Peter Harries

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

Quick update of the map. This time it's all been done in UDK so a little less rough than maya. It's all to scale and you can actually walk through the buildings and wander around the city, although it's very boring at the moment. It's all done using BSP brushes but these will all be replaced with static meshes as soon as their done. Apart from the floor which will remzain BSP and be decorated with various static meshes. The numbers on the map correspond to a list of each building including a description, but I'm not going to show that just yet :p I've also included a screen shot looking up from just in front of building 8 towards the skyline. now i NEED sleep!!

This is a quick and dirty mockup I've done of the environmet for our game (now named DoubleX, as in double Cross!) it's ugly and rough but it does the job. It's purpose is to give me an idea of player proggression through the environment, whats in the environment itself and hopefully this will lead to being able to pin down game pacing and events within the game! This is a mega short post because I've got a load of stuff to do! but as soon as I can I will do a major update with all the stuff we have so far! /Ninja edit: a 3D view of the mockup minus the paintover!

So this week I'm up at GameCity 5 in Nottingham! We got here on Tuesday, Nottingham is a nice city and the talks and expo's have been great! Also seeing several Newport students showing their games ( colour runners , Q.U.B.E. and Mush ) was really great! If everything goes to plan it would be great to be in a simmilar position to them next year! So far The talks that I have found most interesting have been Jonathon Blow talking about the development of BRAID , Chris Hecker talking about Spy Party and Niv Fisher talking about Confetti Carnival . All very interesting and inspirational talks. One key points that I have picked up on throughout the talks is that plot should be secondary to gameplay and that pushing for what you want the players to feel should take priority. Making the game scary rather than figuring out why the game is scary. So in essence designing with how you want to affect the player in mind rather than the story. Ofcourse this could depend on the game

  I've been trying to get our core game mechanic (or a rough version) working in UDK so we can start whiteboxing and testing our gameplay as soon as possible. This is what I've got so far. Picking up the shock rifle, makes the currently invisible blue sphere visible and spawns an enemy bot at a set location. This can be triggered multiple times, as other bots/ players pick up the weapon the mesh will become visible to them and another bot is spawned. This is when things start to get a bit mad. Picking up the rocket launcher does the same for the red mesh. Eventually I hope to have enemies in the level already and have them become visible when the player picks up a certain item. From what I can tell this will most likely be some sort of material effect using matinee but I'm still working on this! Here's a shot of our Kismet setup.

Here I was trying to work out an architecture style for the buildings in the city. The environment is on the side of a mountain so space would obviously be limited, so buildings would be built upwards to get as much real-estate from the area as possible. I was also thinking the city would be heavily involved in the mining industry because of it's location, so this has also influenced my design. The City will have been abandoned when the player enters it so this should show through in the environment. There would still be power within the city so several lights would still be working. But the fact that the city is borderline derelict needs to show through. I'm really happy with this as my first piece of concept work in colour :)

Not so happy nwith this one, lot of problems with it. Trying to get a more of a street level view.

I've done a very sketchy city concept for our third year game. Next I will continue to research and concept ideas for the general feeling within the city. At the moment I'm going quite a modern city that feels very cramped as it's been built on a cliff. So I will be looking modern cityscapes and also places where people live in very cramped areas. I'll post again with full details of our project later on!

WATCH ON YOUTUBE HERE " "Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film. This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world. www.sintel.org" This short film is a must watch. Simply Brilliant!  

So here's a little charcter I did. Inspired by Jamie Hewlett's work.

Back up in Newport Gwent and having a great time!! Majorly busy with loads of exciting stuff going on!! hopefully I'll have a chance to post some of it on here soon :)

So the last few days I've been in North Wales. We climbed Tryfan and walked the Devils Kitchen. It was incredible! Here's a short video i filmed on a digital camera I had with me, I left it in the car the first day (doh!) so it's only Tryfan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHVb4NkrKGQ

Overall I'm quite happy with this but I think I'll come back to this and tweak it, not sure what it needs, maybe a bit of colour on the radio and tidying up some of the lines. oh and I will change the "your" to "you're" at some point!

The first picture is all in my sketchbook, probs going to take it into illustrator! the sedond is the next stage of my previous WIP.

a bit of progress!

some 'lil something something that I'm working on!

Favourite animal, so i sketched a dinosaur, dinosaurs are cool so it kinda works! It didnt take me long, it's very rough, but i like it, i don't do quick sketches often enough!

Went on a little road trip today to Cardiff skate plaza. Really had a good skate! fun little place. Because i suck at skating and photography i dont have any actions pics, but here's a few of the park itself.

I found out about a new clothing company called "GOST" ran by the former creative director of "Senate wheels" which was a rollerblading hardware company and "Franco shade" a rollerblading clothing company. I'm a massive fan of the bold art style, someone get me some of this stuff please!! Check out the blog @ http://gostbrand.com/blog/