New idea?

Hey, I'm glad everything is coming together nicely. I haven't attempted to re skin the character yet but once I have a good amount of free time I'll get right on it. I'm really excited about what Brads been doing with the menus and I think we might take full advantage of all that.

As far as the game setting and story, I was and am still kinda hesitant to controlling robots, or anything for that matter. I dunno why but I get the feeling they wont behave properly or something. Also the whole concept reminds of another game Overlord and Overlord 2. I just want to suggest everyone keep thinking of ideas. I already have a few that I'll bring up at the first meeting and I hope everyone else does the same.

I'm Always Slow.

Come September, if people are still hesitant with the current route, we could consider taknig the mechanics people seemed to like and carry them back to the adventure/fantasy setting people were rallying behind originally.

Scratch out 'robot' and write 'chimera', and replace the prison concept with a home-grown fantasy setting.

Then we're addressing the concerns that were brought up about having a better realistic basis from which to judge the artwork, making a shift back to the style of game initially identified by the feeling 'we can all get behind this', and we're opening up a lot of literary potential both in terms of the traditional mythology around the chimera as well as the tropes of chimeric literature.

Just an option if people aren't feeling the robot thing.

ZZ on Brock TV?

BrockTV is investigating Zombie Zoo (last year's IASC 4F00 project) for a Gamer Culture segment. In returning their contact, I've taken the liberty of mentioning the following:

"Something else to consider: if BrockTV would be interested in having a small segment a few times throughout the year to keep tabs on the next year's project and provide updates on its development, I think the team would jump on that opportunity."

Media & awareness are good, ja? Might get a (hopefully not too painful) feeling for deadlines and such, too, trying to meet scheduled dates to have shiny things to show to the public via BrockTV. I honestly don't know what their viewership is like, but every little bit helps.

how i did third person. I know its late but here it is. and something that might be really helpful

http://www.theballthegame.com/tutorialudk.htm

Its all there. its pretty easy actually and anyone going through UDK should give it a try.


So found this site. this guys seems to have a bunch of tutorials to help us do what we might want to do./

http://michaeljcollinsdreamart.com/

Settings from an Englilsh Student

Just want to throw out a couple generic, widely used structures. See if anything strikes anyone's fancy, gets any ideas rolling. Just a couple bits about styles of fantasy, stuff I thought fit in with what some people were saying at the meeting (ie. 'where magic is not all powerful' / 'doesnt break realism').

High Fantasy: is very dichotomistic. Black/white, good/evil, all/that. Examples include Lord of the Rings & Star Wars. Protagonist is clearly the good guy, posed against the seemingly unstoppable bad guys, and the whole world is at stake.

Low Fantasy: is based more heavily in reality, usually in setting only. This would include things like books about spiritual warfare (angels and demons fighting all around us) and some argue CS Lewis's stuff about Narnia.

Magical Realism: not necessarily based around a realistic setting, but the magical aspects are less surreal than others. Never suspends disbelief through the sheer power of the magic, such as Babylon 5 technomages who are written off as using technology to achieve the effects of magic.

Surrealist: just how it sounds, but may be ideal if you want to do a silly/funny/bizzarro game, or just want to do all your asset creation on an acid trip.

It's easy enough to encroach on mythic fantasy as well (a la Hercules or God of War), Quest fantasy (single objective at any cost; Holy Grail)... there are all kinds of subgenres and arguably mixable types of fantasy.

But getting an idea of whether people like High, Low, Realistic, or whatever else, can help provide a framework for further ideas, too. It's how I've been taught to think, so it helps me to go through that kind of thing. Maybe I'm alone there, but... *shrugs*

June 16th Agenda Ideas

"What's on the agenda?" -- Bill

Anyone have anything specific they'd like to address?
Just to get ideas rolling, given that we have a relatively strict time limit for the meeting, what's top priority to get sorted out?

* What tools/engine will be used? (eg, UDK; this decision and the next point heavily influence each other)
* What is the final goal/product/vision? (broadly speaking: fps/rts, dramatic/funny, quantity/quality, commercial/not, mod/stand-alone, whatever)
* Do we want to identify group members' roles? (I don't really think this is important right now, but ideas are ideas; might be more helpful just to identify if there's a skill gap we need to fill with an external resource)
* Vaguely schedule another meeting?
* Decide if Blogger/Skype/Something could be used to replace or supplement further meetings?


*shrugs*
Those are the biggest points I'm keen to have sorted out, just to narrow the focus a bit and decide how to move forward.

Whatcha think?

Interesting texturing software

Hey everyone.

So at my internship the guys asked me to go look up a bunch of textures and I did. So now I have plenty of textures from the net we can also use on our project but thats not the point. While doing this I found this texturing software that looks pretty good.

http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/genetica.htm

so ya. Take a look.

Meet?

May is almost over -- I trust everyone is doing well.

On a separate note

OK, so 3P99 is now available. I've registered and Brad is going to later today. I also told him again to send me his email so I can add him to this blog.

hey gang, looking forward to the meeting at the end of May. I'm up for spending a few hours thinking about the concept. What do you think?

Skillz - we has 'em

I want to get an idea of what we'll have and what we'll need... What is everyone able to bring to the table next year? Obviously feel free to correct me if you have no idea how, or have no interest in learning anything I've haphazardly listed by your name but make sure you clarify (and preferably add to) what you can do.

Christian - 3D modeling?
Brad - UDK, level design
Matt - music?
Michelle - 3D modeling, 3D animation, writing, hopefully some UDK like importing and such
Sarah - writing, HR, tracking
Stu - coding, writing, audio, UDK, badass stick man concept
Karlee - concept art, 3D modeling
Casey - concept art
Cory - UDK, 3D modeling

I would lovelovelove if past Maya students - because I know there are six of us - would take a look at Maya again and give animation another shot. I have the text book for Maya 2008 (and Maya 6, but I'm not sure how useful it will be) if anyone would like to use it, but any help I can get with animation would be super awesome because right now it looks like I'm on my own.

It would also be nice if we could have someone constantly importing stuff from the get-go, so someone who doesn't have enough jobs can totally do that. Bill wants to have a meeting with us, probably a few hours long, near the end of May or early June but we'll talk about that as it gets closer. I know some people might be far away though.

AND ALSO POST YOUR IDEAS!

GO!!

IASC 4F00

Hi everyone. This is going to be our blog during the summer to post ideas on what we want to do for the project next year. Please send me an email with the email address for you blogger account if you have one so I can let you post.