Brodycount

2085 - First Play Test

2011-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Got the game up to a state where I felt I could get people to test it, and that's what I did last Saturday. My school was having a PC Game Night and used the opportunity to get a bunch of my friends to play the game and give me their impressions.

A counting bug crippled the tutorial level, so I had to resort to teaching the controls to players, myself. In the game, I have players piloting a spacecraft in zero gravity and all the controls are for the ship's thrusters. This includes six keys for translation thrusters (forward/back, side to side, and vertical climbing), and another six keys for rotation (pitch, yaw, and roll). Writing it down, it sounds like a handful, but I thought the controls would be easy to use once learned.

As it turned out, all my players had some difficulty handling the controls. I even taped a couple of index cards to the monitor with the controls drawn-out in marker, and it didn't help.

There were some other issues that came up during testing, but the controls were the one that got everyone. I have about a month and a half left to update the IndieCade build, so I'm starting to have to really prioritize what gets done. Controls are now definitely first on the list.

The one thing I was very glad for was most people seemed to have a very favorable opinion of the game's feel and general atmosphere. Nobody appeared to get motion sick, and they quickly grasped how to work the thruster mechanics (minus which buttons to press). So overall, the test went very well.

Now to figure out what to do with the controls...

Introducing 2085!

2011-03-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

So it's been about a year since I last even touched this blog, but it's not like I've been sitting on my loins. Over the past couple of weeks, I started working on a little game experiment in Unity that I'm now looking to make into something more substantial. So I'm now announcing the development of 2085.

2085 is a spaceflight game, putting you in the pilot seat of a spacecraft in the near future. So far, I've just been working on the game mechanics and the overall feel. I've entered the game into IndieCade, and will be working feverishly to adding polish for the May 31st deadline. The goal is to have a game with numerous mission types, but simple mechanics. When I first started working on the prototype a couple weeks ago, I quickly learned that piloting a ship in a drag-less, weightless environment can be quite difficult, so not much needs to be thrown in to provide arbitrary challenge.

Space and spaceflight have always been a personal interest of mine, and I'm really excited to work on a project that incorporates it.

As I make progress, I'll post more updates.

Bus Interior - 1

2010-06-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Taking a little break from the space suit. It's pretty much done, except for getting it set up in UDK.

A couple friends and I are going to start a little game project fairly soon, and to get a head-start, I've started working on this bus interior. All I'm going to say is you will be driving a bus, and the game will take place in a desert.

The aim is to have this running on an iPad.

Space Suit - WIP 2

2010-06-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

Really going slow with this. Between school and one active contract job, I'm pretty occupied. But I'm still moving forward with this suit. Texturing is getting close to done. Here's the Maya viewport render.

The low-poly geometry sits at a little over 13,000 triangles, with 512x512 textures.

Next thing I'm working on is testing it in UDK, and then I'll finish up on all the textures and stick a fork in it.

Space Suit - WIP 1

2010-05-14T15:15:00.001-07:00

The last week, I've been off of school for break, so I started this little project. This is the almost-final block-in for the suit before I do a ZBrush pass on it and get it down to a real-time spec.

Suit design was derived from the manga PLANETES. I'm working on a head bust to go into the suit, so it's not going to be empty. Here's the reference sheet I'm working off of:

Working on space dudes is so much fun.

Server Rack Doodle

2010-04-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

Did this well over a month ago. Doodled this out in about an hour for the hell of it.

It's all subdivisional. Not sure I'm going to finish this or do a low-poly version of it or texture. Maybe I'll revisit it in the future.

Ishmael Sculpt WIP 2

2010-02-15T11:31:00.001-08:00

Stopping point for now. Need to focus on a couple of upcoming papers.

As far as the sculpt goes, all I really need to do now is get some fur in, and I can start worrying about making the game-ready version.

Ishmael Sculpt WIP 1

2010-02-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Been working on this guy in my spare time for a few weeks now. It's based off of Josh Hodge's Ishmael concept (from Purely Conceptual) with his blessing and feedback. Still need to add the scarf, sculpt in the fur, and then I can proceed with knocking this down for the low-poly version.

Trying to wrap this thing up, but school work always seems to interfere.

Pinako Color Update

2009-06-22T14:15:00.001-07:00

Texture work. It's a 256x color map, under spec from what I had intended, but it really didn't need to be very big.

Taking on Silo - Pinako

2009-06-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

Tris: 982
Maps: TBA
Programs: Silo 2.1

Been working primarily in Silo the past week, and I'm liking it. It's limited compared to modo, but it's much less expensive and still has an easy work flow. So I'm probably going to pick up a license for it pretty soon. I've been modeling Pinako from Fullmetal Alchemist as a warm-up. She's beeing kept under 1000 tris and will give it a 512x diffuse. Still need to unwrap it, but the model is pretty much done.

Not sure I'm happy with the hands. Need work on those...

Simple Crate

2009-06-06T15:50:00.001-07:00

Tris: 12
Maps: 512x Diffuse/Normal
Programs: modo, Photoshop

I did this about 3 weeks ago. Went for a realistic prop using only a standard cube. Basically, a simple texturing exercise.

Go Team Lunchbox!

2009-05-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

Tris: 50
Maps: 256x Diffuse/Specular
Programs: Maya, Photoshop

First homework for my Modeling Work Group. The task I set was to model and texture a crate, under 150 tris and with a 256x diffuse and specular. Simple warm-up to see where everyone was at, skill-wise. Extremely basic, I know. Not too happy with the texture on this. But eh.