Here's a few bigger pictures, now you can see all my errors. Again, I consider everything placeholder at this point. (Click for full size)
The 2nd image is looking up from the first. What I've done to this part is the "hall" of the environment. Next will be building a large circular window and constructing the chapel itself (main podium).
ahh now i can see the detail! looking really cool!! hope to see more. just hope it doesnt get boring with the same color scheme going on all over the place.
Hot damn, Chris, you've really outdone yourself. This is the best work I've ever seen you do, and that's saying a lot since you've been operating at such a high level for so many years. Nicely done.
Completed shaping out the interior cathedral (mostly with placeholders). Now, I fill the gaps and changed everything that doesn't agree with me before moving on to materials.
One last pretty picture for the weekend, click for full size
Not a lot of spectacular things to report, but this long weekend gave me time to clean up and make some new pieces. I'm in the process of organizing static meshes into larger, modular sections. If things come together right, it could mean map pack.
To help dive into the editor, I've been assembling small DM levels. It's refreshing and should brew into some fun ideas for a variety of maps. http://chrisholden.net/quickmaps.jpg
After losing all my work from the weekend, here's where I am now. Playable deathmatch level currently feels good around eight players. The main room is now broken into three floors, and that branches off to a few connecting rooms. Still a ton of placeholder. These are a few pics I took following bots around.
The purpose of video games is to take thousands of years of cultural development embodied in the most sacred, celebrated architecture, and turn those in to death arenas for our entertainment.
Here's the first pass to a high detail column. It's split between three 256 tall and one 128 tall pieces. I'll create at least three different staged of "carved" for modular variety.
I'm creating a 2d isometric style dungeon. This image represents the earliest stages of the modular pieces (shapes, color, texture). Once I'm confident there's enough variety to build a dungeon, I'll go back and detail each piece. While I'm working for a distant, third-person camera, I'm considering putting in high frequency detail to export the pieces for an UT3 level down the road.
and hey, look, it's the steps to my floor tile
What about that wacky elephant temple from way back? I'll probably be working on that again soon depending on what happens over the next month or so.
thats awesome! Maybe you can give the floortiles different heights, extrude some of them to get some more geometry in there. I didn't think they were modelled from the screenshot until i saw your little tutorial gif.
I finished this today for the MGAC over on CGtalk. Unfortunately, no one else entered. With no competative drive I totally shitted it out...almost to the point I wasn't going to post it.
I built this level for UT3 a couple years ago (go back a few pages to see it's original conception), and stopped before release due to time. Last night I decided to dump all the assets in UDK to see how much I could improve the scene. None of textures are painted yet, these are all AO and normal baked untouched. Hopefully I can find time to finish this one up after GDC.
In keeping with my word to get back to this after GDC here we are. Last time everything was quickly place. I rebuilt the scene, and started painting the textures. Currently the lighting and post are temp while I'm nailing the colors. Still a long time to go.
Haven't updated the sketchbook in a while, and now I'm bringing it back with a UDK game, and documentation. First, a bit about the game currently titled 'Old Town'.
Old Town is the confession of a serial killer. It's an Adventure Horror game built in UDK that takes place within a single city block. The player must explore and cleanse the city of life to unfold the whole story.
The level Blockout is complete, and I'm currently in the process of creating all of the Placeholder art to finalize the Proof-of-Concept. All assets are currently my own creation (short of the base mesh for the sky which is a UDK asset, though the sky textures themselves are hand painted). I am taking advantage of Unreal's procedural buildings, as all the background builds are proc rulesets. Generally speaking, I'm not too concerned with the level art since it's what I do so it's only a matter of time.
Gameplay is ~25% complete. I've got basic inventory system in with a basic line of storytelling via Kismet. For example, your do a murder-for-hire quest which gives you money to rent a motel room. From there you can break into the motel rooms, access other buildings from the roof, etc.
Things I need
Characters and Animations for their cinematics. I can make characters, but there are plenty of people better than myself. Thus before I make any steps that direction, I'd rather give another the opportunity. Can't animate though.
Info on character game start. Be default, it's the udk robot guy with a link gun. I need to change his run speed to be a bit more realistic, and spawn without weapons. Everything I may be set with kismet.
Here's an early pic of some placeholder stuff
I'm also documenting the entire process, and plan to release as a large tutorial set covering basic setup, static meshes, materials, particles, kismet and so on. Most of this has already been written(for a while), and needs organizing before release. It's pretty thorough, so proof reading and testing will take some time.
Old Town is coming along strong. Again, focusing only on gameplay at this point so all art is placeholder. So I felt it worth to take a few images that give a better grasp of scope.
Street level view
bird's eye view of the street layout. You can enter each building, some with up to five floors and a basement. So there's a lot of area to explore http://chrisholden.net/ot-layout910.jpg
Here's a short list of a few new things I put in:
1. Progress percentage counter; you can return to your room at any point and check it as well as trophies and spoils you've collected.
2. Lockpicking skill; a pickup that allows you to unlock doors, and the more you open, the more your success increases.
3. Flashlight; derp
4. Cash inventory; again self explanitory
5. Speed booster pickups; hidden throughout the level, permenent increase in speed.
5. Crackhead side quest; fun stuff.
I've got several sections of my udk docs laid out, setup, materials, and blocking out a level. That's off to testing, so as soon as it's presentable I'll link it here.
I've been working on another project I'm pretty excited about. I'm recreating a Dragon's Quest style RPG using Kismet. The game itself is totally playable. You can gain levels, buy weapons/armor at a shop, rest at the Inn. There are three areas of difficulty which trigger random encounters. These bring up a battle screen where you can fight, run, cast spells and so on. You can win gold and exp. Here's some images, again, all placesholder, but putting this together's really expanded my kismet knowledge. http://chrisholden.net/kis-rpg-battle01.jpg http://chrisholden.net/kis-rpg-shop01.jpg
After Old Town, I'd like to build a castle escape level built around this system.
Put together a full play-through of act one of Overblood reinacted in UDK. Pretty fun exercise in Kismet and Matinee. Over 12 minutes of speed-run style gaming.
Replies
My main design inspiration is Chartres Cathedral with a lot of scale liberties. Artistically, Warhammer 40k, Quake, and UT3 brings in ideas. Here's a little more on the cathedral;
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/architecture/chartres2.htm
Here's a few bigger pictures, now you can see all my errors. Again, I consider everything placeholder at this point. (Click for full size)
The 2nd image is looking up from the first. What I've done to this part is the "hall" of the environment. Next will be building a large circular window and constructing the chapel itself (main podium).
http://chrisholden.net/bd05.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/bd04.jpg
One last pretty picture for the weekend, click for full size
Great watching this develop, thanks for documenting it well.
To help dive into the editor, I've been assembling small DM levels. It's refreshing and should brew into some fun ideas for a variety of maps.
http://chrisholden.net/quickmaps.jpg
Things are shaping up, and I'm anticipating the results.
http://chrisholden.net/bd08a.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/bd08b.jpg
cool stuff
I can smell rail guns in there..:)
http://chrisholden.net/bd09.jpg
any good tutorials for hard surface modeling you recommend?
I've been compiling a few directories of reference, and designed a layout. I mixed a few facades into a level built for two to six play deathmatch.
http://chrisholden.net/temple_ref01.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/temple_ref03.jpg
Here's the first pass to a high detail column. It's split between three 256 tall and one 128 tall pieces. I'll create at least three different staged of "carved" for modular variety.
as always, impressive stuff
I'm creating a 2d isometric style dungeon. This image represents the earliest stages of the modular pieces (shapes, color, texture). Once I'm confident there's enough variety to build a dungeon, I'll go back and detail each piece. While I'm working for a distant, third-person camera, I'm considering putting in high frequency detail to export the pieces for an UT3 level down the road.
and hey, look, it's the steps to my floor tile
What about that wacky elephant temple from way back? I'll probably be working on that again soon depending on what happens over the next month or so.
would say add more contrast (focused lights and darker shadows) but it's still early so it's kindof redundant at this point :P
hope you post more of this thing
This weekend, I decided to model my desk lamp. Unfortunately, I don't even have a desk lamp so instead I modeled some robot vomit.
http://chrisholden.net/desklamp.jpg
360 tris, and a touch less than the 512sx1024 total.
http://chrisholden.net/desklamp_beauty.jpg
Flats, wire shot and high detail base
http://chrisholden.net/desklamp_flats.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/desklamp_wire.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/desklamp.jpg
Was fun though...back to the dungeon...
http://chrisholden.net/chell01.jpg
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/1682/chell02.jpg
Old Town is the confession of a serial killer. It's an Adventure Horror game built in UDK that takes place within a single city block. The player must explore and cleanse the city of life to unfold the whole story.
The level Blockout is complete, and I'm currently in the process of creating all of the Placeholder art to finalize the Proof-of-Concept. All assets are currently my own creation (short of the base mesh for the sky which is a UDK asset, though the sky textures themselves are hand painted). I am taking advantage of Unreal's procedural buildings, as all the background builds are proc rulesets. Generally speaking, I'm not too concerned with the level art since it's what I do so it's only a matter of time.
Gameplay is ~25% complete. I've got basic inventory system in with a basic line of storytelling via Kismet. For example, your do a murder-for-hire quest which gives you money to rent a motel room. From there you can break into the motel rooms, access other buildings from the roof, etc.
Things I need
Characters and Animations for their cinematics. I can make characters, but there are plenty of people better than myself. Thus before I make any steps that direction, I'd rather give another the opportunity. Can't animate though.
Info on character game start. Be default, it's the udk robot guy with a link gun. I need to change his run speed to be a bit more realistic, and spawn without weapons. Everything I may be set with kismet.
Here's an early pic of some placeholder stuff
I'm also documenting the entire process, and plan to release as a large tutorial set covering basic setup, static meshes, materials, particles, kismet and so on. Most of this has already been written(for a while), and needs organizing before release. It's pretty thorough, so proof reading and testing will take some time.
Great little .gif on the tileable ground up top as well
Street level view
bird's eye view of the street layout. You can enter each building, some with up to five floors and a basement. So there's a lot of area to explore
http://chrisholden.net/ot-layout910.jpg
Here's a pic of my currently very unorganized kismet (spoiler alert)
http://chrisholden.net/ot-kis910.jpg
Here's a short list of a few new things I put in:
1. Progress percentage counter; you can return to your room at any point and check it as well as trophies and spoils you've collected.
2. Lockpicking skill; a pickup that allows you to unlock doors, and the more you open, the more your success increases.
3. Flashlight; derp
4. Cash inventory; again self explanitory
5. Speed booster pickups; hidden throughout the level, permenent increase in speed.
5. Crackhead side quest; fun stuff.
I've got several sections of my udk docs laid out, setup, materials, and blocking out a level. That's off to testing, so as soon as it's presentable I'll link it here.
I've been working on another project I'm pretty excited about. I'm recreating a Dragon's Quest style RPG using Kismet. The game itself is totally playable. You can gain levels, buy weapons/armor at a shop, rest at the Inn. There are three areas of difficulty which trigger random encounters. These bring up a battle screen where you can fight, run, cast spells and so on. You can win gold and exp. Here's some images, again, all placesholder, but putting this together's really expanded my kismet knowledge.
http://chrisholden.net/kis-rpg-battle01.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/kis-rpg-shop01.jpg
After Old Town, I'd like to build a castle escape level built around this system.
[ame]
[ame]
Basically getting the first act of the game blocked out.
intro
[ame]
Full gameplay implemented for act 1 with all the lovely placeholder arts.
[ame]
part 1
[ame]
part 2
[ame]
Here's a video where I've stripped out all the old content, and started on something new. Things should start getting more interesting.
(edit: see next post for vid)