It may be noticeable. I’m not updating as much. Well that’s because I’m much less bored now and I’m getting down into the meat and bones of the game (actually I was literally working on the bones not to long ago ; D).

There’s another reason for the lack of updates though. I think me going on and on about the features doesn’t really say much about how good the game will be and it’s likely leaving me a little flat. So I’m banning myself from posting little things like clouds and billions of Felix redesigns and the website will only post content, interesting features that I can show through pictures, and special posts about what’s going on.

One interesting thing to try perhaps would be one piece of art on a weekly or monthly basis via deviant art. (Which is outdated AGAIN!)

In short, it’s time I begin the promotion aspect of things. But for those interested in things that probably only interest me. Here’s one last bit. I’m working on hair that moves , OoOOOooo as if it’s never been done before!! : j

I’ve the thought about it, and the fact of the matter is it seems like a lot of the game takes place on roof like areas. So I decided to check into atmosphere and weather effects and put grass shading on the later list. I hadn’t really thought about the sky. Usually I’d just some some 2D background for a sky and call it a night, but because this game is 3D and I’ve  put so much emphasis on the environment , I just couldn’t do that.

The sky isn’t finished but I have the key idea of what I want in place. It seems very generic from the picture but it’s actually how it moves that makes it interesting. When will I start posting video? Probably when the first level is in playable form. Starting this week I’m going to begin working towards that. I’ll lay out my base graphics and slowly improve on them as I go along as opposed to trying to perfect things as I do them. This move would’ve been unacceptable with characters because looking at the characters long enough would inevitably screw up my perspective, invoking a design change. It’s happened enough times for me to know.

Ah one more thing! My source for these neat little clouds is the following:

Source: Little Box Of Ideas

This may have been my slowest month ever, and it started off so well. Granted, it’s not over yet, I don’t think I’ll do to much to make up for it. The majority of the month has been spent redesigning and reskinning my model. Finally the model is turning out how I want it. There are a few touches I’m not yet able to implement so I’ve dumbed it down a bit. I won’t say this month has been a waste of time in terms of productivity. I learned my inverse bind pose was set up wrong which could’ve easily made me need to do all my animations later on and I also learned a bit more about actual skeleton systems and how to get the better results. It took forever but all’s well that ends well right?

Now that I’m over the hump, I’m think I’m finally going to look into that grass shader. I really just wanna get all my graphics testing out the way now.

I’m drained from the massive amount of E3 content I’ve watched. That combined with all this design work I’ve been doing makes me exhausted to say the least. E3 is typically my glimpse into the future to see the direction gaming is going. I always feel small after watching it, like I’m never going far enough to make it to that stage. I didn’t feel that way this year. I feel so strangely ambitious about this that I partly question whether I’m delusional.

Everyone is probably still gawking over the E3 media right now, but still, I’d like to talk about 3 different Es which are a detriment to direction my game is going in. To do that, I’d really like to go into the source of my inspiration for these elements, Zelda.

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Almost every game there comes a stage where I take my base model and update it to more accurately depict the character. I probably did this about 5 times in the Tandem Tales-Tale of the Night era.  This minutia really makes me feel like I’m getting nowhere but as I stated, I’m attempting to get as close as I can to perfection this time.

I’m trying to achieve the look of a sprite I modified a month or so ago. It seems to be the perfect representation of the character, but of course that won’t seem to stop changing! But I’ll take wanting him to look more cartoonish this time around  as a sign that I’ve found a happy medium.

On a last note, I’ll try and start posting real news at some point. I have the habit of using the site as a journal.

Why am I still working on graphics? It’s not the texturing I can’t get right, it’s the coloring. It’s pretty clear to me why there are people hired just to work with the lighting alone.  To help me find out the exact kind of shading I’m looking for I made this concept art using the current model. I haven’t forgotten about gameplay if anyone’s wondering. If I don’t do graphics now I’ll be too lazy to do it later.

There are no ice stages in the game, this actually came to mind when I was thinking of some sort of ice fortress. I don’t know when or why I was thinking of it but the image stuck with me.

UPDATE: June 6 2010

Perhaps concept art is more useful than I thought. Attempting to recreate a concept rather than blindly doing things really helped. Although I had to go back to square one with coloring, I think I finally got the lighting down.  Should be easy to move forward from here!

Really liking the results.

Without being too verbose, I  thought I may just post how a little screenshot of how things are going. I really ought to do that more. I still have work to do with character texturing and level texturing was simply a rush job just to see how it would turn out so take it with a grain of salt. I hope to get out of this graphics bubble soon.