Brainstorming!

     First of all I would like to thank Dimenser for his input on my last blog post. I have to agree with his comment completely. I know, I for one, get very bored with games that are too dark or too drab. The game can look super realistic, however if it's not colorful and attractive it just doesn't hold my attention. "Oh, something shiny!" So, I'd like to design my game with a cartoon feel. Not the extreme that was Borderlands, though I do absolutely love that game. More like the cartoon style of "World of Warcraft" or "Rift". Not that I'm going to copy these games. I just really enjoyed their art styles and I would like to bring that into my game.
     I think that, instead of picking a specific "style" to the game, I would like to blend a couple that I mentioned together. I feel that steam punk and Victorian are close enough anyways that it will be OK to go ahead and mesh the two. As far as game play goes, I was thinking first person styling. Similar to the Elder Scrolls series of games. Except, no where near as big of a world! OK, maybe eventually... expansions would be fun to do as I progress in my game design knowledge.

     Here is a sample of what I'm thinking for the houses in the game. This is not original content (obviously), it was pulled from Google Images as a sample for my house design.

     Here is a sample of what I had in mind for the clothing. I really like the look and feel this will add to the game.

   
     I cannot wait to get started on this project. What are your thoughts? If you have any ideas that you think would add to the experience I'm trying to create, please feel free to add them below!

Fun with a test game.

    Finished my first model, it looks about as good as can be expected from a novice designer. However, I was quite impressed with how the hands turned out. I wasn't sure how they would work out. While modeling the hands they were very block-y. I added a subdivision surface modifier and then added smooth shading. You can see the characters chest has a bit of a dent, still working on trying to fix that.

Close up of the hands.

     I started looking into making start menu screens. It is my first time using the camera to build around. The process is not like regular modeling where you just sculpt it and then worry about the lighting and camera positioning. When creating screens (title, pause, game over) everything needs to be lit and built around how the camera will see it. Here's my first try at it:

Not a real game, just trying out start menus.

     Today I learned of a program called Tree[D]. It is really amazing! I watched a few YouTube video tutorials on it. Tree[D] is used to create realistic looking trees for 3d modeling. You build the tree in the program and then export it as a .obj file. You have to do some tweaking once the tree is placed into Blender. All the leaves are turned into planes, however, with a few clicks you can turn those back into leaves using the textures provided by Tree[D]. I'll play around with that some time and figure out how to do it.

    My project for the next few days will be trying to model a house for my very first game asset. I'm torn between Victorian style and steam punk... I think both would be great fun. Comments, help me decide which would be best!

     -Eric

Starting my journey.

     This is going to serve as a journal of sorts as I progress through the world of game design. I have no prior knowledge of the field and will be attempting to learn it all throughout the process. Wish me luck! Ha! For starters I decided to gather the software I would be needing to get started. I'm going with open source because, fuck paying for software! I don't recommend stealing software, there are some very wonderful open source programs available to the public. For starters, how about a 3D modeling program complete with it's very own game engine? Blender! It is amazing! There is so much information out there on Blender. YouTube has some amazing tutorials and videos of people modeling damn near anything. These two sites have helped me out greatly: Blender Guru & CGCookie. The Blender foundation website has some great links to other tutorials as well. Now, those wonderful 3D models will be needing some textures and colors. Look no further... G.I.M.P.. Your one stop shop for all things graphical! It is basically Photoshop, without the massive price. As far as music and sound effects go, I'm looking into that but it seems that Audacity is the way to go.
   Currently, I am practicing with Blender. I found a few "orthos" images to mess with. "Orthos" images are just images with multi-views, i.e. side view and front view. I'm going to be spending most of my free time working with Blender and Gimp to learn both programs. I've got a pretty good handle on Gimp currently, though I am by no means an expert!

My first real attempt at modeling, you know... after figuring out how to navigate Blender

     I'll keep working on this some more and show you my final render eventually! Also, I'll be using this blog to post my game ideas as well as some concepts from my artists and story writers. I've got some friends looking to contribute to this project later on down the line, lucky me! Oh, I might also post some bullshit rants and raves from time to time.

     -Eric