It’s a known fact in the videogame industry that the most difficult part in a project is actually finishing it and releasing. But beginning ain’t no walk in the park!
This week was a total metaphor: we began working on the first map of our revamped videogame, Tower Revenge. And working on that little map and it’s path was as hard as planning the work and goals for the upcoming 3 months and a half.
It’s not only the amount of work and the skill challenges ahead. We also have to deal with each other. Each of us has it’s own personal approach on how the game should be, on how we should work, on the tools and methods, even our own philosphy towards the industry. And getting each other to look forward in the same direction is hard work by itself.
It was mostly debating while working. And realizing that development isn’t as sweet as it sounds when you begin to delve deeper into it’s dark caves (Ok, maybe that sounded darker than intended, but the image of the Fellowship of the Ring going through Moria came to my mind and oh well… )
So now we have all these excel sheets, shared documents over google drive, team and tasks managing apps… Oh and also this latest technology:
It looks like an app. I tried to swipe it but I cut my finger with that thing some people call “paper” or something.
Everything seems so intimidating. Your name on so many tasks you feel you’ll need an eternity to finish. But I guess that baby-steps will get us all through in one piece. Or two. It depends on how many nights we spend at the office.
I really don’t care that much because I love this office and I look cool in this pic
It’s really not a good thing.
Maybe it’s because I”m still relatively young but I feel invincible, like mental stamina isn’t a problem. However, when I’ve been sitting at my desk going at it on my laptop for +10 hours I get into this weird state in which my mind kind of slows down to an extreme, so for example I have to export a model in Maya and I just go: “Ok… export… whe…where is that button again… oh… file… yeah… wait… what was I looking for?”. And that’s when you realize that either you want it or not, your brain has a limit on how much you can squeeze it. Simple actions become slow and confusing Your attention span drops to such a critical level you take minutes to do something you did in seconds earlier that same day. It’s quite amusing actually.
So my advice is to work 8 hours tops. Anything more than that will be a waste of time. Like forcing an overheated car to keep going: you’ll just damage it and will still get you nowhere.
Also, don’t work from home. I’ve done this because I’m super excited with our videogame, but then your body and mind will crave for free time. For a couple of League of Legends matches, for a bike ride, for calling friends and drinking mojitos. But you already spent that time, so you get to go to sleep and feel frustrated.
Your time and energy area a precious resource. Use it wisely and keep plenty of time and fun things to do to recharge it.
This is how the first map is looking!
A work in progress, many things are subject to change or are missing entirely.
That’s a capture straight from Unity. And here’s a vid of it running on my tablet:
I’m super excited. To be honest, this is my first 3D videogame. I’m a 3D artist so being able to transform my art into something you not only look at, but you can interact with and step into it… woah, just amazing!
As for the style, I wanted to translate our 2D version of the game as close as I could. But of course after many tries I realized this was imposible. 3D is a completely different medium and I had to build the aesthetics from the ground up. And even knowing this still I got stuck here and there because I wanted to “save” at least some element from the 2D design. Once I let myself go from it, things started to fit into place.
The style is coming up to be similar to that of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (even though I didn’t even think of it when designing it).. It’s a “watercolor” 3D world! This allows for a high contrast world where every object is easily recognizable but it doesn’t “dumb down” the style. Also, is f*cking beautiful.
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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and it’s watercolor style
The shaders are tooned. Though it seems we’ll have to remove the outlines since Unity creates them using geometry and its adding an insane amount of tris to the final scene 🙁
Next week it’s the minions and towers’ turn to transition into the third dimension. Which BTW: newcomer approaching: David Boada just joined our team to help me out with all the 3D. He’s got experience making videogames and his boost will prove a priceless new asset for CORSEGAMES. I’m super happy that he joined. Welcome David!.
And while we’re working on the 3D, Kuma is already facing the devils of interface design all by himself ! (with my pokes on his shoulder now and then hehe).
I’d love to know what you have to say about the game’s art! I’m using my knowledge and experience but always testing against the wall of feedback from people not familiar with our project.
So I guess that’s it for this week! Someone told me I should keep these entries short so, yeah!
Now I’m disappearing into the weekend for a good deserved rest with my loving friends and family!
This is was the loving after office dinner on friday <3
See you next week
Chao!
