniques at least.

Practicing textures

It was brought to my attention that I just might be doing texturing wrong, or at least badly after a meeting for one of my projects. Now, this is partly due to me still working on my skills in this area, and partly due to no one really giving me a whole lot of instruction as to what they wanted. For example, they said model a house as one object, so I did; however, putting everything that goes into a house on one texture map was apparently not part of the plan. So I listened to what they had to say and have been watching a set of videos they reccomended. Still working on finishing the set, but already learned some neat tricks.

Anyways, here are the results of following the videos so far for texturing:

Basically the videos walk you through modeling the thing and even unwrapping and some texture work. However, I still modeled the object and everything on my own. The videos were sort of an instruction booklet for putting something together from scratch.

Anyways, going to finish this set of tutorials and hopefully get back to some project progress soon!

Back to Work!

Anyways back to working on various things, sorry it has been awhile since I have posted. It was not that I was not working, it was that I am trying to forget about blogging, again lol. For this update we have a mansion I have been working on:

and the interior

The textures are still very rough at the moment, but I do like the roof at least.

A different project has me working on some filler items to put in some rooms and such:

Still very rough, but the basic idea is there!

GDC, The Survival Guide

Whew, well, I survived the week of GDC! A quick overview of what I learned:

The Survival Talk

(imagined a crumpled list, perhaps it has been stepped on or ripped by being caught in an escalator; hopefully you are in better shape than the dirty tattered thing remaining):

1.) Don't put aspiring anywhere in your GDC badge title. Reason? Well, the short of it is everyone is aspiring to something, or should be. Find a label for yourself that matches you as closely as possible so you don't basically label yourself a GDC noob. A speaker commented about this and I turned my badge around in shame when I spoke to him lol. The badge title can help you meet people, or not meet people in this case (though if they get close enough to read your badge they're close enough to better explain at least!).

2.) If you want to get into a popular talk show up at least an hour early. Popular talks may vary, but a common thread is: if you see people from Riot or Blizzard speaking this is likely to be popular. If in doubt, show up early if you really care about seeing or hearing the thing to check the line. Also, the portfolio critiques are popular. Bring your own device as well (I was looking around at all the portable portfolios and initially thought my phone would work in a pinch, but it apparently doesn't support flash). They might have had laptops, but the guy with the ask me shirt said they probably didn't. Lesson learned: be more prepared and observant earlier instead of passing time with a book. The upside is at least it was a good book.

3.) If you are attending an igda meeting the floor is pretty open... Ask questions earlier. I wanted to know more about the Atavism plugin, so I ended up asking around after and no one knew about it. I guess ultimately that means it isn't popular or well known and my initial thought of too good to be true is correct. Or it could mean someone knew something but since I didn't ask the entire room at once when I had the chance I will never know!

4.) When looking for food or whatever the people you met can point you in the right direction. If you lose all your friends after the first day at least your phone will still be there.

5.) If you lose all your friends after the first day and find yourself on your own don't panic or get depressed. In fact this might be an advantage, people flying it solo are easier to approach, and you can also approach others easier as well.

6.) Networking woes. if you are worried about networking, don't be. Even if you absolutely suck at talking to people you will end up talking to people and learning a ton if nothing else. However, it is a great opportunity to just walk up and ask someone who might be a big deal some noob question. They are surprisingly approachable, and while they might not hire you for some dream job they can and will try to help you out by answering a couple questions. Nothing is lost by talking, and yeah it can be scary, but if you know you have some skills or are looking for something let people know! If you don't have some skills or know you need to improve try to find similar skill levels to work with (personally I like online forums more for this like tigsource, but it can work in person too).

7.) Most importantly think of what you gained. Many people I talked to were jealous I got to go to this event when they couldn't. I mean a lot of people do get the chance to go but in the big scheme of things that bunch of people swarming around in the conference is about as many that attend a popular university. Speaking of which, I compare everything I learned and did to about a years worth of classes. So much is out there that you have access to and it is all in one place: industry experts, new tech demos, students looking for work, employers looking to hire. It is like one massive convention with something for pretty much anyone into this sort of thing. So if you do get the chance to go I would definitely recommend it, even if you have to attend on your own for the most part. The city is noisy, and annoying in my opinion, but the conference is like going to one of the most intense schools ever.

closing remarks: You might be asking why I wrote this little guide or list of tips. Well, partially for myself, but also because I couldn't find a lot of accounts about what the conference was like as a whole. I want to remember that 1st GDC, there will never be another one for me personally (I mean another 1st, it is gone like many other 1st experiences one may have). Another question might be: why is stuff about GDC on your game design blog? Because a trip like this changes ones perspective. You see people in all walks of life at all ages discussing games and tech. The advice given in the talks has definitely influenced how I approached designing games. That is why it is all here. Anyways, I hope any who read this enjoy my little survival guide, I definitely enjoyed the experience that inspired it. See you in a bit after I recover, hopefully all my projects are still doing well and ready for my return!