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[foofter]

Nice graphic style! It's flashing me back to my days of using the 3D modeling program "Bryce," if you know that one... 

[swordofkings128]

How puzzle-heavy would you say this game is? Is it like Myst or is it mostly based on exploring?

The first person exploring parts aren't as puzzle heavy as Myst, it's more about exploring and seeing cool stuff!


foofter, thank you! I do know of Bryce, though I've never had the pleasure of using it. I've looked at old Bryce renders for inspiration though they're hard to excavate from the internet. So sometimes I look to the current Bryce community for inspiration. This is one of my favorite threads:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68441/bryce-render-challenge-surreal-worlds-we-have-winners

Pretty much every Bryce render challenge thread is pure gold... but this one in particular has a distinct mid 90s-early 2000s look.

[swordofkings128]

It's been longer than usual since my last update but I have made steady progress! It's just everything I've been working on is really special... if I show all of the really neat stuff off then it won't be a surprise.

So far 7 worlds are either done or at like 80% done, modeling wise. I also have a fair amount of playable exploring content so far but most of it is using viewport renders. At the moment I'm working on number 8! I'm really feeling good about progress... 8 is a pretty big chunk of worlds in the "80% and above" category! I even have a pretty realistic release date in mind(not this year, unfortunately) but I still need to continue working before I can really commit to a specific date...

I'll show a bit of what I'm working on now. A nice, relaxing beach world. Here's some extremely detailed concept art:


I know, doesn't give a very good idea of what the world will look like! But I this is what I find works best for me- extremely basic scribble of how things are laid out, then going from there.

[swordofkings128]

No new content yet... I've been having to focus my attention on something else.

I don't usually talk much about personal stuff like this, but this weekend hurricane Irma will be coming close or making landfall here in Florida... for those who don't know, it's a doozy of a hurricane. And that's an understatement- this one is up there with the worst hurricanes we've ever experienced, possibly worse. To quote that Undertale fellow, we're all in for a bad time. How bad for any of us depends on where Irma decides to turn north...

I've made a lot of preparations. I have enough food and water to last for awhile and all other things one would need in a disaster. But more importantly, I've taken extreme precautions with my data. I have 3 external drives and backups of my 3d models, textures, fruity loops project files, soundfonts, sound effects, other images, all the assets, on each. I've also backed everything up in cloud storage.

And if things really go south(or, north in this case) I have rented a small storage space to keep my hardware. So, in a worst-case scenario, if my place is destroyed... once that's all sorted out and I can find a new place to live, getting back up to speed will be easy. And I won't have to replace thousands of dollars of hardware that I can't afford to replace.

I'm making damn sure that nothing related to Frog Days will be lost. I've worked way too hard and pulled out way too much hair to lose ANYTHING :p

The only thing I can't really make a plan for is my pet turtle. Turtles, specifically the slider or cooter types, or more specifically a Florida red-bellied cooter like mine(at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it is), are very needy pets, they need a clean spacious tank with a basking area and plenty of light. She's such a beauty and loves to explore around outside:

Despite the misconception of turtles being slow, inactive animals, they move around a lot and can move very quickly. Getting a good picture is difficult!

However, that's for a worst-case scenario... as long as evacuation isn't necessary, everything should be okay. If anyone else lives in Florida, or anywhere where this hurricane might have an impact, I really urge you to make sure you have recent backups of all your project assets, both physical and on a cloud storage service.

[Tabook]

I've seen stories on the news of what's going on down there, I hope you're pulling through. That goes for your turtle, too  . Stay strong man.

[swordofkings128]

Finally, I'm back! The power came back on yesterday.

Thank you Tabook! Yes there's a lot of destroyed homes and businesses in Florida(particularly near beaches) lots of damage in St. Pete, Tampa, Naples, the Florida Keys, though I've heard Miami got it bad and even Titusville(which is way on the east coast)... pretty much anywhere close to ocean.

Farther inland the impact was less severe, mainly because Irma thankfully ended up not being as strong as meteorologists were forecasting by the time it got near the Tampa Bay area(I live in Brandon, which is to the east of Tampa). My family and I got extremely lucky here, no injuries and nothing was damaged besides power lines, just a lot of branches and twigs to clean up.

If anyone can please give me advice on this:
I'd really like to help raise money for those effected by Irma in a way that relates to game development. So I'm trying to see if there is a way I can offer my public domain textures I've posted here(as well as a lot I have yet to post) in a zip that can be downloaded for a pay what you want amount and the money would go to Red Cross's Irma relief. I want to make sure the money goes directly to charity and also make sure everyone who donates can download the zip file. If anyone has suggestions, let me know! I'm looking at Crowdrise right now. It might be a small niche and we developers are notoriously low on extra money but if we all give a tiny bit I think we could help even if it's a small amount.

And my turtle is doing fine thankfully! She's very happy now that her lights are back on and the tank is clean!


Tulip "turt turt" squirt. That's the name my niece gave to her. :p

A little turtle painting! Though I cheated and finished it up in ms paint...

So soon I should have some new stuff done!

[Jay Tholen]

I don't have much experience with charity stuff, but Whenever/however you decide to do that, I'll definitely pimp it via Twitter/other channels. Also it's cool you're in Brandon. I'm there pretty frequently as I have lots of friends who live there/valrico/riverview and my pops goes to church out there. Also I go to Sound Exchange as much as possible.

[swordofkings128]

That would be fantastic! I'd really appreciate the shout out! It is pretty cool to be in Brandon despite it being the sunshine state *rimshot* And yeah Sound Exchange is great! Also on Kickstarter you messaged me about getting together sometime when you're in the area and I kept meaning to respond but had a lot going on at the time and forgot about that until now. If the offer still stands that's a definite maybe- I don't hang out with anyone these days ever since I became the most boring person alive while devoting my life to this game XD

[swordofkings128]

I ended up using Crowdrise, it seems like the optimal place for a charity fundraiser thing like this:

https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/team/texture-pack-for-irma-relief

If you have a couple bucks to spare, please donate! There's lots of free textures involved! I'll be emailing those who donate ASAP with a link to the download.

[swordofkings128]

I think I'm starting to get back into the groove I was in before. Here are some food things. What they look like in openGL view:




For food it's difficult to get the look down with the usual methods, so for these I've used several materials and blended them with vertex maps or black and white masking maps. This is superior in my opinion to using one huge texture that's fit for one specific UV map since this way if I need to I can make more hot dog bun variations or just more bread easily. Just paint a couple vertex color maps on the model after unwrapping!

Same thing with the watermelon. The skin can be changed very easily by painting more spots black for the light green material and more spots white for the dark green material.

Here's the different materials for the hot dog bun:



I'll eventually be posting the textures for the hot dog bun since I had to make a few bread textures... made from a real hot dog bun! I'd do the same for the watermelon but believe it or not, I didn't actually make any new textures for the watermelon! Vertex colors and a texture that makes the mixing rough is doing most of the work.

[jctwood]

This blending method is very effective!

[swordofkings128]

Thank you! It's been working really nicely, being able to just "paint" materials. (Plus it's fun!) It has some draw backs, like I'm pretty sure it's less efficient to render(maybe just a little bit, it's hard to tell) but since it's pre-rendered it's no big deal.

[swordofkings128]

The previous post was about a picnic-type area, the modeling is 99% done(just need to add in a couple small details) and it's playable in the game with ugly viewport renders as placeholders...


*Truly this is a work of art*

Currently I'm working on a industrial kind of world, I spent too long trying to think of how it would look but I ended up coming up with something I really like a lot! One part is inside a dark, Square-Softian facility... Of course it's really too cool to show off! But here's a wall...



It's not shown here but I've modeled a variety of light bulbs for this world. Of course the usual incandescent but also a swirly CFL bulb.


The openGL preview doesn't show the reflections but the unlit bulb has some raytracing going on:


Also I needed to make a potato for this world and since it's pretty difficult to screw it up, I recorded myself modeling it:




Maybe more complicated time-lapses in the future? Or even... a tutorial!!??

And one more thing, I'll be using my twitter account a bit more for a couple things like maybe a small update here and there, maybe I'll post a public domain texture/sound, maybe a video... if you would be interested, you can follow me!
https://twitter.com/swordofkings128

[SC]

Heyo, I recently found this game from your signature on the Hypnospace Outlaw topic, and I gotta say:

This is probably one of the coolest most nostalgic-istic indie games I have ever seen. It just SCREAMS 1998 and it's amazing how hard you hit it on the head with the lighting of the pre-rendered 3D models and whatnot. I'm also a sucker for games with fake UIs in them, so. Hehe. Can't wait to play it!

[swordofkings128]

Thank you! I have worked very hard to achieve the look of outdated graphics It's a dream come true for me being able to make these kinds of graphics and it's just a thrill that's not gotten old to me yet. Sometimes I think "man, this could pass as a render in FF8!" or "This wouldn't look out of place in Riven!" it's very satisfying!

And Hypnospace Outlaw is looking really exciting isn't it? I can't wait for that one! You might have guessed but I too love fake UIs.

[swordofkings128]

Soon I'll be done with everything I plan to show in a new gameplay video. A little snake peak:


*Trust me, it'll look fantastic when it's done!*

Maybe not a sneak peak, more like a peak at what most things look like before the final graphics are in! I'm waiting for the rest of the renders I need for this world to render. I can't do any modeling/rendering of other things since it's using 99% of my cpu so while that's going on I've programmed the snake puzzle(you have to solve 2 riddles to pass). Almost everything starts out as a horrible doodle placeholder then gets the final graphics treatment eventually.

Since it's been awhile since I've posted a regular screenshot, here's one from the same world:

[Stricle]

Man, I completely missed the front page updates.
From the video, I see your game has a LOT of content, how did you do all of that? So many illustrations a whole fake-SO...

I don't know if I said it before, but everything looks (and probably sounds) great!

[swordofkings128]

Thank you! I don't like to toot my own horn but quite frankly there is an large amount of content in Frog Days at the moment(and a lot more to make!)

How did I do it? Lots of days only sleep 3 hours, never play videogames or watch TV/Movies, never go anywhere except work oh and don't have any IRL friends, they take too much time(unless they're game making buddies)! but really I've always been after short cuts to make content more quickly at about the same quality. For example years ago I used a method to make foresty places in a Chrono Trigger-like game I attempted to make


On the left, tree trunks, branches and a finished leaf canopy. On the right, a work in progress leaf canopy I didn't finish. But the method is draw a basic shape, use the leaf bits to make it more... leafy, then layer the bits using progressively lighter bits. Then touch it up by hand to make it look nicer(or don't)


A mockup using those tiles and a semi-transparent shadow tile set

Didn't get too far into that since I had no idea where to begin actually programming it(what engine, what kind of battle system, how to program a menu, inventory...)

It just so happens 3d has a lot of things you can do to speed things up. You can reuse models, materials, textures, armatures, etc... and they can be tweaked or messed with to fit other situations. It's a lot of work upfront building a library of models, materials and textures and it's an ongoing process but once you have what you need things can go very quickly.

And working in an old-style of CG helps! Some egregious errors that would be sins against 3d humanity and would take a long time to fix manually can be overlooked since it's imitating CG from 20+ years ago.

Oh and this has helped in so many situations as well:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

The OS part is a lot of messing with layer styles in Photoshop! Lots of fun making shiny buttons and tacky UI stuff... programming it was very hard at first but after I took a programming class while at the local community college everything came so much more easily(but there were still some hurdles here and there! The pixel-dissolve transition I showed pages back was a tough nut to crack)

And that video is quite old, the new one will give a much better idea of what the final product will be like!

[Stricle]

Wow!
I'm even more impressed now!
You do put a LOT of hours in it.
That explain why you are good at art, coding and composing at the same time.


(Oh, and I liked the pixel art technique. Since I suck at everything with leaves, it will be very helpful.) 

[swordofkings128]

Thank you! (flattery will get you nowhere! ) but I'm just just decent enough at things to kind of make what I have in mind.

And I hope that technique helps! Making an entire tree pixel by pixel is so tedious, nature in general is difficult to make in pixel form... modularity just helps so much. Also working on an 8x8 grid helps with making things more varied.