For the moment I do not know yet what I’ll do, everything is possible (as the fact that in the end I do nothing)

That is what I said in an earlier news. Well yes, I restarted EXIL … for a better stop. I am really tired, I’m not motivated to program, a person was supposed to help me but nothing finally. Besides, I was not very motivated at this revival.

But especially my methodology is really bad. I am a victim of a bade disease. It was after my second reading of the book of Hourences “The hows et the whys of level-design” I had a click, or even a revelation: I work badly. Mal et n’importe comment. In fact I work with envy. Evidence that this is not good, I’ve never succeeded yet one of my projects (rpg maker, mod source, UDK, etc. …). As shown Hourences, I am a victim of “Restart Syndrome.” The disease that I start my work again and again lack of motivation, ideas or other causes. The best example of this disease remains Exil : two years of development, 3/4 different game engine, a story which has often changed, its gameplay too as a result of chaotic and never satisfactory. Not to mention the problems of team management, distribution and preparation of work.

Through the writings of Hourences for modder who fully intended to go beyond seeking (or seeking more rigorous), I was finally able to see what was wrong with my work in general, but also see my ambitions . I never really took into consideration the amount of work. Especially on Exil and being alone. In fact I had the impression of being conscious, pushing with my little hands the various mockery. But Exil was from the beginning a project too big, too complex in front of my abilities, despite my great desire to leave a game in the style of Prince of Persia. It looks like a post-mortem all that. In the end it turned against me: I am completely unmotivated.

And as in the best Hollywood comedies, the one where the wicked won the right to lose in the end, I decided to make good resolutions for sure will change the face of the world where I live. At least a piece of land that supports my feet.

A FPS now…
I share a new project (yeah, again), but this time more to my position. I tried to compensate my programming ability with throwing in an FPS with the UDK. The base of the UDK is already a FPS, I would save a lot of lines of code. Programme:

-2 weapons (a sniper rifle and a submachine gun)
-3 different enemies (warrio, robot, flying robot)
-4/5 maps for 2/3 hours of play (without count cinematic/story)

Somes pictures of my start :

Al.chemy and drawings
Al.chemy is a drawing tool particular… It is used to create “chaos”, and abstract, to find any idea to draw.
Say like this, it seems weird, but here a video to understand:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYYSxZZzgjc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyhznB4jG9w

I am using and abusing the mirror tool, which is really interesting and rewarding. This saves a lot of time to design character/faces in this way. Also rendering tools with some random side gives a nice sketch.
I used it now for the design of my characters (plus a few tests, some have been retouched with Photoshop):

Other drawings without alchemy :

Tout ceci est désormais visible ici…

Portfolio

Yes, I updated my portfolio. For something more clean, simple, and especially, ESPECIALLY, fast. A website in php/wordpress is really not great. I have long hesitated to put a text to each picture to detail my work, but in the end not knowing what to say about some and lambda visitors not likely to read it, I ignored.

A movie : Inception

I saw Inception, I liked. On the first day the film influenced me a lot, since I could detach myself a bit. But the idea of the dream is interesting, especially if one imagines in a video game. However I do not find it so great. Change reality causes an impact on the player, if you create a tangible world, change its laws outside surely cause a strong reaction. That is what I seek in my current FPS project.
But I reject the idea that the player is in a “dream”, because if the context of the dream is set up, the player necessarily expect something illogical, surreal. And even if it took him by surprise, the idea “this is a dream, anything is possible” exists. And she dislikes me.
I would love to propose situations that seem impossible to strengthen their character, their impact. Leave some doubt of the dream and we can not be sure of the way the player reacts. That is why I believe, establish a system of “dream” in a game is not interesting.

I do not especially critical to the film itself, but the idea of making a game on the theme ran through my mind. In any case this is not the film that pushed me to achieve now a little FPS.
Anyway I tested the effect of the street that folds (as in the picture), it gives this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UipCP6klV8

EXIL : restart and new story
My exil is ended, after be fed up about the project (in brief, even if that’s more complicated) in late January, I take it again. Now I work alone. From a technical standpoint, my period on LLOE was greatly beneficial. I know better the UDK today, and everything that affects them (modeling / texturing). I have produced little, but tested much. And ultimately it will be assumed that the most time. Now I know what to do after what I want to get. In short this time has been very beneficial.

I still discovering many things, my last test is currently on SpeedTree and grass. I think I would go through a more traditional model for trees and other flora (so I would not use SpeedTree). Because the problem of SpeedTree is that it generates trees without leaving the option to add a lightmap, preventing rendering like this (detailed shadows on the trees themselves) :

Render created by “whammes”, source.

But EXIL is now a new story. Now with two protagonists: Enklave (always here) and his wife Lena. Each will have a single player campaign for a single story in parallel, but in two very different places, let me explain …

The player will have the choice to start to play with Enklave or Lena (after reached the end of one of these scenarios, the player will start the another campaign).
Lena and Enklave are both at the head of a kingdom on the world of Ora, they are married and govern together. These days, unfortunately, their kingdom is subjected to many disasters and problems. Despite their efforts to eliminate all of the ills suffered by the people, the population expresses his dissatisfaction to the king and queen. They do not know exactly what is the cause of all these misfortunes, but they blame their leader who appears to their eyes do not make enough effort.
It’s in this tense climate that a advised general of the court will seize the opportunity to overthrow the king and queen. Through gossip and rumors, the people will throw the queen at the bottom of a dungeon, and exiled the king on the moon Quet. Quet is used as a final prison (no returns) by many kingdoms adjacent. Quet and Ora are two planets orbiting a sun. They both are a moon to another planet. Quet is known for its dangerous and unwelcoming fauna, all those who are exiled are never returned.

It is from the exile of Enklave and the imprisonment of Lena that begins the two scenarios. The player will choose which to begin.


EXIL : artworks
Here two news artworks created for present Enklave and Lena :

For Enklave I share a similar style of Captain Harlock. A cape, a black eye: everything that gives a style somewhat cheerful and very black. For Lena I’m still in vague, I do not have many ideas. I peel a ton of artwork currently on female characters (and also for architectural level design). But beforehand I leave aside the string, it’s not my style.


EXIL : modeling

Discovering of Topogun few days ago. This was an opportunity to try out retopologie (creation of a low-poly model from a high-poly) and texturing by projection. I stumbled across texturing projection with a video of “Sculptris“, a new 3D sculpting sofware who was released in 1.0. I asked myself after watching this technique in Zbrush if Mudbox did to. Was indeed the case!
Discovering the retopology the way, I decided to try topogun who had very good returns. Well after a quick instructional video on the software tools, I am left to test all these new discoveries.
Sclupting et texturing under mudbox, and creation of the low-poly under topogun. My hands take the software only lasted 10 minutes, but my modeling (low-poly) it took me an hour (not easy in the end to choose what part should have some detail or not on a uniform rock) . So I get a low-poly model of 654 triangles from a model of 1,5 million polygons !

Here the renders (in order : rock 1 under topogun, rock 1 render, rock 2 render ) :

These renders were made in real-time on the map who come from with the UDK, map presented at the GDC 2010 to show the new features of the engine (by Epic).


EXIL : programmation and gameplay
The basic gameplay, which will be shared by the two protagonists was developed and is being programmed. Many acrobatic movements and ability will be possible with Enklave and Lena. But each character has its own advantages and disadvantages. What will end up with two different gameplay and prevent any copy/paste or feeling of a repetition from an adventure to another.
That said, even if the base is common, the gameplay is fairly hard to program. I am currently working on a variety of movement, the horizontal wallrun and roll. And it’s pretty difficult in the end. Today I have a much better understanding of the code of the UDK, but it remains insufficient. Finally facing the difficulty to program all this, I just set aside the code to harness myself to modeling. I’ll go very quickly to develop the prototype as quickly as possible.

The big advance of these days was last night: the menu! Essentially based on the code of Whizzle at the start (and a bit much for the moment), I intend to move and inspire me all of this. My current code is so easily scalable and can draw anything and everything on the screen.

A little drawing at a morning uninspired (left) and an ongoing modeling of an interior type Persian (right). For the drawing I was trying to convey an architecture for the city, and the twilight atmosphere I want. But finally, after 15 minutes of scribbling, I am stopped, not having enough interesting ideas.

That’s all for LLOE … and perhaps the last things I would do for this project “LLOE.

My previous project moddb: EXIL.

In the last few days, I wonder if I could not restart my old project that I abandoned. I would not go back on the reasons that led me to abandon the project, I really do not want to talk about it. Still, I wonder if the work accomplished during the two years on EXIL (the name of my old project) and these four months on LLOE could not be reached. Especially as I have in mind an opening level of programming that would finally set me what I want to have gameplay similar to a “Prince of Persia”.
I made tremendous progress in a lot of areas. Last January I knew almost no UDK. Now I can set a menu, make a level with my own modeling (things that I did not before). I say that it is therefore again possible, and especially, EXIL never really left my mind.
For the moment I do not know yet what I will do, everything is possible (like the fact that in the end I would not do anything), but my project LLOE is ultimately “too hard” compared to what I ask. I can not build a history and ambience. Something that I already made for EXIL. Also the gameplay is too simple on LLOE, and I would dream of selling one of my own games later, staking everything on LLOE seems wasted time. The Unreal engine 3 can do great things, and EXIL seems more suited to it.

Anyway, the point on which I learned at my expense: on a project that I lead I will never work with a team. I’m really not competent to lead a team.

I must say that I made without really knowing, I somehow tampered with it, by reaching for what I wanted. The code is still quite incomprehensible. Major efforts on code documentation must be provided by Epic at this level I think.


Rigging :
And yes, I still have not abandoned this. I left out kenza to tackle the player. Given that the game will be with a view in third person, I’m working on the rigging and animation of my main character (the player). I have not made a new model, I actually reuses kenza. As I create a template that will be unique and probably the same for each person, that I would change the envelope. animations will always validate.
Currently awaiting responses to requests for assistance on various forums (to make a correct rigging, in fact I blocked the way to develop special tools for animation), I think about FaceFX, the tool to animate a character for dialog (facial animation). For the moment I inquire, are studying some file and am a tutorial. But I can already see how to make the rigging of the face. The issue then all the configuration in the UDK and animation, the most difficult.
Here, for example, marcus rom gears of war, I amused myself by moving the bones to see how it works:

Concepts :
I managed to get concept from Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed, which I find perfectly match what I will see/have in the city of LLOE. I’ll let you watch all this in addition to my comments:



The architecture of the city will be similar to what you see: a mixture of columns, towers, and various neighborhoods. Because the city is hoisted on top of cliffs, and a platform flying above it in the clouds, it is important to recreate a sense of vastness and verticality. This induces various bridge and leaped into the void and through multiple paths. With a sun that will give splendid twilight shadows and lights.

Another point I’d like to create: the land. Not just a city with barren rocks, but points of view on a sea within which to situate the center of the city. Sunbathing near the water without jersey anyone?

Here the city but more in detail, a bustling city with markets and other inhabitants. Houses with balconies and narrow streets. In short, a rough warm city.

Always the city, the view outside. Who inspire me on the greatness of the city and its vertical side. But also the tangled streets, houses on top of each other. I hope to send out a human side and chaos across the city, not a rigid plan and would be boring as a Roman city. In addition, this feature would give the neighborhoods, they do not resemble each other and this will allow the player to navigate without a map.

An intimate interior: this is how I see apartments that used for Lena (heroin). Warm, exposed to sunlight, but also very gloomy for the intimate side.

None of these artworks are made by me, they are the respective property of Spath and Hydropix. I warmly invite you to visit their site to see their other work.

I end on a test video, a light from the sun, throwing clouds in the UDK:

      It plays Lena, a young woman of 25 who died early in the game and thus finds itself in the “after death”. It should find some memories of his last moments of life to determine how and why she died assassinated. If she manages to complete its investigation before the time specified by the death (the mower), it can return to live in the world of the living.
      Lena can only explore, observe, collect and combine objects to make his investigation. His investigation will take place in the kingdom of the dead, the city named Echelon. she will have to search the archives, chat, etc.. It may even rare occasions back in the world of living, again for purposes of his investigation.
      In this world, nakedness is challenged before. Man is born naked, naked man dies. Man and woman are left without clothes in the city.

I also developed a storyboard for the cinematic intro. To see if you are very curious, I would not recommend it otherwise, it will be I think a big part of the future trailer:

I just put aside the modeling and animation of Kenza. And I focus on level design. I started creating a series of models that will be used to build the city. A few sketches left or I tried to decompose the architecture to make the creation modular. This will allow me to reuse and easily compose songs for new architectures. I also made a first test.

You can see following screenshots and artwork intended to inspire me (source: Prince of Persia (games and film), Age of Conan (game)).

Age of Conan





Prince of Persia

Purchase
I made the purchase of a new tutorial of Eat3D, this time on lighting and post-processing with the UDK. To better understand how lightmass and serve me correctly the UDK various tools such as color correction and ambient occlusion.

Videos
Last things, two short videos. Various tests (one for The room, the other for a test light with a lamp that would keep the player).

Et voilà, that’s all for now. Not much I stagnant right now.

LLOE
So I resumed LLOE recently, I just spent a half weeks over this. To continue my work paused. As is my habit, I am entitled to my share of problems of any kind! Starting with the March version of UdK crash every 10 minutes when one tries to use it. It’s very … BORING (FUUUUUU…)! It cut any desire to work I must say.

My main concerns are in modeling characters. Some concerns skeletons. Left initially a problem of scale, I had to resize Kenza who happened to be too small. Except that it is not so simple. Despite my tinkering, I came to start my riging because the models and no longer corresponded skeleton (see first image). From there, I take my last tutorials swallowed, I use a tool that allows xsi rigging easy. It works, almost. This time I find myself with an arm that runs from through (second image). But I’m not going to complain, I think I know how to solve (a bit abrupt, must beginning to zero). However, through the tool xsi I can now even easier to animate my character (third image), and I must say that I am aps cons. Bones by bones animate a character is very restrictive because they do not necessarily react very well, especially not really like a normal human. Result bend one leg becomes difficult and very poorly animated.
I’ll probably see an attempt to capture the motion (scale, with the help of webcams) to gain speed (production) and realism (rendered fluid and natural movement).

Otherwise I’m still working on my stage “The room”, I move very little overboard because I am particularly Kenza and her rigging. So I threw a lot of stuff, some really finishes (wood stove, a wall light). I filled a little over the scene this time with books. This allowed me to reduce the effect of light at the window.

Hop, another point on LLOE, two new artworks. I’m currently on the outside, the place where the lead player once came out from “The room”.

Vecruza
During a weekend with just my laptop and UDK, and no files of LLOE, I spent a few hours to play with the base model. Fournits those with UDK. I am strated on the idea of creating a map of type “Deathmatch”, then in the end I quickly stopped. Firstly because it is difficult to compose a map with only the models from one another (especially inappropriate) and then because I quickly lost motivation to achieve something concrete. I am left with no plan, just with the desire to create a special atmosphere. I feel I have succeeded, and I rather like the result for only 4 hours of work.

The Blog
For those who follow my blog a bit, I took a little time to change the head of it. Switching to black! And he is now an intro page at: http://froyok.fr. He’ll have me to take the time to complete the other sections and eventually bring this train …

GDC : Crytek and the cryengine 3

This video is just the first of a series of 5, you can find the following four on gametrailer.
The major principle that people crytek likes to put forward (my impression) is that their engine can render in real time on any computer and console simultaneously. It is also evident on this video, the commentator who handle the pc to the right, and made console in front (and thus on the video just above). The record is already very promising, and consoles now provides a good engine optimization. I also think it’s the spearhead of this version of the engine.

GDC : Epic and UDK
Epic Games made a little video about all that went out through the UDK since four months (November, launch date of UDK). It seems that many of the games was already presented under development as UT3 mod are then passed under the UDK to make them independent. This is the case with “Sanctum”.

LLOE : tinkering and testing
A new animation for Kenza, this time to test more thoroughly the XSI animation system. It’s quite difficult to find great animations (realistic) by hand. Well, I have not quite set my skeleton kenza, so that I have a little trouble handling with it (especially in the pelvis).
I warm up, but hopefully soon move on: FaceFX! I talk more soon.

It will also be necessary that I should see the proportions of Kenza (and my other characters) so that it matches the rest of my scenes, as you can see, it’s not very pretty, kenza is rather small beside chair :

Kenza : details
Some pictures who show you the work accomplished, simple, but very long :

Kenza : animation
In line with my rigging, I made an animation very quickly. It’s ugly (it even gives a perverse side haha), but at least I could test various things in the integration UDK. We’ll have that I also code a system of npc to do interact the player with Kenza, and especially to walk in the room!

I am very happy because in the end I managed to do this by staying with Softimage|XSI, I did not need to use Maya!

Video player
As you can see just above, I had to use a home video player (well, so to speak, built into wordpress) to view my new video. If I did this, it’s to prevent future problem with the nudity of my game with sites like youtube/vimeo who may censor/delete my videos seen their future content. Now I host my own videos. Normally the weight should not be too heavy (which today is 26mb) and my webhost offers a very good bandwith.

Kenza : 17400 triangles
Yeah, yeah, we can say that Kenza is quite large. I will soon start the skeleton (the uv is already unfolded as you can see, it is simply an unfolding with the software Roadkill, the UV is not yet optimized in the space).

Video : gameplay tests and skeleton

First video : this is a test with physical objects. I wanted to see if we could manipulate time, and doing some research on the UDK I saw that we could not only “lock” objects-almost stopped in time but even to a system of “slow-motion”. It remains to see how to go back a few seconds, if that is possible, I think I can offer a very interesting gameplay.

Second video : xsi first test with a skeleton. I do not have much to say, I think it was fairly complicated to make, and ultimately it’s very simple, finally, say it with a single cylinder. It remains to see what it will with kenza.

Artworks
I put my hands on some concepts and made, I find them quite interesting, either by their play of colors and shades, either by the architecture they propose.

(The image à the right come from a multiplayer map for UT3, availible here, on the epicgame forum)

Similarly, I watched the movie “The Fountain” recently and atmosphere although very dreamlike also reminded me the movie “The Prestige” and the movie “The Illusionist”. These 3 movies have really colors and moods common that I want in LLOE.

(Respectively : The foutnain -- The prestige. -- The illusionist)

Photoshop : the brushs
I got a lot of brush on this website: http://www.brusheezy.com/
I did not think the complexe brush could achieve results more quickly and easily, and I must say that I enjoy a lot with:

Concepts : places
Before speaking characters, I’ll tell you about the places. I made two sketches rather amber to get an idea of the beginning:

They are not very explicit and it’s pretty hard to find. Also I think the idea is still at work structurally. Besides, here are other pictures found on the web that I like very much. The left is very reminiscent ICO…

Concepts : The Kenza and Madra sophias
I am currently working on two characters, Madra and Kenza. Madra happens to be the reaper, death. I realized a concept with a few quick tests with tattoos (remmenber that sophias high classes are naked and tattooed. The tattoo is also their function). None of these tattoos are permanent, it is only test when I finalize it I will attack this character (just concepts for the moment with Madra).

For Kenza is different, it is actually the butler/secretary of death. She’s hosting the player at the beginning of the game. From his social status (although Secretary) as she is to serve the dead, she is also naked, and his tattoo is a derivative of that of the death.

I started modeling theire in Softimage|XSI using blueprints, it’s not as easy as I thought, the human body is actually very complex. I was very wrong with the feet and buttocks. Besides, this is not definitive. You can see below Kenza and an advertising campaign which is very interesting graphically, I speak about the “water dress” on the women. I think this can give a garment very, very interesting!

Videos : demo and logo
Two videos that speak for themselves, I have not much to say above: