End of The Year, And What Have I Done?

A page of sketches that I did for kitchen props.

So this is the last day of the year, and I find myself looking at what I accomplished in two months on my project. Honestly I wish I could have accomplished more, but I also am aware that this is my very first project on my own, and it is going to take longer than I think in all aspects. I kept up the effort, and that's what matters to me right now.

MOVING FORWARD...

This project remains a part-time endeavor for me. I am working 30-40 hours a week for Starbucks, and I've been kind of loosy-goosey about the amount of time I spend on the game. This should change. It is time that I take the advice that is so often given to me and create a weekly schedule that I can stick to.

This should be my New Years Resolution. I am going to make a weekly schedule that is doable, and stick to it.

So what have I done this month for my game?

This whole month has been consumed by art. I've done a whole pile of concepting, modeling, texturing, and writing. The biggest hurdle of this project is that I keep wanting it to be perfect on the first pass, and too much time is wasted on details when I should be focusing more on the whole project.

What's next?

In the next week, I want to spend some serious time working on scripting. There are three different types of doors that I need for this dungeon: Trigger Activated, Locked, and Explodable. In order to complete this dungeon, all three must be executed.

Also, I need to spend some time on the character, and begin research on dialog boxes. This should be fun/grueling.

Look out January, here I come!

Christmas Week, No Updates!

While I am most definitely still hard at work on my game: there is nothing really to report this week. I had done some minor art work, played with character representation, and started writing dialogue; nothing major though. I hope that everybody had a fun and great Christmas. I'll be back on Monday with some major updates!

December Week 02 - Wherefore Art Thou?

This week I spent most of my time working on art for my project. In the past I had done layout drawings and sketches of what I wanted the environments to look like. Well, now was the time to start modelling out what I had drawn. The real struggle was keeping myself from sticking to one thing for too long. I have the bulk of my environment blocked in now, and next up it more refined modelling and texturework.

Instead of my checklist this week, I think I'll just post some renders I did today of the individual rooms. Please note that the lighting is all placeholder and the environments are all still very heavily under construction.

This is the very first room in the Demo. The feeling I'm going for is that of an abandoned subway platform.

This is the main room that connects all of the others. Please note that the dragon is ripped from the internet and is that completely as a placeholder.

This room is going to be a kitchen/pantry type of room.

This is going to be a bedroom. There's going to be a lot more construction done in this room.

This is a room with three teleporter pads. I wonder what happens if you step into the green one?

This game takes place in a world just like ours. Except magic was very much once a real thing. The bulk of mankind has forgotten about magic, but there are still magic places hidden around the world. This is one such place. At one point this was some sort of temple used to worship a long forgotten god, but now it is the humble home of an eccentric hermit. I will tell you more about him in the near future.

Until next time...

Game Project December - Week 01 (I Need Better Titles For These)

The first week of December has come and gone. I have been allowing myself a little bit of a break, so I haven't gotten as much done on my game as I had previous weeks. But there was still quite a bit of progress. This week was all about art.

What I accomplished:
 - More diffuse!
 - More Normal Maps!
 - Finally working on Prop Modelling
 - Layout sketches for all rooms in the demo dungeon
 - Lists of props needed
 - Wrote some dialogue

What I'm doing this week:
 - More prop modelling
 - Unwrapping and first texture pass
 - Finish Art Pass 01 on full dungeon
 - import all assets into Unity

For the first week of December, I spent time actually fleshing out what I want these rooms to look like. I knew what pieces needed to be in each room, but I hadn't spent any time thinking about what the layout of these rooms would be. Now that I have done some sketch work: everything is much more smooth and I have a plan of attack for my art.

This coming week is a continued effort on my art. More modelling, and more texture work. I want to finish a complete first pass on the environment and then move on to sprite work on Week 03.

On a side note, I want to promote two other projects that have been an immense inspiration for what I've been working on. First: my friend Michael James has been working on a web comic that needs more followers. It's called Aeon Valley and the art and writing is so phenomenal; you might not believe it was all done by one guy.

The second is a game called Paper Sorcerer made by my friend Jesse Gallagher. This game came out at the beginning of this month and he's been working on it for quite some time. If you like good RPG's that only cost $5.00 and have a bitchin' soundtrack... Then you should really already own a copy of this game, because it's right up your alley. If you don't, you kind of dropped the ball on that one, but it's okay: I wont tell anyone if you go out and buy it right now.

Until next week...

November Game Project Progress Update - Week 04 (My What Big Goals You Have...)

November is at an end, and here we are. What have I go to say for myself? Well, my project is still a ways off from showing off to the public, but that is more than okay. Considering that I have never really done this scale of project on my own before and the window of time I was doing it in: I would say that I should be pretty proud of what I've accomplished.

What I accomplished:
 - Prop modelling has begun!
 - Squashed some bugs with the way my block push works
 - spent some more time with the world of my game

What I started:
 - I am beginning to flesh out the environment for my vertical slice
 - Fleshing out of one specific mentor type character
 - Sketchwork for environment dressings
 - More work on Diffuse Maps
 - Begun painting Normal Maps

What I still need to work on:
 - Normal Maps need some more time
 - Need to work on Specular Maps
 - More prop modelling
 - Finish layout of dungeon rooms

This is the first of December! Wow. I finally got to start working on props for my game. This week is all about modelling and illustrations. I want to finish designing what all of the rooms in this demo are going to look like, then get to designing and modelling all of the elements. That should take me more than just this one week, but anyone who is following this should begin to see it paying off as soon as next week.
Did I say demo? Yeah, this game has become more than just a November NaNoWriMo-type project. Development momentum is steadily increasing for me. I have a great support team, and a schedule that I am sticking to. I don't always meet my deadlines, but I'm still sticking to this.
This week I'm going to post a picture of where my first screen is at currently.

This is the very first room of the dungeon. It is very far from finished, but maybe you can see what kind of vibe I'm going for with this. See you next week.