Click here to play Podcast 14!

Direct Download | iTunes

We make OK Cupid profiles for each other.

Check us out on Twitter!

Matt: mattlarnold
Freddie: fwong
Logan: jloganolson
Brandon: brandonJLa
Brian: 5sf

Click here to play Podcast 13!

Direct Download | iTunes

Facerocker Podcast is… still the Facerocker Podcast! Oh well!

Matt was gone for this one, but Logan and Brandon and Freddie discuss the underground railroad, Logan’s hearing, and the future of warfare, sex, and drugs in what ends up being probably the most comprehensible podcast we’ve ever recorded.

Check us out on Twitter!

Matt: mattlarnold
Freddie: fwong
Logan: jloganolson
Brandon: brandonJLa
Brian: 5sf

Click here to play Podcast 12!

Direct Download | iTunes

Facerocker Podcast is no longer Facerocker! It’s now the Rocket Jump Podcast. Our new site is going to be rocketjump.com (but it’s still being built, so be cool).

We talk about what we were doing in between podcasts, Logan discusses his MFA project, Fathers Day, strip clubs, planking, we help Logan find a hobby (DJing), E3 and Valve, digging really deep, aliens, time travel, Duke Nukem, and a potential “riddle night.”

We’re joined this week by Brian Firenzi, of 5secondfilms.com

Check us out on Twitter!

Matt: mattlarnold
Freddie: fwong
Logan: jloganolson
Brandon: brandonJLa
Brian: 5sf

So we are at a pretty big milestone, and there are some significant changes in our production. These last two weeks we have finalized the last of the levels, all modelers are pushing through environments, and we made our final project folder.

The game is now on its race to the finish. Almost every major component is in the game, and its just a matter of piecing it together.

Final Project Folder and Schedule

So we officially extended the game’s production one month. It’s due date is July 13^th, which gives us a bit more than a month and a half. Art will be coming in till about 2 weeks before the end. However we are already at bug testing for most mechanics and about half the levels.

We have assigned the rest of the environments to the 3 main modelers. They are coming in much faster now due to a few of the big ones being done (the towns), and the art pipeline has been streamlined.

Personally, I am mostly working on getting the story into the game, which is going great. I feel pretty strongly about the game have a fun voice and a nice narrative that actually pushes the game forward. I tried to avoid the “you need 4 of something to get to the end”, narrative of such games.

A Whole Bunch of Concept Art for the Environments

So this is a short update, but I wanted to get something out there. Also, it really has been us just getting the final project folder together, meaning the game now has a start new and resume campaign button and all mechanics are in place.

So I just wanted to show off all the great model work that has gone into the game, most of which is based off of Josh’s stellar concept art. He has been providing just loads of great art work for our game so I figured I would just show off a bunch of it.

The environments are getting textured now, so those will be ready to show in more detail soon. Also I was told an efficient system to capture our game footage, and we will begin testing next week. So I should have a good amount of footage to show soon.

Without further ado, a bunch of art work.

The second part of the Manor dungeon. You can see the concept art above.

The cave dungeon. A bunch of big machinery and other cool stuff.

Many of the variations of the first boss.

Game Blog Weeks 11-13

Clearly I have dropped the ball on the whole “weekly” update thing, but we have been rather busy, and a lot of stuff I wanted to show you guys has taken longer than expected. That said, what is getting done is coming out awesome, and I am very enthusiastic about this game, and cant wait to get it to the point where we start testing with friends, which should be in about a week.

When I started his project I came up with three schedules. A stupidly optimistic 3 month schedule, a very optimistic 4 month schedule, and a just barely realistic 5 month schedule. We are just at 3 months right now. 4 months seems to be about the point that the entire game will be in place minus a few art assets / sound etc. I will want a month to polish and test and tweak. So 5 months it will be. Now it’s a matter of finding some extra money, and keeping happy the awesome people who are working on this for essentially nothing other than profit share. That is a whole set of skills I am learning. Thankfully the people I have found have been fantastic, hard working and passionate.

Next week I am hoping to have figured out how to record the iphone screen as we should have our town completely textured, and we will have our main character finalized and rolling around. It will be the first showing of the actual game. Don’t hold me to it, but hopefully next week.

Now I want to touch on the biggest problem we are having, a big milestone we hit, and then a fun treat courtesy of Jimmy Wong.

Art Pipeline Problems

Asset pipelines, or pipelines of any sort are a pain in the ass. It is a very big pain in the ass when you have 5+ people all in different locations all using different programs. We have 3 main modelers working on 3DS max or Maya, or even some freeware 3D programs, and 2 main texturers working on different versions of Maya. So right now, this is our biggest problem.

Unity accepts only a number of formats, the best of which are .fbx and .obj. OBJs cant animate which is why they are great for environments. We use .fbx for most other things. However, as we move from modeler to texturer to us, we often get flipped normal (faces are see through), missing vertices and more. It’s a pain but its not too bad to fix. The big problem is when you don’t catch an issue and you waste everyones time. Our first fully made environment was The Sewer. Scott did a great job modeling it and he exported it to us in a variety of formats, but during one of the exports, or while we passed it along the artists, EVERY polygon separated from each other making it nearly impossible to work with, and we didn’t figure it out for a few days.

The roof has a flipped normal, that is why it is invisible.

The house looks fine in Maya. Easy to fix for Unity, just a pain.

Now its just a matter of me trying to optimize everyone’s time. Some people are best at modeling, or have the cleanest UV maps (pain in the ass) or texturing. However, while it is hard enough to keep a consistent style across the whole game, I definitely want individual areas to be consistent, meaning people work on areas one at a time which is not always time efficient. Anyways, its been about 2 weeks of real art work and I think we just started getting this pipeline down. We now have 3 finished environments out for 29, and 3 modelers are currently working on 6 environments that should be done by mid next week.

Finish Blocked Out Levels

Biggest milestone for me is I finally finished laying out the entire game in Unity. Next step is for me to take a break from level design and start writing the game. That should take a few days to get the dialog in there. I have a friend who I am writing a web series with that is going to go back and spice up the dialog and help me out with some of the writing.

Anyways, it is good to see the whole scale of the game and start being able to tweak the flow of the level progression. One reason it took so long is I spent a good amount of time reiterating on my own every level to try to minimize the number of issues as we playtest. No matter what, there will be things to change. However, I think most levels are in a pretty solid state. One thing is for certain, the game is pretty damn big. Even with all the stuff I cut, the game is still bigger than I thought it would be.

You can see in the image below the scale of the game. Those are all the environments in the game. The areas in red are dungeons, and the rest are the environments, with a big field as the HUB. That field is the loosest design right now and may need to get smaller depending on how well the game will run it. So far though all of our art tests have ran all levels with light maps and textures in them very smoothly; well above 30fps.

Below is showing the level pipeline. It is being done now by one of our modelers, David Sawchuk. This is the forest going to the first dungeon, and it looks great. First I lay it out in Unity. I send a file to the artist who “traces” over the level and makes it look nice. They send it back to me, and I play through it to make sure the collision works, the scale is right, and the model is clean. They then tweak the model, and UV map it. Next is texturing, which hopefully I can show next week. Also, it will be autumn – the green textures and what not are crappy temp textures I use to check UV maps and what not.

Bottom: Blocked out in Unity. Middle: Artist models of my environment. Top: Tweaked model, and correctly UV mapped. (temp textures in to test)

First Music

So there is some cool stuff finally coming down the pipeline now. Sam is working on the UI for the game, which I am sure he will do a great job. And Jimmy has just started doing the music. It is very exciting to have a full composed score for all areas of the game. I really wanted this game to feel like a solid Zelda adventure for just a few bucks on your iphone. Having an epic score was a must.

I gave Jimmy a list of all the songs I wanted for the game, which consisted mostly of a theme song per environment and dungeon, plus some other tunes such as a few battle cues, boss fights, and little jingles like getting a new item. Jimmy has been busy, and it is rather early, but he did put together his first tune to get a sense of style. It is for our main town, and I think he did a freckin awesome job. So here is our first piece of music for our game – some old school RPG town music. Listen to the music and look at this pic, and tell me that doesn’t fit!

CLICK the link to listen to Jimmy’s music: Marblelot – Main Town Music

The Town of Marbleot.

As always, if you want to hear more about the game during the week (mostly late night rants) follow me on twitter: mattlarnold

Vote for Lelia Broussard!! http://bit.ly/g7M7Pq 5 stars!!
You can download some of her awesome music too FOR FREE! Just search on the Rolling Stone page.

Buy my cover: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/turn-me-on-single/id436358192
http://jimmywong.bandcamp.com/track/turn-me-on

LYRICS:
You and I dance along, living in our own universe
We are something good and feels just like it should

You’re the flare on the side of the road holding out my teenage hope
But I want

You, you are the best thing that I
Knew, I know I know it’s you
Young until you’re not making out like kids on a basement floor
You, you know you

Turn me on, turn me on, turn me on, turn me on

We drive outside the city and count the constellations we find
Does a good love ever last before you know the moment has passed

(Repeat)

=================

Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/jfwong

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/therealjimmy

iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jimmy-wong/id426145959

‘Turn Me On’ as originally performed by Lelia Broussard
Written by: Lelia Broussard
Published by: Alamo Music Publishing obo Lilya Music

Click here to play Podcast 11!

Direct Download | iTunes

We’re joined this week by Benji Dolly, a local radio intern/personality in the northern Indiana/Michigan area. He relates some of his insane stories, and then we pretty much take over by talking about nerd stuff!

Check us out on Twitter!

Matt: mattlarnold
Freddie: fwong
Logan: jloganolson
Brandon: brandonJLa
Brian: 5sf

Tangled is a great movie!! Grace Potter readapted one of her songs for the credit sequence and it is a great tune. Skateboard sounds are great percussion!

iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jimmy-wong/id426145959

SERIOUS audio quality boost if you switch to 480p

I really like Portal. I really loved Still Alive. But the Portal 2 theme song was in a different musical world than Still Alive, so I decided to use the main instruments from the first theme song to re-imagine the second. Presenting Want You Gone – in the style of Still Alive.

For reference, here are links to the original songs:
Portal – Still Alive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
Portal 2 – Want You Gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVZaZ8yO6o