Updates after a pause that was far too long

It has been too long without any update, my life is still kinda the same. I am working on my projects and some of them proceed others fall victim to unfortunate time management. 

As for projects, my game projects have changed a bit. 

I will continue working on Zombie Sleepover at later date, a friend of mine (another game designer from the Games Academy who helped me with a three month internship at a local game company) is going over the design and is making a proper design document for a fun first person shooter.

Dork Tales is on hiatus at the moment and I might get back to it as soon as I get someone to help me out with assets like 3D models and audio files (music and voice overs). The ideas I have for the game I cannot realise as of now, meaning without money to pay for the help I need.

I started a new project to work with Unreal Engine 4. It is an idea I was toying with for some time and it is based upon Phaeton, the scifi world some friends and I have been working on for some time. It is based on Blueprints at the moment but I will change that for later iterations and convert them to C++, at least the most crucial systems.

Oh, I mentioned an internship earlier. I was having no luck getting a job in the industry with traditional methods but got an offer for an internship after posting in an private user group. I tweaked my CV and over those connections I got an internship at a local game company working with Unity. The project is off yet unannounced, so I am not able to talk about it. Working in a real company sure was a learning experience that changed my expectations a bit. I learned the importance of good structure in code and project alike and that communication should never be neglected.

On other fronts, I picked up writing again and might even start up another blog or something similar just for that. That will include the translations of almost all my stories into English as they are almost all in German. I also came up with a new idea for a story that I might publish along with the other older stuff.

I haven't really played any games for some time now apart from Creativerse but as much as I like the game, it is just a time waster, something you can play on the side while watching tv series or movies. Speaking of games, Fallout Shelter released on Android and I wasted some time and money in it so far. I would not really call it a game in the classic sense, it is just a clicker that tries to push some buttons like caring for your dwellers and leveling up as many of them to get better gear from the wasteland to have better chances of survival. It is a recurring cycle repeating over and over again without any real involvement and chance of influencing it.

Memories and other Stuff

Was talking to a friend and we reminisced about stuff we each did when we were younger. I was reminded that I had a lot of different story starts and one or two short stories that I have to translate at some point.

When I was in my late teens, I wrote a lot. Stories, Ideas and world descriptions for pen and paper roleplaying are stuffed in a folder on one of my shelves and catch dust. All of those are written in German and I want to translate some or all of it. There are two or three stories with quite a few pages (20 to 40) and one or two short stories that could be translated and published as is. One of the bigger stories I recently started to translate and already have five chapters finished. It is in a rough state and has no formatting or proofreading done. Parts of it might still be in German on a few pages and in the appendix. Here is a link to it on my google drive.

The translation is as slow as all my other projects even though I found a nice article about finishing writing novels with only a few words per day (how to push past the bullshit and write that goddamn novel a very simple no fuckery writing plan to get shit done). I just need to get my shit together and plan out my day better.

On the job front, I got a chance for a nice C# programming gig here in my city (yay, no moving) but it involves a test that will be send out next week and there are other candidates. I do not know my chances there as I am a bit rusty due to my long time being unemployed and only having done a bit of coding during that time. I have done different projects in Unity ranging from simple movement scripts up to plugins for the editor (parts of my adventure toolkit that I worked on), so I think that I at least know a bit about writing code for Unity. I will not make more predictions in that regard as I do not know what the test will be and I also do not know enough about the company to anticipate the scope of their projects apart from focusing on mobile games made with Unity.

As for what I do with my time, well the usual, gaming and watching american tv shows. The games I played recently were Creativerse and a game called "Timber and Stone" which is a bit like Dwarf Fortress mixed with Minecraft. Randomly generated blocky terrain and buildings as well as characters build out of small cubes. In a recent update they added slopes to the terrain and more detailed textures, it looked better for it.

Creativerse is switching to Unity 5 atm and they are reworking the movement system, so it is a bit different now but if that is good or bad, I cannot say yet.

I have not worked on Dork Tales as much as I wanted and Zombie Sleepover is officially on hiatus by now and could maybe call it canceled as well ;P

Indie Development: Self Made vs. Store Bought vs. Originality + a few updates on projects

In Zombie Sleepover, we recently hit a major road block, all our assets are store bought and we do not have an artist to change the textures or models but as the bought assets are nice and popular, a lot of developers are using them. It is fine for small things but if the sample levels from the content creators are used in games unaltered, they go a bit too far.

There is a huge package for medieval caves, dungeons and castles on the asset store and we found at least three games on steam and on other platforms with the same assets, even with whole level segments copied from the samples provided. I do not own the games, so I do not know if the content creators are credited enough and I do not know what the right way to credit store bought assets is frankly, shall I list all the packages I bought or not? Do I do that only if I do no alterations on the assets?

Store bought assets are fine for prototyping and if you are able to change them to make them fit your game better but using them unaltered in the end project seems kinda cheap but we were thinking of doing the same thing just because we do not have the artistic skills required to make out own 3d art or the textures like in those packages. As that stands, do we have a problem and need to hire an artist or is it ok to use those assets and make the game we want with generic assets but with our game play and level ideas? Will our game be less original as a result? Is it possible for a programmer and a sound designer to make a game on their own without going the "artistic minimalist route" or do crappy pixel art (not that all pixel art is bad, there are some really good pixel artists out there)?

Due to negative feedback on Zombie Sleepover and the amount of games with the same assets, we are changing the concept for the game to be something different (more on that later, as soon as we are done with the redesign). That will result in a change in our projected timeline, meaning the game has to redesigned a lot and we do not know how long that will take.

In the meantime, I am working on a few things in Dork Tales and hopefully get back to streaming on a more regular basis and keep it up this time (hopefully)

Still Alive and Kicking (or Shooting Zombies!)

Well, it has been a while (three month or so) but I have been trying to get my life back on track and Dork Tales is still on hiatus and the procedural terrain minecraft thingy is as well. Since Windborne basically stopped production I moved on to another game for my free time and it is another sandbox building game (who would have guessed, lol, like those too much) called Creativerse. Creativerse is a bit more like minecraft visually but not mechanically and I have about 400 hours sunk there since the end of August...

All that doesn't sound very productive and more like wasting time but it is not really because through the community of those two games I met someone who also wants to start out in game design and he has skills that I do not have and that are needed for indie development like an art and marketing background. We were playing a lot of coop and streamed that on his channel and we joked about starting our own company to make games. One day, he contacted me and introduced me to an old colleague of his who was willing to fund our first steps...

As we all played Skyrim and sandbox games, we want to make our our own mix of the two at some point but to start out with that would be a guaranteed failure! We have to start simpler and a lot smaller, so Loki, my coop buddy, came up with the idea to make a zombie fps. I am not a big fan of zombies in any kind of media but he convinced me and we started out working on a few level concepts and I started to write a simple shooter controller in Unity. With some assets bought from the store, we will be able to get a few levels set up in a short time and shoot some zombies. (Really like the asset store for Unity!)

Those are the little buggers!

They are cartoony and cute but can be quite deadly in masses as well:

The game is about shooting them and collecting coins to upgrade your weapons to shoot more of them... more or less ;P

The first part is nearly finished for testing, have to do the menu works next and do the weapon upgrades later. The plan is to have a working prototype (or vertical slice) up and running to test out between us and a few selected testers and with the feedback improve the game and then go on to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight to get more eyes on it and a bit more funding to compensate us for the work done so far and finance the rest of development.

Development shot: Unity 4.6 with new UI system and a glimpse into one of the levels. 

How many level we want to have is not 100% clear yet but we are confident to produce quality levels in a short time frame to add a variety of different setups without going the procedural generated route .This approach gives us more control over the look and feels of every aspect of every level to include Easter eggs and different ways to finish a levels.

The types of levels we have planned at the moment are mazes, wave setups and boss arenas. There will be no open world and no crafting apart from upgrading weapons via coins. Coins can only be obtained in-game by killing zombies or collecting them in rooms, no option to buy them for real money in a store or stuff like that.

The game will be single player for Windows PC with the option to port it over to Mac and Linux. Multiplayer is not planned but could be an expansion later on with maps specifically designed for that. We aim for Steam as a platfom to get a lot of people to be able to see the game but will also publish it elsewhere like Desura or DRM free on Humble or GOG (long term goals, lol)

Dork Tales - Redesign in Progress

After a long hiatus, I started to redesign the existing levels of Dork Tales and get a better idea of the project's scope. Most levels have to be redone because the scale in the prototype was off. The reason for the scale differences were models from different sources and not enough focus on consistency.

The flow of the levels is not changed but there are a few more sketches for their layout that I brought over from my tablet and paper sources.

I did some blockouts for the start room and now I have to do some wall modelling and build up a few modular pieces that I can use in different parts of the world. The main look is sandstone that was smoothed out and has inlays and door frames carved into it. There should be no seams between wall pieces that have to be covered up by columns. All wall pieces are one sided so the the camera has no problem looking through them. For columns and other large objects that could block the player's view of his character, I might have to write a shader that makes them temporarily transparent.

The cat fish is being resized, rigged and optimized by my little brother who did some work modding Skyrim. He will also build me a base mesh for humanoid characters that can be used for character generation ingame and for most npcs though a plugin for Unity.

The UI is still based off Unity's old scripted GUI system and will be updated as soon as the new visual system is released.

Plans are that I will try to finish the redesign of the first two levels around next weekend (around the 8th) and after that move on to the next levels that are designed yet (as shown above).

Rare Signs of Life and Forays into Live Broadcasting

I am still alive and working on two little projects of my own. One of them is Dork Tales which is on hiatus at the moment because I prioritized another project.

The mysterious other project is a mix between Minecraft and a gathering focused real time strategy game. The terrain is procedural generated and at the moment still Minecraft blocky looking but I will try to understand the marching cube algorithm and use it for better terrain in the future. The rts part is not battle oriented but more focused on gathering resources and building bases. The whole concept is a bit rough at the moment but I will write up a game design document at a later stage and will work through that.

On another note, I am playing a lot of Windborne lately. Windborne is a "social sandbox game" by Hidden Path Entertainment, a Seattle based developer, where the player can manipulate the terrain and build whatever he or she likes. Another aspect is the interaction with npcs in the game but since it is still in active development and I am playing an alpha version of the game, the only interaction so far is exchanging crafted items for more crafting recipes. I like the game because it is like a better looking Minecraft without the survival aspects like hunger and monsters but with the exploration and gathering of resources needed for building. The developer are quite active in communicating with the community and taking suggestions on upcoming features. They even have a regular live stream where they show the game and sometimes play with the community.

The exposure to media like Youtube and Twitch has pushed me buy a new microphone (because the one I had was not working right) and I started streaming some game play of Windborne of my own on Twitch.tv/Apolyon6k. It is quite an interesting feeling talking to yourself on a mic in order to get your thoughts "on the air". Kinda like writing a blog for myself (;P) but with a chance of communication with an international audience with more exposure.

Hearing my recorded voice is really strange because I sound so different from my "inner voice", the voice I hear when speaking.

I am thinking about making more videos of games I have on my Steam library but never played before. Another thought I had was making a game development tutorial for YouTube, where I go over many aspects of the development process and maybe even make a full game from concept to gold status.

New Year, Indie Life and Unemployment

Wow, 2014 already...

The time flies by so fast.

Happy new year to everybody who might read this ;)

My work on "Dork Tales" is on kind of a hiatus at the moment because I am not good at motivating myself to work without clear goals and "pressure", meaning people depending on me or other factors that motivates me form the outside. I tried to find ways to keep me motivated but working at home with too many distractions (like YouTube and my Steam backlog) prevented me from really working much on the game at all. The indie life seems not really made for me after all. I have no problem working with other people in teams but apparently not on my own...

After getting my certificate in Game Programming in November, I'm still looking for a job in the games industry and live on unemployment money for the time being.

QTEs, Story and Dialogue Disconnect

Quick time events (QTEs) are sequences in games where the player has to click a button at a specific time to initiate an action. They started surfacing some years ago and there was an outcry against them and developers seemingly stopped using them for a time in PC games.

Then there was a developer which had the good idea to resurrect the point and click adventure genre on the global market, TellTale. They remade Sam and Max, made some (passable) Monkey Island games and a Back to the Future game series but then they made a terrible QTE ridden Jurassic Park game. The later was a huge flop but then they brought us The Walking Dead...

The Walking Dead is a really good story driven game where the player is glued to the screen because it the story is fantastic and you really feel part of it. But! The flip side to that is players the do not like frantic game play are somewhat pushed away because of timers in dialogues and QTEs. There is a part in the second episode that stopped me from playing because of a QTE that I could not complete...

They just brought out a new series called The Wolf Among Us. They used the same engine like in The Walking Dead which so far worked out OK. There is only one episode out by now.

There is a scene in The Wolf Among Us that made me furious and that reminded me of some gripes I had with Mass Effect and that is something I call "Dialogue Disconnect". What I mean by that is a short answer in a dialogue that can be interpreted in different ways and does not match the voice over at all. In Mass Effect there was time to read the short answers, choose one that might be what you want to say and then the voice over says something completely different. In The Wolf Among Us there are longer lines but shorter time to read because of timed dialogues. I had to replay a scene several times because dialogue options have story consequences and if you picked the wrong answer the later game might be changed in a way you not intended.

I understand the move by TellTale to appeal to a broader audience but I really do not like QTEs and I kind of hate the timed dialogues. I really loved the Sam and Max games and liked both the Monkey Island and Back to the Future episodes but I have a problem with the new engine because I am either to slow for it or am not playing with a controller. It is kind of sad that TellTale which I saw as a shining star on the adventure game world. Fortunately there are still developers that make more classic point and click adventure games.

Student Project V: Adventure Toolkit - Sample Game "finished"

The sample game for my adventure toolkit is finished to the point that was set with my tutor. There are two levels and some "loading scenes" around them. It is a classic point and click adventure game with five actions (walk, talk, pick up, use and look at), seven items that can be picked up and three more items that can be gained by combining items. It is called "Dork Tales".

I ended up modeling three different characters, the cat fish mentioned earlier, a frog in a fisherman's coat and hat as well as the main character, a normal human that looks a bit too much like me...

Frog with umbrella (front)

Frog with umbrella (side)

Frog with umbrella (perspective)

Cat Fish with textures (front)

Cat Fish with textures (perspective)

Cat Fish with Textures (side)

Main Char (front)

Main Char (perspective)

Main Char (side)

All models are still somewhat low poly and have simple textures but that is sufficient for the sample game.

Here are some ingame screen shots:

finished level in Editor (without any ui and old shader for the crystals)

That is the latest version (ingame screen shot with ui)

The resolution is 16 to 9 because the camera pans in the first level and in widescreen it was easier to navigate.

The game is not finished at all, it is just the introduction to a bigger game I will try to continue in my free time but inside the scope of the student project it is finished and will be graded as part of the whole project. The play time so far is about five to ten minutes depending on reading speed and puzzle solving skills. The puzzles are quite simple item combinations with some word play involved like binding two ribbons to a bow (tie) and combining that with an arrow sign results in bow and arrow...

I had more word play planned for the game but realized that most of it would involve an extended understanding of the english language which was not present with most of my testers, so I will add more later on and try to integrate other kinds of puzzle elements to balance the word play. The main character is a pen-and-paper role playing gamer but that is something that is not that dominant by now. I will also have to change that because it is his story and apart from a dice bag and some comment on interacting with it and the environment there is no mention of rpg at all, no cliches or no innuendo at all...

Student Project V: Adventure Toolkit - Progress on Sample Game

As the project processes, I have to work in different disciplines and one of them is 3D modelling in 3D Studio Max. I wanted to use freelancers for these parts but could not find people who had the time to help me out, so I have to do the character models on my own.

One of the models I work on is an obstacle in the early game which is a mix between a lion fish and a cat with the head more cat like. It lives in an underground pond and threatens to eat everything that comes near.

There is still a lot of work to be done on it, like the unwrap, the texturing and eventually the rigging (which I might skip for a time) but I am happy with it so far...

Have some renders:

As for the rest of the game, the mechanics are all finished if not polished and the first room is nearly complete, there are some environment models missing that a friend is still working on and when I get them, I will post some screen-shots of the level.