Long time, no post.

Hey I haven't posted in a while, but there are a few blogs out there that I've been doing and have just started up for current classes at school.

I'll keep ya'll posted.

More texture practice.

Practicing some hand painted textures.

bitgem3d had a great tutorial on simple tiling textures. Of course, this is a first attempt and it isn't tileable by any means but I wanted to practice a bit. I haven't been in photoshop much lately!

Indie thank you.

I know the development process is early for Ouroboros at Clam Stab... But aside from the financial risk of being "indie" or an entrepreneur in general... I can't imagine doing anything else.

I'm glad I've met the people in my life and I'm thankful for all the opportunities I was given due to those friends, my family and my loving supportive girlfriend.

I think credit is due where credit is due.

Just saying thanks, folks!

Ouroboros Developer Diary #1

Progress on the game!

Ouroboros grey box video

A little preview of very early game testing. Animation, assets, mechanics, coding. Lots of learning involved in this little bit. This isn't the most recent "build" of the game, but it's progress.

It's a bit more than a grey box since TECHNICALLY it isn't just grey and white and there are some assets here and there... Just aesthetic for now obviously.

I was so excited to get the backdrop in there and really get that nice parallax look!

Rock Sculpt (Ouroboros)

A quick sculpt of a rock for Ouroboros. The mix of 3D assets with 2D sprites is going to look really cool, I think!

I'm pretty sure this object will be a background asset, just something to pop in and make the terrain look... "alive."

I'll upload a video of gameplay to show these I think...

Caveman Zbrush sculpt

A little something I did for my digital character sculpting class. It was a ton of fun and I think retopologizing it may be a fun side project to get further acquainted with the process and the back and forth between Zbrush and Maya.

Lots of fun to be had here!

Artoras street view (Ouroboros)

Had a random image in my brain that I thought I should quick concept out. I'm not much of a photoshop drawing genius but I felt like a quick sketch of something other than characters would be a nice change for the blog!

Nothing mind blowing, but just some ideas for the look of Artoras, the home town of our soft spoken protagonist!

Swamp Tree (Samsara)

 

I have all these ideas for Samsara! Big swamp trees. Trees crushing old ruined temples... you know, common stuff.

 

The Hollow One.

A bit of music I composed that made me think of Ouroboros.

Consider it a bit of "concept work".

 

Doodles for class.

An assignment required me to use CreatureBox as a style, pushing me out of my comfort zone.

The overall assignment is to sketch some tribal/primitive characters in the style given, so here is a first quick sketch.

The final product will probably be way different than this guy, but he will end up being sculpted in ZBrush!

Jericho runs for his life!

In the current prototype of Ouroboros, our character is 32x32 pixels. As we get further into development, this is likely to change. But look at him go!! Unstoppable. Nothing can stop this endless run cycle... Whoa. 

Allusion? I think so.

Modeling & texturing

Creating furniture has never been more fun! It's great getting back into high poly modeling in Maya. I've been so focused on game design and ZBrush sculpting that I completely forgot how therapeutic modeling clean geometry is.

Defore high quality textures and stuff are put in. This is just colored blinns in action!

World and Lore (Ouroboros)

"No surprises for the writer, no surprises for the reader."

Last night was a breakthrough.

I never really wanted to focus much on story for Ouroboros. I wanted to keep things pretty cryptic.
After having a long meeting via Gchat and Skype with Mike, Bobby and Dillon, when describing the game and the contents of the world... Naturally, things kind of popped up.

It made sense within the world. I am so excited for people to play this. I am so excited for this project moving forward. Things have never been more exciting and intriguing.

We absolutely surprised ourselves.
And I can't wait to surprise our players.

Some more ruined structures (Samsara)

Here we have a few images of the process from beginning to end of FBX export of another structure for Samsara.

From top to bottom of the post, we go from Maya to Zbrush to xNormal to Photoshop back to Maya to finish up tangents and binormals and place diffuse and normal maps created through the use of xNormal.

To make the diffuse layer, we take the curvature blue channel and ambient occlusion and layer it over the poly paint from ZBrush in Photoshop. Once the stuff is all layered, you take the curvature and set the layer to screen while taking the ambient occlusion layer and setting it to multiply.

After doing it a few times, it becomes muscle memory.

basic and quick, placing primitives.

after a bit of sculpting and decimation, we get this.

this is the polypaint of the non decimated, high poly model.

placing the low poly model back into maya to put the textures on.

the high poly paint placed on the low poly model, with normals softened.

this will have a nice shadow cast once we get it into UDK.

HUGE (small) UPDATE! (Ouroboros)

I feel very accomplished. It is a small step for people who are code monkeys but a hurdle for myself personally.

I had been working on getting Jericho to stop and attack Castlevania style for over a month. Not consistently because I was so frustrated.

BUT NOW I HAVE IT FIGURED OUT.

Maybe I will post a playable build of the small prototype I've got going just so everyone can see what I'm talking about.

Either way... This is a big step.

TL;DR version:

We can begin "grey blocking" some early zone concepts!

Grey blocking means to build a level out of primitives and basically get the layout. Not a ton of time on art, just the basics to convey mechanics and ideas!

I am very, very excited.

Low poly archway in UDK. (Samsara)

The previous archway, decimated down from 859k tri's to 2k. Placed in UDK with tangents and binormals.

Archway (Samsara)

 Samsara is a 3D adventure game that is being worked on by students in CCS' Game Projects class. Currently my role in the project is to make various ruins and structures.

The art direction is very colorful with hand painted textures and this is a first pass for a "death" archway that the main character will find in the swamps in level two.

Samsara is being developed using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK).

I may have to start labeling my blog posts with what project the images are for. Samsara for class... Ouroboros for Clam Stab Studios.

The basic block out in Maya.

Sculpted some rough edges and polypainted in ZBrush.

Sleep deprivation.

Second day of classes in a new semester of game design goodness at CCS and CSS (clam stab studios, of course).

I thought I was tired at midnight but here I am approaching 5 am thinking level design, structure and art direction. Maybe that's a sign...

I don't know if it's a good sign or a bad sign right now.

I wanna sleep but I want this project to be as perfect as humanly possible.

Call me a nerd.

Best horror game ever.

Going to the dentist.

It's pretty clear and simple.

Maggot King

The Maggot King, concept work for a mini boss/boss in Ouroboros.

Probably the "Artoris Sewers" area.

Clam Stab Studios' first project.

Following the prototype "tutorial" level of Clam Stab Studios' first game, Ouroboros, we have picked up a coder to allow progress to be more swift.

Right now the game is in the design document stage, getting everything to everyone the easiest and most cohesive way possible.

Many hurdles are in our way, but we'll face them head on.

I have confidence in this.

Happy 2013!!

Hurray! We all survived 2012.

I think this year will be the year of Clam Stab Studios!

Here is to a year of game design, art and creative long nights!