Angry Postman Games

Plans

Progress! Things are starting to pick up. Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s in my head, either way I find it motivating. My game has almost a full structure, my dot com is busy finding its feet, I’ve found some great fonts to use for both the game and the website, and I’ve written a script for the opening.

It’s time I start posting regularly. The Factorio developers, Wube Software, have Friday Facts. I like this alliteration so I’m going to do the same, but which day? Sunday Sit Down, Monday Moanings, Tuesday Tea Time, Wednesday Wisdom, Thursday Think, Friday Fridget, Saturday Sip?? Also trying to keep within the postman theme Blue’s Clues comes to mind – “Here’s the mail it never fails it makes me want to wag my tail… MAIL!”

I feel like Saturday would be the best day to make a postman angry. I think that’s a good day. I’ve got most of my free time then. I’ll come up with a name and start soon. I should also have the look of the website down by then too.

In terms of the actual game, I’ve started prettying things up. I’m modelling and texturing different assets to scatter around the world so it looks like an actual child’s room. Biggest news is I’ve discovered how to put Substances into Unreal!

That’s my update for now. Let’s see if I remember to make a video on Saturday!

New Year!

I’m wasting my time! I’m faffing! I need to stop using double spaces after a sentence.

Over the holidays I got a bit more work done on my game. More than I have in the past few months! Things are getting more serious now. I’ve gone through a LONG prototyping phase since I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I opened a little YouTube channel:

So there’s that!!

I need to start making a social media connection, a presence, a “HEY LOOK AT ME!” So that’s the first stop.

In terms of game progress I have a fully functioning player. He runs, blocks, attacks, jumps, get’s hurt, deals damage, collects things, etc. I do also have a functioning enemy that wonders around, can “see” the player, attacks the player, and then looks for where it last saw the player, rinse repeat. I’ve got a menu system that works, it loads into the “hub world” where you select the mission/fear you want to conquer. From there you can teleport to the first map. There’s also a pause menu.

I’m making a conceited effort to get something done every night. I’m even considering fleshing out what I have now with pretty visuals and cut-scenes. First I must get the reward mechanic down. My plan is to have the marbles as a collectible that is tracked in much the same vain as in Spyro. I’ll get that right, and THEN make it pretty.

In between that I’m going to get more social media accounts, YouTube is done, Twitter is next, then Facebook, and Instagram.

I’m excited 🙂

Change of pace

I’ve been procrastinating, but not in the way you think. I’ve been spending time creating game assets when I haven’t even prototyped this thing at all. I’ve got no idea if my little idea is even going to be fun!

I recently watched Indie Game and I’ve also been watching a lot of GDC talks lately. One thing that stuck in my mind is this image from the game Braid:

While thinking about the game mechanics and how I want the characters to interact with each other I’m slowly realising I don’t have a concrete plan yet. I’ve got a simple story idea but everything is very disconnected. So I must start building some sort of playable something!

Perhaps where to start is blocking out the kid’s bedroom and adding an enemy or two and then feel my way through that. I suppose I’ll just have to open Unreal and start. The one idea I want to explore is his “hero stance” where the surface effect is to make the kid less afraid while driving back the darkness. I’d like to experiment with if it makes the character invulnerable, if it destroys nearby enemies, how it’s powered up, and so on. This encroaching darkness can be the kid becoming more and more afraid and finally consume everything, boom, dead, start again. I’m not sure if a “fear bar” or an actual visual darkening would be better. Time to experiment!

*cough cough* I mean prototype!

Another Character

I’ve been stalling. I haven’t touched my game in over a week so I’ve taken some time today to create the wise old ghostly guide character. It started out as a sphere believe it or not. I wasted a lot of time trying to find the best method to “sketch” a character in ZBrush because on a Sunday I just couldn’t be bothered to model some sort of idea in Maya first.

I eventually, after some faffing and a bad case of indecision, I just pulled in a sphere – who knows WHERE I got it – and started sculpting. After a few dynamesh flicks I ended up with what you see below.

I’m actually very happy with this. Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of things I didn’t even think of like scale, where’s he pointing, how he’ll be animated… all things that will bite me later! But damn this isn’t bad for a day’s work (He says tooting his own horn).

I’ve settled into a bit of a pipeline – nothing set in stone, I mean, it’s only me. I had to take the low res mesh into UV Layout to do the UVs and then I’d taken both low and high res meshes into Substance Painter and threw on some materials I thought were appropriate. After that I masked out the sections I felt they should be on, painted out the eyes for the glow, and exported. It took me a few hours but I got the end result I wanted. I can’t imagine painting these textures without Substance Painter.

I took a lot of inspiration from Mufasa for his styling. I wanted the character to feel proud, old and wise. My intention for this character is to be the wise old mentor, the guide, the spirit, Yoda, the character to tell the player what he’s actually supposed to do. I wanted to do a ghostly appearance to him but felt that a statuesque feel to him would be great. Imagine, a ghostly figure within a statue of a great being from time before. A nice idea I think. Then there’s also an idea where he could be a night light in the “real world” for the child. Perhaps I could combine it. “Psst, hey… kid! Take out your sword…” and then insert some hesitation, the sword comes out… BANG into imagination land and here’s the proud ghostly statue head giving him advice. Yeah… I like that.

Form and function

Finally got the little guy in game and functioning. All his materials and textures are set up and his first three animations are working… mostly.

I had said in a previous post that his feet are about a frame off. If you watch carefully you’ll see that his heels connect at the turning point of their motion. I definitely feel that they could be offset so that they start swinging back a frame before they contact. More on the running than the walking I think.

Nevertheless he’s in game now! You can see he stands still and breaths, he runs automatically (take not of his little ears), and holding shift makes him walk. But this is how far I got and I stopped about two weeks ago, procrastinating, playing other games, watching TV… I need to start again.

I’ve got my girlfriend, Schienne, writing the story for me. I’ve given her a basic outline of the events and she’s stuck within those boundaries so far. I’m actually looking forward to doing all the voices for my game. That’s the biggest hurdle really – I’m doing everything, 3D, animation, programming, sound, and I’m guiding the story along.

When I make more progress I’ll add another post. So for now, enjoy my little test:

It’s ALIVE!

I spent a lot of time making this little teddy of mine move. And I’ve also been going back and forth on names for the game. I had an initial idea of “My Hero Teddy” but that felt too wordy. I had settled on “Teddy Knights” for a few days until I remembered Shovel Knight so that was out of the window. So far the one at the top of the list is “Knight Bears” or “Night Bears” depending on how much pun I want to put in.

I must also stop double spacing after a full stop!

As I said in a previous post, Teddy was rigged using Unreal’s ART tools which make rigging a breeze! Here’s a little picture:

I started off with a simple idle loop, just standing still, breathing, and ready to fight. Luckily the way the ART tools do the rig it makes it easy for me to paint weights as I animate. Doing a range of motion animation is OK but you’ll only really see the spikes in practice. The idle loop took roughly two or three days. You sit there wondering what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling, and if you are not over thinking it!

The walk cycle then took another day or two to get done. Again this was rife with indecision about HOW he should walk. I eventually decided to look at Mario since he is of similar stature and I really liked his run. It has an element of urgency, it was a little cartoony, and the quick staccato steps appealed to me.

I do have a small problem with the contact poses in both the walk and run cycle. The heels connect at the same point the motion of the feet change direction. I really feel that the feet should already be returning backwards before the contact. I’ll talk more on this in the next post.

Here is his run cycle:

And then there were polygons

I’ve started making a game a little while back. It’s been slow going because I only work on it a few evenings a week. I have no idea what I’m doing but I am making steady progress. For now I’m working to my strengths which is 3D and VFX. So as you can see below, there is my main character.

What I’m going for is a third person adventure style. The basic concept is the teddy must defend the child from scary things. I haven’t exactly got a proper list of things but a few examples I had in mind were spiders, the dark, jumping jack, little things that in the kid’s mind is very scary.

I modelled the simple geometry of the bear’s body and armour in Maya, pulled it into Zbrush to sculpt it. It’s a very messy and bumpy sculpt but it works. I then took it into Substance Painter to make all the maps for the bear and different pieces of armour. Pulled that all back into Maya to rig using Unreal’s ART tools. Spent a LONG time painting weights before finally pulling the bear into Unreal. The next step was animation.