reworks and new lands!

The last couple weeks I have been reworking a lot of things not really because they were bad but they could be optimized. For example this group of things:

All this stuff is parts of a village, about 57 models and 27 textures. I atlased(combined a lot of textures into one file basically) these and made it 7 textures (3 2kX2k and some lesser sizes) which was great and only took me about two days. two mainly because of some uv errors and mesh optimization I did at the same time. A bit tedious, but definitely worth it and I cleaned up a ton of files as well by combining all this stuff into one.

Another item on the list of upgrades was our undead creature which was passed over to someone else for some cool model changes. Unfortunately this resulted in a need for re-rigging and remapping. But this presents on opportunity to upgrade the textures as well.

finally on the home front with my game I got a new land done! That means I am about halfway done with my game whoohoo!
Here is a small preview.. It is a close up to keep some secrets hidden:

Here I have added some cool stuff like destroy-able bushes and a slew of new monster spells of course. Look forward to more updates in a week or two as usual!

Swamped in work and everything

I don't know what it is about June this year but dogvacay stuff is just going crazy. A couple dogs is nice but when you get to 5 or 6+ guest dogs it can get a bit complicated lol. Anyways still managing to work on things and we are in the process of updating a creature but in the meantime the filler stuff multiplies:

That should be just about it for general house stuff though. I also am getting my game going a bit more. With this level it will be the farthest I have gotten. I have TWO bosses and dungeons! that is twice as much as my other forays! hurray for progress! The challenge now is just repeating the process a few more times and trying to keep things interesting but simple enough that I can manage with my admittedly meager programing skills. If you want to try out what I have so far here it is:
(links removed for now, sorry if you missed out!)
Now I will say this, it is still very rough around the edges. I need a lot of little changes to make it more fun and not absolutely hellish difficulty. The main thing making it hard is how I have my spawners set up. I may need to make a way to trigger them separately rather than all at once. Any other feedback is of course welcome. Keep in mind this is a single person project with someone who basically has to look up how to do most of the coding atm. So if you say: it needs a complex skill system with a bunch of cool moves I will go: uh sorry maybe next project or I will never finish this hah. Actually I am thinking about expanding on this and making a more in depth game but for now this will be a good start of setting up the little things like mob ai and player control/attacking. The main thing now is a small instruction page to sort of show save points and how to use them and the best way to attack(which imo is clicking on the knight character rather than enemies, but clicking on enemies aims you better).

Anyways sorry for the really long post. A lot of stuff going on and a lot of stuff in the works so to speak. See you next time I hope.

more props and a building

Things are still moving along pretty slowly, but I have got to the point where I can model and texture a prop within a day pretty easily which is nice. Here are some examples:

It took me awhile to find a good wood texture. For whatever reason getting a good image of all the detail wood has seems difficult and even with a texture site like CGtextures a lot of detail seems pretty fuzzy. After I find a good texture it is pretty easy to modify it and add details I need.

The other model I created was a building:

I am not sure if I am completely satisfied with the stone texture. Still, I think it came out pretty well for the style we are going for.

My own project is still getting put to the side while I think about some of the details a bit more and work on these models. It is quite a trick balancing play and productive work when all you have is yourself saying certain things need to get done! It is like a shoulder angel scenario, the good one is saying: Hey we need to do this model or learn this for our game creation! The bad one is like: nah man, play another game of league or do something in BDO, can always work on more stuff tomorrow. I have come to realize that the games are a good thing, as long as I don't let them take over entirely; they give some good ideas and references for my own games in addition to providing a social outlet in a very unsocial workplace setup.

work slowing down a bit as I consider how to move forward with my game and wait for teams to organize a bit more. Still, I did manage to get a simple prison done:

It should work for the purpose we need. I might add some more details later if needed but I have learned you want to keep it simple initially for feedback!

I also got to look over a cabin designed by another modeller and did some tweaks and adjustments:

It was nice working with something already mostly constructed, but it also showed me a bit how far I have come when I was fixing some minor issues. Issues I myself might have had, so I kind of had a system of how to look it over and fix them.

As for my game it is coming along nicely (have some enemies that shoot and attack the player, in addition to some environment details), but I am wondering if just killing monsters in dungeons could be fun enough. Adding inventory and loot seems a bit complex not to mention harder to balance the game if say a player finds a rare item and suddenly starts one shotting enemies. My goal is to make a set of challenging dungeons with just enough story to make one want to keep going and uncover things. I suppose I will just have to plow ahead and see what happens. Play test it and add more if needed, leave room in the maps for treasure and such.

Created an entire town!

Still struggling with the whole play too much and not enough creation time, but I have managed to impose some discipline and get things done here and there lol.

Here are some basic houses I finished. You can make some variations with that side piece but I went a little further and did one more:

By the end the people I was working with are like: Man you practically have created this entire town by yourself! Well, I try, I always beat myself up about not working enough but when I do work I seem to get it done pretty efficiently.

That is the bulk of what I have been doing. Still doing some odds and ends for the other game like cabinet animations and sinks and such. Also looking to get back to some character models a bit soon. As for my own game I got a lot of the world map pretty much laid out!

Ignore the really bad looking collision boxes, those won't be visible in the actual game lol. It is starting to come together nicely, though that cursed feature creep is trying to bog me down. I am like: alright lets get some more actual gameplay that I have planned out in before I go doing things like items, treasure, or more skills. I got a guy that can fight monsters for now, lets make more places to fight them and stuff!

Survived BDO

So I still managed to get some work done despite black desert trying to suck me in, I think I have it under control now lol. So here we have a dead person for one game:

Not too bad on the details though I feel I could clean it up a bit more it works for now. This got put off a lot due to distractions and various things just getting in the way. I also have a male version of the corpse on deck, but taking a break from it for a bit to work on more animation stuff.

Next up I came back to an old model and saw just how much I have improved. Talk to a project lead and show him this tavern I had shelved.

 He was like: I like it lets use it! Turns out it was shelved because of a lot of issues and I spent the rest of the day fixing them and optimizing/improving textures. The end result was much better and well worth the time imo:

 Still a lot of stuff going on, so look forward to more updates in a week or two!

Props and townhalls

Despite getting somewhat distracted by Black Desert Online (so much stuff to do in that game!) I am still chugging away on my various projects. The last couple days I finished up a town hall for one:

I think it looks more like a hunting lodge of some sort but this is the direction my reference steered me! Turned out pretty good I think, though the textures may have to be tweaked at a later date. The rock walls in particular may be a little too detailed for our style.

Next up still working on finishing up a props list. But I did get some suitcases done!

After that I need to create some dead bodies! er at least some virtual ones lol. I am unsure how to approach that but no time like the present to experiment. The two methods I am considering are simply creating them from scratch or just creating parts and combining them into a pre built mesh like makehuman provides. Modifying a pre built mesh does not seem to be the best idea. I suppose I could just treat it like creating an undead character. As for my personal project it is being pushed to the side again but I WILL get back to it. I have just hit a few snags in programming enemies. That is about all for the last couple weeks. See you next time I hope!