Tons of stuff happening. It is pretty much crunch time as a lot of deadlines in October. Anyways lets kick it off with some finished stuff then move on to some in progress:

We have a goblin chief and a hospital interior. Larges textures done, but need to fill it with all the nice details like wall railings and interior windows.

Also, working on some hair model/textures:

Still could use some cleanup, but the base isn't half bad so far. Hopefully have time to give another update before too long... but going to be buried in work the next couple weeks.

3D models new and old!

Whew, been a couple weeks. Most of the time was spent on a new building for a game project. At this time it is just a basic exterior and interior, and only the exterior has textures. Personally I find buildings a bit harder than characters. There are a lot more elements to make up a building, and I find myself thinking about a lot of those elements and how I want them to come together in the end. This hospital in its basic form comes out to about 40k poly.

The top picture is a more finished prototype for the game while the bottom is a different idea for the texture and some close ups of the details.

The other model I started working on a couple days ago is a leader for a goblin tribe:

it is modified from the basic goblin mesh with some accessories added on. The additions only add 400 poly as well; not bad! (the textures need to be fixed a bit, this is just a base mesh so far).

The next couple weeks look like more buildings and refining that goblin chief a bit more. Tune in next time for more updates!

Well time for another update! First up is a character concept I have been working on:

some various techniques at work here including projection mapping and my usual method of overlays and just trying to get a semi realistic look. No normal maps yet, but not bad so far.

next up is the beetles for my other project:

The 1st picture came out a bit better overall... I think the second beetle has too many colors which makes it look a little odd. More refining probably in order but we will see what the team says.

I prefer a less realistic style overall, but it is great to be learning about both at the same time with these projects. I definitely recommend a less realistic style for most initial indie projects based on my experience so far.

Alright a bit of a slow week this time around, mainly updating textures:

Added more detail to the car textures. Also, the people I am working with are setting up facebook and such at https://www.facebook.com/Infinitudestudios?fref=ts
Things are moving right along with the game and I look forward to seeing more come together. Currently working on a character model for them.

Next up is a bug model. Going to get this checked out and see if it will work. Might square off the bottom of the legs to make the texture smoother, but it is a fairly small creature.

Alright, still pretty busy despite finishing that contest game (could still use some votes! http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/235#.VcohgflFauQ). I know I said I would do a preview of a game in progress, but on consulting with the team they said it was a bit too rough to do that right now. We did purchase an asset pack and I was able to look at an interesting way to do textures, which resulted in more detail:

Unfortunately this meant I needed to redo this set of textures/uv maps. But it was probably worth it haha, still a matter of trial and error for me to get the right amount of detail in a large model like a house. Basically this went from 3 maps to 7.

As for my other project we have a nice simple deer that only took about 8 hours all told.

Keep in mind this is meant to be a cartoony simplistic style. Which means no sculpting or normal maps. The hardest part was probably getting the antlers to look decent. Onward to more models and textures this week!

After banging my head against the wall and fiddling with gameguru a lot I managed to get a nice short adventure cobbled together. First 3D game! The adventure is meant to be sort of a prequel for a much bigger idea (that is if the evil route is chosen). Some previews and even the game can be found here: http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/235#.VbuZ8PlFauQ

Wish everyone luck in the contest, but really it was great just to create a game in a short amount of time. Still have a lot to learn, but each model or project is one step closer to making that dream game a reality.

Oh and here is a car model as well. Very rough and lacking a lot of details, but coming along nicely!

The tires are a bit blocky, but we will probably remove them anyways. Main thing I want to improve is the lights and seats since a door will be missing as well! I actually need to fire up bandicam and get a good preview of this game up, that is next on the list.

Gameguru, my thoughts.

I have been taking a break from 3D modeling to actually prototype some game concepts that I have been thinking about. This was brought about by the Humble bundle and all those awesome tools my friend pointed out to me! I may even enter that 2015 contest, I certainly am making some good progress towards that end. That is not to say I am giving up those other projects, in fact one seems to be coming along quite well. The other is still really big an a distant thing but it has a lot of potential.

Anyways without further ado on to Gameguru the easy game maker and some screenshots of what I have managed to create so far:

This is an overview of my level so far. We have a cave, two towns and some ruins. I opted for trying to make a seamless game with less loading times.

Some shots of the cave area. I opted to sculpt it and most of my level out of terrain due to various AI issues. Basically the default AI can have a lot of issues with objects that are not terrain (mainly not liking to walk on or around them very well). Seeing as I have very little experience with programming I have had to design around what gameguru gives me to work with for now. Also, due to the limited time frame I have to work with if I want to enter the contest most of the content I made is going to use sound zones with my voice driving the story.

I decided to take gameguru at its word, and see what I could throw together with what I got in the packs for it. Something to consider is that since it was originally a fps creator, that is what the default settings are at. As such, melee weapons have to be treated like really short range guns, aka damage is done at the center of the cross hairs; you don't really have a cone or frontal area effect you would expect of most melee weapons. The player collisions are actually very well done, so moving around should be a breeze. However this has a downside: the player can get some very interesting places if you are not extremely careful with level design, especially terrain. Your best bet if in doubt is to make it so the player falls to their death or something if they are going somewhere you might not want them to go.

On to the default ai: Gameguru's default ai needs some work. My advice is to try some models/animations and see if they work for your game concept. Some hit boxes can be odd and very counter intuitive making some mobs seem invincible. Some mobs fall through the world very easily or get stuck worse than others. Damage can be kind of wonky too, even by tweaking settings I still have certain mobs one or two shot me. Again, experiment to see what default models/ai seem feasible. Most humanoid or close to human size creatures work fairly well.


Finally lets look at the models. I have to hand it to them, most look pretty dang good. No real complaints with them except the default AI issues. Some animations look a bit stiff or weird, but the texture maps seem fairly good.

Whew that was a book hah. Sorry about writing so much. If you have any other questions about my experiences with gameguru let me know and I will try to help. They also have a great community to fall back on if you are having trouble.

Too long to read version:
pros:
gameguru seems good for throwing together something with a fps type perspective.
terrain and models are quick to create/throw in and use.
you can create some enemies that move around and attack quickly.
trigger zones allow one to make events or play sounds easily
models look fairly good
simple interface

cons:
without programming experience you are very limited in what you can do on your own
can be hard to limit player movement (no invisible walls)
enemies can easily get stuck or glitched.
with a simple interface comes many limitations (positioning objects can be tough sometimes for example).
load times can be pretty long with multiple levels.