Archive for June 8th, 2008
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!
June 8th, 2008
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.
June 8th, 2008
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.
June 8th, 2008