Awhile back I had asked some of you to take time out from your day and vote on some game concepts I Proposed. The majority of you chose Pandora’s Adventure which is great becasue, secretly, it was my favorite of the lot as well.

So I can say I have begun concepting and preproduction and with the help of some talented friends this thing may see the light of day. That’s where you come in. Now and then, here in this space, I will be polling you all; letting you have some stake in the direction the game goes.

Here is the latest image I am able to share (click to enlarge?):

Let me know which design you like best. Pandora is a girl adventurer who lives alone on an island teaming with critters in the Mediterranean.

Well, aside from more texture love, and building the stairs and turrets, I am nearly done with parts that will make up this building.

Curtains are white and interior is black so I can control their color and content via Texture and Vector Parameter instances.

It’s 2am. More work on this tomorrow. Hopefully I will get it all into UDK then.

So. I have watched ALL the videos are are on UDK (Unreal Development Kit). I need to work on some Kismet and Cascade soon too. I -do- love playing with particles. In the meantime I am trying to get all my City assets into editor.

I threw in a few props, made my own Skydome and texture and added a terrain. I think it all looks good, but this is just my first, test, scene. The final product will have -much- more direction. Being able to run around in your own world is pretty great. Lets you see how you could expand it.

The folder for this project has been called WoD for years. Ever since hearing White Wolf was cooking a World of Darkness MMO. I really would love to move to Georgia and work on that. So, I need to make this more WOD like. Fog, tentacles, blood spatters and crack needles. Maybe I should work on some modular assets for a Gothic cathedral. One that has been condemned by the city and is going to be demolished.

Enough rambling below are some shots of my test level. I am constantly adding new props.

The only one that can decide if I fail or not is myself.

I have had this idea for some time. That, coupled with the fact that I desperately need to polish my abilities as well as add more bulk to my portfolio so I can start applying for jobs; has led me to finally resort to this method.

To show off my environmental art abilities I am going to build, what I am calling, “Playsets”. These each have about 6 props or set pieces that fit a theme and genre. From there I will define a style and set about using Max, Mudbox, and Photoshop to make these a reality.

Starting out I did some -quick- thumbnails of how these might come out. Once I settle on a “set” then I will redraw the parts in more detail before getting down to business. I am looking for some feedback, and while these drawings are hurried and crude, am eager to see which one -you- think I should tackle first.

I can do each prop from concept to model to texture in about a day so I hope that knocking these out won’t take longer than January and I can then feel confident enough about applying for jobs some the end of the month.

If you want to see the original “Crystal Altar” I did some years ago you can click HERE.

I’ll keep the poll open till sometime Monday Afternoon. I look forward to the results.

[poll id="4"]

I had reserved this “Work In Progress” section for art and whatnot. Well I guess this falls into the whatnot portion of all that. I don’t use this for personal blogging, but this topic is professional enough I think it can fit here.

I am, now, more serious than I have ever been about writing an RPG setting. Some of you may remember back when I took 5 months to create a 400 page StarWars conversion for Rifts. Those days were wild, and I can’t sell it, but hey: it was a thing I did.

Dream City is going to be a cyberpunk game set on Venus about the characters coming together and helping each other; they are all about to get the shaft for various reasons, and -might- be able to belay that fate.

So, here’s the big deal: I don’t want to do a campaign. Not only to hone my writing and game-crafting skills, but I am more interested in episodes and one-shots. Things you would find at a convention where you can sit down take four hours and play an adventure with strangers.

That means 30min for setup, 3 hours of game, and 30min for resolution/feedback. I want to explore the One-Shot method because of the scientist in me. I can run this story with multiple groups, multiple times, and the one control I have in the experiment is the Scenario I need to write.

So far friends and the welcoming strangers on the RPG.net IRC Chat “MagicStar” have been supportive. For my own reference, and partially for theirs, I am posting these links here. Some I have read and found helpful, others I haven’t had a chance to read, but bookmarked for posterity.

Gar Hanrahan Essays
How to write con scenarios the Gar Hanrahan way: Part 1
Part 2: Characters
Part 3: the Opening Scene
Part 4: Core scenes
Part 5: The Finale

Misc One Shot Essays
The one-shot session success formula
Roleplaying: Designing Good Roleplaying Adventures
One Shots: First Steps
One Shots: Plot
Fast Adventure Writing Structure

General Game Design
What are “The Big Three” ?
What are the ‘Power 19′ ? pt 1
A Trick
Going Easy on Them

As an open letter to myself (you know I have a bad memory) I hope I find these useful later. I hope you do to, in time, dear reader.

-ABC

I have been watching as others develop games. Part of this is curiosity while the other is envy. There is no set method, and some are more successful than others. My new mantra is, “Think Small”; because, inevitably, these projects tend to bloat as you dream up cool new features and ideas.

So, my new method is reaching out to people who -play- games. In this exercise, I need you to imagine you are spending your -own- money; $5 to twenty bucks. Given the descriptions below. Which game do you think you would be willing to drop a cursory, small, amount on; under the promise of knowing you are investing in the title and that it will only get better/ receive more features?

Space Trouble©

Jack Urnbot and Billy Wang pilot ‘The Ribeye Extreme‘ make a living as Haulers, taking supplies to the outer reaches of the galaxy. It’s just another rotation on the job, when all of a sudden they are beamed aboard a massive alien vessel. Jack and Billy aren’t anyone’s hostage! As they plan their escape through many decks of explosions and robot intestines, they learn that the Evil Dr. Worcestershire has plans for his “guests”. Think Alien Apogee meets Metal Slug, meets blowing crap up!

The Tale of Vomisimo©

Vomisimo is a Zombie. A Fat Zombie. He “doesn’t-a want-a be-a zombie no more-o”. As a fat, Italian, zombie, he gnaws, burps and farts his way through crowds in hopes of finding a cure or to devour the progenitor who made him this way. Infect your enemies, eat faces, and puke your way to stardom in ‘The Tale of Vomisimio’.

School for the Dead©

Karl Kadaver is ready for his first day of class. During his lessons all Hades breaks loose, this is the opportunity he needs to impress Suzie Stiff. Armed with the Reaper’s arsenal, he must close the rifts to the land of the dead, and put down abominable things of nightmare, all while guiding lost souls back to their resting place. Think, Packman, meets Bomberman, meets A Link to the Past.

Hench©

You’ve gone on to bigger things: you’ve turned evil. It’s up to you entice the local talent into working for you as you go about building your empire, and face some of the “challenges” that an Arch Villain might. As you struggle to gain fame, and foil Authority, you also must prove to be a bigger evil-doer than your rivals. That’s right, your friends have gone evil to in this Facebook game. Now you can be evil while you -should- be working.

Pandora’s Adventures©

You know the story, or at least you think you do. Pandora unleashes all the evil in the world. Not content to cry in her goat’s milk like some girls she sets about righting her mistake. Determined to find the evils and stuff them back in the box, she fights through a maze of challenges to cleans creation. 8 ancient horrors must be recaptures and with each one her box transforms allowing her to access hidden dangers and adventure. Think Metroid, meets Megaman, meets, The Adams Family, all set in greek fables.

My question to you is which of these ideas do you want to see expanded upon, and which would you be willing to drop some coin on? Again think $20 max. That’s like 15 min of Ninja Turtles at the bowling alley, or two trips to Wendy’s. Tell your friends about this page, as the more feedback we get the better. In time we will setup a Facebook page in support of the leading game. This poll will be open for a week.

[poll id="3"]

So recently it has come to light that my old way of showing things off in Orthographic/Isometric (SimCity looking) mode is not good.

This led me to put down specific cameras that I will use in the future to do beauty renders as the scene starts to come together more. Cameras mean Perspective; yeah there are other ways to get it, but this means I can call on these shots later.

You may remember -this- image:

This paint-over, minus the parking-lot that is now a park, is my rubric for where I am going to take the scene, after that I will make minimal additions.

Here is where I am at so far.

I numbered them for reference. Let me say this. I -do- hate the texture I have for the sidewalk. I have changed it often, and have yet to settle on something.

2: I may desaturate the mailbox, slightly. Also the black box will be a window on the back of ‘Uncle Chow’s’. I need to add the/a mural back to the Hotel.

3: The soda machines turned out great, and match the paint-over well. Now I need to go in and texture the doors and windows, the proxy objects for them are missing from these renders. The Projects/Apartment needs a Front Door/Front Windows as well.

4: This building, the Office, has it’s proxy windows and doors hidden, it needs an awning over the main door. The patio/bar-and-grill on the roof, needs much more attention. It will have Tables-for-four, and dining chairs. The Green awnings for the Hotel are built, but need to be unwrapped and textured.

5: The park benches are done, need to be textured, I also need to learn how to do trees. Keeping the idea, and textures, I may change the fountain to have columns that are taller/thinner.

6: The alleys need to be junkafied. Trashcans, trashbags, cardboard boxes, grease barrels. Decals to crap it up.

8: The office will get a back door. As well as other props such as vents and pipes and whatnot.

This model texture took me longer than the last, but that is because I was having fun in Illustrator coming up with logos for the different flavors of Xtreme Sodas.

Here is this other vending machine:

A closer look at the logos:

And a side by side look of both machine where they will rest in the scene.

In a sort of compartmented way, I am going to be finishing the windows and doors on Uncle Chow’s; that way, aside for adding some decals to dirty the place up a bit, I will be done with that building and it’s immediate props.

Here is the latest model and texture to come out of this project. This AC Unit is larger than the last, about four times larger (wish I had a character to help you see it in context).

In my references the one thing I have seen a ton of are various sized AC units. When I am done, I will have produced 2 more; a larger Vertical one, and a small window sized unit.

Also spent some time last night reorganizing all my materials. Like my file structure, I now have just 2 main materials. Environment and Props. Might do an extra for Decals later. These are Multi-Sub Materials.

More to come…

Today has been about blocking out and working on the Buildings; making them as close to the paint-over (seen here) as possible.

In addition to all that, though I don’t have any pictures of the new buildings I want to show up just yet, I have made many changes to the 1st, main, building. I have been working to bring it more in line with as close as I like to with Vig’s animated paint-over (seen here). While I won’t be making all those changes, I will be adding the awnings. Inspired, you can see them in -my- paint-over (linked above).

Without further ado; here is today’s progress:

Here is how it looked at one time: