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Atavism Dev Log 21 – On legs and related movements

Update 21: August 2nd – August 15th

Witty Tagline

On the personal side of things, I’ve gotten back into the swing of work, been living with my roommate from the last two years again, and have had very little time to play video games. I’ve also started running a D&D game for my friends (for real this time) and also finished rereading Dune: Messiah. I think before Children of Dune I’m gonna read Slaughterhouse: Five. Still need to finish The Last Guardian!

On the development side of things, I came, saw, and conquered rewriting the character controller, fiddled with a few odds and ends, and bought an expensive asset that’s actually a great tool.

Onward.

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Atavism Dev Log 20 – Landing and Seeking

Update 20: July 12th – August 1st

Alright so it’s not August 1st as promised but I’m not that late.

On the personal side of things, I just had the loveliest vacation in Colorado. I went with my sister and we had a huge road trip, saw Pike’s Peak, spent a couple days at the Great Colorado Sand Dunes (inspired by my favorite book) and generally just had a good time. I got to just completely relax for probably the first time since my Christmas week off.

I thought the week after that would be good for the normal schedule (besides move day) but I was pretty wrong. I got a fair amount done on Monday and Tuesday, but I’m still unpacking after Wednesday (when I thought I could write the blog) and only got internet up a few hours ago. And bills, man. Even setting them up is a pain. Anyways I only lost 5 hours of productivity this week so it’s not a big roadblock.

Development-wise my time is split between the first week when I worked on the Bird AI’s seeking and attack patterns when grounded and the two days this week when I thought I’d try out a different venue and casually revamp the character controller. More on that later.

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The greatest part of a single player game is the mystery of unraveling it. This post goes into depth on the AI of the game and may spoil the experience for the casual reader.

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Atavism Dev Log 17 – Ornithology Obsession

Update 17: May 31st – June 13th

Two weeks, more progress, as usual. On the personal side of things, I’ve recently beaten God of War – something I enjoyed way more than I initially thought I would and turned into one of the strongest emotional experiences a game has ever given me. I’m immeasurably happy with the reception the public has give it too, both in sales and appreciation for Santa Monica’s hard work. Aside from that, I took a bit of time off from development on Monday to watch E3 with my friends (with whom I still haven’t started that DND game), and I came out the end of it rather satisfied, but anxious for the distant release dates.

On the development side of things, I’ve modeled a giant bird. This week’s post should be fairly short, as I’d rather not talk about the nature of these birds and have little to say on the modelling process, but this also brought to light the issue of whether I should make dev logs over certain things at all. The tribesmen and birds, for instance, are encountered fairly early in the game, so I see them as both a marker for my progress in beginning the development of this game and a marketable point for the piece without delving too deep into it. As I start developing later parts of the game (or just critical parts of it), however, I’ll probably have very little to publicly say about them, requiring a longer-paced style of dev log.

In short, I looked at some other blogs like this one from Lucas Pope (who made Papers, Please) and Nightdive Stuidos’ kickstarter updates, both of which are narrative-focused games and post infrequently to reflect that. I think as I move into later parts of this project, especially after building unique encounters and levels begins, I’ll shed the bi-weekly obligation to preserve the mystery.

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Atavism Dev Log 16 – Natural Elements

Update 16: May 16th – 30th

It’s been an unusually chill two weeks. My new living space has been treating me well, work has been easy-going, and dev time has been pretty productive. I’ve been planning a dnd game for my friends too, for which they recently made characters last weekend, and now I’m working on harder material so I can start running soon. In addition, I’ve been getting closer to finishing God of War and it’s really ramping up the tension, making a lot more emotional impact on me than I thought it would.

For dev-related things, the first week began with some bugfixing but was spent mostly on some interaction with the environment and experimentation with shaders, but the focus of the second was largely on learning the particle system and making a fire model and some effects.

I guess it’s time to get down to the details.

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Status Update: GDC

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“Infinite Schism” by Leilani Bustamante

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming…

Hey folks, it’s Wednesday. This is going to be fairly sparse, but I want to get this out fast to get back to work, so I’ll try to recount what I’ve done recently and show a few pieces of art I’ve enjoyed recently to make it visually interesting.

I’ve been listening to a NieR Tribute Album recently, which isn’t a genre I typically listen to, but it takes a bizarre and super fresh take to what is probably one of the best soundtracks of last decade. Anyway, onto the blog.

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Atavism Dev Log 11 – Tribesman Combat AI Progress

AI KInda

Week 11: March 15-21

It’s still Wednesday somewhere in the world, which means it’s time to share what I did over the past 7 days – this time from a hotel in San Francisco. I talk a little about the AI’s current capabilities and what I hope to accomplish next.

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Atavism Dev Log 9 – Tribal Animations

Week 9: March 1-7

Thus begins the task of implementing the enemy. Most of the talk is my plan while the webm’s do the real heavy-lifting if you just want to see some progress. I can also confirm this is a Wednesday blog now.

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Atavism Dev Log 7 – Midterms vs. Modeling

Week 7: February 11-17

Hey so this week is gonna be pretty short but I’ll find something to talk about nonetheless.

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New Game – Bringer of Brilliance

Instead of the regularly scheduled Atavism blog, today I bring a postmortem of the game I’ve just made for my college game jam.

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Bringer of Brilliance is a First Person Action game that I and two friends made during the 2018 K-State 48-hour Annual Game Jam, a jam hosted by my own college where we competed against about 17 other teams to make a game with the theme “enLIGHTen”. Armed with more experience and ambition than 2017, the development process was smoother and more productive, but ultimately far more intensive, but resulted in a good end product that won 3rd best overall. Download Link.

If you want to check out a more detailed description of it’s production, check out my postmortem here on my portfolio. Leaving that there, I’ll get back to work on Atavism and should have something to show on next week’s blog relating to the game.

Cheers.