Not just developing games...

I just want to break some of the silence of what I'm doing behind-the-scenes in my developer life.  I'm not just developing a couple of games.  I'm also working on improving the tools I use for such game development everyday.

This is an early announcement, but I'm currently working on a set of five addons scripts for Blender.  Here's a rough summary of what I'm calling the Fantastic Five:

• Project Coalescence, a full-featured true remeshing toolkit.
  
• Project Plasma, a full-featured rapid retopology toolkit.
  
• Project Threads, a full-featured clothing creation toolkit.
  
• Project Kilauea, a full-featured terrain generation toolkit.
  
• Project Fluxus, a full-featured motion graphics toolkit.

They are as exciting as they sound.  I'm working on a set of scripts that will utilize all the latest advances of Blender 2.6, integrate them to work together as seamlessly as possible, and push them farther than they've ever been as tools, as well as feature plenty of original innovations.

I'm personally developing the tools I myself have longed need for streamlining game development.  I have heavy games I'm developing and I need heavy tools.  Even though I do own use other tools to complement Blender, having a streamlined one-stop shop for most of my work will prove most invaluable.

When I'm done with it, Blender will be a tool highly-optimized for streamline game development and animation   I'll outline my Fantastic Five in more detail in another post later.  I might even produce a design document to invite other developers to aid my development.

Naturally, as I do have several other projects I'm working on all at once, this will take some time to do.  Right now, SeVer is my top priority.  But if demand proves high enough, I can set it higher as a priority (even though it's already pretty high as a priority).

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.  One step at a time.  Today, an introduction.  These are what I'm working on, in addition to my games.

- Brian

Incoming!

Hey, folks.  A mess load of updates are coming.  The past couple of months have been quiet, but it hasn't been because work has slowed down with me.  On the contrary, I've been working on more than I can handle over the past couple of months.  I just haven't taken much time out for updates, and some things I simply didn't want to share yet.  But now, it's about time I shared some of it.

Development on Cyka is still coming along.  I'm making a new Indie DB page for Cyka, which will feature most of my increasing development news.  I find that it's easier maintaining an Indie DB page than a blog, and plus it puts me right where my audience is.  I have so much about it I want to reveal, and I'm confident about the success of my planned Kickstarter (which I'm holding off on, just until more development is done).  This thing is growing bigger in development than I originally had in mind, and it's turned into such an involved development, I only want to debut much of it on my Indie DB page.  Impression is powerful, after all.

An example terrain scene for the smaller project, SeVer (WIP)

In addition to my Indie DB page for Cyka, I'm also working on one for another smaller project I've been working on, called Se\/er.  This title is a short-story RPG title which is like a 3D cross between Super Metroid and Final Fantasy and blends platforming exploration with action role-playing journey.  It will play as a nice contrast to Cyka, which is a large-scale game that is a new kind of blend between RTS and MMORPG.

In fact, this smaller project Se\/er has been what I paused a while on Cyka to work on, since it is what will help fuel my Cyka development.  While I've been doing this, I've been working on everything myself (concept, programming, writing, assets creation, music--the works), so my blog suffered a bit as a priority,  My blog site's in need of a much-needed redesign as well, which I've been putting off a while.  But when I get enough development done, a site redesign be my top priority.

On another note, I'm finishing a tutorial series I started, which I plan to use series to bring interest to my game development.  And I've opened a new YouTube channel called PolyKrafter for a set of videos called the PolyKraft series, dedicated to showing the kind of workflow behind PolyKhrome productions.  It's a series of videos designed to help developers with some solutions towards AAA indie game development. When I'm done with some production on it, I'll share more about it.

I want to add that I'm doing some freelance work, which naturally cuts into my dev time.  So I've had my hands full with a lot of stuff.  I'm looking to support myself with development of Se\/er and Cyka full-time and the sales of my game-ready assets, but until then, I've got to freelance along side my developments.

That's all for the moment.  Thanks for visiting this blog!

- Brian

Creating Blue River Canyon with Brian Lockett (Part One)

First of three videos covering my workflow for making a simple mid-poly "green canyon," using Blender and limited settings in World Machine 2.  Since I'm using Blender and since World Machine 2 has a free Basic Edition, anyone can try what I show here.  I used a mouse in this just to show it can be done.  All assets in the corresponding source files are released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.  And the second video is in production.  Just thought I'd share it here, since it will be game-related by the third video, where we convert this terrain usable as a game scene for the Unity game engine.

- Brian

Updates In A Nutshell

It's been far too long since my last update, but never fear--I haven't stopped a thing about my production with this game.  It's been an interesting few past months for me personally, to say the least.  I didn't intend to stay away from my blog and development for so long, but hey, some things in life just can't be helped.

Anyways, here's a briefing of updates, since I don't want to spend a whole lot of time with the updates here:

• I'm working on a three-part series tutorial on creating a canyon with Blender and World Machine 2.  I've completed the first video.  (I'll post the video here after this post.)
• Cyka is still in active production, but due to being such a big project and until I get a reliable dev team assembled, it's taken a back seat to a smaller project.  Now my main focus is a small indie game called Se\/er.
• I didn't make the 2013 IGF deadline this time, but I'm sure aiming for 2014 IGF.
• From now on, I'm going with a "underpromise, overdeliver" philosophy with my updates.  Simple and short.

See you next time.

- Brian

Working to enter demo into 2013 IGF

Processing...

The title's pretty self-explanatory--I'm working on the Cyka demo to enter it in the upcoming 2013 Indie Games Festival.  That's actually why I've been kinda silent lately--I've haven't had time to update my blog like I should.  I've got a lot of work ahead to do in just a comparatively short time to meet the IGF deadline, but I've got a lot of work done, too.  I don't have time to make snapshots or comfortable enough producing a half-working demo just yet.  I still plan to release one as soon as I can, though.  My plans keep changing (well, life keeps changing them for me), but hey, life goes on.  Later.

- Brian

Technical difficulties @_@

Not an actual picture of my situation...yet.

It's been a crazy past month, but I've finally got my computer back to seemingly functional order.  It got infected by some kind of malware that even Malwarebytes couldn't even detect. It took me about a month of trying to search through all my files to detect the problem, and eventually, I just had to save what I could to an external hard drive, start my computer all over again, and re-install all my programs and settings.   And yes, it takes a month to do that!  One frustrating month.

Anyways, even though my computer's crashed twice since I've done this complete re-install of everything (and I'm not quite sure as to the exact nature of those crashes yet--whether they're related to my previous problem or something else completely coincidental), I think it's working well enough to resume my work here again.  Right off the back, I can show you some of the assets I've been creating, and in a very cool way.  (I've been waiting a while to finally use this--just click on the cube icons to start the interactive viewers.)



Here's another one (one I've had for a while now).



Expect more of these.  Play around with them.  Have a blast.  (Also expect some web browser applications posted here soon enough.)

Onward to other news:

• My new website for my game assets and custom assets division for PolyKhrome, Powerhouse Game Assets, is now open to previewing, though it's still in development and being updated.  This will help PolyKhrome generate revenue to go towards the game development, and, well, until the Kickstarter is started.
• I'm still building my team, and it's just a matter of finding time to organize that time.
• I'm organizing my Cyka assets to throw together a demo, to whet some appetites out there.  That's still going well, and pretty soon (for the millionth time, I know), I'm drawing closer to my goal of a Cyka Kickstarter.
• I'm working on a side game project designed to be a casual game--again, for revenue.  But it's still fun.  And it'll be some reduced in scope and size and of a different style of gameplay than Cyka.  A little refresher to cleanse my palette of Cyka from time to time.

Anyways, thanks for hanging with me, and for the 1,000+ views thus far (and think--I haven't even promoted this site very much yet!).

- Brian

Update: Good progress (with one setback), Linux and OUYA

Powerhouse is almost finished!

Hey, folks.  It's been a while, but it's been quite a busy while for PolyKhrome.  I've got a lot of assets created for the Cyka demo, some development video of me making these assets almost ready to share, and I've got some of the basic framework for the gameplay up and going, and I will show them...as soon as I can remove the vicious malware that's plaguing my computer.  -__-" {Of course!}

Yep, my PC's sick.  I'm writing this post with my netbook, which thankfully I still have, and all of my files seems to be okay on my infected computer (that is, when I can log in long enough to see them before the computer totally freezes up).  I'm running every reliable malware scanner I can find.  As I've got over 800 GB worth of occupied hard drive to deep-scan through, and my computer begins to freeze up after about 30 minutes or so, it's taking a while to do this via a series of smaller custom scans.  Anyways, when this minor setback is over, I'll compile my work done so far and post up a preview demo of, well, my demo.  Demo of a demo.  Funny.

But that's not all I've been doing all month of July--I've also been working on the Powerhouse Game Assets website, which is relocating and almost ready for business.  The picture above is from my tiny netbook, so it's truncated a bit there.  Selling game assets will greatly help with Cyka development (some people make up to $100K a year selling assets!), so it's been a top priority for me, as well as this demo.

Some other good news is that since Steam will be supporting Linux pretty soon, expect Cyka: Steamed Edition for Linux as well as Windows and Mac.  Also, I'm involved in a couple other side projects, including a Community Game project being lead by Peripheral Games (my iOS game idea won the contest they were holding), working on the development of a game clothes creator program, as well as producing a fan-created animation for my previous engagement of Operation Moogle--all of which I'm using to bring more attention to Cyka.

Cyka will come to OUYA.

And finally, I thought about it for a while, and I finally decided that PolyKhrome will put Cyka on the Android-based OUYA when the game is finished by next year, even with some exclusive content.  It's a risky console to support, but it's something I think might be worth the chance (and for $99, the price of that chance isn't too bad at all).  I still have some questions about OUYA, like how are they going to promote creative quality games away from an inevitable sea of mediocre unambitious games and shovelware.  But, in any case, Linux fans are really growing in buying indie games right now, over 43,000 OUYA owners will be looking for games next year, and PolyKhrome really can't afford to miss this sweet opportunity, as risky as it might be.  In fact, I am confident Cyka can be a big hit on OUYA--if it lives up to its potential.

Anyways, just wanted to check back here, just to let you all know that the game's development is still alive and well.  So stay with me, folks--we're progressing.  ;-)  (And I do mean a "we" pretty soon--I've got some prospect developers for Team PolyKhrome.)

- Brian