Note to Self: Don't Tell Peter What I'm Planning on Finishing Today.
It never works.
Califer: "Hey Peter, I'm going to get all the items rewritten and meshed with the new game-maker."
Peter: "Cool!"
Later that day...
Wife: "I need to get some stuff done, watch the baby for a few hours."
Califer: *oof, that'll make it hard to finish what I said I'd do* "Sure."
A little later...
BANG!! HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Califer: "What the crap was that!?"
Wife: "The pressure cooker just exploded!"
:O
Luckily no one was in the kitchen when it happened, but the cat did suffer from a minor nervous breakdown as she wandered the whole house peeking around corners trying to find the alien fleet that attacked us.
So then I spent another hour or so cleaning green paste from the ceiling, floor, cabinets, walls, washing the stove, and then of course washing myself.
This was a more dramatic example of why I can never get things done after I tell Peter about them, but it seems that whenever I tell Peter that I'm going to get something done SOMETHING happens that makes it impossible.
Also, everything's been breaking ever since I quit my job. First to go was my DS. Then the fridge, the doorknob, the actual door, the lawnmower, the modem, Darkened Dreams 2, the garden hose...
Peter was nice enough to lend me his DS, since I'm a DS freak and he spends most of his gaming time on Neverwinter Nights now. I gave it back to him last week because so many things were breaking that I was afraid that the DS would be next, and if I had the money to replace his DS I would just get one of my own. So the DS dodged the bullet and the pressure cooker took it instead.
Wait, Darkened Dreams 2 is broken? Yeah. Sorry about that.
I think I mentioned that the maker had some serious flaws and so I was working those things out. In the meantime the data that I have is being converted to a different type so I can reach in and get what I need instead of having to load it all at once. Since the data is changed I can't run it in the game right now, so it's effectively broken. However, after I finish getting the items and the Map maper redone I should be able to get the game working again without to much trouble.
...
Do I get bonus points for my longest post ever?
-Califer
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Game Artists (And Audio Guys)
In response to a comment in the last post, I'll add that there ARE in-house musicians at most big studios.
Audio Guys-This is a job for people good at mixing sounds. You may not need to play any instruments as long as you can put things together in the computer, but instrument talent always bolsters what you are able to produce. You don't just do music, though, you'll also be in charge of converting audio from audio libraries into different formats for use in different game engines and cutting audio into the usable/needed parts. And don't forget recording...Many games require voice and possibly other sound effects recorded with a mic. You might just work out of a small room with a little sound insulation, but that's all going to depend on where you go.
Artists- Let's break this up into parts, because there are lots of kinds...
The title "Artist" might apply to you if you, like me, work at a small operation and you pretty much do everything. Otherwise, at a bigger studio, you will get a different title.
Concept Artist-Concept artists usually are very good at using digital painting programs to make the kind of flashy stuff you all like to put on your desktop background. They need to take a few written notes from a design document about characters and environments and imagine the ultimate incredible scene as it might look in the end. They also need to expect the final product to look absolutely nothing like the awesomeness they envisioned.
UI Artist-Creates and designs the life bars, frames, menus, and buttons that go into a game's User Interface. Should be pro at Illustrator, Photoshop, and a little motion graphics like Flash or After Effects for some of the more polished, cooler stuff. Expect to redo the interface 2 or 3 times, since no matter how cool it is, by the end of the project, someone will get bored of it and decide that's because it wasn't as good as he originally thought.
Character Modeler-Must know Maya and/or 3D Studio Max typically, and have a knowledge of how to create characters that animate/blend well. You'll also want to know how to get your character to look amazing, even with a polygon count limit. For low-polygon models, that means less than 500 triangles usually. For hi-res stuff, you may get up to 2000, 5000, maybe even 7000. But you'll want to also understand mapping UV's for texturing, painting texture maps, painting specular maps, and painting normal maps. You'll be working with model exporters that are sometimes built in-house, because game engines don't use maya binary or max files directly.
Environment Modeler-Much like a character modeler, but you are expected to make environments that fit the poly-count limitations and keep everything within a certain art style for the environments. You may also have to do lots of environments very quickly.
Technical Artist-Can mean a number of things, but I think most common is for this person to be in charge of adding rigging (animation functionality) to character models. They also write scripts for 3d software that aids in production for the other artists (or themselves) to use to speed up those dull, repetitive tasks.
Animator-This is what I used to be...Usually means taking 3d modeled, rigged characters, and making them do all the actions they need to do in the game. Can also include cutscenes, but sometimes there is a whole other position for that "Cinematics Animator". I got to do a little pixel animation as well. The "funnest" part is trying to use animation exporters which turn your animation data into usable game data.
Storyboard Artist-This person visually plans out the game's cutscenes, he usually has to work from a script and he should have a great knowledge of cinematography (camera angles, types of camera movement) and he should be able to whip out cool drawings in all kind of perspective very quickly, showing lots of character emotion.
2D Animator-You don't see this much any more. I was just an animator and I did this a little bit with pixel animaton. 3D animation is much cheaper to make now, so learn the 3d stuff if you want to make games professionally. 2D is still cool though, so having this as an extra skillset will help.
Audio Guys-This is a job for people good at mixing sounds. You may not need to play any instruments as long as you can put things together in the computer, but instrument talent always bolsters what you are able to produce. You don't just do music, though, you'll also be in charge of converting audio from audio libraries into different formats for use in different game engines and cutting audio into the usable/needed parts. And don't forget recording...Many games require voice and possibly other sound effects recorded with a mic. You might just work out of a small room with a little sound insulation, but that's all going to depend on where you go.
Artists- Let's break this up into parts, because there are lots of kinds...
The title "Artist" might apply to you if you, like me, work at a small operation and you pretty much do everything. Otherwise, at a bigger studio, you will get a different title.
Concept Artist-Concept artists usually are very good at using digital painting programs to make the kind of flashy stuff you all like to put on your desktop background. They need to take a few written notes from a design document about characters and environments and imagine the ultimate incredible scene as it might look in the end. They also need to expect the final product to look absolutely nothing like the awesomeness they envisioned.
UI Artist-Creates and designs the life bars, frames, menus, and buttons that go into a game's User Interface. Should be pro at Illustrator, Photoshop, and a little motion graphics like Flash or After Effects for some of the more polished, cooler stuff. Expect to redo the interface 2 or 3 times, since no matter how cool it is, by the end of the project, someone will get bored of it and decide that's because it wasn't as good as he originally thought.
Character Modeler-Must know Maya and/or 3D Studio Max typically, and have a knowledge of how to create characters that animate/blend well. You'll also want to know how to get your character to look amazing, even with a polygon count limit. For low-polygon models, that means less than 500 triangles usually. For hi-res stuff, you may get up to 2000, 5000, maybe even 7000. But you'll want to also understand mapping UV's for texturing, painting texture maps, painting specular maps, and painting normal maps. You'll be working with model exporters that are sometimes built in-house, because game engines don't use maya binary or max files directly.
Environment Modeler-Much like a character modeler, but you are expected to make environments that fit the poly-count limitations and keep everything within a certain art style for the environments. You may also have to do lots of environments very quickly.
Technical Artist-Can mean a number of things, but I think most common is for this person to be in charge of adding rigging (animation functionality) to character models. They also write scripts for 3d software that aids in production for the other artists (or themselves) to use to speed up those dull, repetitive tasks.
Animator-This is what I used to be...Usually means taking 3d modeled, rigged characters, and making them do all the actions they need to do in the game. Can also include cutscenes, but sometimes there is a whole other position for that "Cinematics Animator". I got to do a little pixel animation as well. The "funnest" part is trying to use animation exporters which turn your animation data into usable game data.
Storyboard Artist-This person visually plans out the game's cutscenes, he usually has to work from a script and he should have a great knowledge of cinematography (camera angles, types of camera movement) and he should be able to whip out cool drawings in all kind of perspective very quickly, showing lots of character emotion.
2D Animator-You don't see this much any more. I was just an animator and I did this a little bit with pixel animaton. 3D animation is much cheaper to make now, so learn the 3d stuff if you want to make games professionally. 2D is still cool though, so having this as an extra skillset will help.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Want to work in the game industry?
I've had a few people telling me that they want to get into the game industry. Since I don't have a lot to say about DD2 right now (I was on vacation last week, studied alternative methods of storing game data the week before, and have mostly been looking for a new job this week) I thought I would go over the different positions in a game company.
Producer - These are the people that talk with the publishers and are basically the boss of a team. They make sure that everyone is working on the right thing and that everything will finish on time. Producers need good management skills and good writing and speaking skills.
Designer - Designers are the people that not only come up with ideas about games, but also the people that end up doing a lot of the grunt work on a game. For example, while making My Japanese Coach we would get a large sound file from a two hour recording session. A designer would then use a tool to cut the sound files, name them, and get me a list of sounds that had pops or clicks in the recording that needed to be redone.
Programmer - Programmers are the people that write the code that makes everything happen. For major games we usually use C/C++. Smaller games may be written in C# (such as Xbox live arcade games), Java, Flash Actionscript, and even PHP.
Artist - Artists are the guys that make all the action worth looking at. I'll let Peter go into more detail about the types of artists that work on games since he knows a lot more about it.
Tester - Yay! Play games all day long and get paid for it! Hehe, sorry. It sounds a heck of a lot better than it is. First off, the games that you are testing are not finished games up until the very end, so you'll be playing a broken game. Over and over and over again. Also, you don't get to just choose which games you'll be testing. After a few months of testing on Barbies Fabulous Pony Ride you might not be so excited ever the idea of being a game tester anymore.
Of course there are also the other jobs that will be in most companies, such as human resources and IT.
Is there a job you want to about in more detail? Any question? Leave a comment!
Producer - These are the people that talk with the publishers and are basically the boss of a team. They make sure that everyone is working on the right thing and that everything will finish on time. Producers need good management skills and good writing and speaking skills.
Designer - Designers are the people that not only come up with ideas about games, but also the people that end up doing a lot of the grunt work on a game. For example, while making My Japanese Coach we would get a large sound file from a two hour recording session. A designer would then use a tool to cut the sound files, name them, and get me a list of sounds that had pops or clicks in the recording that needed to be redone.
Programmer - Programmers are the people that write the code that makes everything happen. For major games we usually use C/C++. Smaller games may be written in C# (such as Xbox live arcade games), Java, Flash Actionscript, and even PHP.
Artist - Artists are the guys that make all the action worth looking at. I'll let Peter go into more detail about the types of artists that work on games since he knows a lot more about it.
Tester - Yay! Play games all day long and get paid for it! Hehe, sorry. It sounds a heck of a lot better than it is. First off, the games that you are testing are not finished games up until the very end, so you'll be playing a broken game. Over and over and over again. Also, you don't get to just choose which games you'll be testing. After a few months of testing on Barbies Fabulous Pony Ride you might not be so excited ever the idea of being a game tester anymore.
Of course there are also the other jobs that will be in most companies, such as human resources and IT.
Is there a job you want to about in more detail? Any question? Leave a comment!
Monday, May 4, 2009
IGDA Night
I think I've mentioned that I'm a member of the local IGDA (Independent Game Designers Association). Every three months they have a big get-together where we can display the games that we're working on. Two bloggers mention what games where there, and of course they both mentioned us! Check out Rampant Games and Monkey-Time for more information. And as Jay at Rampant Games mentions, the game did crash a few times during the night. That'll teach me to try adding new features as I'm walking out the door to demo it. >_< I did get all the bugs fixed the day after.
Also, what most people got excited about was the game maker. So I took another look at it and ... didn't like what I saw. Sure, it's nice and easy to use in many instances, but it still has a few things in it that I think will be an inconvenience later on. So... I'm re-writing it. Not really from scratch, but I won't be finished this week. I'm also looking at saving the data differently, since the current method requires me to have all the game data loaded at the same time.
Lastly, when Peter and I were chatting we came up with a new game idea. By this time the response from us was just to write it down to look at it later. By the time we finish Darkened Dreams we will easily have more than 100 game ideas.
-Califer
P.S. Good to know we at least have one reader left.
Also, what most people got excited about was the game maker. So I took another look at it and ... didn't like what I saw. Sure, it's nice and easy to use in many instances, but it still has a few things in it that I think will be an inconvenience later on. So... I'm re-writing it. Not really from scratch, but I won't be finished this week. I'm also looking at saving the data differently, since the current method requires me to have all the game data loaded at the same time.
Lastly, when Peter and I were chatting we came up with a new game idea. By this time the response from us was just to write it down to look at it later. By the time we finish Darkened Dreams we will easily have more than 100 game ideas.
-Califer
P.S. Good to know we at least have one reader left.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Feelin' RACEY
In the world of Darkened Dreams there are two different races. There are the humans, the normal inhabitants of the world, and there are the Heroes, the creatures summoned from a different planet to combat the encroaching darkness, kill annoying creatures, and in general be heroes. Since you can't play as a human, and can't get a human on your team (since they're all either too lazy or too weak) the difference in race isn't anything that I had to worry about code-wise.
The thing is, Darkened Dreams isn't the focus anymore. I'm sure that there will be people out there who want to have different races in the game, so they can have a group of a human, an elf, an orc, and a cute sidekick thing they make up just for their game. Because of this I've put some extra effort in to allowing players to make races and classes in the game maker.
Peter's been getting some work done on the UI, and it is looking NICE!! I'm not quite finished putting it all into the actual game yet though. I'm sure Peter will get a new screenie up when he's got it 100% ready.
-Califer
The thing is, Darkened Dreams isn't the focus anymore. I'm sure that there will be people out there who want to have different races in the game, so they can have a group of a human, an elf, an orc, and a cute sidekick thing they make up just for their game. Because of this I've put some extra effort in to allowing players to make races and classes in the game maker.
Peter's been getting some work done on the UI, and it is looking NICE!! I'm not quite finished putting it all into the actual game yet though. I'm sure Peter will get a new screenie up when he's got it 100% ready.
-Califer
Friday, April 10, 2009
Darkened Dreams has lost the focus
That sounds kind of bad, leaving it just like that. The reality is that Darkened Dreams is no longer the main focus of our current project. What it is now is a RPG making tool. I was considering giving it a nice name since Darkened Dreams is going to be the name of the first mod that you can play with the maker. RPG Maker. That sounds good. Oh wait, that name is taken.
The question that should shoot up first is "Why are you making an RPG making program? Doesn't RPG maker already do that?" Yes, it does. There are a few problems with it, however. It can get pretty complex in trying to figure everything out, and it's pretty expensive. The DD2 maker will be more simplified, as well as being cheaper. You can even make games and post them on our site to sell them. Also, RPG Maker employs a traditional view, where DD2 maker has a new style of gameplay. Check the movies if you want to see what I'm talking about ;)
-Califer
The question that should shoot up first is "Why are you making an RPG making program? Doesn't RPG maker already do that?" Yes, it does. There are a few problems with it, however. It can get pretty complex in trying to figure everything out, and it's pretty expensive. The DD2 maker will be more simplified, as well as being cheaper. You can even make games and post them on our site to sell them. Also, RPG Maker employs a traditional view, where DD2 maker has a new style of gameplay. Check the movies if you want to see what I'm talking about ;)
-Califer
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