Blog for Kevin Erkelenz at GarageGames.com

Constructor Video Training Workshops

Kevin Erkelenz — 2008-11-01T14:41:57+00:00

Hey there guys,

Recently I posted a Snapshot on something I had planned, I am not going to go in to detail on that project but fact is it has been down-sized and re-shaped. Torque Community member Josiah Reeves and I have teamed up and are currently working on putting together a new Identity for Fanatix Games.

Our website is currently under construction and therefore the domain is currently not available, we are still trying to keep this project in a non-profit nature and hope to gain enough popularity to make a small side income through ad space on our page so therefore our first workshop covering the basics, history, and point of CSG modeling, why CSG is used for "interiors", the basics of constructor, and a full workshop will be free of charge either way.

If however we can not keep up with the necessary cost to keep this project going we will publish any future workshops for a fee of $20, in average spanning 4-6 hours of instruction. All videos will be in the Quicktime (.mov) format at a 1024x768 resolution, the recording frame rate is capped at 30fps in order to deliver crisp, clear, and uninterrupted picture and sound.

Once available registered users of the site will have the option to download purchased and free content at any time locally from our server or order a CD/DVD with the option of standard formatting, DVD-player compatible, or both from our online store for no extra charge except of course shipping. The CD/DVD's will be professionally printed along with all the standard covers.

I will of course keep the community updated on any major progress, as of right now I can not give out a time frame in which our website and along with that our first workshop will be online but it is a matter of very few months I'm sure, tell me what you think!

Community is Key.

Kevin Erkelenz — 2008-09-30T22:58:31+00:00

Hello my fellow visionaries,

My 17th birthday has passed and it has now been around five years ever since I have been actively included in the independent video game design community as a whole, of course my path has changed many times in the meaning of what game engine I am using and with that, what software I have included in my pipeline - I am where I am now after years of experience and learning which I can tell you right away could have been a lot shorter of a road if I only knew back then where to start.

We are all people living at least two lives, one being ourselves in the real world where every second that goes by is yet another choice we made sub-consciously that will affect us for the rest of our life, the other is us as an independent artist - we escape from the real world by creating our own visions on a computer and in cyberspace. I have made a choice to create yet another addition to the millions of existing domains already cluttering the massive embodiment of human existence, also known as the world wide web, aiming at being a one-stop for anyone who is completely new to the wonderful world of video game design.

I know very well that there is already a million sites out there for the purpose of learning how to use the Torque game engine and all it's assets. My goal with this website is not to create a listing of already existing tutorials and simply reference to them - although certain memorable materials may be referenced to and/or with proper permission directly hosted on this site. I want this project to be community based, and specifically aiming at people who are planning on making Torque their flagship tool to make their vision come true, I want people to know that Torque is the premier asset for any independent game designer and this website shall be a portal of information on the best pipelines and quality training on how to use the various tools included as well as another way of promoting the existence of Torque and GarageGames.

This project will be maintained by me and when the time comes, certain individuals chosen based on their involvement in this project and quality of work. I am covering the cost for hosting and domain names, more details on what kind of content will be available on this website will be posted shortly along with a name for this whole ordeal. I'd rather not make a huge deal about this project just yet simply because of the fact that a lot of projects with big hype sometimes just disappear.

As of right now I am planning on first creating a starting point on as to the structure of all the required database systems and other third party technologies necessary for this project, once I have a working prototype on my test-server I will announce my presence once again. For now I want to thank you all for reading this long article and one way or another I hope that this project will be a success. The non-profit nature of it will make it a little hard simply because of the fact that a lot of people don't like doing things for free, lets see if there are more people sharing the same interest - to help people who are completely new to game design choose their path, show them the possibilities with Torque, give them enough material to make their own choices and then maybe some time later they will want to give back to the community just like I do, I personally hope I can create and maintain this project.

Good luck to all of you,
-Kevin

The Fanatix theory

Kevin Erkelenz — 2008-02-19T08:02:30+00:00

It has been quite some time now my fellow Torque community, how have all of you been and how are your projects coming along?

As mention before it has been quite some time since I have made my way in to the blogging community on Garagegames.com and therefore it is time for some good news, well for me at least but you guys will definitely benefit! Time has passed and I have something special cooked up with my "brother" and partner in crime, we are about to launch an on-line content pack store primarily focused on Torque-based products, we have two projects in the works and many more planned. I can't give out many details on the upcoming products except that they will be sold separately, in different bundles, and no matter how they are purchased they will work in great harmony when used inside the powerful core of the Torque Game Engine (Advanced).

I have made previous attempts on launching content pack stores in the past, back in the old days when working with 3D Gamestudio (I was a proud owner of the A6 Commercial edition but I wasn't a happy camper for long and I went with the flow as everybody migrated to Torque 1.4 and hey it was for the best of it, right? ;D ) and this time around I will attempt a different marketing strategy that still needs some thought put into it but I think it will help at least a little bit.

Fanatix Games is what I call this project and the website is scheduled to launch in around 2 months, updates on that will follow as well with more blogs containing screen shots and promo artwork (wallpapers etc.)

Have a good day good people of Torque and I will make my presence known another time.

The next step in project management

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-09-04T10:45:41+00:00

Hello again,

Today I started developing a program for my team that will make communication between all of our members significantly easier, the program is intended to synchronize all the work on a local computer with the main project on our web-server. To explain this a bit more in detail, each team member has a copy of the game project on their local machine which they can work on in any way they want, then after completing an assignment the specified team member will run the program, write a report on what has been modiefied and the program will synchronize the the updated local copy of the project with the copy on the server and from there on all the other authorized team members will have access to the latest version of the project. I will also include support for direct communication with the Overlord management system. After finishing this project I will release it to the public in two different versions:

-A full version that will cost around $20 with all the above features plus the ability to directly preview Interior and shape files within the program, and of course general files like textures, TorqueScript files, etc. plus a ton of other features yet to be thought of.

-A bit more limited version that will cost around $5 or maybe even free that will exclude the Overlord support and the previewing of Interiors and Shapes, and if deemed necessary also any features I may come up with in the future.

More details on this project later when I have something to show, but for now let me ask you if you think this would make the process of team/server communication easier?

Thanks,
-Kevin

Aside of my main project.

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-08-28T10:22:14+00:00

Well hello gain dear GG Community and guests,

The title already hinted that I, like many other people, have a side project aside of my main project which is to open up a new game development company under a yet classified name (due to copyright issues). My side project is, and was for a while now to write a novel about Growing up, Designing Video Games, Coping with depression and loss, and dealing with Life itself.

I have been working on two distinctly different books for a while now, the first one was an Auto-biography and since I had and still have a very interesting story I thought it was a great Idea and my Therapist totally adored the concept by itself as well, this book was titled "The power of One", my other book was a Novel about Designing Video Games, this book had a personal touch in it as well since it was sort of aimed to be a self-help instructive book as well for I figured out a way to use my manic depression as a weapon to harvest creativity and ideas in my darkest hours, I want to share this knowledge with the world!

Now, why is it that I am not continuing these books? I mean they are based on great concepts as far as I am concerned. Well here's the thing, I am continuing both of them in a very tricky way. After loosing one of my dearest friends in a terrible car crash earlier this summer and after thinking about a few things that I have seen and done growing up in Germany I decided to combine the two books in to a single Novel, where I am using references to real world events that occurred in my life and are still happening, this new novel is about a young teenage game developer struggling to open up a game design company over the Internet, getting a team together, and just living life. I am designing the character itself to be like me and the characters around him like my friends, but everything will have a narrative point of view and this particular book will be titled "Developer Diary", I got the inspiration for that name from a very popular website that many of you have most likely heard of called Gametrailers.com. GT has every trailer in HD and SD and updates hourly if I'm correct, they also have some videos called "Developer Diary's" where the GT team is allowed to interview developers who are working on popular titles such as Crysis, Bioshock, Fable 2, etc.

I would love some feedback on these ideas and if you have a lot to say, please Email me at af1designs@gmail.com and maybe we can get in to deeper conversations about life, Game Design, and other issues. I am a very open person, I am very liberal, I believe in Human equality, I am against Animal cruelty, I believe that friends and family are the most important things on this earth and that we should never judge a book by its cover, even though we all tend to do so likely sometimes. I know this was a little random but thats why I think I am an interesting person, I have the momentum to keep a conversation going.

Now for some more contact info, since I haven't updated my GG profile in a while (I will do so after this blog) I will give you some info here:

AIM: erkel is cool

Email: af1designs@gmail.com

And you know my real name, Kevin Erkelenz, but a lot of people here call me Bushido which means "Way of the Warrior" in Japanese. I got that name from Bushido being my favorite German rapper and I am on a mission to introduce German rap music and general culture to my friends and man, they sure are digging the Bushido tunes. But yes, contact me please, I love talking and I would love it even more to talk to someone in the GG community since I only have one friend who is interested in what I do, which is Game Design.

This blog was very inspiring to me and I hope to hear from you guys soon!

Yours truly,
-Kevin Erkelenz

I have a dream...

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-08-09T12:09:30+00:00

Hello again my dear friends,

I have a dream that most of you probably had or even still have, my dream is to graduate from High School, and after that go to my local community college with my friends for two more years, and then jumpstart to Portland, Oregon in order to attend the Art Institute College and get my masters in Video Game design and a P.H.D. in Computer Science/Programming. After my long College life is over I want to start my own business in the field of graphic arts, web-design, and/or Game Design. Independence for life, and that means to work hard, stick with the team, work with the community, and find as many publishers as possible! =]

I hope I have a great life ahead of me, I want only the best for my kids and my wife. I know a lot about computers for my age, I think me and computers were meant for each other, I was even offered a job by Offset Software (Makers of Project Offset) after sending in my portfolio. They offered me a job as level designer, not lead level designer but I was still honored by that. Of course I wasn't able to work for them since I was only 14 at the time but man that felt accomplishing, I am also in the donators list! :P

When I said earlier that I wanted to pass High School and get a diploma, most of you will think, uhmn - DUH! But for me that's not so easy, I posted a very personal blog about this topic earlier on this year on how I was diagnosed with the Bi-Polar disorder and to my surprise many of you shared this life wrecking disease with me and some of you had even worse stories to tell then me but I am only an individual and I am not as strong as I used to be so I will tell you what happened this past year in school.

When I first came to my High School I was a little overwhelmed since I never attended an American High School before and it was my Freshman year so it took a few weeks to adjust, and the language barrier was still in tact (I was born and raised in Germany) so making friends was also a challenge, but I have great friends now who have supported me with a lot of things these past months. On my first quarter report card I got a 4.1 average, thats above all A's, I was so proud, and so motivated but then out of nowhere I fell in to a manic stage that lasted for 5 months and my Semester report card had 4 F's, one A, and a B, what a fucking bummer, sorry for the language but I needed to express my feelings. The 3rd quarter had the same grades and here is my final report card for the 2nd semester - five F's and one D, this time around I didn't even pass my graphic arts class and my teacher said she was crying when she gave me that F, thats right, the D was not in my computer class, it was in P.E. isn't that great? A lot of you may now think that I am an attention seeking idiot since I live in the Suburbs in Redondo Beach, California four streets down from the beach and live in a 1.4 million dollar house but I live here because I have no choice. I am a refugee from the Gang war in Germany that my gang over there got in to and I can't move back there for a while without getting stabbed, shot, run over, or killed in any other exotic way. I have done and seen a lot of things in my life that I am not proud of and I don't think I deserved this second chance my mom gave me by moving to my grandmothers house here in the United States but I love her to death for that and it has helped our relationship so much, I used to despise my parents, I was young, stupid, and most of the time drugged out at the age of 13, what an accomplishment. After my seventh time getting arrested in one month and getting stabbed for the 3rd time in one year my mom pulled the plug and dragged me out of my beloved fatherland and back then I was too stupid to understand why, but now I realize that I would have been a god damn corpse by now if she wouldn't have done that. Mom, I love you. Anyways back to my future in high school.
You are probably wondering how I can continue regular high school as opposed to continuation school or independent studies with a GPA lower than 1.0, and sadly - I have to say that next year I will be in the classroom with the mentally disabled kids in order to make up credits but whatever it takes for me to pass high school, I'll do it.

I believe that destiny is, at times, laid out as a path the day you were born - thats how I explain DejaVu, but most of the time we are responsible for passing high school, getting a girl friend, proposing to our girl friends, driving sober, obeying laws and all those sorts of things. Destiny is a topic that me and my friends have addressed a lot in the past few weeks and I think it very interesting to talk about it.

If you have read this far I want to thank you and also wish you a great life,
-Kevin

New Project: Exodus; First Impression, No screens.

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-08-07T05:27:01+00:00

Well hello again my dear GarageGames community members and visitors,

Tonight I want to introduce my newest and first official project with the Torque Game Engine advanced, the project is Exodus and in this post I will reveal a little bit about the story in the game and your role as as the player, however, I can not reveal to much about the game as far as gameplay goes. I am unable to present any screenshots to you at this time, even though I know how much you all love to see nice, bright looking screenshots in blog posts but look forward to that one glorious day when the Exodus screenshot appears in the gallery.

The game's story can be compared to a SciFi Dawn of the Dead combined with Half Life 2 like gameplay and story advancements, in the near future Scientists employed by the U.S. Army will develop a mechanism to clone human beings with growth acceleration and enhancements in strength, endurance, willpower, and brain activity. It was soon to be noticed that these clones do not have a conscious and very low self awareness, but what was really going on is that these human beings were not created by the hand of god and were not granted a soul, the devil noticed this very small defect and immediately took advantage of the situation granting the clones a corrupted and evil soul. An entire army, populated by over 600.000 clones went missing
over night and project Exodus was shut down immediately. 30 years later, out of the dark, the clone army took control of the united states, and the majority of all European countries, what came then was another army no one would have ever expected, gods elite they say. An army of Angels bound to the word of god, but the word of god was not to protect the humans, but to destroy the devils army and anything in their way, even human civilizations. God was not fighting for the humans, god was only fighting for what was rightfully his, Earth, and all the planets surrounding it.

The game begins with an introductory movie showing a character dressed in a black suit approaching an altar in an empty room with a mysterious light shining in the middle, the character kneels down and starts talking to god, god tells him to seek the source of the clones and to terminate it.
this character will be the player and this is where the Half Life 2 like gameplay comes in to place. The players job is to seek the source of the clone infestation, of course this will not be possible without any fighting whatsoever but a lot of the times in the game there will be dialog with real voice and facial animation still letting the player move around freely in the games environment. And just like in Metal Gear solid 4, there is an intense war going on, but you still have to be stealthy. Exodus will not be a stealth game but it is sometimes better to find ways around battle to avoid death. Of course the messenger of god can not just die like any human being, so churches will be the checkpoints in the game and also the respawn points, there will be a lot of humans in each church and since the clone army cant enter any churches and neither can they destroy them, they are the only refuge for humans. You may or may not take advantage of human weaknesses but it is better not to since sometimes they have useful information or items for you throughout the game.

That is about all I have to share for now and if you wan't more information on the game or if you are confused about certain things, please comment this blog and I will respond to your questions.

Thank you and have a great night,
-Kevin

Got Depression?

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-06-05T01:38:52+00:00

Dear Readers,

This blog is not aimed to insult anyone who reads it and if you feel hurt by reading this or if you think the title of this blog is irritating or insulting, please forgive me but realize that this is is an explanation to you, the community how I cope with my depression and how I have learned to harvest its positive sides in the field of Game development and art, also please notice that to me you are all heros to me in my own way, not only the Garagegames employees, but all of the members in this community. Now if you would please excuse me, I have a blog to write! ;)

Depression is a condition many people suffer of, 1 out of 4 Americans if I'm right and it is nothing to ignore, depression causes many people to throw away their lives and suffer in "eternal" sorrow, not eating for days or ignoring any contact with the world whatsoever and when things go really bad - even suicide. I have been there, last month I tried to kill myself and for me this was a shocker, and so was it to everyone else around me. That was when I realized that the hard working and motivated person I used to be last year is no longer alive, but where do I go from here? I still have that $3.000 gaming machine at home and tons of books on the creation of games, scripting, art etc. and over $1.000 worth of Training DVD's from various publishers and Game design was and is still my passion so I began to observe my behavior together with my beloved therapist and we or she realized that whenever I go through a manic phase I start coming up with these Ideas and images in my head that would be enough to supply 5 game design houses a week on ideas for games so I started writing them down and one after one after the 10 pages of ideas where done, recycle bin here we come, trust me you will hate the recycle bin after a while but to me it made so much sense to destroy my work after a while and when my manic phases are over I want to commit suicide again for all my work was gone but another solution was here - Stuff the work on an external hard drive and give it to my mom, that way its all safe and wow, it worked! But up to this date I have no portfolio and nothing to show to the world, why? Because its all in my head, like blueprints - I can see the whole modeling, texturing, animating and rendering process go on in my head and some day I will manage to control my problem and publish my work, whatever it takes. :)

Thats it for my story and here to the message that I want anyone in this community suffering from depression to write down - harvest your creativity when your depressed, I know when its that time you dont even feel like working on anything and there is absolutely no need to - keep it in your head and when your head is cleared up let it all out! Sorry for this mild profanity but depression can be a real bitch, but just like those tons of useless ads say - if you dont do nothing about it, who will? (Maybe those ads arent useless afterall xD)

What I wrote for you guys today comes from my heart and I want all of you to know that I hold you with great respect and even if I dont know you, I am proud of you and what every single one of you has accomplished, theres allways a way up no matter how far down you think you are!

And again I did not wish for anyone to get offended by reading this, the opposite actually - I want the ones that think theyre all the way down to know that theres a way up and as long as you have a goal or even a little hope it will all work out, life's to beautiful to loose it!

Thanks for reading this everybody and have a great day,
-Kevin Erkelenz

Torque Game Engine Advanced

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-03-27T23:33:12+00:00

Hey folks,

I just ran across a random forum post regarding TGEA and I remembered a question that I asked myself earlier this day! The name Torque Shader Engine was changed into Torque Game Engine Advanced for a reason I recall, and this reason was that it had so much more to offer than "just" shaders (i.E. Atlas) and here is my actual question to you people at GG:

In any update of TGEA (v1.1 i.E.) will there be an integration of one of the many licensable physics engines out there or even a ground-up written one for Torque? That is the only thing I miss from 3D GameStudio is the ability to build a quick "game" and play around with physics and also it can add a whole lot of realism to a game since now tith dual and quad core processors games are not only prettier but also "smarter".

If this has been asked a billion times before or If this has been stated somewhere, Im sorry I havent been on my computer for the last 5 days so excuse me.

Have a good one guys and keep up the work,
-Kevin

All for One

Kevin Erkelenz — 2007-02-15T01:20:18+00:00

As some of you might know, I spend most of my free time designing web-templates and dummy code for various things and sometimes sell these to clients or also create websites, logos, banners etc. for various clients - as a teenager it is a good money ressource if you ask me. After a while I decided to come up with a cool name for my so called "company" and I named it All for One Designs - once I turn 18 I will register an LLC (Limited Liability Company) under the name and my dream is to continue AF1 (All for One) and to expand a little more. A lot of my friends are being trained in Photoshop and Dreamweaver so I will have a couple of all-volunteer people working for me soon!

Anyways now that All for One Designs is back in business I wanted to inform you that the website is also back up (www.af1designs.com) and that GG users can get 20% off when you use the coupon code at the bottom of this post.

The Website is still under some construction but as far as it is now I like it for one day of work!

Again, GG users get 20% off for a lifetime and here's the link - www.af1designs.com

Here's the 20% off coupon: af1ggsale

Thanks,
-Kevin