Environmental Doodads!

Whitt and I continue to pump out more and more environment objects, and the ones that have been textured are looking awesome! I have continued to model objects that will be used in the environment as well as some of the objects that will be interacted with, such as switches and our "tilters." I think we are getting closed to making a full 3D level now which is pretty exciting!

Doorway arch screen:

Games: Payday 2 (with the lads), Hearthstone 

Level Building

Shifted gears for a little bit over the weekend and worked on some levels for our game. I think there are a few out of the ones that I created that are decent. I liked using slopes and tilters to try and create some sort of environment puzzle that needed to be navigated. I even ended up creating a tilter maze that is a bit chaotic to navigate haha. We will see what everyone else thinks about them come Tuesday.
I have not really done too much art stuff recently, but did make a nice looking pot today that can be used for stuff like leaves and what not.

Games being played: SWTOR, Brütal Legend \m/ (You cannot kill the metal!)

Situation Critical!

Our team is in trouble... time is running out and our game is not quite a game yet. This is turrible, just turrible. Our professors came by and had a chat with us this week and basically said that they needed to see something resembling a game by Tuesday. This means that we have got some serious work to do over then next few days. We have decided to go the route of little to no story in order to speed up development time. We have also decided that everyone that is not on the tech team should begin working on level development so that come Tuesday, we have 80 or so levels designed, and the top ten or so will be used for the demo on Tuesday. I am putting 3D modeling on pause for now I guess, so that I can work on designing levels. Hopefully I can come up with some good ideas, so far I am thinking switch/maze like puzzle levels along with skill based navigation and some Sonic-y spring levels. We shall see what I am capable of with the level designer, fingers crossed.
I did manage to finish a fancy looking door model this week as well as some updates to the previous pillar model, they are looking good!

Games being Played: SWTOR, The Witcher 2 (the Roche side since I did Iorveth's last time (Iorveth is better)).

It Begins (Again).

So it is the end of the first week back and it feels a little funky after spending three weeks doing almost nothing while trying to recover. I have to admit that it does feel nice being back at school, despite the fact that it is a little weird not having arms and trying to be a student.

As far as the game goes, we have hit the ground running, we are fleshing out new details and moving forward with a lot of changes that we have come up with. I spent some time this week working on some 3D models for environment objects. One of my group members Whitt drew some awesome pictures of objects such as windows, floor tiles, pillars, and other items that could be found around a castle. I took these pictures and started to make them into 3D objects. So far I have done a window and a pillar, and I gotta say that I do like the way that they turned out! Obviously they still need to be textured, but that is the part that I am probably weakest at.

 (It is a window not a tombstone, I swear!)

Games that I am playing: SWTOR (With my sister), Metro: Last Light (This game has been awesome so far! I feel like it is way easy compared to the first though).

What has happened... to me

So I have been away from all everything for about a week now... This is not through laziness. On Sunday December 8th I went skiing some some good friends because it had been snowing and the skiing was promising. The day was pretty cold, but we were still having a fun time and finding some good skiing. With early season skiing there is always a risk of rocks and other stuff poking out. On our last run we decided to traverse out to see if we couldn't find some good snow. The traverse was rocky and patchy, but it was to be expected and was easily dealt with. However, going over one tree line in the traverse, there was something different. Instead of there being snow, it dropped off into a rock garden with some pretty large rocks. I watched two of  my friends ski into this and they seemed okay so I went through the gap with more speed not knowing what was on the other side. I ended up flying pretty far and landed directly on top of a rock with my elbow... it hurt, bad. I rolled down the hill a little ways losing both my skis but eventually stopped. My friends that could see me asked if I was okay, to which I said : "I think my arm is broken." A friend asked if I could move it, I could, but my arm flopped back in a disgusting manner that was in-human. I knew it was not okay and promptly had my friends help me get my skis back on so I could ski down. They urged me to let patrol take me down, but I said it would take way too long and that I would manage to get down to them (plus I am too proud of a skier). I went in to ski patrol where they were surprised to learn that I had skied down on my own. They sat me down on a bed and began to peel off my clothes and ski gear. As they took off  my final upper layer a bunch of blood began to poor out. They took x-rays and gave me some morphine it looked as though I had a compound fracture. They had me go down to the University Clinic immediately because I would need surgery very soon. I was very surprised and depressed to hear this. My friend Randy took me into the ER where they took more x-rays and prepped me for surgery. Upon second inspection, my elbow had been completely obliterated and my forearm was in pieces as well. I was told this was the worst elbow injury the surgeon had ever seen and that he was worried it would not piece back together well and might be much weaker in the future. The surgery was a success and went much better than he had first thought. They reset all of the bone and moved the pieces that were sticking out of my skin back as well. My arm now has two plates and about 24 screws in it holding it together, these are permanent. 

(What my arm now looks like.)

However something also went wrong during the surgery. A nerve going to my right arm was pinched, leaving it paralyzed. I woke up unable to use either arm... this past week has been very frustrating because I can literally do nothing for my self. My right arm is supposed to come back eventually, though the doctors don't know when. After a week I can use my hand though it is half numb... I truly hope that the rest comes back soon so that I might feed myself and perform other very basic tasks again. I spent about 5 days in the hospital under constant surveillance before I was finally released to my parents who had to drive from California. We made the drive back yesterday (which was long and pain-filled), and I am now at home where I will hopefully recover the use of my right arm before next semester start.

It is unfortunate that I missed the last week of school and all that it entailed because of this, and have made no progress on the project either, but I am basically incapacitated at this point. I will try to work some over the break, health permitting. 

Progress: none, bed ridden.

Game play: none, bed ridden.

Intermission

Unfortunately, Kyle has been the subject of a severe skiing accident this weekend, and has not made any progress on his video game. However in the spirit of this blog he will continue to post through me, his personal assistant, Randy Malm.

Cannon Fire

So it seems like our game is going through the ringer right now and has been getting changed in so many ways recently that it is kinda worrying me. It seems like waiting till right before alpha to change a bunch of stuff probably isn't the best idea, but it is what it is. I have just been working on some art assets as of late, and have been running into issues where I start working on something just to find out that someone else has recently finished it despite the fact that I had signed up to do it. I guess there are some communication issues occurring which is slightly annoying, but at the same time not too bad because then there is some variation in a few of the things that we are working on. The one thing that I did do that no one else worked on was cannons for the game. I made a 3D model of one and then played around with some different styles for it. I also hand drew (Computer drew?) one, but the file is on my other computer so I cannot post that on here for now. The 3D stills that I took will be bellow, and for those of you that see them, let me know which style you like the most!