Modular Kit - Another Shield

I also made another shield. I started messing around with the material editor a little bit and it is great big fun. There's SO much stuff you can do.

Print N Play - Why can't I hold all these...

Game tiles. A lot of them. Solid oak beauties. Not too much work left to get these done. Only thing I'm worried about is getting an appointment for the laser cutter, since apparently GWiz isn't an option any more.

Modular Kit - Medium Props

I had awnings for my medium prop. I modeled four different variations and textured each model eight different colors. So I have 32 different awnings. There are still some different variations some people want to fit their level specifically. I should be able to throw a couple more together to appease the masses. Here are the four different variations.

I also messed around with the UDK Cloth PhysX quite a bit. That whole system is cool, but very finicky.  So, in addition to the static awnings, I have a few skeletal meshes of awnings. They still need a little tweaking but I got the basics down.

Print n Play - Storytelling Illustration

We needed to create an image that visually communicates the core mechanic and theme of our print and play game. In my game each of the two players has either a head or a body and the goal of the game is to capture whichever part you don't have so you can reanimate the corpse, like a Frankenstein monster. So if you have the body piece you want to capture the opponent's head piece.

I am going to mesh the ideas together of these two drawings for my image.

Print n Play - Prototype

This is a prototype I made over the weekend to get a feel for the size of the tiles I want to use for my game.

I'm pretty happy with this size. Ultimately I am going to make 11 of these and laser engrave the tops of them. The tops will have different designs depending on different class, Nearl's body part, and decoy tiles. I will take those 11, glue them to a sheet of masonite, and cast the engraved tiles in a big silicone sheet mold. After that I'm going to make two different color resin sets of 11 tiles. To make them feel nicer I am going to put tiny weights in each of them. After the resin pours I will paint the engravings for some subtle flavaaaa.

Print n Play - Theme and Concept Statement

Nearl was decapitated. The prophecies told that one day his separated body and head would have to be joined back together so he could be reanimated and show the people how to transcend. That day is today.  Since Nearl was been decapitated his head and body had been split between two rival factions. Each faction is going to battle the other to get the other half of Nearl so their faction will be the one to transcend.

Take charge of one faction and fight for your future. You command two platoons of three units. In each platoon you have one secret unit; one of Nearl’s body parts, and a decoy. The other two units in each platoon are customized by you.  The units in each platoon must stick together to maneuver, trick, attack, and hopefully capture the enemy’s half of Nearl. You must be careful though, if the enemy capture’s your half of Nearl, you lose and do not get to transcend.

I can’t decide on an exact theme. It is either some medieval, pagan, peasant-filled, fantasy world with zombies, OR these other-worldly, primitive, quasi-amorphous, simple, alien, creature things.

Concept statements are tricky. Best I came up with all weekend: Annihilate. Reanimate. Emancipate.

Here is a theme that was put to good use to unify a product. It is an anniversary release of a tv show on [adult swim]. The show is, roughly, about three 8-year-olds and the home movies they make trying to follow one of their artistic visions.  The way they packaged and boxed the whole anniversary set reinforces the theme of the show.

Proops

My easy props are shields. I guess our theme is 15th century Arabic influenced for the most part. So I looked up some 15th century Ottoman Empire business. I modeled like 14 different shields and that was the problem. It took a loooong time for me to put the textures together for three shields.

I'm not even completely happy with the textures I got done. I need to mess with the normals a little bit then fix the specularity. AND tweak a couple of things on some of the models.

I guess it also didn't help I started modeling some of my medium props...

These are just an experiment for now. Going to mess around with putting bones in and weighting the fabric of the awnings then usings the PhysX's cloth simulation engine in UDK to make some cuhrazy stuff.

...AFTER I'm satisfied with all of my shield business.