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swordofkings128
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« Reply #20 on: August 20, 2015, 09:11:50 PM »

Thank you for that, Quicksand-T! That's exactly why the OS is pretty detailed. It's more than just the way you get to the game's worlds. It's a love letter to the magic that was the gray-box years of Windows!

Debussy.pro is the resident music player. There won't be a world associated with it(most likely), but it'll be there to provide you with some tunes to listen to while using the OS.
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« Reply #21 on: August 23, 2015, 10:33:58 PM »

Light bulbs are deceptively simple objects. Modeling one in 3d isn't terrible difficult, if you do just the outside. But if you model the inner bits, it's a bit more challenging! I made a program icon for a friend that involved a light bulb, so I decided that I'd make a detailed bulb for Frog Days incase I needed one...


I've got something planned roughly for a light bulb themed location, but it's pretty basic at the moment. Also, I wasn't sure if wanted to show this last time, but I might as well:



Looks like it might sneeze! But how? There's no nose!

This is still an early concept, but there will be random events that can happen in any of the worlds in Frog Days. One of these events will be a stray Bit(represented a little digital baby!) appearing. You can interact with it, but it's just there for fun.

Then there would be stray Bytes... and sometimes you might run into a cat and mouse chasing each other... sometimes you might come across a frog chilling out somewhere.



Also I've begun modeling chessboard pieces. Here's the knight!

I'm extremely happy with the direction things are going right now. I think I've hit a decent medium between modern stuff and era appropriate stuff. The important thing now is remaining locked on that vision and not straying too far from it like last time.

I've noticed a disturbing lack of skeletons in the game too... next update, partly bony with a 50% chance of skeletons.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2017, 10:05:50 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #22 on: August 27, 2015, 11:40:16 PM »

Sorry for the *ahem*... barebones update, but I think it's about time for one! First some STUFF!



The nice thing about skeletons is they can be modeled in small pieces. I did a skull first because it'll be used in a couple places, but I'll most likely end up making an entire skele.

Some instruments as well. This violin is just minding it's business, lounging in a chair.

*What is this! I thought Frog Days was a game of adventure, not a game of musical chairs!*



---

You know when you're drawing something, or writing a story, composing a song, or any kind of task of creating something... Another idea kind of spawns from that? I was modeling a sofa, and slapped on a couple textures... Got up close and personal with it and thought "Hmm. Maybe a location on a sofa?"

Yeah, how about a world where you're insect-size on a sofa, and the only light in the room comes from a TV?



So I made a simple TV, entertainment center and some cables.

Between modeling and such, I've been doing some behind the scenes stuff by redoing a bit of the game's world-navigating scripts, and implementing an old-style audio system. Basically all sounds are muted, and then the game plays a sound effect(usually with an animation) and when the sound/animation are done, the music and ambient sounds play again. It works pretty well, but more importantly I'm almost done implementing inventory/using inventory in the game.

WARNING: OLD 3D RENDERS AHEAD! I only have older renders loaded into the game at the moment.

*inventory graphics are very temporary!*

The inventory system is pretty simple. You click on the "my inventory" icon and it brings up a window with your inventory. Also, I'd like to mention this window can be dragged around, incase the menu is in your way.

Now, a lot of adventure games make you select an item, and click on a the correct spot to use the item. I'm 90% certain that won't be the case, simply because that would make things unnecessarily cumbersome. If you see an ant selling ice cream, and the sign says "$1," you'll think "Hmm, maybe I should use money on the ant..." so you walk up to the ant, and get a nice face-to-face view of her. Why should you have to click on the ant with the money? Just click on the money from the inventory window and you'll get a result.

I don't want players to be baffled by a pixel hunt! If they have an idea of what a logical solution could be, there shouldn't be a pixel-hunting barrier between them and the solution. A way around this is big hotspots, but even then you might end up with weird places no one would think to click on at first...

Seriously. You're looking RIGHT AT the broken power-diamond chamber; obviously, if you select the power-diamond from the inventory window, you know it's supposed to be used here.

The goal is designing these puzzles so you won't get stuck if you're paying a bit of attention. Which is why items are classified as "types" so you can use apple/carrot/corn chips or any food-type item on alien sea creature and you'll solve a puzzle without making the game unwinnable(actually the game will be cupcake easy to beat, really... if you want the basic ending ;p)

All in all, hopes are still high. I'm banging out content, knocking out scripts... feeling good about progress so far. Smiley
« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 07:37:35 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #23 on: September 06, 2015, 11:56:08 PM »

It's been longer between updates than usual, hasn't it? Despite that, development has been going swimmingly, maybe too swimmingly. I seem to have gone off the deep end, and right into the abyss...



How about a not-so-realistic ocean dweller...


*They don't call them -see- creatures for nothing!*

I've been doing a lot of other 3d content, but I don't want to show off too much more. It's been mostly for an area where you're in a bowl of cereal, walking along multi-colored crispy flake pieces. Well, maybe another one.


This book rests near the bowl of cereal. It's as if the cereal is for a kid who's rushing to finish their homework before school. Or, that's the intended idea. I haven't really delved too much into the story aspect of the game beyond "explore computer files as worlds" but that's mainly because(and I may sound like a broken record at this point) the story is told through little visual hints and themes and such.

So for those who might think "Oh what's with all these weird, nonsensical things in this game!" It's not nonsense in the least(maybe weird, yes) Donuts, lightbulbs, musical instruments... there's contextual meaning in these things. It'll make sense in the end. Some of it is obvious, some of it isn't.

I've been thinking about doing an extensive write up on the process of creating a Frog Days location, but I feel like there isn't much I can contribute beyond "think of unusual way a normal place can be viewed from."

So instead, let's talk audio...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byxpy03yBoVSbW11NU5wN1NfR1E/view?usp=sharing

The audio in Frog Days won't be crystal-clear, super hi-fi stuff that we take for granted in the age of digital storage! It will be very... fitting for the time. I've posted audio before here, but it was all music that hasn't been degraded. Here's an example of what a song will sound like:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byxpy03yBoVSYnVpaDJxT3F6LVE/view?usp=sharing

Fuzzy, mono, and just all around blockier sounding than the usual 320 kbps stuff we're used to hearing. So yes, all audio will sound true-to-the-times! I'm a style-purist in a way! Oh yes, not only do the graphics look like 90s pixel throw up, the audio sounds like it's coming out of a tin can. That's the way it was and we* loved it. *I can only speak for myself here, you know?

That's all for this update. I was testing out how my skeleton looks with the appropriate render settings on a random background and, well...

*Looks like someone waiting for the next game by swordofkings128*
« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 07:42:30 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #24 on: September 07, 2015, 09:11:59 AM »

When I see the images of your game I imagine the audio being like the album Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro:



That song snippet you've posted sounds about right, then.
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« Reply #25 on: September 07, 2015, 10:01:49 AM »

This will sound cliché but it does have a great nostalgic feel to it. Just like when I was a little kid playing games on my sister's win95. Also OS games, we need more OS games.

Quote
When I see the images of your game I imagine the audio being like the album Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro

and also some vaporwave stuff, for sure



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« Reply #26 on: September 13, 2015, 11:57:23 AM »

Quicksand-T, thank you for linking me to that. It's an addictive album, I've listened to it twice!

Considering changing the musical direction based on this Vaporwave genre... never heard of it until now, and it's pretty awesome.

Same with that album MAVW, very good listen. It has a very... "gelatinous" sound to it.

Thanks for the nostalgic compliment, too! Exactly the feeling I'm going for. Hopefully it can fill that empty void some of us may have for old, weird PC games! I agree we need more OS games too... There's a lot of potential for cool interactions and story-telling clues. Realistically I can't do everything I want to do because of skill level and money, but that's how all developers feel about their games right? Tongue

It's been awhile since some content too! I've been working a some interior locations. Here's a fast-food joint:

*Tell me if the burger décor is too cheesy Wink*


*Mystery door?*

Smaller details, such as partially eaten burgers/fries on the tables, ketchup packets that were seemingly tossed on the ground, spilled drink or two Toast Left... that stuff is missing for now. But expect to see the usual haphazard things common among popular, over priced fast food chains! ... They claim to be cheap but come on... I can buy enough ramen for a week or two for the cost of the cheapest cheeseburger, small drink and a small order of fries!

And I'm also working on a shopping mall, but I'm not really ready to show much on it...


The frog was kind of a sudden decision, and the posing needs some refining around the finger tips. The main hall was looking very empty higher up, so I figured something thematic sprawling across the second floor would be a fitting ornament. Gotta' say I've been getting some decent mileage out of my frog models! :D which is good, I spent like a month and half modeling just frogs...

The mall is still very barebones as you see(according to my research, most malls have walls and stores in them), But it'll be a pretty rad spot to visit...! I guarantee it Smiley

« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 07:46:02 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #27 on: September 21, 2015, 02:10:26 PM »

It's been awhile since I've done an update besides just pictures of places and things, so this one will be about how I do a lot of my texturing.

I dislike UV mapping... It takes a lot of time getting the seams just right, takes time texturing around a UV, and most of the time the UV is only good for one model(I can not use the texture of my giraffe on my frogs, for example)

I like to keep a lot of my texturing general purpose... break them down into smaller parts. Tile is a good example, but this kind of method can apply to a variety of things such as large concrete surfaces, placing graffiti on an surface(using multiple UV's), rocky surfaces, etc...

I also like to keep my textures small whenever possible. No bigger than 960x960 most of the time! My machine is 7 years old and was pretty good at the time but doesn't handle working on huge huge textures as nice as I'd like it too... The solution to these problems is layering textures!

Blender allows using many textures on the same material with multiple UV maps and such and it's very nice. The tile only has one UV map, but you can extend this very far is you use alpha transparent textures with multiple UV maps(you can do writing or special cracks on surfaces this way)



This is a "high poly" tile asset. If you were to do tile that would be viewed from a normal distance, you'd want to use just a flat plane, but the tile here is for a scene were you see tile from an ant-sized perspective, so it has more faces to it... This tile uses 9 faces/18 triangles. Seems little but can become ALOT when you have hundreds and hundreds of tiles in one scene!

So anyway, this is what we're looking at with a simple light setup:


First things first- we need to get some lines in our tile. To do this, we use this texture:


Simple. Black with a bit of noise with alpha transparency. This is the actual size too! Like I said I like keeping things small...



The setup is pretty normal(no pun intended!) the color is a little weaker because full on black is too much for the tile. Also the influence on the intensity and color of the specular is all the way up. The lines shouldn't have any specularity to them at all... They're rough. Which is why the normal is set all the way up. To get it roughness.

UV mapping is really important for our case, just so long as the outer faces are covered by the tile line texture...

And we get this:


But there's no actual "texture" to it yet. Here's a small concrete texture I photo-sourced from an artifact ridden picture of a drive way:


Oh man that is ugly isn't it! But the beauty of our textures doesn't matter as much as the results they produce... You don't need anything too fancy to make stone-like noise. This one seems to work very well for my purposes.



For this texture, no color at all. All that is needed for the first layer the normal influence. Also the mapping is set to global and not uv. If it were on the UV, the texture would repeat with every tile object. Global maps it... well, globally! Also, the X and Y scale are way lower. This is like the broad stroke on our material.

The result:


You can see how low resolution the stone texture is! That texture is only 320x320... very small. So to solve this, there will be two more layers of tile texture.

Layer 2:
Once again, we use this:


Like this:


This time the color data for the texture is used, but it's not set to the "mix" blend. Instead, use value. This will disregard the color of the texture and use the color of the material, but use the shading values of the textures colors... it's hard to explain but it means that the tile can be white, blue, green, red, any color just by changing the material's color. And we use the normal too, but much weaker(about a quarter of the previous' normal influence) to add a bit more variance the over all normal appearance...



One more layer of stone! Same as the last two... that ugly, horrible looking artifact ridden mess of a texture:


Here's what we do with it:


This one will repeat 3 times for every 1 of the previous layer as you can tell by the X/Y scale on the mapping panel, with very little(but still visible) normal influence.

Equals this:



The stone layers are setup. You could stop there... But the tile in my house has weird, almost handprint indentions in them. I did a simple picture of them:


Since the indention is very subtle, a lower-resolution image can be used. A rule-of-thumb I use is if it's a blurry, soft picture, it can be scaled down to a lower resolution or drawn at a lower resolution since not much detail would lost.

This is the only other thing that should be UV mapped. This texture should repeat on every tile in the same spot!


ABSOLUTELY no color influence! Just need the image for it's normal influence... And it should have a good deal influence. I also mistakenly made it black on white instead of white on black, so I checked negative to invert the influence. Otherwise, it would appear to be rising instead of falling.

The result:


Hard to tell by the lighting here, but here's the lighting for the actual scene:


It isn't exactly the effect I was going for, but I think it works well enough! If you wanted to have a bazillion polygons you'd want to make those indentions actual geometry... but that's beyond my machines capacity to render in under 40 seconds.

And a bonus! Very empty sandwich scene, but here's the tile from above:


Overall I'm satisfied with how it turned out. The nice thing is, as with all materials, it can be used again. So it'd be easy to pop into a scene were tile is needed, tweak it a bit, and have tile unique to that scene...

This method works well for small rendering sizes like 640x480 and for 90's style renders, so your mileage may vary! Just sharing my method for getting around using small textures...
« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 08:03:46 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #28 on: September 26, 2015, 06:22:05 PM »

Am I gonna need a Voodoo card to play this cause I can't really afford one.
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« Reply #29 on: September 27, 2015, 09:19:10 PM »

Of course! Can't afford one, huh? Well, tough luck. :/ Frog Days is only for game players who are serious about getting a state of the art, high tech sensory experience. If you're not on the cutting edge of tomorrow's graphics today, ehhhh... maybe one of your friends will tell you how the game is... Wink


Your friends: "Man that new frog "game," steer clear of that one!"


"It's totally lame! All you do is walk around and all the places you go to are just plain weird! A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Seriously? And frog's are icky, dude..."


"Really? I get enough of the school cafeteria AT SCHOOL. Last place I want to be is in school in a game! Not cool."

"Frog Days? More like Frog Pay'd for this game and regret every penny of it. The tagline for this game should be "don't lose your receipt!" because you're going to need it.

Also I'm working on making really horrible chairs:


*What these chairs lack in comfort and utility they make up for in style!*
« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 08:05:27 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #30 on: October 04, 2015, 03:06:50 AM »

I've been particularly productive the past week, which is good. I've made some big steps in two locations, one is a bathroom, the other is a museum. I've already shown a bit of the museum's stuff before, and I usually hate posting content twice, but I'm very happy with how this t-rex skeleton turned out that I'm putting it here anyway.


*Sue, the most complete t-rex skeleton, likes Cajun food, philosophical conversations, and long walks on the beach. Maybe you'll want to get to know her better. She might be around 6.5 million years old, but don't let that stop you- you're as young as you feel, right? I don't know about you, but that's a fossil I'd like to date!*

Something like that. I want to have displays in the museum that have a couple interesting facts dotted around weird/maybe funny text on signs. I did research on fossils while making that skeleton and learned some interesting stuff, so maybe it'd be cool to sneak a little education in there too...

Here's some masks for the museum as well:



These masks are also my first real models that I've used Blender's texture paint function. Quite frankly, I love it. Lots. Can't believe I didn't use it sooner. Very basic stuff going on here, just a simple airbrush-like diffuse texture(640x640) with a low res normal map(320x320)

There will be masks based on the exhibits in the museum. So far I've only done a few, one is "Tall Animals" and another "Gators: Then and Now"

While making these things I realized I hadn't modeled light switches or power outlets! These two things go in the category of "useful things that should only be modeled once, ever" and reused whenever needed. So I got those out of the way.



And more recently, over the last 2 or 3 days, I've been doing assets for another fun area; A bathroom! I don't know how many games have toilet paper, but I feel like I can safely say Frog Days will have some of the most detailed toilet paper ever rendered in a game.


*Frog Days: the game where you explore toilet paper*

I'm tempted to show more, but it's been awhile since I posted some music. So here's a couple songs that I finished not too long ago:

Logic puzzle loop

Figured it out
« Last Edit: January 09, 2017, 08:09:17 AM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #31 on: October 16, 2015, 03:19:33 AM »


*A chamber in a facility so big it has it's own atmosphere! Where's the walls and ceiling? Waaaay over there.*

Mainly I've been focusing on making table lamps... I have 17/20 lamps done right now. All 17 are modeled, textured, and(most importantly!) organized to make scene management easier.


*Not all lamps required this much detail, but I modeled the elephant one because I had an elephant model I was working on and figured maybe it could be adapted for use here*

Also working on the interior for this lamp-themed place. Intimidating machinery with whimsical neon colors is the theme.



Really these shots are more "scene sketches." I have a vision in mind of what the location will look like, but I usually iterate through some different looks. Who knows! I might change things here drastically... But I like the themes here so far.

Also, a couch:

*fish texture for test purposes. I'll be making a fish pattern specifically for this couch.

I already made one couch, but there will multiple couches in the game. I realize that making one and changing it's colors could be sufficient for a "new couch" but Frog Days is a game where almost every object you see has importance of some kind. The idea is objects you see here have relevance elsewhere. Don't worry, there won't be puzzles based around this(and if there is, it won't be hard). It's more like you'll see a lamp at some point and think "Hey, I saw that before!" and *hopefully* make a connection as to it's importance. Same with the couch.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 03:55:04 PM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #32 on: November 05, 2015, 07:01:02 PM »

I'm working on completing 2 places for a gameplay video. Something to demonstrate the game's concept, the operating system's features, and how the finished game will look.


*There goes my lego masterpiece!*

The place that will be shown is a revamped version of the first environment I made for Frog Days. One of many places to explore in the game. But also the place where the magic happens!


*State of the art equipment!*

The desk where the player accesses the computer is easily the most important aspect of the game. It will be big, beige and beautiful. Right now I'm working on getting the big things done. Just to clear up any confusion, the tower is modeled. Just didn't put it into the desk part yet.



Also what old PC desk would be complete without some floppy disks laying around?
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 03:56:52 PM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #33 on: November 06, 2015, 04:17:18 AM »

I remember how I loved Riven: The Sequel to Myst, even though I didn't quite understand the story. Just being in the mysterious and extremely well-built world gave me the most awesome vibes. I hope your game will turn out just as good!
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« Reply #34 on: November 06, 2015, 06:53:44 AM »

Thank you Beyond! Phew that's a high bar to meet! But Riven's sense of mystery and well-crafted-ness is something of a target for me. Not so much the graphical quality(to render stuff like found in Riven is beyond my current skill level and computer power) but anyone playing Riven can tell it's very well thought out and put together.

I want the same kind of sense of "this game got a lot of TLC!" when someone plays Frog Days. Hopefully that is something that goes through a player's mind at some point while playing the game! XD
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« Reply #35 on: November 06, 2015, 11:02:52 PM »

Getting a huge Arcane Kids vibe from this and I love it

so  vaporwave
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« Reply #36 on: November 08, 2015, 08:03:39 AM »

Thank you!

Edit: I'm on my laptop and hit the reply button by mistake...

Anyway, I quite like the games Arcane Kids make! But Frog Days won't be quite as outwardly strange as say Sonic Dreams Collection. There is a lot of surreal stuff in the game obviously, but it's more Rene Magritte like where as I'd say Arcane Kids are more Salvador Dali weird(as far as the flavor of the surreal qualities) that make any sense?
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« Reply #37 on: December 18, 2015, 09:33:43 AM »


*work in progress!*

It's been awhile but since the last update I've been working on redoing all the code I wrote for the game. I knocked out the basic code for navigating the game worlds in like 2 days, it's very simple now and it will allow me to add locations much faster and efficiently than before.

Anyway, I'm nearly done with all the code in the operating system portion. It's taken some time but it's gotten to the point where it feels like it's own thing, not a watered down windows clone. I was a fool to think that I could recreate a near-identical windows 95 experience... and if it has the windows coat of paint that becomes more noticeable.

So I figure the less and less it looks like Windows 95, the more it won't break immersion when a feature windows has is missing because I can't program it. Overall I think this works pretty well.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 03:57:57 PM by swordofkings128 » Logged

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« Reply #38 on: December 18, 2015, 08:34:30 PM »

Those windows and scroll-bars remind me of some old game, maybe Nickelodeon's Director's Lab.
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« Reply #39 on: December 19, 2015, 05:03:15 AM »

Thank you for dropping that game name! Somehow I've never witnessed the beauty of Nickelodeon's Director's Lab menus until just now after looking it up. That'll be a nice source of inspiration. That kind of tacky, cluttered and busy interface is really what I'm shooting for. Most of them will have their own unique kind of clustered up, inconsistent interface.
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