So, since the last post I've been
brainstorming on ideas, writing up what a MVP would look like and
doing some concepts for the “Harvest Moonisk” game I mentioned
last time.
I've started modelling the PC and got
though most of the retopology for the main body. After that I have
to model hair, cloths and a few parts of his anatomy I was saving for
after I have the main mesh made. Then there is rigging, materials
and what not. The materials that are used in the Toon Kit add on I
bought a few months ago look impressive enough to use instead of the
Blender internal material that I typically use. The problem is the
line art functionally is nowhere near as good as freestyle. I know
that I could probably just run a color pass in Cycles then run a
freestyle pass in BI and finally combine them in some kind of raiser
imaging software like Gimp, but doing that for animation frames would
be tedious to put it mildly.... I'll have to look up a more stream
lined way unless the technology improves by the time it comes to
print my animation frames.
So after much deliberation, I thought
that my life would be too easy by just sticking to plain ordinary
birds eye view tiles. So the solution I came up with is to make
ISOMETRIC tiles!..... But seriously though, I remember my fond
memories of playing Harvest Moon 64, and even though I know that it
was partially 3D and you could pan the camera, I typically played it
in isometric view. Some of the most interesting 2D games I've played
used an isometric view, so naturally I would like to at least try to
make it work. So far I have the basics down and can make some bland
tiles. The real trick will be making more complicated textures
seamless
Things seem to be moving smoothly so
far. Real life keeps throwing me some curve balls but I've still
managed to (mostly) keep doing something daily.
In not so gamey news I finally went to
an anime convention (called N2U) around my neck of the woods.
It pretty much turned out how I though
it would. If I had to summarize the city I live in, in one phrase,
it would be “ho hum”. That's pretty much how I would rate the
convention.
Now to be fair I didn't stay that long
and It may have ramped up later and I may have actually enjoyed
myself more. But after the first “panel” doing a 180 in
subverting my expectations, the lack of events and overall small size
of the convention, my inability to mesh properly in crowds of people
that I don't know and the fact that the transmission in my only
working transportation is trying to break free of its constraints
(yes this is as bad as it sounds). I couldn't relax enough to try
and enjoy myself. I bought a weekend pass but will probably forgo
tomorrow.
So my rating in paragraphs:
Market: Had some OK stuff but was
wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too small. The event planer had some trouble with
the venue the first time and had to refund everyone, they managed to
get the “issue” sorted out and started selling tickets again. I
suspect that most of the people made other plans instead of signing
back up. Nice variety, but way too small.
Anime Theater: Like seriously, I know
that this was a small convention, but showing just the first or first
two episodes of anime that has already been aired was kind of
lackluster. Maybe getting the licenses for fall anime just
premiering for the fall season was out of scope, but they could have
at least showed anime movies instead. Good way to waste time quietly
while waiting for friends I guess.
Game Center: This wasn't too bad. They
had a nice variety of consoles set up and for people that like co-op
fighting games. They had a few collectors edition NES, SNES, Genesis
and a few Xbox and Playstations.
Panels: Maybe they had some better
panels lined up before the first cancellation but..... If the idea
was to get rid of me, they did a good job at that /s.
The first “panel” was get the
audience to draw a pose then show it to the speaker so he can rate
it..... Seriously. Maybe this was fun to the younger members of the
audience, but my idea of a panel is the speaker(s) talk about a
subject, then members of the audience ask questions/make comments in
turn. Maybe there were “better” panels later on but everything
just finally came down for me and I had enough.
I'll have to give the organizers credit
though. I'm sure it was hard to restart the event right after
telling everyone that made plans, cancelled them, then to restart. I
suspect that some of them didn't even bother to sign up again. This
is the size of event that you go to when you know at least a few of
the people that are going there or are meeting up with friends to go
together. Maybe next time I won't have so much to worry about and I
can try to enjoy myself more. I'll probably be aiming for a larger
convention though.
