2016 - My year in screenshots (warning: image heavy, cartoon penises)
Some of these are jam games. Most of these were done as prototypes at Free Lives. Some are art tests, or tech experiments. And I spent a fair amount of time painting, which isn't listed here because it's not very gamey (see the Facebook album here), and I've also left out most of the work that took less than 8 hours (of which there are also lots, but where the results aren't really worth showing).
I'm on a new computer now, and have switched to Unreal because of day-work. I had to install Unity just to get some of the screenshots. :P
I'm on a new computer now, and have switched to Unreal because of day-work. I had to install Unity just to get some of the screenshots. :P
ColourRef
After seeing a friend's work on Colour Constructor, where he fakes all of the lighting calculations in 2D, I figured I'd make a fully real-time version of it so that you could add your own geometry, or change skyboxes and stuff. I spent a lot of time on the UI, and it was working, but I got stuck and abandoned it. I still don't know how to be able to "pick" a colour from outside of the Unity screen, in case anyone ever decides to try tackling that.
VR Lightsabers
You'll remember after The Force Awakens came out, I made an ATAT vs BB8 game. This was my continuing riding a Star Wars high, with some personal, fan-made fun. Unfortunately, no gif, because I don't have a VR headset any more, and this needs VR to work. :(
Yojimbrawl
I didn't work on the game that released at the end of last year on Humble, but early in the year I took a week to explore some art styles, eventually settling on this.
Zerds
I did a bit of work making some mechs and fx for Ruan when he wanted to recreate the game in 3D. I'm just stealing the link that he posted on the forums before.
Hacker
My attempt at an online hacking MMO. :P I think I got a look and feel that I like, and I got some basic functionality working (it can theoretically take on thousands of players, because it's basically just using simple php/sql in the back end). I didn't get very far designing interesting puzzles though. Cukia helped me with trying to design puzzles while he was interning. :)
MatrixSight
I think this was a game jam project, though I can't remember anything about the theme. It looks impressive, but the tech is stupid. :D In a jam setting, I wasn't confident about drawing text to a screen in a shader, so I just used a full screen text box... :D
Drawing with GL.Lines
This was in preparation for the visualization jam. It didn't take 8 hours, but it looks cool, so I'm adding it. :P
Fire tornado
This was the first fx art test I'd ever done, but it was a super fun one because I was given pretty much free rein. When I showed them my concept, the feedback I got was that it was great that I was trying to impress, but that it was probably too ambitious for the time allowance. Which made me double-down on finishing it... XD
Pirouette
A jam game where I had very little time. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it was funny to watch for a few seconds. XD
Dating Sim
An alternative dating sim, where you play as dogs. This was a jam, and all of the imagery was Google image search results, so this game will never be put up anywhere (and thank goodness for that!). Dorianne and I worked together on the writing.
File Explorer
This generated a city based on a folder on your hard drive. Building placement, height, etc. would be based on the files in your folder, with subfolders creating different neighbourhoods. As a bonus, you could select different buildings, and it'd show you details about it, and if it was a music file, it'd play the audio. :P (It also helped me to discover some giant files on my hard drive that needed removing! :D)
VR Cricket
I did a bit of art for Robbie's VR Cricket game. I think I'd do it over a lot better because the art looks bad, but it was a super fun game to play. XD And a famous SA cricketer got to play it, and kept going for like half an hour! I also just took a screen grab of the scene view, because I can't run this without a VR headset either.
TickyTocky
The game I worked on for 67 Games. Jacques Wessels and I worked together on the design. He did the illustration, and I did the programming. Ivo did the audio. (I especially love the music, and the ticking clock theme!)
MadVR
Another VR game. This one has you grabbing floating robots, tossing them around, hitting them with laser swords, and being a badass on the back of a truck that's riding through the desert. :P Frank, an intern, modelled the robots and the truck. Jason did the sick audio.
Flight
This was a game where I wanted to get the feeling of a bird flying. It was kind of hit-and-miss. Cukia helped with the controls during the jam, and Maike did such a great job on peaceful, ambient audio.
Burglar
I was mostly playing with dynamic bounced light and seeing how far I could push it. Barring extremely specific types of games, I don't think this was feasible yet (at the time of testing), at least not with Unity's current implementation. The game has bad audio, and bad level design, but guards can detect you based on whether you're in the light or shadow, and on how much noise you make (I think. I don't actually remember). I particularly liked how you could turn off lights, and you'd see the bounced light disappearing.
Desperate Stupid Scumbags
I didn't work on the game itself, but I did spend a week trying out some art style exploration. Some of that involved doing lots and lots of drawing, and some of that was trying to get an interesting aesthetic that'd fit the game's fantasy.
Genital Jousting
Can't show a gif because compile errors that I don't feel like fixing right now, so Youtube to the rescue. :P I worked on penis outfit models, environment props, the game's cartoon shader and some of the fx. I'm particularly proud of the "art room" scene, where I tried to create splattering everywhere without the perf hit that you'd get if you were actually drawing the splatters to the textures. (I'm not 100% certain, because I tried a few different approaches, but I think my solution was to have a camera specifically for splatters that just never clears the screen. I could be wrong.)
Tanks
I did a bit of fx work in 24 Bit's Tanks game when I was in limbo waiting for my US work visa to clear. It took some getting used to working on mobile games again, after having more freedom to throw a lot more at fx on PC. :P
Physics Animation
Had a go at implementing physics driven animation in Unreal. It's so janky. :P
The takeaway I'm getting from this post is that I should just go and buy a Vive this month, just to get VR screenshots. XD (Although Oculus currently has me interested purely because of Quill and Medium.)
Fortnite
I started working on fx for this game after moving to the US to check out the AAA scene at Epic Games near the end of last year. I'm very fond of the art style.
Comments
There's an amazing sense of style in all the work posted here. Particularly love how most of your personal stuff is pretty abstracted, but still really pretty and effective :)
PS. I've been doing a bit more work on VR Cricket recently :)