Posts by ForbiddenDonut

Yikes. Triple post. Been a while since I posted updates on here.

Sorry for the lack of a test build. I've been having a lot of local testing events and each one kind of ripples out to "I want to fix this for the next build." Real easy way to lose track of time.

Here's some latest WIP shots:

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I've got Nerve down for testing. Anyone else curious to participate?

Also, I'll be bringing a build for playtesting at IndieCade East. The timeslot I have been given is between 4PM and 6PM on Saturday, Feb. 15th.

Hey guys. My old external monitor recently gave out on me and I'm looking to get a new one. Do any of yo guys have any good recommendations for a decent (but not absurdly expensive) external monitor?

Looking for 20-24 inch range and needs an HDMI port.

Many thanks.

http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/08/crimson-searchlight/

Indie Statik wrote an article about the game. Not... all of it is accurate, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Mostly spot on to a lot of the themes/ideas of the game, though!

So one of the (few) good things to come out of the VGX show was this. Really came out of nowhere, but it looks awesome. I love the 1950/60s comic book-esque style of some of the art. Also - Dune references =

It's a 4 man team. Pretty awesome.

Quote from Nerve

How's the test build coming along?

Coming along nicely! We had it playtested at the NYU Game Center in NYC last Thursday, and got a lot of really good feedback. Mostly just need to make the game more digestible for first-time players and flesh out the first suspect a bit more before I toss it up here. We got some pretty crazy interpretations on whether he was an artificial or not. It was really neat.

Posted up a news article on IndieDB!

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This one is about the dystopian-esque vaporization device the player uses in order to erase confirmed artificials.

Oh god I've made a huge mistake...

...must resist.

...it's not in that universe. It's inspired from it. We aren't allowed to do games in worlds with human-like artificiality?

It's a common theme for a lot of media. See: Natural City, Deus Ex: HR, A.I., Remember Me, I, Robot. Even Blade Runner is inspired from a book - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Just because the themes are similar doesn't mean you have to get IP licenses. None of the characters, locations, devices, objects or even story arc is being used from any film or book, including Blade Runner.

You work for a government agency that is inherently surveillance obsessed and you use a cremation-urn shaped device to digitally destroy a victim (which you hide in their apartment). You investigate and trap - you aren't a bounty hunter by any means.

I'm confused as to why you don't understand the difference between influence and based in a IP.

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This concept art is amazing.

Admittantly, BR is an influence, but it's not BR the game. And anyone going in thinking that will be quite disappointed. You are investigating a space - the stories are told directly through an area. You don't give interrogations or VG tests. And your job is not to hunt androids - your method of removing them is very abstracted - in the form of a device left their apartment.

So whereas BR focuses on the interaction between Deckard and the people/androids around him, that's not happening here. It's a completely different way of interpreting humanity. It's about sifting through drawers, closets and emails and asking ourselves what parts really make us "human."

So while the "elevator pitch" / face concept sounds similar, it's a very different core engagement. And I only say this because I think it'll upset BR fans if I don't. They want a proper BR game, and this won't be it.

Quote from Nerve

I'd love to help out with the testing, would you bear me in mind?

Absolutely!

Quote from blackdog

For some reason I generally like cel shading, and these early images makes no exception for me. Curious you mention P. K. Dick, the palette reminds me of the Scanner Darkly movie; being a fan of the writer I'm curious to see what you come up with.

Keep us posted!

Huge fan of PKD, as if the game itself wasn't a tell. A few of the police agency devices/tactics were heavily inspired from A Scanner Darkly. Man in the High Castle has also been helpful in trying to create characters that feel at odds with the society they are in.

I've started participating in #screenshotsaturday - an event where indie developers just post up WIP for that week. It's a nice little motivator to keep working each week so you have something new to show. Here's today's one:

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Thanks for the comments, guys. I appreciate it greatly.

Hey guys. Been working on a project for a little while and decided to bring up the Indie DB page. It's basically the mix between Gone Home's environmental storytelling with a Phillip K. Dick/Blade Runner narrative.

A Crimson Searchlight on Indie DB

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Still pretty early, but I'm hoping to get a video and a public/private testing build (basically, open to people who want to actively play test it here on Mapcore and a few other places) up in the next week or so.

Some alpha images -

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Edited: Updated images to more recent versions.

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I agree with this, but I feel it wasn't the intention to do that, but just to learn how to create a game from beginning to end.Anyway, eager to see your next piece of work.

Understandably, but I still give the feedback so Al Anselmo-Intelect0 knows what to consider as he starts his next project. My intention was to be as helpful as I possibly could.

If this is the real deal, then I trust Bethesda to handle Fallout 4 in a way that does it justice.

I highly doubt they'd switch engines. The Creation Kit (or its G.E.C.K. equivalent after F4's release) is just so fantastic for Bethesda's purposes. It's just so easy for a level designer to build a vast array of different maps with modular assets. Their art and level design team is tiny - like in the double digits. For a game so structured off the idea of emergent gameplay, it's a great engine (although, notably - can definitely look dated at times).

I do hope, however, that Bethesda avoids some of the locked-in hand-holding it implemented in Skyrim. The fact I needed to mod the game to skip that long and trite beginning is pretty lame. Also, their main storylines have notably been lacking compared to random encounters and the side quests. I think they probably try too hard to make the main campaigns feel "epic" and end up trying to do too much.

I played through it.

I don't think I really understand the core engagement of your game. All I did was move a bunch of shapes into their needed spots in order to satisfy context-less characters. It all felt very abstract and with little to no intellectual or emotional impact.

Part of the problem for me is that, even with multiple 2D planes, there's still a very limited amount of spots to move objects to create your shapes. The game can be solved completely by trial/error on every spot. So it doesn't make the player feel all that smart for solving it. There's a very small possibility space for interesting choices. It also felt very hand-holdy. I understand it's the first few levels, but you need something there to show how far you can go with the mechanic. Doesn't need to be challenging - just engaging.

Also, please don't make it so you walk slower when you're moving an object. It's really annoying. And I don't understand why there's a "No-entry" sign when you switch between the front and back planes. It made me feel like I couldn't do that action for a while until I realized I could.

I apologize if I seem harsh, but I wanted to be as honest with my feedback as possible.

The Skyrim team liked mixing modular kits for combined effects. For example, they had a set for "Draugr Ruins" and a set for "Ice Cave" - and mixing those together allowed you to create ruins that broke off into organic cave systems.

You can check out a lot of their modular kit tricks here. There's a ton of other neat tricks to avoid the rigid/90-degree feeling of modular kit building.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoelBurgess/20130501/191514/

Agree with Shawn - you really don't want to bother with Sketchup if you're going to take the time to learn 3DS Max. Max is simply a far superior product in terms of game asset modeling. The only argument I could see is that Sketchup is free, but... so is Blender, and Blender does a better job at modeling than Sketchup. Both of which are sorely lacking compared to Max and Maya, however. If you want to do this professionally, I encourage you to stick with Max and keep working at it. You won't get better overnight, and I don't think adding more programs is the right solution.

Quote from Marcem

I was also wondering how to get started with texturing. All I've done is generate crappy filter textures and poorly cropped photos, and I'm wondering how to turn that into something at least decent.

Finding tutorials on straight texturing is a little more difficult because, often times, it goes hand in hand with just proper reference sourcing and good painting techniques, which are generally more vague than simply "model a so-so tutorial."

Get a free account at CGTextures and use it religiously for photo-sourcing. Avoid the temptation to just use the unmodified textures - you should try picking specific detail from them (ie I like the color from this metal sheet, and the detail from this metal plating) and then work in layers to achieve something that matches what you wanted.

Also not a bad idea to try straight hand-painted texturing first with no photo-sourrcing. Gets you in the habit of learning Photoshop brushes and how they stroke. If you have any friends that work professionally in art or are art students, ask them for a copy of their brushes. Photoshop's default set is sorely lacking.

This was a pretty good starting point for me:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7334/painttut.jpg

http://wiki.polycount.com/TexturingTutorials

Been learning the same thing this summer. Here's some stuff that really helped me:

Polycount - community of 3D artists, many of whom are professionals. If you run into a problem, polycount will have an answer. Great place to get feedback on your work, too. Their wiki is brilliant, also.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/

http://wiki.polycount.com/

If you're willing to shell out a few dollars, I do recommend getting a one month subscription of 3DMotive. There's not a lot of videos (so one month should be enough time to blow through them), but I recommend Don Ott's intro to Max and intro to high poly modeling, and Alec Moody's suitcase video (it covers the entire art pipeline from modeling to texturing to importing). They are very detailed and clear, and they teach some very good habits.

https://www.3dmotive.com/library_guest

If you get more serious, the Gnomon Workshop and Eat3D are a great place to pick up a lot of efficient and effective techniques to polishing off your skills. They are certainly worth the investment.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/

http://eat3d.com/

Hope that helps at all.