Side Project

First thing first, my dad is like genius. He got into developing software with the Microsoft Kinect awhile back and has done some amazing things with it. He also got a write up in Automation World for gesture based machine control (page 14 on the digital copy of the magazine).

He has been one of my biggest followers and supporters into my adventures of making my own indie game and came to me recently with an idea to take the gesture based machine control and apply it to a 3d world. Essentially by creating a game in Unity and applying Kinect based motion controls, he will be able to navigate the 3d world and interact with an object within the game. The coolest part about this is that there will be an object outside of the game, in the real world, that will be affected by what happens within the game itself. Essentially this allows someone to navigate a 3d environment and interact with something and outside of the game, completely independent, and action will occur.

Of course me and him have separate views on how this could be applied to both of our interests. We also both agree that our differing views are pretty awesome. He sees it as a way to control different types of machines within a 3d environment, making an easier to use interface within machine control. I see it as a new way that different game platforms and accessories can be used within a game.

There may be numerous updates on my lingo and jargon once my dad reads this but overall I think I gave a pretty good jist of what we're doing.

No more pictures.

So I haven't posted in awhile due to the fact that a friend visited from out of town and I didn't have much time to work on anything and, also, I'm working on things that aren't technically "visible", which i'll explain in a bit.

As far as no more pictures being posted of the game, this is due to the fact that for the few people that are interested in it, I don't want to give anything away as far as story line goes.

Currently I am working on getting the dialogue straightened out and written down as well as placing where the dialogue will be triggered in unity by making "sound walls", which are basically invisible trigger that once the player passes through will trigger the dialogue. I already know how to make them, all i need to do now is figure out the timing between each sounds wall and fine tune my dialogue to fit within those time frames and then record them accordingly. Thankfully I have my wonderful girlfriend, awesome cousin, and great friend all offering to help with recording dialogue. i also have completed the level design in blender but don't want to show it quite yet, possibly not at all. I will also have to work on some more 3d lettering, much like the pillars I have shown.

Last but not least I need to figure out the beginning menu, design work for logos and also how I will do the ending scene and the credits section which may differ a bit from normal credits. Also, I have an easter egg or two to hide inside the game.

Overall, I will be updating when these things are finished but won't go into much detail as far what exactly they all mean.

**EDIT** I need to get the music made and recorded as well. Lots of work.

Work to be done.

So they next few updates will be pretty boring. For those just interested in the game, there won't be much as far as new content shown. For those interested in the development side, I have to go about labeling each of my polygon shapes in Maya so I can easily apply textures once I import the level design into Unity. This means a lot of preparation and boring work so when it comes down to it I can easily apply the textures later. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

In the meantime I'm trying to get people to promote this site. I've been getting regular pageviews daily but would like it to grow. Anyone interested in promoting this site will be recognized and be included in a beta testing type thing when it comes up.

Off topic

My usual waking up at 3 pm routine is to check my phone, check social media sites, and then check the Steam Store. Today L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition is only $19.99. This is furthering my feeling that I won't buy Mass Effect 3 until something like this happens.

Pulling teeth

Borderlands is so tempting.

Ok so I finally got back to working. And I must say it was like pulling teeth.

First off: Huge monolith structure. Call it a giant rock, giant piece of metal, nothing at all, maybe even your own consciousness crumbling from the inside. Who knows.

I also worked on a new level type area. Most of the game will take place in this "structure." This is a window that I scaled to fit the new window opening.

My other picture didn't save correctly but it wasn't much to look at anyways.

Also this is an official reminder to myself that I need to label all the pieces of the level to make it easier to apply textures.

Anyone who likes Radiohead should try this. It was my only way to not get too distracted.

Off to get my pre wub wub going till September for 96.5% more and to JOY PUKE MY FACE OFF.

Lack of Updates

Sorry for the lack of updates, hectic weekend and i recently downloaded Borderlands and the DLC in preparation for number 2 and got distracted. Plan on working more tonight and will be back with updates.

Off Topic

Jonah Hill looks like a turtle in this picture. 

but Ron Swanson is in this movie so I'm going to go watch it.

Buzzed progress?

Hey look. I got my terrain back. Finally.

Also, I found doing textures and terrain building while tipsy is fun, but counter productive. Probably the last I'll update till Sunday night when I'm back at work. Have a good weekend!

Foot in mouth.

So much for progress, trying to clean up the hierarchy and project field in Unity, I made the foolish move of deleting stuff without knowing what it is and deleted my terrain. Have a rough new terrain but still needs another couple hours of work. Dang.

Progress!

Worked on the pillars. I like how they look so far. Getting the hang of texturing in Unity too. Feeling accomplished for the day. Once again, back to KoA!

Story telling for now.

Working on the story line right now in order to progress through the first level with a story to lead into the second "level" which is going to take some time to build. Unfortunately this means less updating since I can't necessarily give away too much story. I'll be making a few posts later tonight though.

In the mean time here's Mona Diesel

Forgot to add some pictures...

Here's some of the photos from the foliage I did last night. Tonight will hopefully be level design.

More inspiration

I am so going to GDC next year. Awesome words from John Romero.

Introducing...

The pillar...

This is one way the story will be told through the game. Fragments of a forgotten time, a fictional time, a future time. Along with a more constructive and easier to follow narrative, the pillars will offer an abstract twist to the story. The two will be in juxtaposition at times, relate to each other at others, and tell completely different stories sometimes.

Notes: this. took. forever. Maya was being very rude to me and would let me make on line of text but not any after that. I finally figured a way to duplicate each line and change the text into. this is the first pillar. It has a rough filler of what will be said later. I have also begun the writing process for the voice overs.

Also, I was successful in finishing the foliage for the island part.

More to come tomorrow, right now I'm pretty worn out working on this for the better half of the night. Holding off on playing Stacking until Friday when I can sit down for a few hours and play. Right now I'll play KoA.

March 6th - 7th. A day of advancing.

So I read a story and you should to. Inspirational...so I decided to really put in some time to making the game tonight and tomorrow night.

Also, buy Stacking and support Tim Schafer. I bought it as a reward for working on my game tonight and tomorrow night.

Ok so I'm adding trees and bushes and grass to the main land. Shouldn't take to much longer as long as my colliders start behaving like they should. Which they are. For now..

And I might attempt working a river in somewhere...might just end up working on the level design in Maya and importing and texturing it in Unity since I've been putting that off for awhile.

More pictures and info to come!

PS: listen to this

Woops

So I may have totally gotten distracted playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and forgotten to do any type of development at work.

Here's a picture of a desk I made in Maya and then imported and textured in Unity Sunday night to make up for it.

This will be a reoccurring motive throughout the game by the way. It will also be touched up a bit, mainly the legs of the desk.

Special

Here's a build of one of the first things I did in Unity if you are interested...

Test Build

Back Log

So I started this project two weeks ago, but haven't really updated till now, so I will give some back story and catch you up to what I will be working on tonight. The first week i messed with source SDK and eventually moved to Unity. Within a couple days of working with Unity I made my first landscape type level and added some trees and grass and such. I even went ahead and made an executable and sent it to my cousin (who may be working on some textures for me) and a friend. I did hit a wall when i realized that 3D rendering in Unity is...troublesome. Quick search and I found Maya 3D rendering! And quickly realized that it cost a bit too much ($3,459 to be exact.) I downloaded the 30 day trial and I'm using that until it craps out on me. After that I will be using Blender. Anyways, I made my first 3D rendering of a crudely put together fence type object which I then placed in my level.

I also began to do my level design that will be connected to my landscape in Unity in Maya.

And built more...

And then I built some stairs and pillars...

And then I spent some time making a window...

All of this catches us up to last night. I will post again tonight with the things I worked on last night and plans for tonight.

Also, I will usually be working on this stuff between the hours of 7:30 pm and 6:00 am. i work a night shift that has a lot of down time and is the main place where I do all my work. You could technically say I get paid to make video games. Technically. Maybe one day...

About the blog

This blog is a tracking of progress through the making of an indie exploration game. I feel like it would be interesting to see a game being built through screen shots and video and would like to share it to any one who is interested.

About myself: I am and fine art graduate and avid game player that lives in California. Up until about two weeks ago I never thought I would be able to make a game. After countless tries with "simple" game making programs, I felt that I was in over my head and should just stick to playing the games. That was up until I played the recently revamped Dear Esther. I had read about the game earlier when it was made with the Source SDK and was free to play. I downloaded the free game and played about 2 minutes before I went and bought the revamped version on Steam. I played through it twice in one night. The story and the overall feel of the game was so unique and impressive that it finally gave me the confidence to jump into making my own. I downloaded the Source SDK and started playing around with it. Within five minutes I faced my first challenge: how do I make a floor? All it took was a quick Google search and I found one of the greatest communities of indie game developers. I quickly started making my first "level." After working with the SDK for two work nights (more to come on when I work on my game and why I can invest enough time later) for about 18 hours, I ran into what you could call a boundry wall. I'm not saying that I "mastered" Source SDK in less then twenty hours, but I did feel like I was being limited, and that there had to be engine that I could use to further my new found interest in game development. Another quick search on Google and a hour or so sifting through forum discussions and research I settled on the Unity game development engine. After downloading the program and a few tutorials I made this:

Not incredibly impressive, but none-the-less I had officially made a world that could be walked around in in first person. By the end of the night, I had made my first "level" in Unity.

Although rough around the edges, and small in size, I had made something I never thought I could. A rush of ideas and plot lines started rushing through my head. I began going back to short stories I had written, getting ideas for level designs and plot, until I finally started writing a plot line that closely followed my short story Doorknob. 

The game: The current working title right now is Letter. It may change into something else. A quick synopsis of the game is a writer who has recently suffered a (currently) unknown trauma is now stuck in his own stories, questioning the world around to be reality or his own created fiction. The story progresses much like Dear Esther, a voice over narrated by the writer himself as he goes through these different worlds, remembering his surroundings as either reality, fiction, other literary tales, or a strange combination of the three. For gamers: there will be no combat, no real puzzles, but instead a exploration through a created world and driven by a strange story. For literary buffs: I plan on referring to a few of my favorite writers and stories from those writers as small nods to there works.

The next post I will show the building of the first world, mainly in Unity and Maya.

More coming soon.