Blog for Spencer Boomhower at GarageGames.com

Bringing the synergy paradigm to fruition

Spencer Boomhower — 2007-03-28T20:38:33+00:00

Sorry, I just had to see how many business buzzwords I could cram in a title. Though I really am thinking about "synergy," because I've just experienced synergy, specifically by finally getting around to linking the product pages for my character packs AdamPack and AvaPack to the Torque Motion product page. The Torque Motion people do motion capture, and came out with this pack of mo-cap moves that's compatible with my characters (and the Torque Orc), and I'm pretty psyched about it.

I mention it because it's the kind of mutually beneficial deal that us indies could stand to do more often. There's so much scattered potential out there in this community that could be pulled together into something truly formidable. The "how" is the tricky part. Indie stands for independent, a character trait that doesn't lend itself to teaming up. Still, I made my packs on my own, and Torque Motion did their thing on their own (off in Thailand, I think!), and after the fact we were able to both benefit without sacrificing our respective independence, or even entering into any kind of deal. Pretty neat.

Oh, I also mention this as a form of blatant self-promotion. Buy my packs. Tell your friends.

:)

-Spencer

AvaPack to join AdamPack! Soon, very soon...

Spencer Boomhower — 2006-05-18T18:04:30+00:00

Hey all,

Just a quick update to let you know that there's a new character pack on the way: AvaPack!

She's a follow up to AdamPack , and is based on the same skeleton and animation set, making her completely compatible with AdamPack. Also, as Eve was to the biblical Adam, AvaPack is a bit of an improvement on the original. She's got more clothing layers, more polygons, and she looks better in a close-up.

The only drawback with AvaPack is that, whereas AdamPack was built in 3ds Max 4 (and thus was compatible with all subsequent versions of Max) AvaPack was built in Max 5. It's over a year since I released AdamPack, so an upgrade was in order :).

I just have to get a few more promo materials together and get AvaPack through GarageGames' testing, and I should be ready to go!

And I have to say, it's about damn time :). AvaPack, like AdamPack, took a surprisingly long time to wrap up. A big part of that is the fact that these packs are tools, meant to be used to create new characters. This means they have to be as perfect as I can make them, whereas a typical character only has to be good enough to work in a given game. Or at least, even after it's in the game, the typical character can still be fixed. If there's a problem with one of these packs, getting a fix to all the people who started building with them is tricky at best. Still, I had actually entertained hopes of having this done before last Christmas! But all those easy little polishing tasks add up, especially when you have other work to deal with.

This just further underscores a lesson I've learned, that - with any project - finishing is the hardest part, and no project should be started without the finish line in mind. An unfinished project is a burden, it's demoralizing. But wrapping up a project, tying a bow around it, and kicking it out the door is liberating. It's like throwing a ballast out of a hot air balloon, lightening you up to go new places.

Look for AvaPack on GarageGames soon!

-Spencer

Wednesday Jul 20 19:17

Spencer Boomhower — 2005-07-20T19:17:54+00:00

New AdamPack is here!

OK, this is a little late, what with there having been an Image of the Day, and a news item on the subject up for a while now. But I just noticed my last .plan was titled "New AdamPack is on its way," and I figured I'd better get up-to-date :).

From the IotD:

"Most obviously, I added a T-shirt texture to the pack. The old muscle shirt allowed more flexibility in turning Adam into other characters (like, say, some kind of fantasy warrior character), but I prefer the way the T-shirt looks. The old muscle shirt will, however, still be the primary skin in the updated pack, and it'll still be available as a layer in the Photoshop file. While I was I was making changes to the texture I also added a khaki version of the pants.

In response to one of the bugs reported in the original release, I added triggers to the run cycles that create the footsteps and poofs of dust that appear when a Torque character runs.

Beyond that, I made small tweaks to the vertices, UVs, and vertex influences. I also made some minor tweaks to the animations. "

Here's the link to AdamPack.

Thanks again to everyone who helped get this out the door!

-Spencer

Wednesday Jun 29 18:19

Spencer Boomhower — 2005-06-29T18:19:24+00:00

Update for AdamPack on its way!

Just a quick note to let everyone there's an updated version of AdamPack coming soon! I took into account the feedback I received and added in some minor fixes I wanted to see.

Most notably, I added a t-shirt texture, and while I was at it, a pair of khaki pants:

The old muscle shirt allowed more flexibility in turning Adam into other characters (like, say, some kind of fantasy warrior character), but I prefer the way the t-shirt looks. The previous skin with the muscle shirt will still be the primary skin in the updated pack, and it'll still be available as a layer in the Photoshop file.

I also added triggers to the run cycles that create the footsteps and poofs of dust that appear when the character runs. Beyond that, I just made small tweaks to the vertices, UVs, and vertex influences.

Should be uploaded very soon. I'll let y'all know when it's available.

(BTW, this is my second time posting this, apparently I took too long to post the last time - just mentioning this in case two .plans show up :))

-Spencer

Sunday Apr 10 20:34

Spencer Boomhower — 2005-04-10T20:34:03+00:00

Post-pack: of poofs and taxes

Well, it's been a week or so since AdamPack was released, and I think I can finally take a breath. The response has been great, and I appreciate it. This being my first pack, I was expecting a deluge of support requests, but it's been pretty calm. Whew.

One problem that an observative AdamPack owner spotted (thanks Bill!) is that I neglected to provide triggers in the forward, side, and back animations that indicate footfalls. The game uses these triggers to create poofs of dust when the character runs. I've fixed the run, but not the other three animations. When I do, I'll add those fixes to the pack and submit them to GarageGames.

I'm not 100% clear on how the update process works for packs - I think GarageGames just adds my fixes to the pack, and owners can re-download the pack to get the fixes. I'm not sure if anything on the page tells you it's been updated. I'm pretty sure owners don't get emails telling them new verstions have been released (but that would be cool). At the very least, I'll add a version history or something like that to the Readme so you know if you have the fixes or not.

FYI, I'm pretty sure my main reason for making this update is that I'm putting off doing my taxes (ick) which is my primary task for the day.

Thanks again for buying AdamPack!

-Spencer

Friday Apr 1 4:29

Spencer Boomhower — 2005-04-01T04:29:25+00:00

AdamPack!

My character content pack, known as AdamPack, is ultra-super-mega-close to being released (I've been saying it's, "close to being released" for, oh, six months now, so I figured I should switch to something more descriptive).

I have new respect for people who manage to ship content packs. Or ship anything. I've worked on games that have shipped, so I should know better. But the work I've done on games has only been as part of a much bigger effort. This is the first time shipping anything on my own, from concept to final release, and it's as difficult as it is really freaking cool.

AdamPack started out as a character for ongoing project - a project code-named: "Putting Stuff Into the Torque Engine For the Hell of It". Jeff Tunnell encouraged me to take it to the character pack level, as did Joe Maruschak. Joe, as usual, went the extra mile and offered tons of technical expertise and advice. Many thanks to both of those guys. Big thanks also to Josh Williams for a tremendous effort in guiding this pack to market.

About the pack itself: The idea is to give people a fairly generic male character that would simultaneously work out of the box as a usable soldier-type character, as well as being easily modifiable into any similar character. So you could easily turn him into a sci-fi or fantasy tough guy by adding armor or clothes to the relatively bare base character.

If you're unfamiliar with 3D editing, but you really need to make changes to AdamPack, consider hiring one of the many talented artists in the GarageGames community. It'll still be a heck of a lot cheaper than building from scratch. I've taken care of some of the more complicated modeling tasks, like the muscles of the torso and arms, so even inexperienced artists will be able to tweak you up some good results.

-Spencer