Did Halkun die again? (A Little off-topic)

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halkun

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Hi, I'm not dead....
     Just wanted to give you guys a heads up on what I've been doing. The long and the short is that I've started a indy game comapny and I've been busy working on my first game.

     Yea, remember that ""Pineapple Chronicle" thing? You know, where you were stuck on an island with a Japanese girl and you had to learn Japanese in order to survive with her. That's the game I'm working on full-time now. I'm taking what I learned from Q-gears and applying it to my game. Now I'm not taking any of the Q-gears code, this game will not be open source. Mostly I'm taking management ideas and frameworks I've learned while taking apart FF7.

     Now, I'm not a game programmer. I was, at one time, a relational database programmer for the local police department. Even though you would think programming is programming, creating a game is massively different then writing parsers to convert VMS reports into SQL commands and depositing them into the correct table with the correct relational keys. But, as I have recently graduated college, I have now found myself with a disproportionate amount of time on my hands. Taking my skills I have accumulated over the years, I've decided to start an indy game company.

     For those shocked by this, yes, I can actually code too. (Cyb has seen me slip when I say I don't and then all of the sudden I'm writing XML parsers for the Q-Gears homepage, and slipping code into the source tree.) Actually, in my downtime I've been learning C++, and have a good framework for my project going. Most of what I've been doing is throw-away prototypes, but it's shaping up into a really cool thing.

    I've decided to write a interblag so you guys can watch me develop my game. If anything it will allow others to look at the design process. I, however, have no idea what the hell I'm doing, so I'm relying on my mundane database programming disciplines and a lot of imagination. As it would seem, I'm actually having fun with this. I make mistakes, but they are more challenges than anything. If any "real developer" wants to comment, go ahead. I take advice and criticism really well.

Anywho, here's a link to my Blag. I've made a promise to update it at least every day with my progress. Lemme know what you think!
 
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Wishing you the best with you own project, I'd like to know how this is going to influence the development of Q-Gear, now that the main supporter (Akari) has also decided to stop working on it.
 
I suggest you go and read Charlie Cleveland's blog, which details his founding of an indy dev studio (although the blog picks up long after development, there are some posts where he talks about the early process) with the goal of writing Natural Selection 2.

Here's the first post:

http://www.charliecleveland.com/archives/2005/03/
 
Heh. Halkun your blog is kind of popular :D

Good fortune and there have been interesting comments on it. I'm reading it just to ponder the problems. :D

Cyb
 
i wish you the best of luck. it's very tough to break into the industry, but if i get the gist of this (you're making an educational game right?) then you're filling in one of the many niches that exist at the moment.

if you need any 3d assets, let me know. i'll do them for no charge, as long as the title is unreleased. we can negotiate payment if and when it comes to selling a product.

but until then, as i said, i'll make you anything you need.

edit: after reading a few of your posts with regard to your own model, and comparing it with Yuna. and in particular, your comment with regard to the ps2 capabilities. realise that the "millions of polygons" aren't just in the player models, but also in the environments etc. and that weapons tended to be fairly dense for their size.

also, try to visualise how many pixels on screen your character will be taking up. if it's less than 500,000 then you should try to keep your model to less than 5,000 triangles. the reason being, you'll never ever see that much detail anyway. the same goes for a texture. if you have a 512x512 texture, you won't see all of those pixels unless they fill up the same number of pixels on screen. which means that a face with that size map will probably need to take up 1/4 of your average monitor. not to mention, the more faces/normals your mesh uses, the more information has to be loaded into your video memory. you can expect a model of around 10,000 triangles, with a single 1024* map, to hit about 10mb. if you're looking at 50k triangles, with a 512* map for each object. you're then looking at about 1000mb (taking into account the number of textures). which means loading that model alone will bottleneck your videocard, stopping you from rendering the world around it, and any other characters you have.

A sound theory to go by is this: always have at least one viewport (i usually use a second perspective view) zoomed and locked to the same distance/model size i want my model to be in-game. any verticies which are no longer defining an outward shape on the model, are redundant and unnececary, so get rid of them. the most important thing to focus on is the silouhette, because internal details will be handled via texture.

feel free to email me, or contact me on aim/msn. i'm more than happy to advise/teach/do some work for you.

also, check out:
www.poopinmymouth.com (ben mathis) for a bunch of really useful theory and tutorials.
http://boards.polycount.net/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0 <<< that should be your new home. it's a hangout for both wanabe's and professional game artists alike, along with animators, modelers, mappers, texture artists, and a few programmers. you can find anything you're looking for there, and if you can't then ask someone. be warned though, they are kind of cliquish, and you'll need to pimp something REALLY cool to get their attention. and they don't care about your feelings when it comes to critique. they will be honest, and open. and if they tell you to restart your model, it's probably for the best.

i can also explain to you how they put up "invisible barriers" without making them look like they are there (kinda the point i think?). the water would have an under-current for example, which would push you back in. and at the edges of the map, you would have a piece of cliff/land that comes out just far enough that you can't get past it without having to swim through that nasty undercurrent. when walking along, the bushes next to you would be overly thick, you'd need a chainsaw to get through. etc.
 
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I'm gonna pop this into Completely Unrelated, as it really doesn't have much to do with Q-gears. I would like to expand further on Pineapple. You guys can follow me if you want.

Almighty_gir, As much as I would like for someone to help with the assets, it can run into some very nasty legal/logistical  snags very quickly. I'm simply too small to be able to handle the transfer of assets. Contracts are something I can't even begin to imagine right now. On top of this, my budget is incredibly meager. I can barely afford the torque engine itself, and in fact, I'm just using the demo right now just to see if things are even feasible.

There is a reason why my computer only costs $65

The tutorial videos you showed me are a big eye-opener. My models are prefabs that I have ether licensed or are free for commercial use. I don't own Photoshop. In fact, I can barely use Layers in Gimp. I've never used a mask, dodge, or burn tool, and can't tell you what they do other then they are important. I "model" my characters by squishing them in blender to conform to scribbled line art I scan in.

After watching what the guy was doing with silhouettes, I couldn't even watch it anymore.

I'm sending you an email...
 
lol, i tell you what then.

if you want me to help you with assets, the only thing i want written into any form of contract would be:

i reserve the right to show any work i create in the form of a portfolio piece, or as work to further my career.

i've helped out indy companies in this way before, it's mutually beneficial, and it's always fun for me =] i didn't get your email, unless it's in my junk box, i'll check that out... like i said, i can help you learn anything you need to.
 
All right, someone honest enough to not own something because they can't afford it!  :-D
I doubt that you can run photoshop on a 65$ computer, unless you have huge scratch discs. Good luck on pineapple island though!
 
i didn't get your email, unless it's in my junk box, i'll check that out... like i said, i can help you learn anything you need to.
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I spoke too quickly. Your email is hidden. Go ahead and email me. (krythic at gmail dot com). we can start a conversation there.
 
Hey I'm always looking for stuff to do if you need something modeled gimme a buzz, I'm currently (slowly) working on a mod at the moment I can link you to a thread of a WIP I have.
 
i didn't get your email, unless it's in my junk box, i'll check that out... like i said, i can help you learn anything you need to.
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I spoke too quickly. Your email is hidden. Go ahead and email me. (krythic at gmail dot com). we can start a conversation there.
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I wish you luck Haikun, I'm going to make sure I keep up with your blog, especially since I desire to learn Japanese
 
Olie, please do not resurrect old posts, especially if there's no real content to add.
 
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