Delta_Edge_Productions

Charity Game Jam (miniLD) + Thoughts on the IndieSpeedRun

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 05:04:00 +0000

Two weekends ago I participated in a (very spontaneous) mini ludum dare. It was the 48th MiniLD and a bit of a special one. Organised by McFunkyPants (Christer Kaitila) this MiniLD was also a charity game jam for the Make a Wish Foundation. It was amusing to see both of the goals surpassed a good 12 hours before the LD even began. The reset higher goal (when the LD did start) was also surpassed by the end of the weekend, which was even better to see!

I haven't participated in a miniLD before, they never really appealed to me as much as the more major LD's do, but the mixture of having that weekend (for the most part) free, the charity aspect, the epic theme (NES style) and the buzz surrounding the LD, I couldn't resist entering.
The theme for the miniLD was 'NES', as in the retro Nintendo Entertainment System. I've been pretty keen on retro/pixelated games lately, so it was certainly something I felt excited to get into.
The day before the LD, I started working on the template. There was a 2D overlay provided for anyone using flash/html5/unity, but nothing (of course) for the BGE which I was pretty keen on using (as per usual). So I went about making my own template for the 'Funkytron' (made-up retro console & monitor for the miniLD), and since I was working in Blender, I figured Id might as well attempt something more 3D.
The results of the 2D template to 3D conversion:

With the template sorted I then had the challenge of setting up a game to run on the screen of the Funkytron monitor itself. The BGE VideoTexture module seemed like the obvious (and seemingly only) choice to make this possible.
The plan was to create a low-res/pixelated type of game (with 3D elements) to be played as a 2D game via projection onto the 2D screen of the 3D monitor in a 3D scene (which would also have interactive elements)
Adding to the complications... I wanted to have the game playable in-browser using the Burster plugin which I hadn't ever used.

The final game I manged to put together over the weekend (missed out on a good 14 hours of the LD due to a friends going away party) turned out ok. It was inspired mostly by GTA2, ie the 'mini-game' is a top-down game based in a city, with a player you can control to run around and cause havoc, I've named it 'Super Theft Auto' for now, but will probably change the title in the future.

What went 'badly'/wrong:

There were a couple of features I didnt have time to implement, like a proper car system (including being able to steal & drive a car - kinda important for a GTA2 clone!)
Spent too much time working on the city level, should have simplified to allow more time to focus on other important things
The graphics went a fair bit beyond the NES theme/restrictions, I wanted to keep it closer but it just didnt work out in the end
Rushed a lot of the road textures, resulting in lots of bad seams - theres a lot of texturing to completely overhaul
Using modules Id never used in combination before - caused a lot of grey areas to pop up, taking a lot of time to solve (or in some cases not solve) - ie trying to get a shader to work on the videotexture output - which didnt work out in the end, costing me an hour or two
Burster - the plugin worked well for the most part, but due to security issues it doesnt allow the use of external modules, file I/O or various other functions, this generally complicated a few things and required me to re-write/re-structure a bunch of code which again took time! There was also the fact that mipmaps cant be disabled using Burster, so all textures had to be scaled up a large amount in order to get them to be 'crisp' - more time gone!

What went well:

Overall I actually got the basics of a game working, you could shoot people and so on, adding to your score, it was something playable at least - and being able to play it in-browser is also a huge plus
The 2D sprite system works very well and was easy to modify (thanks to SolarLune for that)
Some neat NES tunes quickly made by AniCator
The 3D Screen with 2Dish game projected onto it worked much better than Id expected, its a very cool effect and I hope to take advantage of it to make this game more 'unique'
Got the basics down for a game Id like to work on developing!

So heres a link to the game page (which has been updated since the miniLD version):

http://www.delta-edge.com.au/SuperTheftAuto/

You can play it in-browser, but will need to first download the Burster plugin and install it. Theres links and instructions on the page and its a small download.
Theres also a template available, listed on the page I just linked to. The template is the Funkytron setup and mini game test scene I initially made, all setup to work using the VideoTexture module and Burster plugin, would be a good basis for anyone wanting to achieve the same effect.

As far as plans for Super Theft Auto go, I'm certainly planning to develop it further. Its the kind of game I was initially trying to make back in Highschool, I remember attempting it a few times using Flash - but of course faking 3D elements in flash is tricky and I had no luck at all being a complete beginner.
My main issue currently with the game is trying to do something 'unique', I dont want to end up with a boring clone of GTA2, but I want to keep some of the elements which made GTA2 such a good game.
I've been undecided about the main '3D scene' which the player and computer reside within too, it seems pointless right now and just adds a level of abstraction from the player and the mini-game, not to mention some brain-numbing effects if you move the 3D camera while trying to focus on the game on the screen.
But (thankfully) a few nights ago I had an 'epiphany' which solved all the main issues/concerns and produced one core idea/concept the game could revolve around. It effectively gives the 3D part of the 'overgame' a strong and relevant purpose - which is exactly what I wanted, rather than having to remove it due to being pointless/problematic.
I'll develop this idea futher... So no details right now, but its got me pretty excited about the future of this game!

On Indie Speed Run:

Seeing a ton of negativity in the game-jam/Indie community regarding the recently announced Indie Speed Run being run by the Escapist.

Cant say as I agree with *most* of it.

I'll quickly address a couple of the more popular opinions/perspectives about it which I disagree with and find the most concerning:

"Indie Devs who are in debt and trying to start their careers, pay $25 to have Escapist make money on your game!",

"You Have to pay $25 to take part/enter"

The idea of paying to enter a game jam, to many, seems to be offensive for some reason. Lets be serious here, its $25. It might be a lot for some, understandably, but whats the worst case scenario? - You choose to not participate. Some evil corporation isnt trying to force you to do this, theres no gun to your head. There's other game jams to be had anyway, and currently there seems to be several happening every month, I know I cant keep up with every-single-one going on at the moment. But I would argue that the $25 entry fee could be worth it for many, depending on the benefits which could potentially come from the game-jam, Indie Speed Run is no exception in this case, theres several benefits which Im yet to see coming from something like Ludum Dare.

The idea that this whole event is all about Escapist making money off your game is just unreasonable as well. They clearly outline the rules and rights you and your game have. If you dont agree with it, again... No gun being held to your head, you can make decisions for yourself about whether or not its something you want to enter.

Also clearly, if you're in debt and struggling to pay the rent, Id hope you'd be trying to make the right decisions - ie not spending that $25 on a game-jam (or that extra bottle of wine you probably shouldn't be buying right now) Its all just common sense when you get down to it.

"Commercializing game jams is just completely wrong and missing the point.. please don't participate in it!"

This seems to be a typical overly-dramatic response, not particularly based on anything other than something about 'missing the point' (further addressed below). I'm not going to bother with the 'commercializing game jams' part, that's just completely over the top...

"It goes against the ideas/principles of a GameJam"

From my understanding, the idea/principle of a game-jam is to make a game -

"A game jam is a gathering of developers, artists, and other creatives over a short time during which a collective effort is made to make one or more games."

Whether or not you have to pay to enter, of if there's a panel of judges instead of a community voting scheme, there's no judging at all, the game-jam is run by some larger corporation or company who offer a cash prize (or any other prize for that matter) - the fact is, you're making a game! Nowhere is it stated as some 'global law' that any of the above cannot or should not happen. And we've see it happen already, this isn't the first time any of the above mentioned has happened in regards to a game-jam.

Think back to the 'shitstorm' that surrounded the Kongregate post-LudumDare contest during LD24 earlier this year - all completely unnecessary amounts of drama and negativity. If anything, I would argue the response was damaging for both game-jams and the indie game-dev side of the industry. Will we see another contest like Kongregate contest (or anything similar) happen alongside a Ludum Dare or similar game-jam in the near future? -Doubtful, after the outpouring of anger and close-mindedness we saw last time I wouldn't blame a company for shying away from the idea, just to save themselves the backlash.

To me it feels like a loss of opportunity. There's chances in these kinds of things for little known indie game devs to get more publicity, to be seen by those already established in the industry, to enter into healthy competition with others and potentially win money for a game they've put time into - a horrific thought, I know.

"The winners get a cash-prize"

I know some people are probably going on with the argument 'the prize for a game-jam is the game you make, the experience you have and ultimately the self improvement' - and I get that, its the reason why I participate in game jams. I'm yet to even enter a game-jam or anything similar which offers cash prizes, or a panel of famous game devs to ponder over your game. But I can at least can appreciate the value in this kind of a game-jam and I'm sure its just a matter of time before I participate in one (I'm pretty keen to enter this Indie Speed Run if I have the time later in December).
They go against the norm of what we're used to seeing with a game-jam or similar event, but because of that they offer benefits beyond the norm and I feel disappointed when people respond with close-minded fear-mongering attitudes which generally get no one anywhere.

Its about time to let the indie game dev/jam side of the industry open up and mature to these kinds of opportunities.

/rant

September - October 2012 [Updates]

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:07:00 +0000

Not much has been going on other than University the past two months. Next week is the start of end-of-year exams - so holidays are in sight. I guess this post will just be a roundup of the past 2 months worth of random projects & works.

So as far as current projects go, I've felt a lot of motivation towards this sci-fi horror game, to the point that I've put plans in motion to have it appear at the Indie Games Room at AvCon 2013. Every year I go to the IGR I end up wishing I entered a game, bout time to step up and actually do it. At least 1 game is the goal, if anything decent comes from a Ludum Dare I'll consider throwing that in as well.
Some old & new screenshots of some SciFi level assets:

A mockup SciFi hallway with experimental shader(s)

Staircase section

Modular floor panels with added
details (such as spinning fans)

Ludum Dare 24 was missed, due to a pretty heavy workload at Uni that weekend. But Ludum Dare 25 is almost a month away, nicely placed before the Christmas New Years rush. So all going well I'll be enjoying 48 hours of madness starting on the 14th of December.

On the 3D printing front a new (and pretty major) order has been placed, theres some interesting non-Minecraft items in this lot, including a Raspberry Pi case I've been wanting to print and design since my Pi arrived. Theres also a few other interesting items which could lead on to some more business opportunities and of course a couple of new Minecraft figurines. The Enderman has been requested more times than I can count...

Solar flyby - ingame

I also started working on a Millennium Falcon mod for Kerbal Space Program, inspired by some images I saw a while back where people had imported full 3D models of ships from Aliens and Prometheus and so on into the game so people could fly them.
I didnt want to just import some model and set it up to be pilotable, instead Id rather have a set of parts to build a ship from, not to mention the ability to spontaneously de-assemble. Its much more effort, but Id say its worth it - especially for a ship like the Millennium Falcon.
At this point in time the low poly is done and imported into the game (which took a ton of work to setup all the node positions), I'm now working on the high poly mesh for normals, AO and texture baking. Once exams are over its one of the projects I want to focus on and wrap up first.

Armour Platin'
Greebles ahoy

Ludum Dare Results + Current Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:45:00 +0000

As the Ludum Dare results unveiling date approached I thought a lot about how well I imagined my game 'Darkness Creeping' would fair in terms of overall position etc.
I had a hunch it would do well, and potentially score highest (out of all the categories that is) for the Mood category. I thought Id get into the top 50 for Mood - at least.
And if I did, Id be satisfied and happy about my first complete Ludum Dare entry.

So I was pretty shocked when the results were finally announced, to find that Id scored 5th position for the mood category. This meant that for one of the categories Id actually made it into the top 5. This was way beyond what I expected!

Overall I placed #125, which was also surprising when you consider there were just over 1400 entries. This put me in the top 10% of entries overall, very please with this result!
You can see for yourself at the main results page here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/

So with that out of the way I look forward to participating in Ludum Dare 24 in August.

[snip]

So Ill soon have a month of holidays before the next semester of uni starts up and Ive realized I have a ton of work I want to get done during that time. In summary I have this major project to 'manage/maintain' and improve, a WIP game to continue working on (the failed Ludum Dare entry from mid-2011), a Zelda animation I'm super-keen to finish and (hopefully) a Kerbal Space Program video series to start at some stage. Im also considering entering into the next Operation Moonfall contest as well... Throw AvCon + normal life ontop of that, and July will be one busy month....

-Thats all for now.

*Edit*
I did just realize I had another large-ish project go public earlier this month (also 3D printing related), and I completely forgot to write a post about it.
So I will cover that one here soon enough.

Ludum Dare #23 summary

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:01:00 +0000

So! This time round, I actually completed a game for Ludum Dare. Was quite a moment, its no easy task to make a (somewhat) playable game in 48 hours.

I present, 'Darkness Creeping':

The theme for this LD was 'tiny world', which at first threw me off. Id mentioned in my previous post that I was intending to make a dark, atmospheric kind of horror game. And the theme 'tiny world' didnt quite fit. But with some thought, I decided to implement a feature which let the player 'take over' and control the little cockroaches I planned to have running around the floors (the kind of little detail I love to have in games), so while playing as a cockroach you can experience their own 'tiny world'.
This would be integrated into the puzzles for the game to keep things interesting.

Making the 'controlling' feature took much longer than Id expected, need to brush up on my python a bit it seems. But then other features took much less time to implement.
I also stumbled across one of my favorite features of the game, completely by accident. Id turned on 'rigid body' for the collision box for the player, and enjoyed actually playing as a character which could fall over. A few tweaks later (lots of dampening so you wouldn't fall over every time you walked over a bump), and with a self-righting mechanism to get back up, and the idea came together. A lot of people have commented on how it adds to the game, making you actually feel like a frail weak character.
At the end of the game it makes the end-boss even more challenging (I evilly put a bunch of rocks all over the hallway floor, so in the situation that you have to run away from something big and scary, your in for a bad day)

So overall I was happy with what I got done. The game itself is a bit glitchy in various ways, and I had to update several times after the LD was finished in order to make it playable. The main issue is BGE's collisions, which put simply are terrible. I later found out that scaling the scene up larger made the collisions better (wish Id known this before!). Also the BGE's slow performance started to show. The game isnt very optimized, although having said that, Im impressed that the armature system has been improved so much for realtime applications. I successfully had 40+ cockroaches all running around (animated and with armatures) along with a couple of spiders, with little hit on the fps.

Heres a timelapse of the entire 48 hours, its focused on only one of my screens (I have a 2nd screen, which was used for everything not related to the main work in creating the game)

Voting for this Ludum Dare is 1 day away from finishing, Ive had a lot of good feedback (and a bunch of valid complaints), so it will be interesting to see how my game ranks. I even found the other day, on the front page of the LD site, that someone had featured my game in their favorites - which is awesome to see.
Overall I expect the mood category to be the area I scored best in, possibly innovation as well. Might do decently in graphics as well, since Im one of the few who made a 3D game for this LD (most people stick to 2D games)

The main LD page for the game is linked below. You can download and play the game from there, and Ive made the source files available as well.

[Darkness Creeping]

Anicator was nice enough to feature the game on the front page of his wip Blender games site bGame as well: http://bgame.anicator.com/games/game.php?id=84

And finally, to see how I progressed though the LD, heres all the posts I made this time round:

Looking forward to the next Ludum Dare!

2012 so far

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:57:00 +0000

2012 has been a busy year so far, Ive been trying to focus a lot more on uni, and so this blog has suffered because of that (was hoping when I started this blog, to be posting at least once a week!)

I have been working on one major project however, late last year (December I think) I dropped all other projects to pursue this 'secret one' which Id been working on since the final months of 2011. I don't want to say too much about it until its closer to being ready - for fear of being caught unprepared, but it is Minecraft related and involves 3D printing - a LOT of 3D printing.
The whole thing should be 'public' early May (fingers crossed). I initially aimed to have things done by mid April and was on track until some computer issues arose...

My laptop GPU nuked itself for a 2nd and final time (the first time it went bad I pulled the whole laptop apart & ended up putting a bolt through the motherboard to hold the heatsync down... That amazingly worked (initially), and it kept my loyal little laptop running fine for another week or two)

Either way, I have a super modern and exciting (not to mention expensive) laptop on order, which should last out the remainder of my studying years at uni, and should arrive before this weekend - just in time for.......

.....Ludum Dare 23
In my last post I talked about Ludum Dare 22 (and the failure my 'attempt' of a game was)
This time round I have 2 other LD's worth of mistakes under my belt, and a more structured plan of attack. It will be interesting to see what theme it will be this time round, as of writing this post, round 1 voting has started. Theres been some interesting themes in the first round, and I feel like I'm leaning towards making a horror or creepily atmospheric game this time round, so hopefully the theme will be geared towards that initial idea/plan of mine.

I'll be screen-capturing the whole thing this time too (for a full 48 hour timelapse on my youtube channel)
So, third time lucky??

Previously, in March, I also finished a Minecraft based video - 'Minecraft [Real Life] EPIC Creeper Explosions' which I filmed and then spent a week editing in both Blender and After Effects. The video itself was a test for various things leading up to my bigger Minecraft project mentioned at the start of this post, plus it gave me an opportunity to tap into the Minecraft community and get some more Minecraft based subscribers on board.
The video was featured on episode #50 of the Minecraft Monday show (@ 8:08) [link], and the Minecraft daily show #217 [link]

(we'll be seeing more of the Minecraft Monday show with this other project as well, more on that in the near future)

On a more technical note, the video also provided an opportunity to test Blenders newly implemented camera tracking module. The results weren't as good as Id hoped given the amount of time I had to spend on the video, but it was good to finally do some camera tracking in Blender!
I also discovered that as of Blender 2.61 there has been a AE exporter built in, so this project gave me a chance to give that a spin as well - and it worked exactly as Id hoped. I was able to track a shot in Blender, insert 3D elements and render it out. Then using the script I imported the camera data into AE, and continued working on the shot from there. Its the first time Ive used Blender and AE so closely together, and it was great to see the process made so efficient with the inclusion of this script in current and future versions of Blender.

The finished product:

The node rendering setup:

Camera tracking:

Creeper footage breakdown:

Intro footage breakdown:

I had a couple of other things to mention, but since this post has already become quite large I'll save it for another later this week (I'll be trying to get back to posting a blog update at least once a fortnight from now on)
So that's all for now.

Wrap-up of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:54:00 +0000

Well, 2011 is well and truly over. The past couple of months have been quite busy, I had my final exams for the year, then of course Christmas and NYE.

The main thing Ill mention in this post is what I got up to in December - Ludum Dare 22, a 48 hour game contest held 3 times a year. Its a contest with some big names from the game industry in it, such as Notch (the creator of minecraft)
This was my 2nd time doing the compo, and ultimately my 2nd failure to produce a game worth submitting.

I made several posts during the contest, listed below in order:

-Lets do this (But for goodness sake no kittens!!)

-And we’re off! (Finally)

-Half-ish time report

-Game over man, game over.

The main issue I encountered, just the same as my previous attempt during Ludum Dare 19, was that I spent way too much time on unnecessary details and a lot of the time got stuck battling with issues instead of finding quicker ways around or ditching ideas completely. I also could have planned a lot better, working on gameplay first and other details like the environment later depending on time.
Its something I hope to work on, leading up to the next Ludum Dare (#23) in April 2012. Im determined to at least finish something for the next compo.

Looking at Ludum Dare more optimistically though, I did get something out of it - other than sleep deprivation.
Throughout the 48 hours I spent some time developing a story for the game temporarily titled 'Adrift'. The story started out relatively simple but after a while it developed further, into something I feel strongly about completing. Its exactly what Ive been wanting to do lately anyway, since I havent really had a decent game project for well over a year and have been itching to get back into working with BGE.
So, at least I got a new game to work on out of the Ludum Dare experience this time round!

Im hoping to have some of the basic gameplay systems of 'Adrift' done by the time April comes around, so Ill be working on it on and off until then.

And just to wrap up 2011, heres a (cliché) list of my favourite movies and games from 2011:

Movies of 2011:
-Super 8
-Real Steel
-Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
-Rango
*Edit!* - Melancholia

Most played Games of 2011 (not necessarily released in 2011)
-Minecraft
-Amnesia the Dark Descent
-Limbo
-Skyward Sword
-Portal 2
-Oot3D (3DS)
-MarioCart 7 (3DS)
-Links Awakening (3DS)

Thats it for 2011 (finally) for my next post, Ill discuss some of my plans for 2012 and some work Ive already done this year.

Roman Ludus Cinematic Project - Finished

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:34:00 +0000

Finally!
Ive battled with numerous issues, from the project file messing up to loosing the UDK screenshot sequences and having to upgrade my laptop's HDD half way though putting together the final cinematic.
Its been a frustrating effort to get this project wrapped up.

So in summary: This is the final product of my 2nd year (1st semester) project for a digital media class at university. We had to work on an architectural visualisation and I chose to mix things up a bit and use a game engine for the rendering which lead me to UDK and to the 11 day level design tutorial. (Id never used UDK before, but Ive had several years experience using Blenders inbuilt game engine)

The building and surrounding environment is based on the Roman Ludus and terrain from the TV series 'Spartacus Blood and Sand' and 'Gods of the Arena'.

Id originally submitted a rushed version of the final cinematic for the actual assignment, but wanted to tidy it all up a bit more before uploading to youtube (thats the part thats taken so long to get around to doing)

Ive mostly used 3Dsmax for the modelling, but did a bit in Blender as well. Level blocking was done in UDK and Gimp/Photoshop for 2D texture work.
I did a lot of preproduction, including drawing up some blueprints for reference from scenes in the series and an entire design/planning document to refer to throughout the duration of the project.

And finally heres the cinematic:

Now, time to get into other projects :)

New YT Video - BGE realtime slideshow

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:58:00 +0000

Mid semester break from Uni is into full swing, one day in and I've already got a new youtube video up demonstrating a recent project from uni. The project was associated with a speech I had to do a couple of weeks ago, I chose to use BGE for the visual side of the presentation instead of a powerpoint slideshow. The topic of the presentation was something I'm very interested in: Nuclear Fusion.

Using BGE made the project into something interesting and motivating to work on, rather than several boring hours making powerpoint slides. It also gave me an opportunity to have a mess around with videotexture, something Id wanted to use properly for a while.
And of course theres also the advantage of having a presentation which engaged people more directly than what boring PP slides with a few pictures could do.

If I have time over the next couple of weeks Ill be working towards finishing a couple more projects, most which have a large percentage of the work already done, just in need of some finishing touches.

Mars

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 05:07:00 +0000

Ive had a lot of uni work to do lately, so not much time has been spent on blender projects.

This morning however I thought Id do one of the new tutorials over at Blender Cookie, just as a break from the uni work. The tutorial was the planet/space scene one found here: http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/08/24/creating-a-scene-from-space/

Heres the result after following the tutorial:

And the current node setup:

Considering the amount of time it took to setup, its not too bad. Theres still elements Id like to improve on however. Mars itself looks too clean, it needs some kind of subtle atmosphere. Also the lens flare needs obvious work. Im also trying to find a higher resolution texture map, the one I used here was 2K but it doesnt seem to be enough. A normal map would also help...

It was good fun to set up though and I learnt several new tricks with the node editor, I'll be trying to do more BlenderCookie tutorials in the near future I think.

The Past Month

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:38:00 +0000

*Warning - Massive post*

Ive been meaning to post at least once a week, apparently not for the past 4 weeks. Time flies :/

Over the past month a few interesting things have happened. Heres a summary:

----The first ever Blenderheads meetup took place in Adelaide.

I got to meet some very cool people who Id known and talked to online for several years. This included Ben Dansie who worked on Sintel, and Lee Salvemini who runs CGMasters (http://www.cgmasters.net/)
It was also great to catch up with the guys who run Monkeystack again (I did work experience with them at the start of 2010), they were very kind in hosting the event in their studio.
We had a pretty relaxed dinner and chat initially, then some people did presentations (including me) about work they've recently done or a particular area of Blender.
Lots of interesting things were discussed and my only issue with the night was that it ended so quickly, I felt like we all could have talked for days (even though the meetup went for several more hours than planned)

Theres a thread for organizing the event on Blenderartists here. This is where all future meetings will be organized.
Blendernation Post

On the forum thread Ben did a nice writeup about the events of the night, he explains:

The recent Blender User Group meeting in Adelaide was a great success. Big thanks to Michael, Lee, Duann, Alex and Levon for sharing and again to Monkeystack for hosting.

After a pleasant round of chitchat and greetings, I got the ball rolling with a demonstration of the Cycles renderer with an emphasis on characters. (Slightly embarrassing side note, my drivers weren’t actually up to date for CUDA on the night so “only” showed off the CPU rendering.) Michael then continued on by showing some very high res Cycles renders (up to 7k from memory!) and talking about his findings as he pushes Cycles in its current form.

Lee gave an overview of creating the trailer for the CG Masters Rigging DVD – animation, rig controls, adding titles and the sequencer. Also of note were his recent efforts in talking to local schools about the potential to use not only Blender but the growing training material as well. This is certainly something I’m keen to keep an eye on.

Duann then shared about his work with Shapeways and gave a general overview of what the company can offer artists. Some really cool examples were shown including a very neat little walker. After some further questions and discussion, Alex shared his experience with getting a Shapeways print made and painting it. Neat trick – simulate the model falling in the BGE to see if it will stand on its own when printed!

To cap off the night, Levon shared some of his work on various projects and those of us who were left (rather long but enjoyable night) had a quick chat about future meetings.

Further meetups are more than likely going to happen, we all agreed that 2-3 months between meetups was a good amount of time.
My presentation was pretty unorganized and was on the topic of one of my current projects (the one hinted in a past post with a node setup) - it involved some 3D printing testing, Id only finished getting the presentation video together the morning of the meetup, next time I hope to have something more detailed prepared.

----Space Shuttle Atlantis launched - The end of the era of Space Shuttle flight

Might be a strange thing to mention here, since its not *really* related to my current work. But I did have a trip to America planned for this year - at the start of July - to see in person the final space shuttle launch. Unfortunately exams and money became an issue, so I wasn't able to see it in person, but I did watch it live online which is better than nothing.
Id planned to do some kind of mini documentary on the space shuttles, their history and my trip to America and back again, using a lot of footage Id take myself. Im thinking of doing something different now however, perhaps a 3D animation of some sort as a tribute to the 30 years of Space shuttle operation. We'll see...

----Ive purchased an 'Eleven'

Which is basically an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed and produced in Australia. Very nerdy, very cool, very fun.
Its a rather powerful little device, which lets you program microcontrollers. I have several little projects planned, and some larger ones. I might take on some graphics related projects with it, but a lot of them will be electrical engineering and programming based. Ill probubly end up posting stuff about it on here as well. One project relates to the next topic Ill mention below:

----I attended Avcon

Avcon is the Adelaide Video Game and Anime Convention. It happens once a year and is pretty much one of the only events in South Australia for geeks to get their geek on.

It was a pretty interesting weekend all round, lots of *interesting* cosplayers however (some terrible of course, but some surprisingly awesome)
This guy took the place of one of my favourite outfits for the event, it was something I was looking to do, but didnt have the time (and couldnt be bothered anyway)

SSSSssssssSSssssssss........

All that aside, I plan on definitely coming in costume next year.

Another highlight of Avcon was the indie games room (pretty much the main reason I attend the convention), its a place for indie developers (or even hobbiests) to display their games, and have them played for pretty much 48 hours straight by thousands of people. Its a great place to network, and I met several people there over the course of the weekend who were good to network with.
Next year I hope to have something to display in the Indie games room. Something to work towards...

----Operation Moonfall began

This one kinda came out of nowhere, but Im not surprised. In an interview only a couple of days ago, Eiji Aonuma stated that if fans made enough noise about it then Majora's Mask would be remade for the 3DS (MM3D) like Ocarina of time (Oot3D) was.

This was quite exciting to be heard, coming right from one of the top guys at Nintendo, the fact that theyre actually considering remaking Majoras Mask.
This is a game which has firmly sat in my top 3 games of all time, ever since I played it way back in the 90's on my N64.

I had plans myself, before hearing of any of this, to make it heard that MM3D needs to happen, and many other fans have been voicing this since Oot3D was announced as well. So to put it simply, I need to get my plans up and running a lot faster now, since now is clearly the time to make as much noise as possible.
Either way, Nintendo will be recieving a message from me in the near future, heres a sneak peak at part-of-something-to-do-with-it:

I should probubly drop the link to the main site as well while Im at it. So here it is - http://operation-moonfall.org/
Theres a petition to sign, and a facebook group to join + twitter feeds to follow.

Thats about it for the wrap-up of the past month. I have done the occasional 3D work, but not as much as I had planned and Im back to Uni as of this week as well, so finding time for this stuff is even harder again.
The Ludus Cinematic is still not 100% finished, hit a snag when all my file allocations messed up in Premier Pro and I effectively had to re-import everything to the timeline again from scratch (very frustrating)
The problem was caused by the way Id imported the files, and the way they were named after being dumped from UDK.

Hopefully this doesnt happen again...

New Series Intro Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:02:00 +0000

Bit of progress over the past few days working on the intro for my new series.
Just been looking for reference images and styles and I think Ive got a good idea of what the intro should look like. Its based around a bunch of 'glass' looking slides with a certain theme to them, most of these themes will be cgi related, for example one slide is about python programming, another about Blender, and so on.

Ill probubly do a couple of other random ones with games I like and other interesting things. Its not overly important though, the slides are mostly just there for detail and to look 'technical' and loosely provide glimpses at the types of things that might be involved with an episode at some stage.

Heres a quick render I made to see how it was looking with all the moving parts. The video is unlisted so its pretty much a sneak peak for anyone following my twitter/blog or going to my website
(I want to do more of these in future!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5LPQ5ax4B0

This will probubly be tweaked a lot more soon, but its a good start for now.

And I think I'll save working more on this until next week, I want to spend the next couple of days finishing the Ludus cinematic once and for all, keep getting distracted! Gah.

*Edit* Ill change the little thumbnail images to the full images when my internet starts behaving itself again and I dont have to use Imageshack....

Exam Fortnight (arrrghhh)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 05:37:00 +0000

One week of exams left, Ive only had 2 exams this semester which is nice, but it still means lots of sitting around in the dark corner of my room for days on end doing last minute study.

My first (and most difficult) exam was yesterday, my final exam for the semester is this upcoming Friday, and after that I have holidays till August (Hurray!)

I have, however, continued working on polishing up the Ludus cinematic (not too much longer!)
And Ive started blocking out shots for my secret 2nd project which I hinted to in the last post. At the moment I have just over a minute of blocked out shots finished (with a couple of the shots being pretty much final - odd at this stage but theres a couple of non blender things going on here as well)
Looks like full animation will be ~4mins, not including intro and credits. Havent posted anything that long for quite some time, but its nice to have a substantial animation in the works. Also due to its nature it *shouldnt* take too long to produce. I cant say much about why that is, cause it would give a lot away. Just got a couple more characters and environments to *restore* and rig up, then some animation and Im on my way.

Ah, and I really need to get this new video series on the go as well (I think 99% of all the people who follow my work wouldnt even know about this blog yet, the first video of the series will be about news and updates etc so thatll point people here as well)
Im in the process of designing the HUD for the series currently...

-Yes this series is so serious that it requires a HUD.. D:

Back to Blender [finally]

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:17:00 +0000

With exams on the horizon I havent been too active with 3D work(s), but thats not to say I havent done anything.

The Ludus project is coming to a close (finally! Im seriously about to boot the whole thing out the door) and now Ill have time to focus on finishing my other 2 current projects, plus starting a third.

Not sure if Ive mentioned this anywhere, but Im trying to buckle down with projects at the moment. Leaving myself with 3 running at one time max, so once one of the 3 is complete I can take on a new project. This means that I cannot allow myself to get distracted with other projects (lack of productivity lately has forced me to try to rework my project and time management to try and help get more projects finished)
Any other projects I come up with get written down in my notebook and are pretty much forgotten, to be started when Ive completed some other project.

Either way, the Ludus project is finished, I completed the A2 poster for it a week ago, its pretty simple with a wide view of the cliff as the basis, the Ludus perched on the side in the lower right of the poster. The whole bottom of the poster is a 'making of' section which describes the process of designing the level and theres a few other interior shots thrown in around the place as well.

Heres a final shot of everything together:

I still havent finished the cinematic, but will continue to work on it over the next week or so before uploading.

And finally, I havent mentioned anything about my 2nd current project, the screenshot below is a sneak-peak, many people should know where its from, and what it is.

Ludus DVD + Cinematic

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:31:00 +0000

The DVD design is finished, and the Cover+DVD with the cinematic on it was handed up Monday when it was due. Unfortunately I had to rush the cinematic quite a bit more than what I wanted, so its very much lacking polish. Didnt have a choice however, I had to hand it up how it was because I was out of time.
This means I wont be uploading the final cinematic for at least another week, as I need to work on it some more first.

Heres some pics of the DVD

Next up Im doing the final part of the project, an A2 poster.
Cant wait to finish this and get back to some Blender projects!

Thoughts on 3DsMax + More screenshots

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Wed, 18 May 2011 09:56:00 +0000

First up, some more screenshots (even some interior shots) over in the thread at GameArtists.net.
I mentioned in the post how I failed at implementing most of the decals, some kind of lighting issues going on which I dont have the time to look into fixing right now, so most of the decals I made were just a waste of time. *sigh*

Onto current thoughts on 3DsMax (beware, long and drawn out):
So Ive been using 3dsMax pretty extensively the past few months and I cant help but compare it to Blender in several ways.

Its been painful getting into it, but Im slowly getting the hang of using 3DsMax to model and UV map basic objects. It bugs me however, doing anything seems to be overly 'bulky' and/or 'slow'. Ive put most of that down to me not being experienced with Max, anyone familiar with a 3D program will know that they each have their own little tricks and quirks, and once youve gotten to know the program well enough everything starts to flow better. But even telling myself this all the time, I still feel like my inexperience with Max isnt the whole problem. I have after-all been using it for months and know the in's and out's of modeling simple objects with it reasonably well. But for me it seems non-intuitive.
Nothing seems to be in the place you automatically think it should be, or even the next place you think it should be. Max seems to be the product of getting a bunch of uninspired programmers in one room to throw together a program, no consideration for the artists at all.

Sometimes even simple tasks take a whole lot of (seemingly) unnecessary steps. For example adding a new face requires you to find the correct panel, make sure your in face mode, scroll down to the panel within the panel which has a button labeled 'create', activate the button, then the viewport suddenly has verts appear (even though your in face mode) and then the user must individually click every single vert, plus the first vert again just to create the face.

In Blender you select 4 or 3 verts, then press 'F' and the face (either a tri or quad) is created. Done - easy - it makes sense and is super quick. (theres also a button in the UI which does this, but the hotkey is slightly faster)

Another example is UV-unwrapping a complicated object.
First you need to choose the correct option from the modifiers (theres about 5 different UV mapping modifiers here), then change the modifier into face mode (hidden in the modifier stack), activate 'Select by element' in selection parameters panel, press the big 'Edit' button in parameters to bring up the UV window, all going well you can then use Mapping>Flatten map to get some kind of flattened UV map. No idea about making seams for the UVs however, didnt have the time to try to work that one out properly, as it proved to be more frustrating than a simple unwrap of the object to begin with.

Blender however, select the object, tab into edit mode, select all faces, press U (or unwrap in the side toolbar), select method of unwrapping from the dropdown. You then instantly have the UV's flattened out and viewable in the UV window. Seams are as simple as selecting an edge and using the shortcut Ctrl+E to either mark or clear a seam, or again the button(s) in the tool panel.

Again, maybe its mostly a lack of practice and instruction in 3dsMax on my part. But it doesnt take much effort, after using both programs, to see which is geared more towards efficiency and less frustration for the artists.

Additionally I found that 3Dsmax sucked up ram to a point where I couldnt have it running at the same time as UDK (which is also pretty intensive on system resources). This lead me to having to import into Blender the initial Ludus model I made in 3dsMax, so I could have an interactive 3D version of the Ludus to refer to as I blocked out the level in UDK.
Along with all this, 3dsMax takes 2-3mins to boot up on my system, Blender takes 2-3 seconds.
3DsMax 2011 student version - 1.53GB, Blender 2.57 - 74MB

And I still remember the days when Blender was <20MB....

Final week progress

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Wed, 18 May 2011 08:34:00 +0000

Got less than a week remaining for this project to wrap up (at least the major cinematic part, theres still one part of the project to do later but thats not so much 3D related)

The ludus is coming together well, Im just about finished making assets now, and the level has been rebuilt a bit for some extra rooms and the staircase connecting the ground level with the top, plus its all pretty much furnished as best as I can with the remaining time Ive had to work on it. Im starting on the new camera angles now for the full cinematic which will be rendered using Manitee.
I also spent a bit of time yesterday making a ton of decals. They should liven up the bland walls and texturing. Soon we'll be seeing walls with damage and chipped away surface, or the occasional stains, grime and blood splatters.

Last night I also got around to making a full 360 terrain object complete with mountains, which really adds to the overall environment. The terrain was modeled in Blender in about 10mins (would have had a migraine trying to do it in 3dsmax, Ill get to that in my next post)
Then I slapped on some rocky texture, which didnt really cover it properly (lots of stretching) but it doesn't matter because all of this will be in the distance, and UDK's DOF blurs the distant mountains anyway.

(thats the Ludus in the bottom right)

Ludus Asset Development

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Tue, 10 May 2011 12:28:00 +0000

With the main level design out of the way and the teaser rendered out at a decent level of quality, Im now focusing a lot on creating assets for the level. My main concern at the moment is that its a bit too bland and undetailed.
Ill be spending all of this week and some of next week going though a relatively large list of objects Ive written up, its been slow progress to begin with, but I think Im finally at a stage where my workflow is pretty fast and efficient.

Heres my custom asset folder slowly being populated:

And some arrange for a screenshot:

Note that all of these assets have at least one low poly mesh, a collision mesh, UVW mapping and one diffuse map (more will have normal maps if I have time and theres a few with multiple textures), so its taking quite some time per object to get it into UDK.

A lot of the objects also have hollowed out collision meshes- the pots, bowls and wooden barrels in the picture for example are hollow and can hold other items. You can see one of the barrels is filled with rigid body wooden swords, with the barrel in turn being rigid body as well. This means you can pick up the barrel and move it somewhere else in-game, with the ability to spill the swords everywhere if your not careful. Also if you accidently run into it, the barrel will fall over, roll around spilling its contents everywhere. I cant explain the amount of time Ive wasted running around a test area putting pots and things into barrels and then rolling them down a staircase or just throwing them to see what happens.
Thats one of the great things Ive discovered with UDK - when you think of something a bit tricky, all you have to do is approach the idea in a sensible way and UDK tends to work out exactly how youd want it to. BGE (blenders game engine which Ive been using for years) is a more primitive for some of these things. I could imagine similar ideas in BGE being a painful task. In UDK it just works as expected.

So for now Im just going to carry on though the long list of objects I need to make, but at least Im at the stage where I can get a model into UDK (start to finish) in pretty good time, everything that was slowing me down previously Ive managed to overcome and learn for the most part (like using 3dsmax's stupid UVW system)
Then mid next week Ill start putting the final composition together while adding final objects and polishing up the scene further.

UDK Level progress

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:00:00 +0000

So I spent a decent whole day working on this Tuesday (samples of raw footage were required for the university assignment Wednesday afternoon)
For the most part Ive finished the majority of the level design, lighting, basic details, postpro effects and managed to animate and test render some camera movements using Manitee.

Heres a teaser of some of the better external angles so far:

So whats left to do? - Polish and detail mostly. Theres a lot of objects I havent modeled and added to the level yet, some stock ones from UDK I want to replace with my own and a lot of the textures need rework and tweaking. Then its time to render some more interesting shots and compose the final cinematic.

Temporary front page is up!

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:52:00 +0000

Ive finally got around to getting a slightly better front page for the website up!
(before it was just the spinning 'Delta' logo)

The main site is under construction for now, but I still wanted somewhere for people to be able to see news and WIPs as things happen. Im not sure when the main site will be done, but Ill be working on it whenever I have time to spare.

And to announce all this I plan on doing the first part of a new video series on my youtube channel. Not sure when Ill get around to making that either, but the first episode should be pretty short and just news based, so sometime during May or early June I hope?

And how about a screen-capture, just for reference in the future:

WIP's - April 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:06:00 +0000

Currently I'm working hard on a 3D related project for University (Uni being one of a collection of things taking up the majority of my free time at the moment).
Anyone whos used UDK before will have instant familiarity with the screenshot below:

This is the very early 'blocking' out of a UDK game level which is the focal point for the overall assignment. Its coming together slowly, as this is my first time using UDK, but I hope to have a decent amount of work done early next week. Will be interesting if anyone can recognize what building it is and where its from. Key word here is 'Ludas'.

Consequently the logo sting I put up on youtube a few weeks ago is also related to this project:

More about this project soon.

Another project I'm hoping to finish soon - A Blender one I started in January, hoping to have finished it before the Uni semester began, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I got a bit out of control with the node-setup for the render and then Uni went back and I haven't really touched it since.
It was good practice with nodes at least - and much needed practice since Id hardly touched them in the past but had been meaning too at some stage.
Id say 95% of the node setup is complete, still a few things to tweak and tune, but overall that part is finished, all thats left is to animate the character and render it all out and compose the final clip together. Ill get to it again soon I hope, because it leads onto other projects I wont let myself start yet (trying at the moment to finish some projects before I move onto others)
Its looking pretty good at the moment however, nice lens flares, blurs, all kinds of lens effects, a functioning HUD just for the hell of it, plus a whole heap of render layers interwoven in crazy mind-cramping ways, and even some bubbles which refract the environment and character behind them (one hell of a pain to composite using nodes as I found out)

To finish this post off here's a teaser pic of the node setup -

News-feed Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Delderfield (AD-Edge)) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:30:00 +0000

So this is the first post for Delta Edge Productions. Its all been a while in the making but the site is almost coming together in its basic structure. Im working on getting it functioning properly at the moment, so Ill make sure to improve and change the look of the site in the near future.

This side of the site will be primarily for my portfolio work, personal projects and WIP news, while the other side is for more business type stuff (Delta Edge Designs), and wont be as active.

So keep an eye on this page and this news feed, Ill hopefully be updating it regularly (which I figure is a post or more per week) with current projects, tests, thoughts and overall things happening on the site and with my work.

/AD-Edge