Molyjam 2013

I attended to this years Molyjam in Düsseldorf (Germany). 60h without sleep with 48h of game development marks a highlight in my carrer of becoming a professional game developer. To focus yourself on the essentials and be as efficient as possible in a given amount of time was tough but rewarding.

The basic idea of our game was to create an continuously changing environment. We quickly had the architecture of the holocaust memorial in Berlin in mind and mixed it with the idea of an changing maze with completely random generated maze patterns.

This was a little concept sheet that I put together in the concept phase:

You can download the game here

In the middle of the jam, almost all work in terms of 3D was done so I took the chance and helped an other team with their project which turned out to be to most fun of all. You should definitely play it!

You can download the game here



Working on the station

The concept requiered some more work on the station.
-adding a parking place
-moving the station closer to the road
-Adding some more assets

EDIT: Pls dont mind the rails crossing the road. This will be changed.

Update

Again, all the stuff piled up to just one update. So here you go:
-Retexturing of one building Interieur
-Applying emissive to static light assets
-Creating a second storage building
-Switching to highpoly

Most of our normals are done with crazybump which delivers quite a decent result but I started to switch to high poly modelling. Not only because of the normal map but also for using it with the ambient occlusion map for texturing. The reference and extra detail is just a pleasure working with.
This a a recent example of a heater for a kitchen scene.

A little explanation if you are not familiar with "normal maps". The idea of normal maps is to project the high detail of high poly models onto a game ready low poly asset. The normal map will be applied onto the model just like the diffuse texture which contains the colour information with an extra dynamic shadow of the normal map. If you cast a light over the object, the normal map will react to it and shadow the modeled details correctly, faking a more detailed surface.

Map Update

Sorry for not posting anything for quite some time. I am a bit ill at the moment and cant motivate myself to post something everyday. So take this as some kind of a major update. The map that I currently work on took some steps forward.

This is my first approach on creating modular trees for the map. It took some time to figure out how to construct a believable tree with a maximum tri count of 2000 but I am quite satisfied with the result. If you wonder, what the white cage around the trunk is good for, this will be used later on for the collision. The red/black colour will not appear in the game, this is just a vertex paint to define how the branches are affected by the wind. (red: 1, black: 0)

 

Working on the lightning (WIP)

Finished grass

Finally, after one day of hard work, the grass is finally done. I stumbled over a a nice tutorial series which helped me to achieve a new level of foliage creation. So I walked out in the morning, took some photos and put everything together trough the day. This is how it looks right now:

I will probably tweak the specular and the wind but for now it does the job quite well.

Foliage WIP

Currently, I am creating some foliage for the coast-map. I am still new to the material editor so most of the material is made by a tutorial. I hope I can fix some of my current problems tomorrow including:
-lightning
-colour
-mesh compositing

Working on a new map for "F99"

After 3 weeks of experimenting and working, the map I currently work on, reached a presentable stage. This map is intended to be used in the student game "F99", a first person horror adventure with the spirit of the old resident evil games developed by a group of german game design students. I took the opportunity and applied for the job of the level designer and got the job. This is the result of 3 weeks of work. It is not much but I had to learn UDK from scratch while building this. I am kinda satisfied, though.

Another landscape

Hi there,
I´m sry for not posting anything useful the last days. I just came back from my trip to paris a couple of days ago and I am currently a bit busy working on a new landscape. Here are some screens of the current status:

"abandoned island" - Day 6

Currently, I do a lot of experimentation on the terrain. This one comes with a first rough set of detail textures and some weather effects. I am not sure, if I can continue tomorrow because I will have to do some preperations for my trip to paris.

"abandoned island" - Day 4/5

Cryengine 3 screenshots

Diffuse map

"abandoned island" - Day 3

Sadly, I messed up the cavitiy quite a bit but most of this will be covered by water anyway. I guess I will stick with it.

"abandoned island" - Day 2

Starting a new private project - "abandoned island"

Highpoly in Mudbox

 First erosion overlay in World Machine

CryEngine 3 prototype walkthrough

A rough idea of what look we wanted to achieve and about 25h of work later. Finally the finished prototype. (720p recommended)

CryEngine test map

The test map is going well so far. With some help of a fellow student, I managed to import my models with collision and texture. In the next three days, I will try to give the map a spooky touch with some fog and whatever I can find that seem to be useful.

CryEngine 3

Wow, this engine ist just....wow. Even as a beginner to the engine you are able to create decent results with just some clicks. I was not able to add the station yet but I hope to do so tomorrow. Damn I am lazy sometimes... Anyway, I made some screenshots of the current stage.