Hello and welcome to the start of a long trek through the magical world of game development. I am your host for the months to come, and hopefully you'll see us through the highs and lows of actually producing a game from start to finish.
It's been horrible for many of us because our efforts are always to no avail - this time, things are going to be different! Basically, you are a Hell's Angel (American, on motorcycle) accidently drawn into Hell after all your other Hell's Angels have been took out by demons on bikes - the REAL Hell's Angels..! Hooray for originality! Still, looking at the game spec, I can't think of any more games which are motorcycle weapons-based games set in Hell... so could this be a semi-original concept? Hmmm... The sad thing is, there's been an announcement of no more PlayStation 1 development.
The first mock-up logo for Hellgate
It is rather sad hearing about that, because I love my PlayStation. I also adore my Dreamcast, though now we're working on Dreamcast, I'll have to concentrate more on that... Yipe! We've recently got our PC Dreamcast Development Kits (glorified Dreamcasts in boxes, basically) and it's strange to think that because of my Dreamcast ownership, I have the most experience in Dreamcast games..!! I'm currently working at home producing the first model of the entire game - a demon bike which the main character will be riding on, in 3D Studio Max 3.0.
Scarily, Renderware (a very handy development tool from the makers of Trickstyle) isn't available as a Dreamcast alpha version yet, though the team of programmers on this project assure everyone they can do it themselves, World Manager or no World Manager. Alf, our boss, wants something doing for the Tokyo Games Show on the 15th March, though we're probably miracle workers if we get something REALLY polished by then. Work-In-Progress? Yep, no problem! I say this with only a week's Dreamcast development experience.
I also hear that I might have to bump down texture brightness by 25% because of the way the Dreamcast handles the colour white - I CAN'T DO TRUE WHITE!!!! Stupid? Yeah, ever so slightly. I've also been given the dubious accolade of "Head Artist" on this project, meaning I am in control for the first time ever entirely on the art side of the game, plus some artists!! I really don't want to use this "Head" title, because power in the development of computer games is very, very wrong.
Ideas will be something which will help us more than anything else, and we're using the game Hydro Thunder as a template for how the game could look and play. Except the water is lava, and weapons are plentiful. Saying that, there will be loads of stages to this game, and the level structure is going to be pretty incredible - more on that with later posts, though. It's hard to think that in 9 months time, we'll have a completed game, but development time is a lot slower than normal time.
A typical Hell's Angel. With a mullet. Yesterday.
I'm confident we'll produce something rather special. I still have to be pretty co-operative with the programmers, and I already have experience of that on PlayStation, albeit 3 months worth, but this project scares the crap out of me and excites me incredibly at the same time. A very, very, strange feeling indeed, but one which helps me get out of bed every morning...! Hopefully this will all go on-line by the end of the year, with development sketches, screenshots and more besides.
Due to contractual obligations (grumble, moan), I can't put stuff online as I produce it, though this means the appearance of a MASSIVE web site. When I was trying to look for information on game development, there wasn't much hope from the internet at all. Now, I hope that this helps would-be game developers, giving them inspiration, excitement and the realisation that there is a better job out there for creative types...
Four days later and the bike has been finished and textured! I'm a little unhappy with the fact the programmers wanted a bike produced quickly, so there has been some uncreative texture sloppiness. Plus, I was freaked out by the fact there was now three times more work to texture due to the fact there are now three times more polygons. The bike has a rider, and is all one mesh to avoid any import problems.
The texture map was produced yesterday, and I admit it is the one thing I hate about the job. It's not as if Photoshop can magically produce textures for you which haven't been seen before, and if you ask someone to produce a facial texture on Photoshop from scratch, there would no doubt be much worrying and screaming... Best off doing what I did, and basically drawing the face and scanning it in. Due to the nature of the texture wrapping, I've had to drawn the face squashed. I'm probably going to adapt this facial technique from now on, because it is definitely a stumbling block.
The first ever texture map for the biker and bike, on 256x256 pixels.
One good idea is to scan in the face 1:1, and then shrink it down so all unsightly features are blended together, giving a tighter look. I'm not too sure yet whether we can add vertex colours, though for that I've use Max 3's "Assign Vertex Colours" from the scene, and then will fine tune the vertex colours. The bike model is 1,500 (approx) polygons and is far from finished. I still need to redo some textures I'm unhappy with - the bike texture was robbed from an elephant skin texture, though I want to place SOME artist graft on there, though seeming that time is sometimes the essence and deadlines are our enemies, artistic integrity goes out of the window in blind panic. Something I'm not proud to do at all.
Also I need to break the model apart to seperate pieces so the bike can become articulated. Whether I do the same for the biker remains to be seen. Nick, my artistic companion in our art team of two, has finished a test cavern complete with tunnel, and this will give the programmers something to get their teeth into. It looks luvely, and with the bike, it's strange to see the bike and the cavern together. The beginnings of a top-quality title?
The first ever biker sketch and the first build of the bike and biker.
It's also a little hard trying to juggle 3D modelling, 3D texturing and pencil/ink/Photoshop sketches to flesh out this hellish world of ours. It's going well, though more artists could be a godsend. We are getting an architect who wants to produce games in pretty soon, so the levels could look pretty Gothic and forboding. I've been reassured by Greg, one of the programmers on this project, that this is just the "messing around" phase of production, and due to our small amount of Dreamcast development experience, he's most probably right. Just the words "March 15th" keep ringing through my head - the Toyko Game Show and our first major mini-deadline in which we need to show something for our troubles.
Things are slowly but surely coming together. At the end of last week, we had produced a cavern for the game in an early stage - a pentagram room, which features (obviously) a large pentagram in the centre. But no ordinary pentagram, nooooo! A pentagram which is made up out of loads of tall monoliths! The way it's produced means that when you see the room from a tunnel above the pentagram, you'll see it as a pentagram!
It's also a perfect room to push the Dreamcast to its limits, because we know the basic amount of polygons which are needed to build it, so it would be easy to tesselate the room to a huge amount of polygons and watch the DC's processor melt! Today, I may redo the texture of the bike model to the point where I'm happy with it, because there are some bits which are great, and some bits which aren't. But being the main character in the game, there will be a lot of changes to be made.
The first build of the pentagram room. More will follow. Oooh, yes.
I did work on some more bike models for the game, where there is the notion that the bike can mutate through various bike models, which will look more meatier and cooler as they develop. I'm also tempted to build these models in my spare time, strengthening the "labour of love" theme to this work, because I absolutely love producing stuff for this game - and I'm getting paid for drawing demons...!
We also had a meeting over the control method of the game with the Dreamcast controller. Many people who have just got into playing with the controller seem to hate its guts, though they haven't been playing Soul Calibur on it, and guess who has...! Also, it was hard enough trying to pursuade the team that it's perfectly normal to have the triggers for accelerate and brake - many were still in the PlayStation frame of mind with driving games, but on the Dreamcast it has become the norm to have accelerate/brake as triggers.
I still think the analog pad is clicky - not nice at all... Well, there is more research to do today on the internet which includes downloading loads of pictures and visiting plenty of demonic sites, as well as visiting a site I discovered in Official Dreamcast Magazine called www.booyaka.com, where there is a lot of downloadable PC software which I'd love to use for loads of pointless VMU animations - including that burning skull I've always wanted to do. A burning, laughing skull, though laughing probably is well out of the VMU's capabilities. A burning, beeping skull? That reminds me, got to get a PocketStation.
When I was looking for research into getting a job in the games industry, it would of been great to get a taster first hand from members of development teams into what happens when a game is produced, from design to conceptualisation to the finished product. Working on Hellgate has taught me many, many things.
I decided to produce this diary as I was working to show the public what actually happens. Each week, this diary will be updated with my past extracts, and hopefully this will enable you to be that bit more confident when you apply for jobs in the games industry.
My blood, sweat and bodily fluids are your knowledge.
Enjoy :)
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