Sludge, sweets and sewers

Hello and welcome back.  We've been in the background continuing to work on the game and it's finally starting to come together.  More bigger news later this month.  For now, lets start with the alleys:

Lately I've been hard at work making every single prop in order to make this town feel like a town.  Cardboard boxes, crates, pipes, stairs, trash cans, etc.  You name it, I modeled it.....and lit it....and added animation to it........you get the idea.


We here at Skyride like the "Hands off" approach when it comes to gameplay.  We will set up areas with specific treasures to find, but we don't want to have to blatantly point out where you need to go next.  Characters and props will help lead the way.  One of the cool concepts we are going to do incorporate are posters in the city like this:

Even those these posters won't be moving, they will be plastered around town and will "magically" change their image depending on where you need to go next.  So incase you ever get lost or can't seen to figure out what to do next, all you'll have to do is track down a poster and you'll get a good hint.  This hint is what you'll get when you first arrive in the city and need to get a place to live while you are here.

RainChecks are the in-game currency you use to buy things.  You will not need to buy fake money with your credit card, because this game is a non pay-to-win game and we feel like if you bought the game, we don't need anymore cash from you. (You're welcome.)


Another big idea we've been bouncing around are the idea of sewers.  Since it's a city of Rain, there sewer system should be large and vast.  We didn't want to make this game about living in the sewer and hiding with the mole people because we want to force the player to interact with the people in the city.  So to meet in the middle, we hid a secret underground room somewhere in the level (no, we aren't telling you where and good luck finding it) and as a bonus we put someone special living inside that room.  Take a look:

We might add some special weapons or a loot of money or something cool in this room later, but for now, it's just a sewer room.


So that basically wraps up the latest on our end.  Hopefully you start to get an idea of the feeling of the game as well as how some of the gameplay might be.  Keep an eye out this month for big news about our characters and we will see you next time screen slavers.

Danger Zone

Well maybe not as dangerous as annoying.

Recently Skyride has been dealing with a lot of changes.  Cryengine has updated to a subscription program where you can pay $9 a month and get greater access to their game engine.  This also gives the developers using it a deal where crytek (makers of cryengine) won't take any royality (money) away from you once you sell your game.  I think with the old free version of the game engine they take 20% of your royality which IS HUGE for little indie developers like us.  So I coughed up the cash and am so far 90% happy with the outcome.

With this new version crytek has changed a lot of the way their engine worked on the past which, to keep this rant short, has caused me to go back to what I had already done and fix a lot of what was working in the old engine but not in the new one.  Here's a example or two:

The first issue that I recognized with the engine were shadows.

 The top picture is the old game engine and the bottom on is new game engine.

The engine seemed to re-calibrate the way it processes light and made everything super dark.  After a little forum Q and A I got it fixed and then came the next issue; lights:

None of my lights were....well....lighting anything.  Again, after some Q and A found the reason why and fixed that as well.  Now everything is pretty much back up and running.  A few bugs here and there but with time, Crytek has said they are working hard at fixing them and should have a new patch in about a week.

Apparently this new lighting system is next gen stuff and better than the last so we will see.  Much more control over lighting than before so that's good.

So my life lately has been fixing things that were already fixed.  That's fine though.  Now that I have main street lit up a bit I will start working on the ground/road for the street along with lamps, props, vending carts, store signs, etc.  Hopefully in a few weeks/end of june I should have something to show you all.

Texturing has become more streamlined and I think I've found a way to get high res textures on my buildings without sacraficing frame rates.  I might have to re-do some of the rundown buildings I previously did for frame rate issues but other than that, things are going as planned.

I've also added glossiness to the buildings to make them look wet.  Here's a shot from the new game engine showing one of the buildings looking glossy:

Luis, the games composer, has also been making some KICK BUTT music lately. We have finish 8 tracks so far and plan to have 40-60 tracks in total for the game.  Here's a new song work in progress that I love.  It's a battle song for when you start winning in a fight as a character:



So there you have it.  We keep chugging away and even though I've been slacking on my end for progress, I'm gonna kick it up into overdrive this month and get as much as I can done.  Hope all of you are doing well.  See you later ScreenSlavers.

Shop til you drop!

So today my goal was to create a rough draft version of a store for my video game (along with my ongoing mission of completing my collision proxies for my buildings.)

So without further ado, I present to you:

The Garden of Weeden.  Haha!!!

Just wanted to play around more with the lighting and see how it all looked together.  Obviously the store still looks a bit empty so I'll have to keep playing around with it, but you get the general idea.

Well, until next time!

-Will
www.skyridestudios.com

Dark city alleyway

So I've been playing around with some props lately, trying to put detail into the city and get it ready for characters.  The first area I decided to play around with was one of the alleyways between two buildings.  After some fun production design and lighting, here's a first pass on what it looks like:

Obviously there is still a lot of work to do but I am pretty happy with the result.  Next I will decorate a shop in one of the buildings and see how that turns out.

Later crazies.

Lost a day...kinda

So today my goal was to learn how to make all my props and custom buildings physical.

Not like that you pervs.....

Basically put, all my buildings at the moment are like ghosts.  You can walk right through them without a problem.  You can even shoot a missile at them and watch as it blows up the hill behind them.  (Ignore the creepily professional floating house in the background)

Soooo I watched a tutorial on how to make it so that they are solid objects that you can collide into and shoot at.  After watching the video I said "Simple."  I should've known better.

Here is a link in case you want to try it out:   https://vimeo.com/35828945

Just kidding.  Here's the real link:  http://eat3d.com/free/cryengine_3dsmax

For some reason, now matter what I did, I couldn't get the Proxies (which make the building solid) working on my level.  Even after all the steps I took and followed to the note, my buildings still remained walk-through-able.

When I went into the test level (the level that comes with the game engine) and put my buildings in there, they worked just as they were suppose to.  I thought for sure I had accidently clicked or didn't click the wrong/right setting but after hours of looking around I couldn't find much.  I thought "Well, maybe it's a bug on my level.  I guess I'll just have to make a new one."  But even when I had started to make my new City of Rain level I quickly tested the building again and it worked.  I said "F&%^ THIS!" and went back into my old level.  I remembered reading something about how the tree's in the level were messing up another guys proxies so I deleted all the tree's and guess what....now the buildings work and take damage:

I'm just glad I didn't have to start all over on another level because if I added back those tree's without knowing they were the cause of the problem, I'd probably run outside and punch a midget.

So all in all I lost a day to this little project.  The of many I assume.....

City Complete

So yesterday I just finished texturing my last building for the main road.  Here are pics of the 13 remaining buildings:

I can't begin to describe how awesome it is to have my default character run around town.  All the small squares in the front of the buildings will be shops along with street vendors, shoppers, gangs, strip clubs, casinos, etc.

My next step is to start adding props and people into the city, so first I will start laying down roads, trees, streetlights, vendor carts, etc.  Then after that, I'll take a small break to learn Autodesk Mudbox so I can start creating my own people to inhabit into the city.

In total there are 25 buildings that I made from scratch and textured.  I total, from learning the programs til now, this has taken me ~3 months to achieve.  (5 if you include the time I had to take off to pay the bills)

I'm expecting characters to take me another 2-3 to complete with props taking about 1-2 months in addition.

That leaves me with 4 months to complete animation and recording of the video for release in November to be pitched at the American Film Market.

So far I'm on track as long as my day job doesn't eat up too much free time this year.

4 down. 13 to go.

Hey.  So I've been slaving away working on these buildings still.  I found a new better way to texture them using UVW Unwrap which allows me to put the textures into photoshop and add multiple ones over others to help blend them better instead of just looking like a repeating pattern.  Downside is, it takes a lot longer to do so my process hasn't sped up like I'd hoped.  As a treat, here are the new 4 buildings I've done:

I'm still gonna try to finish them all by then end of the month, but I might be a week off because of work.  Still going strong though and can't wait to be done with these and onto bigger and better learning experiences.

Building Buildings

Hello again.  I thought I'd take a small break and show some pictures of the buildings I've done so far along with close up shots of the detains that I've been putting into them.  I found with all the detail I am trying to add, each building takes a day to texture.  Also I've been slacking a little on the texturing because in a few days, I'm going to be publishing a book I wrote and had to go back through it again to make sure it's all ready to go.  Once it's online, I'll make a post about it here, even though it's not game related.  It will be published for Apple ipads and iphones, Amazon Kindles and PDF form for computers.

But enough about that for right now, on to the good stuff.  Here is wide shot of each building with a close up shot of the texturing it below:

So, there you have it, the first 7 buildings.

Keep an eye out for my book post coming soon!

Buildings Are Boring

I've been working my butt off trying to finish these buildings, however my progress is going at snails pace even though I've been putting a lot of long days into the process.  Here is a sneak peek:

I have 6 buildings finished and 19 more to go.  The one above took me all day to texture.  It only has roughly 23 different textures on the single building but the process is grueling.


1.  I search for a texture I like either in my texture library or online.
2.  I then bring it into photoshop and resize it, color correct it and if need be blend the edges and save it.
3.  I then have to re-tweak the image for again for highlights and save that as a separate file.
4.  Then I apply it in 3DS Max and work on the way it fits onto the building by pushing and pulling it around, (Giggity)
5.  And then I repeat that over and over 23 times and then I have one building done...........this is going to take me longer than I expected.  I'm exhausted after just explaining it.

I'm gonna go take a break.  Later crazies.

I'm bbbaaaacccckkkkkk

Hello all. Hope your holiday season was as relaxing as mine.  Ok, enough small talk.  Here's what's up:

This week I'm going to be working on texturing all the buildings I've made in the past two months.  The picture above is a small example of one I did today.  I'm hoping that the process gets more streamlined the more hours I work on it and that I get 5-8 buildings done a day towards the end of this coming week.  

Once that's all said and done, I'm going to start working on characters and motion capture (aka "mocap") while trying to implement lighting/prop/signs into the street. (that should only take a few months).  

After that it's on to animation, recording, editing and then posting the final product video.  

Sure, it doesn't sound like too much, but I'm expecting to hit my deadline of june/july.  I can't wait to show you all the finished product I have in my head that is slowly coming together.  

Well, just wanted to give you all a little late holiday present.  Until next time!

Buildings are done!

Well, done being modeled that is.  Here is a early x-mas present for all you naughty boys and girls:

(Sorry about the shaky video....it's not my fault...but it is....)

So now that all 25 of those hand crafted beauties are made the next step is to add textures to them such as brick, stone, wood, etc to make them not look like clay anymore.

I'm going to be out of commission for a bit cause of my day job, but I'm hoping to have these all textured by the end of Dec.  I'll try to give another update in a few weeks.

P.S.  To all my foreign viewers (people outside the USA), thanks for keeping up on the blog. I hope you've been enjoying it.  Feel free to contact me through email with questions/concerns or just to chat at:  will@skyridestudios.com

100% sure I've completed 50%

What's that?  I haven't posted for 2 weeks and you miss me.  Don't worry loyal minions, I haven't strangled myself quite yet.

In the past two weeks I've been getting calls for my day job while also modeling buildings.  Here's what I got so far:

A good start to a awesome city.  Here's some more to wet your whistle:

I even took some night time shots with temporary lights.  Don't say I never gave you nothin':

Even though these buildings are in the level now, all of them still need to be textured and tweaked to look juuuuussssstttt right.  I should be done with modeling these by the end of the month.  By the first of the year they all should be textured with signs (hopefully) and a lot of the assets starting to be placed around.

So was it worth the wait? Yeah, I know it was.  You're welcome.