Savvy’s Awesome Unicorn and Prince Commission   Leave a comment

I have some fun eye candy for YOU to watch :) Enjoy

Posted January 26, 2012 by SavvyKazi in 2D Art, Savvy's Stuff, Site

Kyle’s Hand of Nod   Leave a comment

If there was any reason I had any interest of games, or what inspired me to become a video game developer. It had to be the Command and Conquer franchise, BEFORE Electronic Arts took over. I’m talking about Westwood Studios, they probably had to be one of two main reasons why I love games and why I am where I am today.

As a result, I have a little drawn up sketch of a FPS Multiplayer map below is a building that you might see!

Posted January 21, 2012 by Kyle in 3D Stuff, Kyle's Stuff, Level Design

Savvy’s Hot Keys   2 comments

For those of you followers of the Allar’s Awesome Blog, you are in for a treat with a Savvy created hot key tutorial. The hot keys I cover in this tutorial are ones that I use on a regular basis, but there are many more hot keys that you could find useful for yourself. Using hot keys might be a bit foreign for you at first, but I suggest writing down the short cuts you think you’d use the most and make yourself use them until it’s second nature. Using these keys help cut down on time, and promotes focus on your illustration, concept, or texture.

 

 

Posted January 11, 2012 by SavvyKazi in 2D Art, Savvy's Stuff, Site

Beginner Level Design Tips by Kyle   Leave a comment

Everyone has to start somewhere, even sometimes you will have to refer to your foundations when it comes to making something. Here in this topic I will give you some tips before it comes to blocking out or modelling your level. This is a workflow that I have used that can help you get started.

The Idea

Movies, games, history, music, photos;  anything can be your references and inspiration to create these epic and memorable play spaces.

Here are some sites to help:

Fuck Yeah Concept Art
Reddit
Bioshock
Mongkok, Hong Kong
Nasa – Image of the Day

My Idea: Space Station on a meteoroid.  

Restrictions/Limitations

Once you have constructed your idea, there are a few questions that you have to ask yourself.

  • Is it single player or multiplayer map? Multi-Player
  • What is the gameplay like? Deathmatch
  • What kind of Engine will be used? Unreal Development Kit
  • What will make this map memorable? You are able to launch players in space
  • What is the story that this map will tell? A warehouse in the shape of a bio-dome controlled by a mercenaries now being raided by cops.
  • What is the deadline (if none give yourself one)? One week. 
  • What is the theme? Sci-fi,
  • Where do my limitations lie? Shortage of assets

Draw it Out/Reference

Now comes to bring the look of what you had in mind. Start looking about on the internet on where you can grab photos on what you want your map to look like. When grabbing your photos you also want to try to grab some ideas of the lighting or maybe how you want your background to look. Here are some images grabbed from Google and Flickr.
This is the time you want to also draw something out. Personally I love doing a bird’s eye view of what the map could look like. Only start thinking about how this map is fun; there is plenty of time to worry about balancing out the map, placing  power weapons, and making play spaces used more but that is to be done later during play testing. By the end you will have many iterations of your level.
This is the basic pre-production on how to create your level. Thanks for reading!

Posted January 8, 2012 by Kyle in Kyle's Stuff, Level Design

Beginning Your UDK Game: Tools Setup   12 comments

Hello reader! Whether or not you are brand new to programming in general, programming with UDK, this will set you up with the tools you need to have to make awesome!

At the end of this tutorial, you will have:

  1. A copy of the Unreal Development Kit installed (at the time of writing, version Dec. 2011)
  2. Visual Studio 2010 with Version 1862.1 or higher of Visual Assist X installed with UnrealScript auto-complete
    • Or Wotgreal if you do not have access to Visual Studio 2010
  3. UnCodeX for browsing UnrealScript code
  4. Everything set up for you to begin a new game project!

Things you will need to download:

  1. The Unreal Development Kit
  2. Visual Studio 2010 (or Wotgreal)
  3. Version 1862.1 of Visual Assist X (if using Visual Studio 2010) You must use Version 1862.1 or higher of Visual Assist X
  4. UnCodeX
  5. Visual Studio 2010 Project Files and VAX Enabler

This video comes in two flavors. The first video is for people who are brand new or have no idea whats going on:

This second video is a much shorter rapid fire approach to the above, and is either for those without patience or who already know what they are doing but would just like to get Visual Assist X working properly:

Posted January 7, 2012 by Allar in Unreal

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Composing Game Music   2 comments

Game music is, without a doubt, one of the hardest things to break into, ever.  To put it into perspective: I had a friend start a band, get the band signed to a label, make an album, toured Europe, then left the band, all while I was still trying to break into the industry.  

Unlike artist, programmers, and even sound designers, very few studios actually house full time composers.  Your chances are already slim.  Small time indie developers make the mistake of wanting a sound designer that can do both sound and music, or a composer that can do sound design.  Add that to the fact that the director of the indie project has a brother with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops who now thinks he’s Mozart, and you may realize your chances of becoming a game composer, or even working on projects, are less likely.

Frustrating and depressing at times? Yes.  Without a doubt.

Does that mean you should give up? No, of course not.  But knowing how hard it is will help put things into perspective.

Taking the music aspect out completely, being a game composer is so much more than knowing how to write music.  Dare I say it’s an art to itself.  Understanding interactive media and how that translates to the music is one of the differences that sets it apart from any other media.  You’re not just writing a piece of music.  You’re writing music that has to adapt and change with the player.  Not only is it interactive but you have to understand that it is fluid, not abrupt stops from the ambient piece to the tension track.  It has to evolve from one to the other.  Which, in reality, might be a whole different “transition” piece you have to write all together.  Being a game composer means understanding all of this and being able to write music according to these demands.

The Unreal Development Kit (UDK) / Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) and WWISE / FMOD are probably the best examples of how a game engine (or middleware in some cases) create an interactive musical landscape.  If you do not understand at least the basics of these programs, and how they relate to, and handle, music you are doing yourself a disservice.

Do you understand when the tension track is played in UDK?  How about the action track?  Do you know how loop points get set in WWISE, how it can relate to your music, and how it’s incorporated into UDK / UE3?

If you have no clue what I’m talking about or don’t know the answers to those questions then I suggest downloading both UDK and WWISE and experimenting with them.

UDK Website

WWISE Website

Both are free to download and learn.

Not only will this give you an understanding of how these tools work but it’ll give you a better understanding of interactive music.  How it’s created, applied, and possibly even change how you write you music all together.

Now on to the music aspect.

If you want to sound like Zimmer, do sound like Zimmer, or only write music that has staccato strings with horns playing fifths, and don’t even know there’s a woodwind section to an orchestra, then don’t waste your time trying to break into the industry.  Zimmer clones are a dime a dozen and, honestly, not very well-respected in the musical community.  Yeah, you might pull off a convincing Zimmer sound, but no one cares.  We’ve all heard that style time and time again.

On a similar note, if all you write is “un-tis”, house, techno, whatever you want to call it, you might want to try a different industry as well.  Everyone with their cracked copy of Fruity Loops is a “producer” and can write that same stuff.  They too come a dime a dozen.

I can hear the angry mob forming, ready to lunge at me with their pitch forks and torches.  I know it’s very blunt and may even be hard to hear.  But the fact is, you’re applying for an industry that has some of the most talented and creative people you’ll ever be given the chance to talk to or associate with – people who aren’t a dime a dozen and could probably write that same generic crap ten times better than you in their sleep.

Do you think Kevin Riepl knows what notes are in a B minor scale?  Without a doubt.  Do you think Sascha Dikiciyan uses stock presets in Massive?  Far from it.  These guys have honed their craft and are damn good at what they do.  Jesper Kyd, Sam Hulick, etc, these are, essentially, the same group of guys you’ll be applying against (or possibly even working with).  What are you going to do if someone tells you, “Alright guys, we’re gonna write this whole soundtrack in A minor.” and you don’t know what A minor is, or what notes belong in that scale? (Red Dead Redemption’s soundtrack was all in A minor)

Again, this isn’t musical elitism.  This is knowing your craft inside and out and being able to deliver on all fronts when asked.

So if you are reading this and are becoming depressed – good.  But that doesn’t mean don’t try to break into the industry,  just know that it’s something extremely hard to do and you really have to be on top of your game to get that foot in the door.  Hell, things are just now starting to come around for me after many years of determination and growth.

- David Mason

Posted January 5, 2012 by David Mason in David's Stuff, Sound and Music, Unreal

How to Make Bad-Ass Sexy Leather Part 1   Leave a comment

So folks, this video pertains to leather. Painting leather, especially different types of leather, can be difficult and confusing. To make it easier for you humans to master, I have a two-parter to help fellow artists learn ways to create a nice leather look. In this video I cover sexy shiny leather. Cat Woman’s tight fitting, very snug leather suite might come to mind. The soon to come 2nd leather video will be a way to do a flat leather.

These styles of painting can also be crossed over into texturing characters, or even prop models, so give this video a go even if you’r not a 2D artist.

All of the ways of painting that I suggest in my tutorials are techniques that I go by,  but you might find a way that works better for you, and by all means go for it. It’s about the final piece being AWESOME, not necessarily how you got there. As Tim Gunn says, “Make it work”.

 

Posted January 4, 2012 by SavvyKazi in 2D Art, 3D Stuff, Savvy's Stuff, Site

Design3′s Game Development In One Word   2 comments

Ben Mears over at Design3 has been recently blowing up Twitter #gamedevinoneword about how game developers describe game development in one word and created a montage of their responses from interviews at GDC 2011 which I also happened to be at.

You can check out the original post on Design3 here, or view the montage embedded at the end of this post. Please hit up #gamedevinoneword on Twitter if you’re also a tweeter or whatever these newfangled kids are calling themselves now. Side note, this post is my high score for links-to-total-text-density, whooo.

Posted January 4, 2012 by Allar in Site

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A Challenger Has Appeared! (Kyle)   2 comments

I know with the cliché gaming title you must be wondering on who I am.  To get a super quick idea of who I am, my name is Kyle Bardiau. I’m a level designer/world builder by heart, but sometimes caught acting like an environmental artist. Love long hikes, pizza, etc. Now lets talk about levels!

Below is something I started, being inspired by a certain picture done by Gia Nguyen Hoang. Tell me what you guys think of it so far, and what you are working on!

Posted January 4, 2012 by Kyle in Kyle's Stuff, Level Design

Free Indie Games   Leave a comment

So there has been a few good Humble Indie Bundle packages that let you pay what you want to pay for a set of indie games…

Here is a pack of free indie games! Just thought you guys would like to know about it if you don’t already.

http://theturtle.editions.free.fr/nanigaming/freeindiebundle/

Posted January 3, 2012 by Allar in Gaming

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