Learning to use Hammer

In what is probably quickly becoming obvious with me from these posts, I'm pretty good at starting things and not so great at finishing stuff. I can do a bunch of things mediocrely and very few things well.

I add to that list today by having played around in Hammer for the afternoon. I thought it would be good experience for Level Design work to learn how to use it and this is what I've done so far.

As with everything I ever post, it's very work in progress and just like the rest, I wouldn't count on that changing.

The main view from the start is this cropped tower that hits the roof of the skybox and also has no back. Yay!

You start behind the railing show here. I've always loved intricate and off staircases especially outside so I tried something a little fancy here. 

Between the two staircases are some benches and a vault door because why not right?

And looking from the vault door you can see the tower again.

It's probably obvious by now that I had very little plan when it came to making this map, it was just about getting myself comfortable with using the tools, so theme, layout and any design decisions were secondary at most. This was my take on an Apple style store using the default assets.

Inside I started adding tables, it's a bit dark...

On the subject of being a bit dark, just next to the store is what's supposed to be an american style subway entrance. I really struggled with lighting and down here is the worst. 

Here is the view from one of the platforms, this is even less complete than the rest of the map and was really just an after thought when I found that yellow texture.

On one of the platforms is some bathrooms, I couldn't find a bathroom stall mesh so I just made my own out of brushes, not sure how well it works. Obviously ignore the texturing again though!

Over all it was fun to play around with. I'd need to do a lot more reading/youtube video watching if I want to take this a bit more seriously though. Especially if I want to look at more natural terrain undulation. In the future I would also spend more time looking through the assets in CS:GO first and build a small level around those. Rather than trying to create something that probably was too much for my first map.

Oh, also I'm learning to play the Ukulele. :D 

Unity and 3DS Max

So I started working on the next Unity project, the space shooter and it's going well although work has been extra busy, as has wedding planning so it's not going to be finished as quickly as I want. I guess it's better to be slow and accurate rather than rush it and learn nothing though!

I've also thought of a cool way I can combine it with what I learn't in the first project, so I might mix the two together into something a bit unique when I'm done.

I also have had a bit of a hankering for some 3D this weekend, especially low poly work. I always think it's much harder to be creative or to express what your trying to in low poly so it was a fun challenge.

It all spouted from a thread on NeoGaf about how good some DS games can look on an emulator when bumped up to 720p and I felt like I'd like to have a bit of fun recreating some of it! It is worth noting that NONE OF THESE ARE FINISHED PIECES!

This is was from Professor Oaks Lab in Heart Gold/Soul Silver as seen in this screenshot!
http://i.imgur.com/g1qnB6U.png

I made a low opacity cover for the tube as well but P3D doesn't allow for opacity on a free account. The texture is a 256x256, so why not throw on a normal map right!?

In the same screenshot is also a bookcase, when I was finished however it was so basic I threw in a simple plant and bin as well.



After working on such basic stuff I wanted to work on something slightly more complicated (not much though) that would give me an excuse to play with specular and normal maps and as a massive Final Fantasy fan my brain went to only one place...


All in all these models took about 5 hours for all three of them, I imagine if I put a bit more time into something I might be able to make something half decent. Who knows, maybe this bank holiday weekend might lead to something.

So that's what I've been working on, nothing too exciting but yeah!

The Roll-a-Ball Tutorial

I'll be honest, I've tried to learn Unity a couple of times in the past, but I was and can sometimes still be to arrogant to accept I need help. I spent the first few times that I've poked around with Unity in the past doing just that, loading up a test project and poking around, trying to make it go.

This inevitably leads to me getting frustrated with it and walking away, convinced that I'm not smart enough and that I don't have the time to get better at it. Not this time. 

I decided to swallow my pride and start with the most basic thing I could find, the Roll-a-Ball tutorial on Unitys website seemed like a good place to start, and it was!

It taught me the basics of using the program, and it's actually pretty straight forward (so far) it even got me coding a little bit with some C#, even if most of that I copied verbatim from the tutorial video.

I couldn't figure out how to upload the game I made to this blog without paying for some outside hosting, so for now I think I'm happy to just upload some screenshots. Take a look, it's very basic but I'm still proud of what I accomplished in an evening.

I created a play field for the game, including walls, a character (the ball) and rotating cubes for pick ups. All of these things have C# scripts attached to them to allow them to do what they need to do.

The goal of the game is simple, move around the board picking up the pick ups, as you pick them up the score on the left increases. When you finish picking up the final one...

You get some incredibly unoriginal internet humor.

It's not much, but it's a start!

My plan is to move onto the second tutorial now, which is a basic top down space shooter. It doesn't seem to include any pick ups in the tutorial, so maybe I can combine the two tutorials to make for something slightly more complicated when I've finished? 

Welcome to my Blog!

"I’m making a game! I will probably never finish it! But I thought I’d start talking about it anyway, to keep my goals straight and get feedback on my ideas as I go."

Tom Francis, 2010 

What better way to start this blog than to quote the person that inspired it and a little background information.

I've been working in the games industry for the past three years now, first working as QA at The Creative Assembly in Horsham before taking a brave/bold/stupid leap of faith and moving to Headstrong Games in Central London in my first design job.

Since then I've been working on an unannounced product that has really helped me to grow my skills as a designer and what better way to put those skills to the test while also improving on an area that is currently a weakness than to start learning how to work with Unity?

This should be fun right?