Peter Harries

First post in a while! Been crazy busy recently, but with loads of interesting stuff!! So on March 10th 2011 I got the opportunity to visit blitz games in Leamington spa!! I thought I would do a write up of what it was like to give anyone else thinking of applying an idea of what to expect. (If you're thinking of going already, do it! it's well worth it!) I arrived in Leamington spa on the 9th and stayed overnight in Buckland Lodge , the hotel it self was a bit dated but overall it was ok. Run by a guy called John who seemed nice and it was cheaper than the travel lodge! Also got breakfast in the morning, always good :) Next day I was up at 7:30 got breakfast had a bath (no shower in my room! gutted!) and got up to Blitz just before 9. At which point I waited for Rhys (One of the programmers we worked with in the 2nd year, also from Newport uni). But Rhys managed to get himself lost so I just went inside and I was cold. Once I was inside we got directed through to a ...

After the presentation last week (that I think went quite well!) it's back into production. Over the next few weeks I feel we need to really focus on a couple of things. #1 - Getting a working prototype out the door. This is so, so important and thus far we haven't managed to do it. I wouldn't say it's any of our fault that this has happened. But we have such a nice mechanic and at the moment we don't have the technical abilities to pull it off. In short we need someone familiar with programming and is possible scripting for UDK. Now we have two options, hunt for someone who can do this or one of us learn to do it ourselves, possibly sacrificing other areas of the project. So I'm stumped. We have a meeting tomorrow so hopefully we can discuss a solution then. #2 - Having a defined art style in engine. By this I mean something within UDK that shows how are game is going to look. At everything apart from the actual static meshes is out of the box UDK (textur...

First off I would like to introduce my new website! http://www.peterharries.co.uk/ It's still under construction but there are a few interesting bits on there to have a look at. Including a development diary and post mortem of the pre production stage of Double cross. Here's a direct link to the preproduction development diary and post mortem. So please have a look and let me know what you think :) Since my last post I've mainly been working on those documents but I have done a bit of modelling, you can check out below: I'm realy tired so I'm going to go and play minecraft some more, then maybe sleep.

So I've been pretty quiet on here recently! Mostly due to the fact that a lot of the work I've been doing has been paper based design and dissertation work. Some of which is quite interesting and hopefully I'll get a chance to post about it on here. But I much prefer to post visual stuff when I can, gotta love pictures!! I'm back in Newport Gwent now after spending Christmas and New Year back in Pembrokeshire with the family which was great! Now I have to face the looming deadlines and get the work done for them! Which does include some modelling work so hopefully I'll be posting regularly throughout the process. The last of those deadlines is on the 13th after which we'll be jumping straight into Double Cross production! Which I'm really excited about! So January looks like it will be busy! Happy 2011 everyone!

First some assets! These are WIP's. The barrels need a lot of texture work including spec and possibly bump maps. The sign mesh needs tweaking as it's a bit tri heavy at the moment. Mite play with the textures some more as well. We've managed to get our forums up and running and have finally found a programmer! Recently we've just been meeting quite a bit and setting up online stuff. We also had to prepare for a presentation as well so I haven't really had a chance to post on here much! But I will update soon!!

All done, now to give it some detail! This is going to take a while!   And here's a quick UDK workspace worskapce shot for no particular reason.

A bit more progress on converting the building into modular static meshes. It's a pretty monotonous job, exporting a scaled down version of the building from UDK into maya then exporting it from maya back into UDK. But once thats done it means I'll be able to edit the buildings details and test in UDK realy quick, like I've done with the airship docks building. It's getting there!

The crane's hook swings in the wind ^_^ love little details like that!

This shot was taken on one of the piers of the airship docks looking down towards the river flowing over the edge of the cliff. The airship docks is a building I've just started modelling with the idea that it was a place that airships could reach the city built high in the mountains. It also gives the player to get a really spectacular view of the (as of yet un existing) scenery below and the mountain above the city!

This is my progress on the level so far. each building in white is a static mesh that has a Maya file and a .FBX file. The maya file can be edited so eventually these buildings will be detailed. I've started off by creating the smaller buildings as they will only have 1 maya file corresponding to them. However the taller buildings will be done modularly allowing me to use static meshes repeatedly. This will save me time and mean I can edit building size/height very quickly. This is already implemented on the two tallest towers. The very tallest you can even go inside and walk to the top. But this takes ages (lifts will be implemented! lol) to avoid the repetition being obvious I'm planning to use decals, props, texture variations and the occasional different modular mesh. For example a floor that has been damaged or has a different layout. Hopefully this will be enough to mask the obvious repetition. To get an idea of scale the red dot at the lower part of the city i...

Ta-da! www.doublexgame.co.uk (still under construction, hopefully live within the next few hours!) So things are shaping up quite nicely! At the top of the page you can see the logo I've put togeather for double cross, everyone seams to be happy with it, but like all things it's not concrete at could change in the future. So first I'll talk about the city I'm creating. I have it all mapped out in UDK and started to replace the BSP brush buildings with static meshes. I've tried to create a very narrow and cramped atmosphere when on ground level and dizzy heights when on top of buildings. I'm pleased with the results! I'm going to continue to drop static meshes into the environment. Next I have a piece of promo work I've created for the game. I'm hoping to be able to do a few more images like this to help promote the game. Hopefully there will be a future version that includes silouettes of our actual in game charcters. we do have a b...