It’s been several months since I wrote a proper update about my game development projects. That’s really what the purpose of this site is for, after all. So here’s an update.
I’ve been working for months on a new animation system for my next game. Unfortunately, not everything is working out smoothly…
My new 2D character in 3D… may not represent final gameplay.
Disclaimer: I am the developer of this game. Which makes it a conflict of interest that I would write a review. But with the expected lack of written scored reviews elsewhere, I felt it best to write something as unbiased as possible to make sure people know what they would be getting into should they buy the game. It also acts as a release for me, a psychological exercise after releasing my second game, having doubts about it. In the meantime, there are a variety of preview posts and playthrough videos online that I encourage you to check out.
“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” starts (after a minute-long cutscene of the main character being drawn) with a stick figure in a white empty level. Rotating the camera, you see a blue pencil drawing, slowly moving away from you. With nothing else to do, you move towards the pencil. As you get closer, the perspective looks odd, especially when you rotate the camera and look at it from a different angle. A thought bubble and audio prompt suggest something about a wall: after moving around the wall you see that the pencil was just a flat texture on a large wall that merged with the rest of the white background, and that the wall hid what looks like a more interesting space of old paper making up a level to explore.
In a way this speaks to what you are getting into with “Unfinished.” There’s worthwhile game and story to find here, but most people would likely give up in frustration before even thinking of going around the wall. Even then, those who stay might be disappointed with their reward.
In June, I introduced a promotional contest of sorts for artist’s to contribute to my new indie game “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament.” I wanted unfinished works of art by as many artists as I could find to enhance one of the levels. 25 artists (most of which made new work live in front of me at Toronto’s “Stage Select Gaming Expo”) contributed work, which you can see in Level 4 along with my own collection of sketches, making for over 50 scattered drawings across the place. You can also see the contributed art works individually in a gallery in the Options menu. I place them here as an archive for you to see.
Remember that these were “unfinished” artworks. Some of them are fantastic, others less so, many of these people admitted they are not very good artists. All the same, I would frame them all on my wall if I had the space. If you were one of these artists and do not agree with how you are given credit or would like your work removed from the game, please contact me at ahlynka@fromdustscratch.com and I will sort it out. I had contacted all the artists weeks ago, but some have still not gotten back to me.
I shouldn’t be spending time writing more blog posts, but this was a big week for game developers big and small. GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) had some great announcements.
Oculus Rift still doesn’t have a set release date, although most sites state it will formally release before the end of 2015. And it better… plenty of competitors from Sony, HTC, and others are racing to beat it, and will release early 2016. I’m still excited for the opportunities of VR.
NVIDIA announced the greatest thing ever: an Android TV. Like the ones we’ve had for the last five years. Except it’s slightly higher quality, and they are using a high-powered mobile chip to encourage developers to port their last-gen games to Android with the new box. More importantly, they’ve announced a sort-of Netflix for films, which again kind of existed but still has opportunity for improvement. Imagine streaming games at high-quality purely based on your Internet connection rather than your computer’s own graphics card. The thing is, my mid-range-graphics card is much better than any Internet connection in my town. Regardless, I hope it works.
More importantly, Unreal Engine 4 is now outright free. It was already cheap at $19 a month (with an easy-to-quit subscription, so it was basically $19 for the whole engine), but now there’s no excuse to not give it a try. The only barrier is that standard percentage after you make more than $3000 profit. Also, a few weeks ago they announced a new grant program to give money to small developers to use their engine. At a time when Unity 5 and Source 2 are also released, it’s hard to say that Unreal isn’t worth at least looking at.
So I looked at it. As a experienced Unity developer, did I like Unreal? Well…
CES 2015 happened last week. Beautiful tvs, new laptops and tablets, a lot of car-tech… but I’m going to talk about an innovation from about a month ago that’s more up my alley.
Most of the posts on this blog makes it clear that I like 2D animation. My first game (which got Greenlit on Steam recently, I’ll talk about that more in a few weeks) is one of the first truly 3D games that has a hand-drawn character. I did this because I am annoyed that no one has really done that before. However, “Live2D” is a company that has been trying hard to make it easier for developers to do that, and so their latest effort, “Live2D Euclid,” comes closer than ever. Their website is available here: http://www.live2d.com/en/ , and a video of their latest technology can be seen here:
