For Developers: PolyKhrome introduces Powerhouse

If you're not an indie or hobbyist game developer, then you're not going to care about this one too much.  But if you are, then this might be of some interest to you.

We're opening a new page devoted to our game assets for sale.  It's going to be through a division called Powerhouse Game Assets (or simply Powerhouse).  This is just so we can focus our attention on our games here at PolyKhrome, and on our coming assets at Powerhouse.

The assets from Powerhouse will be developed with the indie game developer in mind, and as indie game developer, PolyKhrome knows a lot of those needs personally.  We make what we need (such as the clothes-modeling program I've been organizing, for instance) and we know that others will appreciate what we are and will be producing.

The assets will range from everything such as 3D models, environments, music, textures, scripts, detailed content packages and even full basic game starter packs.  And we're providing assets for many kinds of game engines, including Unity, UDK, CryEngine 3 SDK, and Spring RTS Engine.  2D game engines will be later supported.  The assets will be variously available in a number of asset marketplaces, such as the Unity Asset Store, Envato, TurboSquid, and 3DExport.

The majority of the content will be game-ready, and the prices for our assets will be priced with the indie developer in mind.  We'll even offer a royalty-based plan option that will be available when we begin with showcasing assets, because we know that sometimes you've got to start with nothing to make something.

The money we make from assets will go towards our own game development, and even some of the game assets from our own games will be made available as assets to use, typically provided with alternative textures in addition to the original textures.

As for the name, I like the name Powerhouse because it describes our we're going to be with our assets production.  I already have the kind of logo in mind for it.  And I think I just have a thing for ten-letter words that begin with P, has an H in the middle, and ends with E.

We're looking to have our first assets put up this week.  If you visit the site, please excuse the mess--we're building something here.

- Brian

Thanks for 600 views (and without even trying!)

We've reached over 600 views so far, and whether you're a repeating visitor or a new visitor, thank you!  This is a rather nice number of views considering that PolyKhrome hasn't even began to broadcast our game Cyka yet.  We plan to put the Cyka game and register PolyKhrome on Indie DB as soon as the playable demos are almost finished, and we suspect there will be a significant jump in attention from that.

But just the fact that you all who contributed to the 600+ views thus far, just on word-of-mouth or curiosity alone, it still pretty cool.  Having 600 views is not a lot in terms visitors of most bigger blogs, but for an upstarting indie game developer working on their currently unheard-of game, it does mean that at least 600 times, we've piqued someone's interest to come here.  We'll take it.

- Brian

Update: Some development concept designs up

Next time you see me, I'mma be finished and awesome!

This will be a brief one here.  There's some development concept shots on the Concept Art page.  It's just few pieces, and again, they're in developmental stage.  They're undergoing design refinement, sculpting, retopo (making it a low-poly mesh), and texturing, and incorporated with other designs.  There are several designs being finished at one time.  I meant to post something earlier today, but I simply lost track of time (I'm one busy guy).  But there are more shots on the way, concept art, finished shots, and in-game demo shots.  Meanwhile, terrains still need more texturing, and so they are next.

-Brian

Update: Podcast is available and concept art is next

Our first podcast!

The first PolyKhrome podcast is now available in the Behind The Scenes page.  This is the first one from me as the chief developer, and here I talk about things such as a overview description of the game, the plot and theme of the story in the game, a little on the visual design aspects of the game, and some development in plan for the game, as well as some brief mentioning about the upcoming Cyka Kickstarter soon (which awaits my demos).  You can expect more podcasts in the future and from more developers, and you can expect them to come maybe once or twice a month.

This podcast is about 1 hour and 53 minutes, as in this one in particular I'm explaining a lot for the first time, so I recommend that you listen to it when you have some time and are doing something menial, like surfing the web or something.  I am considering breaking up this particular podcast into 3 or 4 parts, but for now, this podcast is available as is on two links (just in case one of them should ever stop working for some reason).  The format of the audio file is MPEG-4, and the folder is zipped.

I think I did alright and I think I got a lot said how I wanted, though, I'll work on my flow a bit in speaking (better pace, less stuttering).  The audio is pretty good quality, though I must apologize about the few instances of audio compression artifacts (little glitches) present in this podcast's audio occurring every now and then.  I'll choose better recording settings next time.  If you have any questions concerning something mentioned in the podcast, I'll take them here in the comments or you can e-mail me at polykhrome@gmail.com.

Also, today you should see some new concept art posted today.  If for some reason it's not today, then surely expect them Sunday (Saturdays are my only days off).  But I'm personally rather picky of what concept art I reveal and when, and I try to release a load of pictures at one time, but that's just me.  I don't expect this of my expected team members soon.  And speaking of that, I'm writing the post calling for collaborators at this page right now.  I'll post an update when the page is up, and if you're a game developer (currently and specifically, a game artist), you can check it out then.

If I'm not able to return here today, have a good weekend, folks!

- Brian

Update: Podcast is recorded and a few other updates

The first PolyKhrome podcast has been recorded and will be a podcast available sometime tomorrow.  The chief developer (um, me) talks about the details of the game, including descriptions of the gameplay, the plot of the story in Story mode, some of the visual style of the game, as well as some as a little details about some development planned for the game.  The podcast is being edited and will be available by noon tomorrow.

There will also be some new concept art posted tomorrow, some as 2D illustrations and some as 3D.  There's a whole lot of concept art and screenshots coming pretty soon, as PolyKhrome goes into overdrive in development of these two demos.  More development screenshots will be posted as well.

Starting tomorrow, PolyKhrome will be posting up available two positions on Unity forums for developers.  For the time being, the positions will be for an additional game artist for 3D assets, as well as concept designer for 2D designs.  An additional programmer will be sought later.

Finally, our first video is currently in production and will be available on our YouTube Channel very soon (which will be getting a face lift as well).  This video will be showing the development of one of our models for the demos.  This marks the start of an exciting time for PolyKhrome, as we will be using YouTube extensively in following the development of this game.

- Brian

Update: Some production screenshots and delight for the UDK version of Cyka

Can't show you the textures just yet...

More development screenshots are available on the Screenshots page, down under the "Cyka Kickstarter demo (Unity version)" section.  These some screenshots are just something to give you to look at just for now.  They are just showing the wireframe models of the Unity-developed Cyka demo and using a placeholder sky texture, as the terrain model textures and sky textures are not yet finished.

But what's cool about these pictures is that they're showing one-fourth of the total map size for the playable region for the Unity-developed Cyka demo.  To give you a sense of scale, click on screenshot 03 below, look at one of the triangle faces, and place your mouse cursor within one--that's just about the size that one character will be on the terrain.  Now imagine about 50 of similarly-sized units engaged in confrontation with 50 other similarly-sized units, and you can begin to imagine the elbow room your playing field will be in this demo.

Screenshot 03

Some of this terrain map will be what actually gets left untextured and released for free use on the Unity Asset Store.  This entire map when finished textured and animated will be in the pack of three game-ready terrain maps made available for purchase for $10, provided with many prop assets to allow people to make it look like their own terrain.  We're not afraid of selling the terrain because the terrain in the final game will look better defined than the more general-purpose terrain pack and there will be so many terrains in the official game that will pale even this large terrain size in comparison.

Also in development right now for this demo:

• models of several types of trees, rocks and plants are being made
• high-resolution sky texture being created and rendered from scratch in a separate 3D program
• initial character models are being modeled (animations come next)
• concept buildings are being conceptualized in both 2D and 3D
• creature designs are being done in 2D at the moment
• textures for the terrains are being done carefully (but not yet shown here)
• game logic for both demos are being plotted out

Again, more reveals of the Unity-developed Cyka demo are coming this week.

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Progress is coming along quite well for the UDK-developed Cyka demo as well.  So far, we've tried some tests of terrain as both generated using the heightmap terrain editor and as imported modeled terrain meshes, to weight out their advantages and disadvantages for us (some as memory usage, environment destructibility, ease of assembly, etc.), and we're definitely going with the terrain editor option.

UDK makes it pretty easy to create an impressive terrain quite quickly, so the test to be sure about our approach was worth the time.  Though, UDK is such a robust engine with tons of amazing features at your disposal, some obvious and some not-so-obvious, and personally, it's still quite the learning experience for me as the chief developer (currently the sole developer, at the moment).  I am proficient in using Unity, which I've been using for years, but UDK I'm rather new at--I've only adopted it this year--and so I want to be totally up to speed with UDK when I finally hire my team of developers.  Though, it's time-consuming learning while you utilize.

It's been worth taking the extra time to learn how to best utilize the engine--and thanks to a wealth of learning resources, that's been happening with no problem.  I'm mastering this engine quickly, and I can see how even more amazing this version of Cyka is going to be.  The original Unity-developed version will already be loads of fun (cross-platform-style), but this UDK-developed version of Cyka will be very amazing to experience on Steam.  The contrast between them will be one I think gamers will thoroughly enjoy.  (Of course, Kickstarter supporters who pledge at the $50 level will get both the Unity-developed standard Cyka (four copies of this version, in fact) and the UDK-developed Cyka: Steamed Edition.)

I can't wait to show you the work I've been working on so far!  Since I'm working on more than one thing at a time, I'm working non-linearly, going between different aspects and working on them a bit at a time, so that's why I don't want to show them off just yet.  But I'm sharing the untextured examples of my Unity work just to whet your appetite a bit.

- Brian

Update: Screenshots coming, building our team, Cyka details, and E3 excitement

The two demos are coming along well, and we'll post some development screenshots up as soon as we reach a good point we're comfortable with sharing them.  Also on the way are some more concept art, our first video for the PolyKhrome YouTube channel, a podcast, and those terrain maps for the Unity Asset Store that we're working on.  Expect most of that coming this week.

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Next on our announcements here, PolyKhrome be looking to expand our team soon.  The development team of PolyKhrome will be kept deliberately small, where we can be a tight-knit powerhouse.  We will have four positions available pretty soon.

• 3D assets artist
• 2D assets artist
• Game/network programmer
• Sound designer

After the release of our demos and the start of our Kickstarter, we'll be looking to fill those positions.  We also plan to seek dedicated music production from one of my personal favorite game music composer, Jake Kaufman, if we reach our goal with the Kickstarter.  This will put Cyka development into overdrive, but for right now, we're focusing on establishing Cyka with a solid foundation these demos currently in development will provide.

~ ~

As for some more details about the game, because some have been curious of how Cyka plays in terms of perspective, the game's battle aspects play out in a third-person overhead (isometric) view similarly used in games like Starcraft II and Torchlight II, but we aim to improve on the usage than most games, as Cyka allows for a range of rotation with the camera, as well as allow players to experience the battlefield in third-person ground-level view, and first-person perspective for certain units with scoping available with their range projectiles.

You can quickly switch between overhead view and ground-level third-person view.  The overhead view is particularly useful for turn-based actioning, while the ground-level view is useful for real-time fighter action.  Though, you can use the ground-level view during turn-based actioning when you're taking cover and you want to snipe at an dead-as-a-duck open target who might have retaliating sniper units covering them.

The game's exploration aspects play out in third-person ground-level view, but players will have the option to traverse the lands in overhead view and to survey the land in first-person view.  You'll have a sense of freedom of exploring the fully-explorable continents of Rhye, as you traverse by foot, by mountable beasts (if which you'll have to catch and tame for your army), and by other means of transportation we don't want to give away just yet (but we'll hint this much: the sky's the limit).  Again, we're making the kind of game we wish would exist.

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As we develop the demos, we're going to post Cyka up in the IndieDB database of games, and I think our game will get quite the coverage in news there.  We expect this game will get the attention of a lot of folks, so if you want to be among the first 100 to receive a free desktop copy of the game (PC or Mac), visit our Facebook page, Like us if you do, and let us know how Cyka sounds to you so far, and we'll send keep you listed as one of the 100 people to send the game to upon completion.  We say this because we expect quite a lot of attention to flood in when the playable demos are complete and word gets out in indie game news sites.

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Finally, I just can't leave this update without talking about E3 2012!  I'm personally excited about this year's E3, in particularly due to the Wii U from Nintendo.  I'm looking forward to seeing more about the Wii U, though I'll be posting up some thoughts of the E3 presentations of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.  I've been following the Wii U's development from day one along with multiple sources (like Wii U Blog, Nintendo Everything, and Wii U Go), and as both a gamer (esp. a Nintendo fan) and a game developer, I'm ecstatic about the possibilities the Wii U's sweet controller and better online features provides.  I can say that PolyKhrome definitely has aims for developing for the Wii U, and I would definitely make sure we take full advantage of the features of the Wii U.  But one step at a time--become established developers first!

Anyways, that's all for now.  Though, I'd like to say thanks to visitors for our 500+ views of this blog so far--PolyKhrome really appreciates your checking us out.  A lot of hard work is going into this game, and I'm sure in saying that these demos will not disappoint you.

- Brian