Blog for Greg Findlay at GarageGames.com

Cathedral: Week 4

Greg Findlay — 2006-03-15T13:36:10+00:00

This update is coming a few days later then usual and sans images. The transcept (entrance) is mostly done though (as planned for this week) and the goal for next Monday is to have half of the nave (central hall) done. It really doesn't look that different then last week but there were a lot of little things to do that are now done. Only the entrance has be be finished and I'm holding off because I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle it yet. Anyway, image:

Cathedral: Week 3

Greg Findlay — 2006-03-07T03:53:49+00:00

Another week has gone by on this project and unfortunately it wasn't the most productive one. I was hoping to be starting the nave (central hall) this week but it looks like I'll only have time to finish the transcept (entrance). Oh well... I knew I was going to have a few slower weeks but having one early is never a good thing. The good news is that almost all the pieces that I've remodelled with more detail have been unwrapped and are ready for texturing. I did a quick test to see what bump mapping could do for the detailing and the result were not bad. I'm thinking I might normal map the whole thing so the test isn't really what the end result is going to be like but it'll be pretty similar. Here is the progress:

Cathedral: Week 2

Greg Findlay — 2006-02-28T02:23:02+00:00

So it's been a week since I started and I'm not quite were I would have liked to have been but I'm not that far off. I'll be able to get to the point I wanted to be right now by the end of tonight and the power was out one day last week which would have made up the missing time. Things like that are going to happen though so I'm not worried about the progress.

Right now I'm almost finished a basic layout with a temporary model for each piece that needs to be done. The nice thing is a lot of pieces repeat so I can reuse a lot of stuff. I'm not sure if I'm going to start each piece with the rough one I've already done or if I'll start from scratch for each. The nice thing about reusing what I have is that I can UV map them now while they are in their simple form to get a lot of the basic UV work out of the way now and just tweek the UV's as I go. It'll depend on the object.

Anyway, back to work. Here is a shot of what I have so far. If you look really close you can see the scale reference that's in there of a person.

Art project: Cathedral

Greg Findlay — 2006-02-21T02:52:31+00:00

So I've decided that I need a fun artistic project to suppliment work where I don't get to be so artistic (for those who don't know, I work as a level designer for A2M). The project: bring Winchester Cathedral to Torque. It's been quite a while since I've worked with Torque so this will help refresh my memory on the processes (which have changed since I worked with it). This isn't a massive project like building a game, but it is quite large in terms of an art piece. For some reason I have had a passion for cathedrals for years. I'm by no means an expert on them in any way shape or form, I just find them beautiful and fascinating. The ultimate combination of function and form. Anyway, the project begins tonight. I'll update once a week as a sort of weekly meeting with myself. First up design. Since I'm already using a prebuilt cathedral, design is a piece of cake. Find reference and divide it into sections.

Plan for the week:
- find reference images
- divide cathedral into very small pieces
- start building

I'm looking to start building by Wednesday. Shouldn't be a problem, I've already gathered a fair amount of reference. Looking forward to building!

Thursday Nov 17 15:10

Greg Findlay — 2005-11-17T15:10:57+00:00

Are casual gamers afraid of 3D?

So here is some food for thought. Are casual gamers afraid of 3D games? Inharently 2D games are simpler which is obvious just by looking at them even to the casual gamers eye. I know of a few people who enjoy 2D games and have tried 3D but tend to struggle with moving the character around which doesn't really encourage them to try more 3D games. But is a casual gamer averse to trying a 3D game? Would they not play a game simply because it's 3D?

Friday Aug 19 18:26

Greg Findlay — 2005-08-19T18:26:49+00:00

How do you design games with publishers in mind?

As part of my final portfolio for school I'm required to make 5 pitch documents for games. These are simple one page docs that describe the essence of what a game is, gives a list of key features and breaks down the major feasibility issues. When I start with a game design I like to break down the restrictions of a game and come up with some questions that need to be answered to understand how you play the game. By answering these questions I want to know the goal of the game and who the intended audience is. So my idea for this project is to come up with the 'perfect' set of restrictions that publishers are looking for in a game and build 3 game ideas from that. For an example, here is what discussion in class has brought up so far (a lot of these are from the instructor):
- dynastry oriented (ie. can make sequels and/or sell merchandise from)
- is somehow community oriented (player extendable content, fanboism, etc)
- has some type of online feature
- has a potential economy beyond the game (publisher can sell additional content for the game)
- team based
- has some type of sandbox feature
- cinematic feel
- incorporates lisenced IP (has an existing fanbase)

The idea is that the more of the things in the list that get hit the more appealling the idea is to a publisher. This is by no means a comprehensive list and I'm welcome to any ideas anyone has that they think should be added.

The goal of this project (for me at least) is not to come up with some crazy game idea that I'm going to pitch to people, it's to impress a company enough to get a job.

Friday Mar 18 3:48

Greg Findlay — 2005-03-18T03:48:26+00:00

I don't know why but for some reason every now and then I go into commercial mode. Essentially what this means is that I see things as a television commercial or at least a video ad. I had another one of those moments reading some posts on the board here and this is what I thought up. Normally I wouldn't post stuff like this here but this time is sort of relates.

It's an ad GG could make for torque. It would be a film taken during IGC of a group of people playing one of the games in the ShowOff area. There is a crowd of people gathered around watching the game being played. The camera is far enough away that you can't 'really' see what game is being played. The focus is on the audience. Suddenly one of the players scores and the whole place erupts. The scene fades to black and a caption appears but you can still hear the hooting and hollaring. "It took 3 developers 18 months to develop this game. It could be yours. www.garagegames.com or visit <insert game being played during vids website> for more about the game played in this video."

Obviously the number of devs and the time period would change to actually reflect the game being played. The game link is in there to promote the game and to show people that yes it really does exist and this event really happened.

This isn't an original idea per say because I think I heard that this event actually happened at IGC last year. Remember to bring the camcorder this year ;).

Where GG could use this ad I don't really know but it would cost about the price of a camcorder tape to make (if they already have the vid editing software) and who knows, it might look good at trade shows. It would almost look like it was live footage there.

Monday Mar 14 5:54

Greg Findlay — 2005-03-14T05:54:54+00:00

In EA's defence; the place for indies is new game design; The answer to overworking employees is less work, not different benefits.

Before I start this I want to warn anyone reading that I'm defending EA a little. I don't work for EA but I have friends who do although this isn't coming from them it's just my thoughts.

There is definitely a massive amount of EA hate going around here and I'm not on the EA band wagon or anything I just don't think running around with pitchforks yelling EA is bad is very productive. EA does do a lot of things right, they make boatloads of money after all and although money isn't the be all of games it does keep a company afloat to make more games. For one thing the production quality of EA games is very high. Some of the tech they have is top notch. Everyone's sore point is that EA doesn't create much in terms of gameplay. You're fooling yourself if you think EA is ever going to be a source of massive game innovation. Not because of the people they employ but because of the size of the company. There is a certain point were the size of you company hurts you because you simple can't listen to the ideas your lower teir employees have anymore and it becomes a neccessity for one person to make decisions. That's where the creativity is lost.

This is where indies come in. They don't have that structure and can do what ever they want. The sad thing is that EA is catching up in the creativity department and it'll be a sad sad day if they ever do catch up because indies have so much more potential. The place for indies is the for front of game design innovation. Your product is not going to sell unless you do something new to interest game players. Leave it to companies like EA to make the same game with a little twist because they have x million dollars to market the game. What's going to sell your game is word of mouth and your only going to get that if your game is fun. The glitz of flashy games last a few minutes, what keeps players playing (and talking) is fun factor. Think about this: if I see a really great looking game I tell a friend (or a couple of friends) about it once just to say it looked cool. Unless someone else brings it up in conversation I never mention it again. If I'm playing a fun game I do the same thing. The difference is if a game is fun I will most likely bring it up in conversation again ("Damn man I can't believe your haven't pick this game up it's awesome" or "I'm just going to go home, watch a little TV play a little of <game name>").

EA recently made a press release that they will be changing the way they compensate employees to go from giving stock options and other fringe benefit to paying overtime. I don't think what EA is doing is really addressing the problem and is more of a silencing tactic, which is pretty much what the EA rep says in this article. The problem is employees are over worked, I don't think how they are compensated is going to change that and five years from now the people who receive overtime pay and not stock options are going to be kicking themselves when the stocks are worth 5x the amount they received in OT. I think the benefits at EA are pretty good, it's the fact that their employees work stupid long hours that's the problem, which is pretty much industry standard. EA is trying to find ways to solve the problem, whether or not they have a decent solution we'll see. If they come up with one we'll all be thanking them later.