My First Blog: Painting My Worlds Green

My first blog and project.

Hi. This is my first blog, of many I think, and I'd like to start it of with a thank you. I'd like to thank the most important artists at Garage Games: The Programmers. you have dropped the Greatest Box Of Legos into our hands! I have a Vision, and you have written/rewritten the tool that is helping me realize it. Thank you.

My name is J.R. Wilde, and I live in the foothills of Mt. Hood in the Cascade mountain range; I live in Rhododendron, Oregon to be specific. I live on 8.5 acres of dense woods, next to the Sandy river, that has a pond that houses our State's animal: the beaver. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the place you see in the picture (one of the more famous "picture spots" ). Anyone who knows that mountain, knows where I'm at Down the hill and to the right ;) . This is a place conducive of creativity and meditation -a perfect place to make games.


So far as schooling goes, for games, I'm going to the IS of G and the U of HK. That would be the International School of Google and the University of Hard Knocks. I also continue to peruse the Library of TDN whenever possible; the clever things people can come up with is always enlightening and enjoyable reading. One can always learn, no matter what. Soon I'll be able to give something back to the community in the form of sharing what I've learned in Photoshop, especially keyboard shortcuts and how they relate to productivity.

When I was in high school, I had a Vision for a game. After a time it was forgotten, and life went on. I had songs to compose, poems to pen and a lifetime of experiences that I would not let pass me by. Now, a long time after, I've recaptured that spark of a fleeting vision, and carefully fanned it into the flames of purpose. Fueled with ever-growing knowledge, propelled by brute-force-stubbornness, I will make my Vision come to life. If nothing else, this has become a personal Quest of mine. This may take awhile to achieve, but my knowledge and development grows ever faster and, someday, I will succeed.

Being a Chef, I'm a firm believer in a concept called <i>mise en place</i>; a french term meaning "In its place," or thereabouts. What it means it that you should have everything you need, prepped and ready to hand, before you even start cooking.

This project is an analogous part of a different style of preparation. What I've done, is create a set of "prefab" environmental props that work well together along with some "alternate" textures that can change the "feel" of the scene. The models are extremely low poly (the highest poly tree is in the 345 triangle area, most are in the 145 to 289 range) and are meant for a background for the Action Adventure parts of my game. I need "real" trees and a "real" environment not just billboards. A more advanced and much higher poly set is underway for the times where the environment will actually be a vital part of the game.

Here's a video of how fast something like this can be created. All I really need to do is swap out the terrain(s) and some textures, if necessary, and I can have a new forested level in minutes. Its been quite helpful to me so I'm offering it to others.


Stones that perfectly match the terrain textures, waterfalls, a set of rivers, audio and more add-onswill add a layer of unmatched diversification. Each forest created will always be unique. Reuse of assets is rather important to me but I don't want everything to eventually start looking the same. Unity in diversity is one thing, redundancy is unacceptable.
thanks for taking the time to read this.
J.R. Wilde