I So Metric

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.