So bad at updating..

I guess one of the issues of getting older is that last January seems like it happened a week ago. At least that's my excuse for not updating so often.

Since August I've implemented FBX files for skins to make animation a bit less buggy. Also did a lot of art retooling on the Cells level. And we're making mobile games as well.

I really didn't want to go back to mobile after making Pocket PC games, but too many people (three) asked for games to be made, and we finally said yes. So to help raise money for Shades we developed a puzzle game where you stuff objects into a moving van. It's a game for kids so our client can give their client's kids something to do.

Marmalade is what we're using to help development, which is loads more fun than Eclipse, where my first attempt to port Android games was done in. I ... I really hate Eclipse.

Well, back to some art and some shades.

Post ReplayFX

Whew... Finished up four days of ReplayFX and had only a minor disaster on the last day.  Got to meet a few hundred great people who tried out the game (and one somewhat inebriate.) Gave out half the cards we had printed and may have picked up another contract. All in all a win.

This was my neighbor, he was really nice and draws comics. You can check his stuff out at jonchad.com Behind him was a guy that restores pinballs and arcades.

And this was the creepy automated puppet show across from us. This would play traditional children's themes from time to time. This was on sale for 600$. Don't have the space. Also don't want to be murdered in my sleep by tiny puppets.  Whenever they played "It's a small world" all I could hear was :

"It's a world of dread, it's world of fear,
The good people do not end up here.
It's a fact, you'd been had. You are here, cause you're bad!
You're the dead one after all. "

Well, you get the point.

This was Mike's booth. He's with a Cleveland dev team and they're working on a head-to-head both where you're blasting balls over to the other side of the arena. They kind of had him at the ass end of nowhere. I knew where he was and had trouble getting to them. I had to traverse around the inflatable obstacle course. He did end up winning best indie game in show, though!

In addition to all the marketing we learned about three other possible events to attend. Magfest maybe? ArcadeExpo in LA? (maybe that one.) There's also Kurokiro Festival.

Well, need to catch up on several hours of sleep deprivation.

Moving Day...

                     

                        So we've moved down to a smaller house and finally got the homestead up and running. Just amazed on how many companies don't have their shit together. We had a hard to navigate road in our old place that didn't allow large, 18 wheelers up without getting stuck. You'd think alerting the moving company to this would make them come up with a plan. You'd be wrong.
                        So after getting stuck they look for one of their smaller trucks. In the days were everyone has a cell phone and GPS I still don't know how a dispatcher can't locate one of their vehicles. The driver works for you, right? He isn't just some guy off the street?
                        I understand that if your situation doesn't fit the mold than there might be some issues. Though when places like a closing company have one job, and that job is to deliver a check, how is it that they can screw it up? Rather than mailing the check to pay off our mortgage, the person just handed it to a random UPS guy. That's one step away from putting thousands of dollars in a wheel barrow, rolling it downhill to the bank, them hiding under some covers and hope for the best.
And that's not the only check they've lost.

                       ReplayFX is around the corner and I'm very happy to see how well it's been advertised. The local food store I walk to even had a poster until some jerk ripped it down. It was a nice motivator while it lasted.
                      We're going to have two lap tops to show off the game, one with the rift and one without. It's good to have two, there's always something that comes up. I plan on having the game on a thumb drive and the number of a rent a center in case something happens to a machine. I'm not sure where we'll be located at, but if a kid goes flying out of the bouncy castle and knocks our table over, I want to be prepared to be back up and running.
                       ReplayFX is going to be four days, and that's a rather long time. It never been held before so there's no telling how big it's going to be. It could be an echoing empty hall, or we may have huge lines. Who knows, maybe they'll out do the furry convention, something that Pittsburgh is now known for.
                       The shot above is the sky we've added. Keith thought the level needed it, and after looking at it I agree. Previously it was just darkness, which I think worked a lot for some areas of the first Silent Hill. But I think it worked out rather well.
                       

It's too easy to drop the habbit

Miss a couple weeks of blogging and next thing you know you haven't posted for months. The older I get the more time seems to compress into just one continuous moment.

Phantom Menace released 16 years ago. I had to look it up on imdb to make sure I wasn't crazy. I swear I just watched it in the theater a few years ago.

So since we got the riff I've added three small areas in front of the game. I think there needed to be some time where the player can just walk around before any puzzles needed solving to continue. Before you woke up in a cell and had to figure a way out. I think it wasn't a bad way to start, but if we're pushing VR with ReplayFX then I think people want to see more than just a cell to start with. Some people fly through puzzles, some people struggle, and I didn't want each person have to spend a half an hour at the booth to see stuff.

Things seem to be going smoothly. Going to try to cast Joe (the player) for a few lines and get some actual voice acting in.

 And I'm also selling and buying a house, for ultimate crazy busy.

Oculus Rift

Oculus Rift First Thoughts

So the development kit came in yesterday and I was able to look at some samples and test out the equipment. It's a prototype so I'm not expecting everything to work without some issues.
After spending some time reinstalling drivers, rebooting, trying every different video port I finally found the trick on my system to get it working.

So the thing requires two usb ports and a video ports, has two wires coming out of the camera as well as two wires from the head piece, so there is a bit of cabling here. The head set is fairly light, even though it looks like a brick.

The house demo that comes with the game has some low resolution textures, and these really stand out in VR. I got the feeling that I was looking props made out of paper and cardboard, kind of like visiting a local haunted house.Surfaces that don't have normal maps really stand out.  So the suspension of disbelief is less forgiving.

The head tracker can allow you to turn all the way around and look behind you, which I wasn't expecting. It seem to work really well as allowing me to look around seamlessly.

The device puts you entirely in the world, since it cuts you off from reality. You can't see your own hands, so you have no sense of self. You guide the controls by feel, and it's an odd feeling to look at your hand and not see it. When lights flicker out in a game, you really end up in the dark.

The inverse is also true. Sitting in a bright sunny game can make you forgot that it's night time.
It's curiously dangerous on how immersive it can be. Then again I'm an old dog raised on Atari where my adventure guy was a block.

I also was getting a bit of vertigo when looking down off of tall ledges. I'm not sure if everyone would experience that, but you really do get a sense of distance and scale, and I'm a bit afraid of heights.

Unfortunately I can't really show a video or picture that can get any of this across, so I recommend trying one out if you get the opportunity.

Speaking of vertigo

Jar Specimens

Jar Specimens

Here's a pic of the exam room area of the demo. Keith worked on the glass shader a bit for this one.

Also been working on improving the AI of the wandering bad guy to this level. Also working up on an alternate way of dealing with him, other than just straight up hiding.

Going to be showing off what we got working at the Pittsburgh IGDA Halloween part here:https://sites.google.com/site/pittsburghigda/

It's their annual costume party. I'll be going as Benny from the Lego Movie.

No Human Being Would Stack Records Like This

Shot of the records room from the demo we're working on. The scary part is that medical records are often kept in huge stacks, not unlike this one. We don't have a paperless system yet, and medical paperwork is something that seems to breed in the dark corners until it reaches the ceiling.

Currently working on a door puzzle, which involves severed limbs and growing vines, plus some more medical trickery. Should have some images of that one soon.


Scary picture for the week is this nice abandoned subway station. Not sure if it's supposed to be the end of the line, but the track seems to lead straight to a concrete wall.

Can't find the source on this one, it's being offered as a wallpaper on many sites.

Creepy Photo Day

Creepy Inspirational Photo Day

 

 

 

Been on vacation the last few days so I don't have a game photo ready for this week. Instead I present a creepy photo:

 

 

 

This is from an abandoned theme park called "Nara Dreamland" in Japan. The twisted spiral into fog gives a nice effect for the eye. The game is going to have a roller coaster theme puzzle in it, which I'm in the processes of locking the design down. Though I think the old wooden ones have a bit more charm and would be a better fit.

 

You can read more on the source of this image here:

http://www.abandonedplaygrounds.com/nara-dreamland-the-abandoned-gigantic-amusement-park-of-japan/

 

 



 

ReplayFX, indiedb

We're happy to be attending ReplayFX next year, which is a pinball tournament held in the convention center in Pittsburgh, August 2015. We'll be at a booth showing off the demo for people to play. The event is mostly a pinball theme but there will be other gaming rigs as well as indie gamers.

http://replayfx.org/

Also, we've joined the indieDB community!


http://www.indiedb.com/games/shades-of-sanity

Some older Screenshots

Some older screenshots of the bedroom area. Been working with the cells so long I forgot how nice it looks. Need to return to it someday.

Art work Update

Got some art from some fine talent lately. First one is a sculpt of the arms from the "arm puzzle." Alex is featured here, who also sculpted the Rachel, Janet and Stalker models. 

These are the arms that will be holding a cell door shut. They're a bit mutated, combining both flesh and plant mater. 

Steve gave us an update of a nicely done box. These will be used to store piles of patient's personal effects. I can even individually label these with an overlay effect.

Andrew gave us this model of a wall hanging blood pressure machine. Hard to see from this shot, but the display has glass cover. You'll be able to squeeze the ball and play with the need to some extent. 

Tyler is working on a model for what I call the "Dark Man" for the cell level. This is the first iteration so there will be some final morphing. 

Wasn't originally a character, he (she???) is just something that spawned from redoing the cells level about four times over now. Before I tried to do a smoke effect but couldn't come up with something that worked, then I tried a skeleton model. Decided to try something based a bit more on reality. Horror needs some grounding to the real world or else it just becomes silly. 

Next time I'll post footage of the first puzzle. 

Tech Update

The Normal Buffer Overlay Shader

Keith added a new shader that allows us to blend in a normal map into the background. The top left postage stamp shows the normal buffer blended in with the additional overlay map. This opens up the door to add a lot more character to the environment at minimal cost. 

So now we can add random cracks, water damage, bullet holes, and pretty much any surface detail without having to create entire new maps for each section. 

Design and Tools....

Since we got more help now, gotta spend more time on design and organization rather than pretty pictures at the moment. Can't stress enough how important a detailed plan is, and how current tools just seem to be so lacking. Google doesn't organize it's documents well, and I ended up spending more time looking for documents than editing them. And of course the team would all need to be added, shared, and what not, plus then you quickly run into space issues. I made a 3 page document that somehow turned into 27 megs! It was as if the images were being stored 5x over. 

So the solution? Why, create my own design system. Seems somewhat neurotic, but I've been coding for 20 years and sometimes it's easier to create a wheel than deal with the flaws of what's out there. 

New Cabinet From Dave

 

 

 

Old friend of ours from Dreamforge did a prop for us. Simple prop with four drawers that open, has the slider part with it as well, and even the bearings are in there (though you'd be hard pressed to see them.) Each drawer has its own unique set of papers as well.

 

I think back to the days of DFI. The last time I put art from him in a game it was a werewolf model that was less than 100 polys. This one has about 40k in 22 pieces. Boggles the mind when I think about how much tech has improved.

 

 

During the 1st iteration of Unreal, they told us a scene should have 200 polys if it had no creatures, 100 if you add a creature, and 50 with three or more creatures. Unreal didn't even have hardware support at the time, and when we say hardware we mean the voodoo FX card. 



Back from Vacation....

Was out for more than a week, so haven't done a game update in a while. But we're still plugging away.

Redoing the model for the skeleton guy in the cells and replaced it with a bronze statue. Was inspired by the "Verity"  in the UK
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2012/oct/17/damien-hirsts-verity-statue-hannibal-lecter

Got to do some work on the material to make it look more bronze. Perhaps some reflection map to sell it a but more.

Readable Paper Test

Readable Text Test

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHyb2A6Ah8

 

 

Here's a video showing readable text on an object you can pick up. The text is added from a file at run time, so that means we can add any language we want. it also means we can add a ridiculous amount of readable objects as well. 

She's a pretty girl

Animation test with Rachael. Added a lip syncing system so we can match her jaw to the audio. Originally we weren't even going to have characters in the game. Then they weren't going to talk. Things always seem to snowball that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAa_QNyRao&feature=youtu.be

Her jaw is controlled by a 1x256 texture whose color determines the jaw position. It plays iT over 3.8 seconds (depending on the length of the line.) The bitmap can be edited in real time so we can adjust how well it's matching.

She only has a jaw controller and a mouth corner controller, so at the moment we can't do anything more advanced. But I guess this is the point where we decided exactly how in depth to make it.

More Physx upgrades

Fixed a few bugs with the Physx implementation on our engine. It's one of those things where you fix one thing, and it reveals about ten other things you're doing wrong.

I really like version 3.2, it seems to fix everything I didn't like about 2.7. Though I still hate using programming API's, and use them sparingly. If a system isn't hardware implemented I have a hard time justifying its utility.

First off, there's a learning curve. And it takes a long time to really know a system. This includes spending hours on a bug that ends up being an API system that you're using wrong. It's just much faster to fix your own code (unless the code base it huge and you didn't design/document it well.)

Second, upgrades can be a pain. Often there are whole sale changes, which repeats the above. Pretty much everyone was touched in the Physx upgrade. It was needed, it is appreciated, it's just time consuming to redo.

Third, API's often cost money. Physx is free for what we're doing (at the moment) so that's not a concern. But other API's are not, and given the first two that makes the utility of using them questionable. Take Granny for stance (a skinning API.) Are bones really that hard, now that information to do them is all over the place? It seems all the work was really getting animation info our of whatever 3d animation system you're using. If what 3ds MAX did made more sense (and maybe it will with later releases) this will be even less of an issue.

 We use OpenGl, OpenAl and Physx. I really don't want that list to grow. Each one has a hard ware implementation and in all fairness I think they're all robust enough for any need.

Okay, less ranting. More pretty pictures later.

Cell Hand Puzzle Test

Puzzle in the upcoming demo area. You come across an iron door that's held on by three disembodied arms. They twitch in sequence when the syringes are hit. It's a timing plus combination puzzle.

Three difficulty settings are shown.

This is all temp art, I just chopped off Joe's arm and modeled up something quick. I added the meters later when I realized we needed more indication that a pattern event is happening. Plus it helps time the pushes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipj6ABCdgt8&feature=youtu.be

Cells Pulse

This shows off the pulsing wall effect. Using a simple sine function for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shP01U9A8UE

 

 

Gonna be handing the level off to Keith to start a lighting pass.