Hey all, it's been a while. My last post definitely spoke of my nerves getting tossed about by too long away from team projects last time. I mean... seriously? A rant trying to convince myself I'm good at math when I already know it's true from using it all the time. How silly. This is how I know I'm an extrovert, it happens every time I spend too long cooped up alone in my room/office (which are the same thing right now). Thankfully, I was able to get in on some team indie projects shortly afterwards, and I am no longer suffering from social contact deprivation.
Northern Bend
The first project I got brought in on is tentatively known as "Northern Bend". It will be entered into the Grand Rapids Art Prize Festival this fall and then find it's permanent home at the public museum. It's a historical steam ship simulation, where people will stand inside a boat cabin shell and pilot the ship down a river and out into the great lakes. In place of the cabin windows will be TV screens that will let people look out into the simulated world. During the journey captains can gain points by slowing down to watch the view and by listening to entertaining and educational narrative about life in the early 1900's along shipping routes. I'd love to say a bit more about the goodies involved, but it's not my project, so I don't know how much is okay to disclose at this point.
I came in late on the project, and I have to say it looks really nice. It's made leaps and bounds forward on it's progress each week, and I can't wait to see the final product with all the place holder art swapped out for the real stuff.
I have two rolls in the project. One is to determine what is required in terms of hardware for the project (figuring out how to deal with 3+ monitors and a giant steering wheel etc.) while still staying within the budget. The other is to find a way to get the best possible water the Unreal Engine can produce without causing the entire simulation to get sluggish.
I've figured out and made my recommendations for most of the hardware at this point. The exact TVs and input system that will be cannibalized for parts have been narrowed down, but a trip to visit displays is in order to make the final selection.
Water is notoriously tricky to render in real time, and while you can get a lot of detail in small pools of water, everything changes when you have a large open expanse. Recently, I've seen some really nice open expanses of real time rendered water produced in other engines, on super computers and without the presence of a lot of other things going on. Unfortunately, when you need a lot of other stuff going on, or lack a super computer, things get a whole lot more difficult.
I've spent 4-10 hours a week the last two months trying a number of potential techniques to get the water as believable as I can. Unreal has been fighting me a lot on this project and it's buggy/finicky nature slows everything down, but I've made a lot of good progress. Every implementation adds (or if it really kills the computer, clears) an option to the slowly growing list of possible techniques to choose from. Eventually, once everything else is in place in the game, I'll be able to put in the best looking elements and then pick and choose which to replace with less impressive but better running alternatives until the system is as good as it can be given the technology available.
XNA Game
The other project I'm helping out on is an XNA game. Since I've been looking for a full time job, I made sure not to take on any lead rolls. Instead I'm a design associate, helping with a number of areas as much as I can depending on my availability.
To start, I mostly did work for the writing team, with a little creature concept art and mechanics mixed in. As a pleasant surprise, one of my suggested premises was chosen for the games plot, and after several rehashes with the team we came up with a pretty solid story to work from.
The game already had some interesting mechanics and art direction, but I can't really talk about it right now. Anyhow, now that production is more under way I'll likely be pulled to produce animation tweens, maybe a few code classes or functions, perhaps a little more concept art, and eventually dialogue for one character in particular.
My roll in this project has been pretty heavy so far because I have had time while I look for work. Recently, I found a really good prospect for some fun work building dash clusters for cars, so I've had to pull back out of the project a lot. Now that the ball is rolling, I don't think it will be much of an issue if I cut back to just a few hours of work on the weekends for this project. It's a greatly talented team, with a very good leader. This all of coarse applies only if I get the job, but I feel pretty good about it at this point. Though if I do get the job I won't be saying anything beyond I'm making car dash clusters, I already signed the non-disclosure agreement.
