Peter Harries

Unplanned features, a concept that doesn't sit well with most game developers (producers I'm looking at you), and rightly so! Additional cost and bugs means they can be risky. After all, they are the very definition of feature creep. However, making games is a creative process. Things change during the course of development, inspiration strikes or something you've been experimenting with turns out to be a huge value add. Not all features are born equal, some are much more suited to being a last minute addition than others. What are the attributes of the perfect unplanned feature? How can we spot them and take advantage? Makes use of what's readily available If the feature can be created with elements from existing systems and assets it's immediately something that's worth at least considering. It's a "modder" approach, taking elements of the games that were created to do one thing and repurposing them to create a variation of a feature or even som...

10 years ago I started working in the games industry. Along the way I've picked up a few things that I wanted to record (for my own sake!) and share with you. 1. Understand the problem before chasing a solution Don't be tempted to start designing a solution when the problem is not fully explored and understood, take the time to focus on what you're trying to resolve. Make sure you understand what the solution needs to accomplish then formalize your findings, write them down. Develop goals. Present these to other team members, discuss and amend them as required. It's always better to debate the purpose of a feature than to debate a feature with no obvious purpose. 2. Don't pop an idea before it's fully inflated When a new idea or feature is proposed it's tempting to start immediately identifying flaws or concerns. Avoid writing ideas off or designing fixes based on these assumptions. Although these concerns are likely valid it's worthwhile giving the peop...

Last night Jase got in touch with me with some finished tree models, we decided to get the textures on and get them in engine. A maya shot, complete with texturing problem! No Alpha :( Alpha with dodgy edge :( wahd out textur and no lighting built :( Lighting built, almost there! And some grass! ------------------------------------------------------ and done :D Let us know what you think we love to get feedback! oh and we also have a website (although I've been told by my good friend Max Jensch that a single page with a couple of links on is not a website) sorry max! www.fatpancake.com

Adding more assets and playing with colours. Spent most of today working on foliage! (and watching game of thrones!) I think I prefer the snowy version.

I'm quite tired so no big description. This is what I've been doing today! Early days yet. With  Ollie L  Making rocks.

It's been almost a year! Oops! So I'm going to do a series of posts about all the stuff that's happening at the moment and this is the first one! Game design stuff! Games, fuck yea! anyway, I've been trying to get a game project on the go again, based on the 1st person puzzler I was working on a year ago! With help from my housemates Ollie E (http://theenormousblogodile.blogspot.co.uk/) and Ollie L we've been redesigning the style, layout and general game with keeping the same mechanic. Here's a look at some whiteboxing screenshot and a  rough style screenshot. Early art style shot GOD RAYS! Spooky Fforest, hopefully we can keep this sort of feel on more final builds The area has changed from a swampy region to a more mountainous area, big drops instead of poison swamp. Overall shot of the whitebox, getting proportions and pacing nailed.

So here's a video of what I've done so far on my little puzzle / adventure game. There's are a few game play bugs that need working out, especially the checkpoint system. I also need to get some characters in there but as I suck at character modelling. The environment needs fleshing out as well, more models, textures, better lighting, particle affects and interactive items. wow just realised that's a lot to do! Anyway aiming to get this section of the game playable so people can have a go at it and maybe even enjoy it! also start working on DoubleX again on Monday! wwooop!

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 this is what it's looking like! I want to use this in a submission for the Blitz open day and the deadline is the 10th. My disertation is needing a bit of work too :( So may leave it as it is for now. I will however keep working on this after the Blitz submission. The things I want to change are: - re-do the main body and tower textures, change them to 1024 maps. - add more geometrical detail to the edge of the roof of the main body, tower, porch and both extensions - tweak the geom on the edges of the pine end of the roof and the tower to get a better silhouette - create emissive textures for lamps and windows - create a smoke particle affect for the chimneys - work further into the roof textures, especially the edges. Get all the walls and roof. - add some weathering to the roof tiles.

So I'm going to do it a bit different today and instead of making multiple posts just update this one with my texture progress! Here's the first shot, pine end of the house, Haven't done the stones at the bottom of the wall yet.   update #1: got bored made this out of parts of the main building!    Update #2: Just got a comment on Polycount about how the wall texture is grainy, I do agree so I may bump the texture up to 1024 for the bigger parts. Here's a texture shot of what it's like now. (actual size). update #3: Door done! update #4:WHat I've done today, may revisit the wall texture but I want to get it finished in the next few days so I'll use it for now and hopefully have time to go back to it later. The roof texture needs working on as well.

Yes this and my previous post are a reference to lil jon & the eastside boys musical masterpiece that is "get low". :D So I've unwrapped and done a first pass on the textures, so most of them are big ugly block colours. Still pretty happy with progress and confident I'll get it done in the time I've set myself. There are a few dodgy shadows, I'll try and figure out how their sneaking in soon. Could just be the Ambient Occulsion being weird. anyway here are some pictures of what I've been doing.

Broken the house down into seperate assets. Hopefully this will let me re-use them if i decide to create a full scene with this, will also let me tinker with the model as I go along. Edit: Here's the re-assembled version!

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!

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!!