Reddit concept art class, lesson 2
Copying a photo with guides and sampling values is incredibly easy compared to coming up with original concepts. For this lesson the goal was to use silhouettes to generate many ideas in a short amount of time. I spent around 10-13 minutes on each one and noticed by the end I had become quicker at sketching out ideas. There is certainly room for improvement in both time and quality.
Moonsoon project video
This is the result of my immersive environments class and the game pitch I mentioned previously. I worked in a team of four and we used the Unreal Development Kit, Maya for modelling, and ZBrush for creating normal maps and texturing. A few sections of the mansion were cut as we ran out of time and we probably shouldn't have worried about the polycount as much as we did. Overall it was a great learning experience but there was so much more my team wanted to do.
One of my team members, Lanz Singbeil, put together a video showing it off. He also created most of the sound effects and composed the music, which I found really impressive.
Reddit concept art class, first lesson
I'm participating in the Reddit University Game Concept Art and Drawing class so thought I'd share my homework on my blog each week. The idea behind this lesson was to learn to draw what you see instead of what you think you see. I've done exercises in the past with the same concept but usually required you to focus on one part at a time without seeing the whole. The approach the instructor, General_Lee, suggested was to use grid lines to help find the spatial relationship between shapes and I really liked this approach. However, I probably used more grid lines than I should have but it's a start!
Sculptris
The last few months I spent considerable time learning ZBrush to create normal and colour maps for a UDK game project I worked on. One thing I learnt pretty quickly was if the base model didn't have good topology it would be pretty difficult to add detail where I wanted to. My team never bothered to use the re-topology tools available since it would have changed the base mesh and we didn't have the time. Fast forward to today, I learnt that a sculpting program called Sculptris has been released that solves this problem by dynamic subdivision that adds sufficient detail where needed. I was also delighted to hear that it will be implemented in my favourite 3D package, Blender.
Below is an image of an elephant alien that took me a few minutes to do in Sculptris. I consider this a sketch since I can think of a lot more I could do with it such as adding skin texture and sharpening up some areas to distinguish between bone and flesh.
Quick 5 minute sculpture
Evil Genius VS Spies released for free
Evil Genius VS Spies is finally finished and the cards have been printed. The cards in physical form look absolutely amazing. It was a surreal experience seeing the printed cards for the first time. Up until last week we were still playing with plain text cards that had pencil marks over them. I decided to buy clear protective card sleeves to keep them in good condition. What was really surprising is how they fit the sleeves perfectly even though we adjusted the card dimensions to reduce printing costs.
Gameplay is still a bit rough in a few places and I will likely continue working on it in the future. It is completely playable and a lot of fun to play although I'm probably biased. So if you don't believe me, go to the project page by clicking on the image below and print yourself a copy of the game. We decided to release the game for free under a creative commons license in hopes that people will build upon the game. If you do please let us know as we would like to hear about what you came up with.
Evil Genius VS Spies coming soon
I've been working on a card game called Evil Genius VS Spies which is nearing completion for my advanced game design class. My team finally has a decently balanced set of cards and now we're designing the card layouts and rule book. It is an asymmetric card game with gameplay that focuses on the spatial relationships between cards. One player takes the role of the evil genius and constructs an evil lair to carry out an evil plan. The other player plays as the Spies, building intelligence networks to support spies and infiltrate the lair to thwart the evil genius' plans. The objective of the game is to thwart or carry out 10 evilness worth of evil plans.
In my game design class the focus has always been on learning game engines rather than actual design skills so amazingly we got permission to do a card game. The best part about it is we went through tons of iterations to see what worked and what didn't. It really taught us a lot about game design and balancing in general. The card set will eventually go online so everyone can print them out and try it. I was hoping to release it on thegamecrafter.com but with shipping for a small card game to Canada being almost 3 times the cost as the product, it might have to wait.
Below is a sample card from the game. I created the card art in Maya and Brooklyn Hillman created the card layout.
Fruit War project finished (previously Towers and Catapults)
I finished up my game project for my Advanced Game Design class. We managed to implement just about everything in the original design. My role in the project was mostly programming but I also contributed to the design. I don't consider this project done because it could use some game balancing and bug fixes. A couple of my friends played a single game over an hour until they introduced house rules of no more growing trees to end the game quicker. The game is available for download on its project page.
Game pitch for immersive environments class
For my immersive environments team project we decided to create a puzzle game sort of like Mist using the Unreal Development Kit. Our focus is on high production values using ZBrush and Maya. For our game pitch we greyboxed the game world using the primitives in UDK and recorded a video with voice over explaining the project.
The essential experience of Towers and Catapults
I've been working on a new game tentatively called Towers and Catapults but the design has changed enough that it no longer describes the game. I'm working with four other people in my advanced game design class. My role is primarily programming but I also do some game design and project management. We're programming it in C# using XNA and the Farseer Physics library and considering eventually releasing it on XBLIG.
The game is a turn based strategy game where players try to attack each other's slingshot fruit trees by launching fruit they grow. Players can also use up more fruit and plant a seed on a floating platform which will grow and allow them to get a more strategic position to fire from. The game ends when either side defeats the opponent's mother tree. Trees take damage when their trunks are hit and their branches act as a shield absorbing damage but will break off if hit hard enough. We're still tweaking the design so it might change. Below is a screenshot of an earlier build which is still missing a lot of core gameplay.
Early development screenshot
We came up with this idea by thinking about the essential experience we wanted the player to have. Jesse Schell, in his excellent book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses describes the essential experience to be something every designer should focus on because games like architecture are all about the experience. The experience we decided to go with is the fun of launching a slingshot. This particular experience was proposed by me thinking back how I would create catapults out of Lego to launch blocks across the room.
The experience can be broken down into three components or phases. Setting up the shot by pulling back to adjust angle and power. The projectile flying through the air creates anticipation. When the projectile lands it interacts physically with whatever it hits. We were able to confirm with playtests that these phases not only exist but they are incredibly fun if done right.
The stages of the essential experience
We looked at what kind of catapult to use and decided on a slingshot because it has more degrees of control than a trebuchet. Then we looked into the properties of rubber bands to see if any of that could be translated to gameplay. Heat makes the rubber band contract; if you stretch it, it creates heat. It's used to launch air crafts and also as a motor for toy planes and boats. Our final idea didn't incorporate these points but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Gastown building design project
The last three weeks my team for IAT 233 Spatial Design worked on creating a contemporary building in Gastown with a showroom for Vitra and an office space for Area/Code. We started by creating folding architecture and with the idea of bringing a game to the street like Area/Code does. It eventually involved to include the idea of visual surprise, which is similar to Steven Holl's concept of parallax, and finally integrating the Net 'n' Nest concept of the office by Vitra. Below are some renders of the building using Cinema 4D. Not quite finished but not bad considering we only had a few days to work on the design and model.
I'm an independent game developer located in British Columbia, Canada.