In the details.

Lately we've been working on making the city feel like a city.  Lights, telephone poles, sewers, alleyways, they all make the feel of the game come to life. That's where the quality comes from and being that we only have one person, ME, doing the modeling for the game, it's hard to get all the quality I want into the world without worrying about or fixing something else that needs my immediate attention.

I say all of that to say, I recently re-worked a final version of a shop I had done back in 2013 called "Garden of Weeden."  It's one of the many shops in the game and will probably be one of the more comical pieces.  Here's a side by side comparison of of the version of the shop, not much longer than 2 years ago, and the one today:

I hope at the end of the project, when all is said and done, that it really feels like a game made by a big studio.  The style, quality and details, even though they won't be AAA in scope, will at least give off the feeling that this could've been made by one.

I'm doing my best to make sure everyone gets to play this game as soon as possible.

Dionysus and Diligence.

Hello all.  Welcome back. Today we are going to discuss new updates:

First off is badass concept art again by Leandro.  This is Lady Lynn's son Dionysus (and looking quite dapper):

If you look closely you'll see something on him that is super special.  I'll give you a moment to look.

Times up.

On his coat there is a logo of sorts.  This, which will have a larger picture soon, is the family crest for lady lynn and her entire family.  (Lady Lynn's drawing will be updated soon with that crest as well.)

Next up is the main street itself.  I've been working a lot on getting the town set up and making it feel like people could live there.  Here's the interior of the night time fishing shop "Luna Tuna."

This is where you will probably buy and sell items as well as maybe craft a weapon to use against your attackers.  Everything in Rain is a weapon.

Here is the Crimson Castle.  A bar next to Luna Tuna where you can sit and enjoy a drink while listening to whispers of people plotting to rob you:

The city is slowly growing life and soon every nook and cranny will be filled with fun areas to explore, hide and gather information.

In addition to this, we also have a new video of a ladder system we created for the game as well as a fishing boat with sails.  Take a look and let us know what you think! (No, seriously, no one ever comments.  Be the first.)

Models, Music and Mischief.

Hello and welcome back....wait....we're back...not you.  Welcome back us!

Lots to talk about so let's jump right in:

Models:
We're trying something new here at Skyride Studios.....more videos,  That's right, you read correctly unless you can't read then obviously you didn't.  We are going to start adding more videos of behind the scenes stuff just for you.

Up first is this timelapse we'd like to share.  After we model our buildings, we then go and add textures to the buildings, add collision proxies so that you can't run through the walls and then apply it in-game and tweak the textures until they look like whatever we set out to make them look like, I.E. concrete, glass, wood,etc.

 To do these last two steps it took us a hour and a half for just one building (City of Rain has something like 90-100 buildings) and in a attempt to keep you from watching the whole 90 minutes, we sped up the footage to 2 mins and 30 seconds. (You're welcome).  We also added a new unheard track to the timelapse so you can enjoy some music while it goes.  So here's that:




In the future expect to see these types of videos from our composer Luis and our concept artist Leandro.  These talented SOB's are still working on those videos for you as we speak...or type...or whatever.

In addition to exteriors we are also working on interiors.  Here's a screenshot of reference art and the final in-game art:

There will be final tweaks later on but the first run looks pretty good we have to admit.


In other news, I don't know how many of you went/knew about it/missed it but the amazing Los Angeles GameSoundCon happened this week and Skyride Studios sent Luis to attend.  Crazy enough the event sold out this year.  Over 300 composers/sound designers attended and Luis came back with mountains of knowledge and smiles.  Here are a few pictures he took of the event:

If anything the experience has made us want to work even harder on the game and we can't wait to attend next year.  If you end up attending the next one, hit us up at: will@skyridestudios.com and let us know.  We'd love to meet up and hang out.

As a final note, I wanted to share some of Leandro's concept art (still a work in progress).  After we completed Willow we moved on to Willows counterpart Winter.   Winter is the brains to Willow's brawn.  We first started with a few variations.

We then move on to a rough, refined draft:

And then finally the detailed finalized version we then give to our character modeler:

This time around we even gave a detailed version of his gadgets and toys:

After Winter was complete we started work on our first female character (Lielah).  Lielah is Epios's sister and the whole reason Epios goes to Rain is to look for her. (She's been kidnapped and it's your job to find out where and by who).  We chose #3, #4 and #6 as different costumes she'll have on throughout the game depending on what's happening within the story.

Just the other day Leandro sent me the rough draft of #6 Lielah:

Probably by the end of the month or so this character's concept will be completed and we will move on to the next which I'm hoping will be Metis.  Metis is one of my personal favorites and here's a little sneak peak at his description:

  

Hope that was worth the wait.  Hopefully we will be updating more frequently as we get closer to the end of the year.  Thanks for everyone's kind words and support.  It means a lot to us and please spread the word if you like what you see.  Talk care, talk soon.

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.

City of Shame

Hey, how have you been?  Me?  Pretty good.  Getting a presentation put together to show some business clients and thought I'd give you a sneak peek at how my game is coming along.

I added some elements to part of the rundown side of the city and this is what I have so far:

I'm pretty excited about this.  The blue lights the man is standing under flicker and in the far right there is a candle light effect.  Obviously still a lot to add in but I've been enjoying it.  Ok, time to get back at it.  Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

Abandoned Buildings

Hey, so today's update it to let you know I've completed the buildings for the main street and am now working on the rundown buildings on the outskirts of the city.  These will have overgrown bushes and trees, boarded up windows, etc.  Here's a sneak peek at a building I just got done modeling today:

This one took me all day because it's basically 6 buildings in one.  I'll add cracks and broken cement to these to hopefully look like this when done:

Once I get the buildings laid out for the new street I'll update you all.  Since these buildings are suppose to look like they are half finished, they shouldn't be such a nightmare to texture.  

See you screen suckers later.

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.