All TOJam 3 games posted!
All 34 games of goodness…
One of my favourites is Office Smash:
Save a tree! Go play a game now!
Add comment June 30th, 2008
Archive for June, 2008
It’s taken a loooong time
But now the first robot has been properly rigged and joined together in game. Unlike most 3D characters, the robots in The Supers are merely a collection 12-15 parts that are stitched together using dynamic parenting.
The second robot, after much haggling, is almost through the rigging process. The time frame estimates per robot have been blown due to the unusual nature of rigging.
The hero is essentially ready for animation.
Oh yeah, Telefilm Canada is now an official financial participant on The Supers!
Add comment June 27th, 2008
Waterfall vs. SCRUMM vs. Who cares, git er done!
My first two robots in The Supers went from concept/design to hi-polygon modeling (waterfall method) which is a complete mistake because any future changes requires a massive re-working. I suspect AAA games have this problem. Once something has been decided and implemented, changes are hard + problematic + expensive.
So I’ve decided to use a more iterative approach since my deadlines are not as firm as others. I plan to rough model each robot, add a rig, insert it into the game and test out the gameplay before going into hi-polygon modeling. This is more of the “prototype first then implement” methodology and I suspect it will provide a better end result, but cause the project to take longer than expected.
An expensive game with a large team probably would bleed money and get canceled if it tried this method but that is the beauty of indie games – experiment, refine, experiment, refine!
Add comment June 8th, 2008
TOJam Arcade – Sweet-as!
100+ people showed up Friday night to attend the “screening” of the games made at TOJam 3 – all of thanks to the hard work of Jim, Em, and Rob.
It was a lot of fun to see games projected onto giant screens and have people play (or fail to play) them instead of hiding our works in some obscure directory on a hard drive never to be seen again.
Photos of the third jam can be found here/ Pictures of the Arcade night should be up very shortly.
Add comment June 8th, 2008
Lack of workflow management systems for games.
It’s amazing, two years ago I looked for a public implementation of workflow management system for small media projects (like games) and now I still haven’t found an easy/cheap one.
I’m not talking about version control system like Perforce or Alienbrain. I’m talking about Flickr-like access to concept art, web-based access to changes + comments (think blog/Drupal), easy file upload and download (the version control part) and the ability to set and track the status of an asset (think approval levels). The justification behind all this overhead is the ability to share assets with offsite artists without resorting to FTP and E-mails. With FTP and e-mails there is version explosion and a lack of metadata (comments, history, requested changes, approval level, etc.) connected to it
The animation + visual effects business has Tactic but it’s not open and tailored towards those industries.
2 comments June 8th, 2008
Havok now for “free”
As promised, Havok is now free for PC developers who charge less than $10 per game(with certain exceptions).
Add comment June 2nd, 2008
Procedural cities – Procedural humans!
Quidam is a neat character creation tool that allows you to construct low-poly humans using an assortment of heads, body shapes, outfits, etc.
This is a great tool for creating low-poly city populations.
Add comment June 2nd, 2008