Been fooling around with making mobile 2d games. Got a few fun games that I'm creating content for, probably publish them when I feel there is enough shit in them to sell.

Other than that I've been thinking about next semester and what game I'm ganna make. At first my thoughts were on "GTA in space" but after a few weeks of brainstorming and concepting and making models, I realised that perhaps an open world game has a little too much content to be made in 6months...

So I started brainstorming a new idea and I've thought of doing a creepy/spooky archaeology game like tomb raider or uncharted... but in the future where archaeologists search for wrecks of old space crafts... I'm thinking that the ships could look like decomposing carcases with light piercing the holes in the ships hulls wick would be not unlike the rib cage of a carcus...

So I was concepting for this new idea. Its ideal for 6 months as its more linear in nature, but within it I could get the underlying functions I need for the open world game, such as upgrades and hover car handling.

I came across an interview with Guerrilla games about Zbrush and checked it out. These guys are probably one of the 5 or so devs that pioneer the future in terms of game engines... But anyways, I digress. I was interested by the fact that they've been using Zbrush for the characters, guns and... whole levels... Apparently they sculpt the level in Zbrush (minus props) and then export the mesh, normal map, bump map, diffuse map, spec map and height map (for tessellating them pebbles)... Apparently not only does this approach mean faster level design from consepting through to final level and tweaking, but It also lets the artist get the exact environment he wants in real time due to being able to sculpt every detail...

Of course these guys are amazing and they have much better tools, skills, resources (being the PC's an the poly/texture budget that comes with PS4, Umbra 3, LOD's and streaming) and engines than I have. but I figured I'd fool around with making my asteroids with that approach.

TDF final gameplay screens:

(Please note that the bug with the missing fog has been fixed.)

Got alot of shit to blog about

So here we go.

Firstly some screens for the FPS with textures and all that stuff, started fiing bugs and implementing the last of the assets and texture work. Its now going by the name Project Dark.

Just droping off some screens of progress:

So for my TDF, I'm going for a very noire Sin City or Schindler's List type of look and feel. Dark and mischievious, unerving in some ways I guess... But I just realy love the look of those things with thier drained dark colors with bright ones that jump out to emphisise something, Like the one woman/gir in a red dress... I want to do the same thing with my level where they important things stand out due to thier lighing and colors.

The idea of the player not being able to see the enviromewnt is somewhat like unfinished swan where the player throws balls of paint to see where to go:

i thaught i would add more tension to this and make the enemies hunt the player whilst this all happens.

ive also started placeing props like lights, boxes, fire and sparks to add some life to the level. ive animated flickering for the lights and sparks to make it seem alittle more spooky and ive set the ambient light way down to make it dark.

ive redesigned the level again making it smaller and more tence as there was realy no need for it to be as big as it was, it would have been boaring.

in redoing the level i managed to halve the polycount again. Something im verry proud of. the disadvantage to redoing the level again, athough far better in every way, it now needs to be retextured again, wich should be as quick as draging them on.

So I've been bussy polishing, tweeking and refineing.

And that means small tweeking and that often doesnt feel like you are doing mutch work, but hey, i figure its starting to l;ook alot more like my vision and well, to be honest i can see quite a difference in the level now when compared to when i started, so i feel comfortable updating.

The player explores the enviroment and soon finds that the power for the other rooms on the ship has been triped. the player must then find the switch to turn it back on and use the elevator to escape from what is hiding in the darknes.

The player uses beakons to see his surroundings for short periods, however, the creeps can only see when they are in the light, so the player must be cairful not to alert them by using it.