What's All This Then? An Update!

So it has been a bit since my last update... Work on Miskatonic has been put on hold at the moment and while I still love the project and the idea of it two things are hindering my work on it. A) Full time employment, and while I love working to pay bills and such I'd rather be working on Miskatonic but I would rather eat more B) I've started work on a project with a few guys that I went to school with tentatively being called Project Whitehat. With some influences from William Gibson and Frozen Synapse it is a top down shooter based in what I feel represents Gibson's cyberspace. We'll see how things pan out and I'll post some pics a bit later on.

Assets III: Organics

Organic shapes have never been something of a strong suit for me so today I decided to step out of my comfort and model some tentacles, after all who can have anything based on the Cthulhu mythos and not include some form of slimy creepy tentacles? While I'm not at all impressed with the texture I did or the model as a whole, the concept and the idea are taking shape and I've learned a bit more in 3DS Max doing it so I'm sure this is something that is going to be revisited again and dome more and more, but for now here are some shots of the tentacle and trap door I did this morning.

Assets, Mk II.

I've spent the week working on some more assets for Miskatonic and am getting more and more the hang of 3DS Max. Still not doing anything overly complicated with it and still aren't completely happy with everything that I'm producing but it is starting to get there and I am becoming a bit more comfortable with it and with how to texture the models after putting them into UDK. I've been using a program/plugin for Photoshop called xNormal which so far has done amazing work with every texture I've thrown at it to create a normal map for. Some of the following shots I'm really happy with, the books and the Lament Configuration, others not so much, the trophy and lockers for example. I believe they will be getting revisited later on.

Assets

I'm going to preface this post with A 3D modeler I am not, there not that that is out of the way, I've been working on some assets for Miskatonic University because open empty halls and rooms are well, boring. I've starting to grasp 3D Studio Max a bit more confidently than I had in the past but I'm still working with very basic primitive shapes and minor modifications to them. Textures in 3DSM are starting to come along but I still run into issues with UDK not wanting to import them correctly, I think I've finally figured a way around it which has worked once, I've had other methods work once for me and never again in the past however so it still remains to be seen how well this method holds up. Below are some of the few things that I've modeled so far.

A nice dark imposing desk

Curious about what's behind the door?

Trying to keep a 1920s feel to all of the assets, found a few locker types this one seemed the most flexible.

Miskatonic University Update 2

So it has been a little over two weeks since my last update, got to start keeping this thing updated a bit more, which may have become a bit easier now. On the one side of things loosing a job is never easy on anyone, but it gives me time to work on my portfolio and money isn't terrible at the moment. So I've been busy working on Miskatonic and running around some other back burner ideas in my head. I think I've finally gotten the normal map issue with the textures sorted out. I started using a program called Normalx (Thanks for pointing me in this direction Jeremiah) and it seems not only to do a much better job than the nvidia plugin I was using but it is a lot more straight forward as well.

So without further ado some updated Miskatonic University shots.

Front entrance, not completely happy with that concrete texture.
I think I need something lighter here

Looking in the front door.

A look down the first floor corridor.

Second floor, just some work lights in place.

A look down into the library from the third floor balcony.

Over view shot. Still missing some floors and the clocktower.

Small Update, Large Rant

So a quick update on the Miskatonic University project, I ran into a bit of a wall in designing the second floor of the University. I knew that I wanted to add a library and some science labs but trying to figure out how to lay it out and how the layout would affect the third story's floor plan was giving me some issues. So taking a suggestion from my girlfriend I created a mock up of the University in, of all places, The Sims 3 and was able to work quickly and try a few different floor plans out until I found one I liked. While this probably wasn't the approach that is the most typical in a situation like this it did allow me to design quickly and see results of ideas rapidly it seemed to work well. So hopefully I'll have more of the University laid out tonight with some more screen shots as things start to fall into place.

If you're just here for design insights, now is probably a good place to stop reading. While the following will be regarding the gaming industry and gaming culture it does not pertain to design.

Look, I know you're safe and secure behind your screen and your anonymity and that's fine, that's one of the wonders of the internet, it gives everyone a voice. But too many male gamers and males in general use their anonymity for saying disgusting things towards women that they either may know or just pick at random because they can. When did having a screen and the internet between you and the person that you're talking to on the other end of it give you an excuse to act like a misogynistic asshat? I'd say you're a grown man and that you should know better but clearly by your actions you're not and you don't. So let me spell this out for you, treat people like they’re person and not a piece of meat. Just because you have the security blanket of the internet around you doesn't give you a reason or excuse to act like some frat house drunk jackass. My parent taught me to respect human beings as human beings no matter their race, gender, sexual preference or what breakfast cereal they eat in the mornings.

The gaming community is especially bad about this, along with treating women terribly; the bigoted speech that comes through on games is insane. There's a reason I don't play a lot of FPS's online and when I do I have the voice chat muted or when I play an MMO I create custom chat channels that usually avoid the public channels. It’s because not only do I not want to hear the torrent of hate speech that comes out of most of the chat but it’s also because it makes me uncomfortable. I don't fall into any of the categories that should be offended by this speech, I'm a straight white male, but the fact that the words that I would never in my life even think to say are thrown around so easily and freely makes me no longer want to associate myself with a game where that kind of speech is rampant.

I'm not here to point fingers at a cause of this, it could be societal, it could be bad parenting, it could be just a screwed up individual, but the fact remains that nowhere is it acceptable. The gaming industry in the past has, and in some cases still does, employ "booth babes" women who have no problem with guys drooling over them. But as we move away from the idea that games are for children and towards being a multi-billion dollar industry that wants to take itself as seriously as the film industry, it is time to move away from childish things. It is time to let your game sell itself and not need some skimpily clad woman to stand by your game to get attention for what you've been doing. If you need that sort of marketing it seems to me that maybe it’s time to go back and rework your game until it can sell itself.

Miskatonic University Update 1

I've done a bit of work on Miskatonic University recently and figured I was far enough along to show a few in progress images. It isn't anything major yet but the first floor is laid out and I've begun experimenting with some over all textures, I'm happy with the floor texture the red brick texture needs some work, the normal mapping is giving me some strange black outlines. Anyhow on to the images!

Shot from inside looking down the main hall.

Shot from outside looking up the front steps

Overall aerial shot

First floor layout