A shortcut for modeling people

As a way to settle on my next project, I decided to do some character prototyping. It's something I haven't done in a while, and it seemed like a good time to try a more in-depth 3D modeling project.

The human form is, as you might imagine, a fairly complex thing to model. It's easier with a solid reference drawing, but I'm not a particularly skilled artist either. So, armed with a basic line drawing enough skills to be dangerous, I set out to figure a way to cut some corners.

After some digging for a free alternative to Poser, I stumbled on a relatively new, open-source product called MakeHuman, a free piece of software designed to help people create 3D models of the human form. Turns out it's not quite complete, but I think it's going to be pretty effective for my purposes.

Upon first opening the program, though, my first thought was, Wow, that's quite an androgynous figure. This might not work at all. The model had kind of a masculine face and a vaguely female body. It turns out, though, that MakeHuman takes an interesting approach to body shape. Rather than selecting "male" or "female" when you start, you get to adjust the values along several continua, including male/female, age, muscle mass, body shape, and weight. The default model happens to lie right in the middle of the male/female spectrum.

After tweaking parameters for an hour or so, I had a character that I thought looked decent, so I exported a model to fine-tune in Cheetah. I've been working the last few days to dress it and simplify the mesh.

The only hitch so far has been that MakeHuman outputs a fairly high-resolution model with about 12,000 polygons. I ultimately want one that has four or five thousand, which should provide plenty of detail. Though Cheetah doesn't have a method for polygon reduction, Blender has a good one, so I used that first to get things down to a reasonable level. Despite the extra step, I'm hoping to end up with a decent model that doesn't require building a human form (particularly the head and face) from scratch.

It remains to be seen whether MakeHuman provides a shortcut that's actually shorter, but so far it looks like it will be a huge help in modeling.

Blender 2.46 released

This news is a few days old now, but Blender 2.46 was released on Tuesday. This new version adds an impressive list of features, including:

• Better hair and fur simulation
• An improved particle system
• Cloth simulation
• Render baking for effects like normal maps
• Ambient occlusion
• UV texture editing

I haven't used Blender much in my game development process so far, since Cheetah provides most of the features I need in a friendlier package, but this program continues to amaze me. In my opinion, Blender is one of the true success stories of the open-source movement. It is actively developed and delivers a host of professional-quality features in a cross-platform package, for free. To buy a program with the same capabilities would cost thousands of dollars.

And, by the way, it plays nicely with Unity. Blender is definitely my app of choice for advanced 3D modeling and animation effects.

Take a look at the official Blender gallery if you want to be amazed.

New hardware

Got a new computer over the weekend. I've been eyeballing the latest round of iMacs for a while, and they announced a hardware refresh a few weeks ago, so the time was right. This new one replaces my last iMac, which was nearly six years old.

The new one has a 24" monitor -- it's hard to know what to do with all the space, but game development will be a completely different experience. I see a lot less window switching in my future. I might actually be able to have the debugging console and the main Unity window open at the same time. Or maybe even have a programming window up along-side Unity. Oh, goody.

But...I don't have Unity loaded up quite yet. My license wouldn't work on the new machine for some reason (though it is supposed to), but I expect the problem will be worked out in the next day or so. That's really the last piece of the puzzle. Most of the other important software is in place and ready to go.

I'm working on a couple of concepts, trying to figure out what to develop next. Trying to find the right mix of interesting and possible. Stay tuned.

A musical interlude

Tonight, a musical interlude. I traveled to Charlotte to see Radiohead last Friday. I've listened to Radiohead almost constantly since I was in college, and this was my first time seeing them perform. It was worth every penny and the long drive. They sounded great, put on a fantastic show, and played a lot of my favorite songs. Here's a video of them performing Weird Fishes/Arpeggi at the concert I attended (just ignore the drunk girls in the beginning). This is one of my favorite songs on their latest album, In Rainbows. Check it out.



Am I writing about this to bide time until I have something video game-related to say? Perhaps.

Life lessons from SPUDZOOKA

I still find it difficult to call SPUDZOOKA finished. There are still so many things that would make it better. More levels, more cannon parts and paint jobs, more things to shoot at, a new environment to play in (something other than a warehouse) -- all would help. I even planned to build a level editor at one point.

But, as I've said before, SPUDZOOKA was never supposed to be more than a learning experience. What did I learn, you ask? Did any life lessons stick in my head? Here are a few:

Programming is the easy part
Yes, it's essential. Interaction (gameplay) is what makes games tick, and programming makes gameplay possible. There's no denying its importance. But I learned that it's much more difficult to create compelling visuals than compelling gameplay. Gameplay either works or it doesn't. There are levels of quality in there, certainly, but once you've got your central game mechanic humming along, you're done with the bulk of the work. Everything else is details.

The visuals, though, can go on forever. You've got to model dozens of objects, texture them, and possibly animate them. The process is endless, and it's made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that it's always possible to make something look better. I could have spent weeks trying to create the perfect cardboard box, giving it so much character that you would gasp at seeing it for the first time. But I found that the "good enough" threshold for modeling and texturing comes fairly early in the process for me. Partly I was frustrated my lack of knowledge. I don't know the right tricks to make things look perfect, and I found my patience was limited for experimentation. So I generally created something that was close enough and went with it.

Maybe this means I'm not a natural-born modeler/texturer. Or that I should have been a programmer.

Self-promotion is a tricky game
I loved building the web site for SPUDZOOKA. In my day job I work on a large, convoluted corporate web site. It was fun to create something very simple from scratch. But now that it's there, how do I get people to see it? I can blog about it endlessly, be sure the site shows up on Google searches, submit it to game publishers like shockwave.com (we'll see if they respond), post about it on the Unity forum, and post something about it on Facebook. I've done all of the above, and I even added an e-mail-a-friend feature to the page where you play the game. But there's a critical mass to these things, and I haven't hit it yet. It's been an interesting test. I'll keep plugging away, but I've learned that it's a full-time job to promote something like this using the grass-roots tools of the Web.

If a target-shooting game takes four months...
How long will it take to create an RPG with memorable characters, a sweeping story, and a vast world to explore? This is the big one. It will take (more) years, and a lot of dedication to make it happen. I might be better off focusing on a series of smaller projects and putting the big project aside indefinitely. Or I could figure out a way to divide the big project into smaller ones. Maybe there's another kind of story I can tell that won't be so ridiculously large. Instead of aiming right an an epic, perhaps I should start with a short story.

Regardless of what I decide, I have to decide on something. I'll probably spend the next week or two mulling the possibilities and see what develops. SPUDZOOKA is the first step. Now I have to take the next.

Grand Theft Auto IV: early thoughts

Clearly I've been a bit absent from the blog lately. I've got two excuses. One is that I wanted to let the SPUDZOOKA announcement percolate a little. The other is that I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV in every spare moment. It's amazing that I managed to get SPUDZOOKA out the door at all considering the fact that I bought GTA a couple days before I finished it.

So here are a few thoughts about GTA based on my experience so far. The reasons I play? Entertaining gameplay and world-class writing.

Gameplay
Grand Theft Auto games have been known in the past for having some spotty gameplay. Driving has always been fun, but the weapon targeting system seems to get a complete overhaul with every release. As expected with GTA IV, the driving system and car physics are top notch. It's still amazingly fun just to cruise around town. Now that I've made may way to the second area of the game, there are finally some straight roads to fly down at top speed. I'm still getting used to the hand brake in this one, since it's so easy to skid, but I like the fact that you have to learn how to use the brakes if you're going to get around quickly.

The targeting system again has been revamped, and this time it's pretty good. After a little while getting used to it, I realized that it basically operates like a modified shooter control with a lock-on system added to it. You can walk around with your free target mode engaged and the system will automatically lock onto any enemies that come into view. It works pretty well.

They've also added a cover system, which lets you hide behind obstacles during a firefight. I've found this quite fun so far, since it gives me a way to take out targets systematically rather than just running in shooting like a madman, which I did a lot of in previous GTA titles.

Writing
Lots of people probably argue that gameplay is what makes GTA shine. It's just a fun world to interact with. This is certainly true, but I think the real difference between GTA and a lot of other games is its writing. The characters are bigger-than-life and well developed. Niko, being a typical GTA hero, basically just does what people ask him to, but he seems to have a nicely layered back story that's coming out bit by bit. Plus, a big reason I can drive around for hours is that the radio stations crack me up. This is comedy writing at its finest and a brilliant commentary on American culture.

It's not just the radio stations, though. GTA IV finally seems to have latched onto something that others in the series have flirted with but never explored fully: the American Dream. Sure, all the GTA titles have dealt with the idea of one man pulling his own way up through whatever means necessary. But III and Vice City were simple mob stories. There wasn't much to make you relate to the hero (in III he never spoke at all). He was just a criminal trying to get rich. San Andreas developed Carl's character a bit more and toyed with the idea that he was a product of his circumstances and was somehow trying to rise above all the violence in his life.

But Niko Bellic is different to me. He's a man ruined by his past, and he has come to the U.S. both to escape something and to find something (or someone). He finds Liberty City a very different place than he expected, complicated and damaged. It's this interaction between Niko and Liberty City, his search for inner peace in a complex and chaotic place, that gives GTA IV something special. Niko in effect personifies the city, which in turn is a powerful American symbol, full of as much repressed anger and fear, but full of life as well. I can see him slowly forming a connection to the city and its inhabitants, just like I am as the player, and it's a beautiful thing.

SPUDZOOKA is here!

Yes, at long last, SPUDZOOKA is live and ready to play. You're excitement is intense, I can tell.

I made a few visual enhancements since the beta version, and I fixed a number of bugs, including one irritating one that would randomly cause people's browsers to crash (never a good thing for web-based game).

There's also a web site where you can learn a little about the tools I used to create the game and leave comments letting me know what you think.

Oh, and one more thing: there's a little surprise for people who play all the way through the levels. It was a much-requested feature. I hope you enjoy it. Ok, enough jibber-jabber. Go play SPUDZOOKA!

http://spudzooka-game.com