Some of you may have noticed some of the other models floating around (pun intended) in development for Project Minerva. One such model was the space station made a few weeks ago. I had a lot of fun making it. It had been a while since I had been able to do some more artistic elements and not straight programming. I tried to look a various references to get some inspiration. And that is where everything went down hill, but I'll get to that later.
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Things are moving right along...After a few weeks of work, Project Minerva is making progress. We have a team working on points of interest (POIs) and a team working on ship controls to provide a smooth and satisfying experience moving through the environment.
These are the first steps...I am really excited to write this post and share the latest project. Under the code name of Project Minerva, several Det students are helping me create a new kind of space game. By drawing on inspirations such as Star Trek Online, Artemis Bridge Simulator, and many more, we hope to create a very dynamic and interesting game of strategy and teamwork.
Amazon's LumberYard Engine that is.Amazon has recently announced their new development system called LumberYard. The announcement caught the attention of many independent developers whose popular options for game engines have so far been the Unity and UnReal engines. Unlike those options, LumberYard is free, fully and completely. No hidden gotchas or royalties... well except for the fact that should you need servers, and you don't host them yourself, then you can only use Amazon Web Services (which does charge for use). But really, AWS is really pretty awesome anyways so that isn't that big of a gotcha. AWS is the only was Amazon gets money from LumberYard as there is no free until you make $X and no royalties tied to your projects. Gem Mine has been published!For those just finding out about Gem Mine, it is a mobile application Katey Bluel and I started as a major project last semester. Now, just before Christmas, we have released Gem Mine into the Google Play Store! We have many improvements and features planned for the future so the current release is not final, and we also plan to release to Apple devices once a few more Apple specific details are taken care of.
we will think of next. The DET Club will continue its work on the virtual campus and many more projects are coming our way next semester! Get Gem Mine on the Google Play Store Here Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!
but it's almost crunchtime...So what's the hold up with Gem Mine? Glad you asked! We've been working on getting our music and sound effects up to par before we release it, and school really takes its toll on all of our times. The DET Club just celebrated Halloween and it seems the end of the semester is right around the corner. That means projects and finals galore! Don't worry, we are still working hard on getting Gem Mine released, but it may be a little later than we first expected. If all goes according to plan (and we all know how that goes), we will be releasing a second app into the store together with Gem Mine. It has a new panel on the projects page (Top Secret of course), so keep checking back for more details. It's almost crunchtime, but until then, I'll leave you with a symbol of the game: "It's not crunchtime yet Mr. Kim, I'll let you know when."
- Captain Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek Voyager What do you do when a project doesn't work out?The way I see it, you can take it two different ways: positively and negatively. This week, development on Colony Rush was stopped due to a lack of funding. We're going to be positive here, so I won't even get into how to look at something negatively (why would you want to anyway?). The obvious thing to take away is to learn from any mistakes that were made; that is how you learn. However, it is often very easy to focus only on every single mistake and take on a pessimistic attitude. When a project doesn't come through, the best you can do is look back at what you accomplished rather than what you weren't able to do. At the beginning of my time at Reactuate Games, I knew next to nothing about C# or Unity, and after two and half months of development I was able to get a playable game working; a game that wasn't even clearly defined when we started working. It wouldn't win any awards by far, but to think that a developing programmer and artist (the artist, Katey Bluel, hadn't done much 3D work before this job) were able to create something in that amount of time is crazy. What is the next big game this fall?Gem Mine of course! As Gem mine is the first major project to be released by Katey Bluel and myself, I'm going to go back to the beginning and tell the story of how it began. The origin may surprise you. As part of the Digital Entertainment Technology (DET) degree at Abilene Christian University (ACU), one of the assignments was to learn about mobile application development. The assignment was to simply change three things... and Katey and I changed pretty much everything. But, the true origin of the game is from much earlier. Fall Sophmore year, I took an honors colloquium entitled "Based on the Book" where we analyzed source materials and adaptations and what an adaptation says about the adapter: what information did they see as important, what reasons where there for changing certain details, etc. Introducing Top Secret ProjectsI have begun implementing what I call "Top Secret Projects." That means that information regarding that project will be hidden, or "classified," until I am allowed or ready to reveal it. I think of it as a way to build suspense and make you want to come back to find out what's new and if any of my projects have become "declassified." Not all new projects will be classified, but existing projects may become top secret if I am preparing a big update of information and graphics for my portfolio, so keep checking in to see what's new.
See you next time, "Access Denied" - Computer This blog will serve as a means to keep record of all sorts of projects and game development related events I happen to be apart of that I can share along with the content of my portfolio. Be forewarned that there will be all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy quotes and allusions within my posts. I hope you enjoy the future posts and stories I share, and don't forget to leave some comments down below with your thoughts!
Until Next Time, "Live Long and Propser "- Spock |
About Me:I'm a young programmer just figuring it out as I go. I'll post here about all sorts of things I learn or encounter along the way. Archives
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