Ao Dai

So I've been very busy recently. I mentioned before that I've been working on clothing for 3d models, in part for my game, but also to sell to others who do 3D art. Well, my first outfit is just about done. Here's one of my promo images showing the different textures that are included.

And that was fun and cute. But for The Roads of Ty'Ren there aren't going to be too many toddlers. So I've been working on that outfit as well. In addition there's a new anime figure coming out, and so I'm making a less realistic version for that as well.

A lot of the textures I'm working on are rather fancy, although I'll often be using some simpler ones for The Roads of Ty'Ren at least for the poorer characters. But here's a look at what I have so far.

The basic shape of the Ao Dai by itself.

Same basic outfit, but this time with added dynamic sleeves.

Sora, the new anime character that Hivewire3D will be releasing soon and a test run of my outfit on her.

Choosing a style

It's been a while, I know. And yes, I originally intended to have an alpha version out long before now. However as I was trying to add just enough content to make it somewhat interesting, I kept finding an issue. The issue was the artwork. In my last post I talked about going with a Classical look, to follow the Greek inspiration for the story. But the more I tried to make this look work, the less I liked it.

There were a few problems, the main one being trying to differentiate between the rich and the poor. It's a game about merchants, about making money, and it seemed to me that being able to tell the difference though the clothing between the the social classes in the game was important. But, I also didn't want the main characters to look boring, just because they start out poor. Also, when it came to our heroine, she looked quite nice, but all I could think about was how difficult it would be to work in those clothes.

I tried all sorts of things to create an attractive Greek or Mesopotamian look that would convey what I wanted, but nothing was quite right. I started just looking at possible clothing at random, hoping something would grab me, and finally it did.

It may seem rather random, but I've settled on a Vietnamese style of clothing for my characters. First of all, this is just a beautiful style of clothing. An áo dài is a beautiful woman's out fit whether it uses ornate or plain textiles. It's worn with pants, which wonderfully solves the issue, of could you get any work done while wearing it, but I've seen examples where the top and and pants are slow flowing that it almost looks like an over and underskirt. 

And, from a practical perspective in terms of resources, I can make a couple base models, and then add very different textures to easily create many different looks.

Which reminds me, I've picked up a new piece of software, and a new skill. Rather than looking for premade 3d clothing to use, I've started making my own. Although this is going to slow down development of my game, it has the advantage that I can sell what I design to others, so that I can start brining in some income before my game is released. 

So it might seem a bit odd, but I've actually started with a toddler version. So if after all that you're wondering what I'm talking about, well here it is: 

Forward and Back

So my goal was to have a very early Alpha by the end of this month. That probably won't happen, although it shouldn't be delayed by more than about a week.

A couple things have happened. In the annoying, I've spent a lot of the last two weeks trying to get my 3D software working. I think it finally is. But while dealing with that, it slowed down the coding part of things. Also, I'm wearing fake nails for a play I'm in, and that definitely impacts my typing.

In the positive side of delays, after putting up the FAQ on my game, I finally figured out exactly what sort of fantasy world I was trying to create. I knew I didn't want it to be generic medieval fantasy, but I had quite figured it out yet. After writing down formally so many of my ideas I realized that my game is what I'd call ancient world. A mix of Greek, Babylonian, Perisan, etc. I say a mix, because I'm undecided if I really want my men running around in chitons, but it's a fantastic look for the women.

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Ninnev one of the main characters haggling.

A possible look for her younger brother . . .  if I stick with the chitons.

That's meant however, that almost none of the art I'd created so far was correct. Not that I thought any of it was going to be the final product, but I have quite a graphical mismatch at the moment while I'm trying to create new art, and it's living side by side with the old art.

The other positive slowdown happened yesterday when I tried to start making a second scene for the game. In this context a scene is what happens when you go to another area and you see some sort of loading icon. Although the game isn't big enough yet, that I needed to do that, eventually I will need to, and in trying to do it at a logical point, I discover some places where the templates I created weren't quite as modular and reusable as I thought. Although it's slowing me down at the moment, I'm glad I caught it now, rather than when it would take me months to fix it.

A new year

So  not a lot happened here last year. That's going to change however. This is no longer something I'm working on when I have time, this is now what I'm doing full time. So you'll see a lot more updates. 

Currently I'm working on a trading RPG. Here are a couple screen shots.

Mistakes

Mistakes lead to strange creative processes. I was trying to animate some seahorses and they began to spin out of control. They reminded me of shurikens so the next step was obvious. Mermaid Ninja! You can't quite tell from this angle but she has an orca tail, because obviously a mermaid ninja would be part killer whale, not part fish. We'll have to see what adventures she has.

Now a real thing

So it's official. Gadget Girl Games now exists in more than just my head, and a mostly empty domain. IRS cogitat ergo sum. Which means it's now safe to unhide my domain. Next up: getting trademarks for some of my ideas so that I can talk more about what I have in development.

Something's coming

It began in the first grade on a VIC-20 with a book called The Cats of Castle Mountain. As you read the book, you came across BASIC programs for simple games. After you had typed in the programs you could play the games, and save the cats.

"CBMVIC20P8" by Cbmeeks / processed by Pixel8 - Original uploader was Cbmeeks at en.wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CBMVIC20P8.jpg#mediaviewer/File:CBMVIC20P8.jpg

There have been a lot of games since then. But one particularly stands out. I was eighteen and in the Navy when Tomb Raider came out, and for the first time I didn't have to be a guy in a computer game.

I could go on and on about games I've loved and games that have disappointed me. But that's not important. What's important is the games I'm going to create.