Name change...

"Counterpoint Games" was a bit generic, so I've changed my operation's name to "One Man, Banned" or OMB. It's "Banned", not because I can't spell, but because I have felt in the past that there was a wall between me and the industry, so I have to do it myself. And of course, it's a play on..stuff.

I still don't know if it's clever or stupid, but I think it has more character. The URL will remain the same.

Still working on the other pilot. He's coming along.

Deandra's 'Costume' complete for now.

Here she is in her clothing.

To get the folds in her dress, I selected the faces that followed the desired curve, extruded, moved, and scaled them, then smoothed the edges to make it look better.


From the back, in shadow and light...

Her hemline, and a bit of detail on the sandals. The second picture of the sandals is what I changed the texture to after I rendered most of these, so it's most accurate. The texture is meant to be dragonskin leather.



Two other views.

As you can see, I'm not a costume designer, but hopefully I get the idea across. I'm going to move on to the other pilot, but I'll be coming back to her to give her an armature for animation and posing, to do her weapons, and to give her a ring that will be featured in the story part of the game.

Though the dress was simple, it was good practice for what's coming. The other character has a much more intricate outfit.

Back to work.

In order to finally shake the sick feeling I had recently, I had to take a couple of days off. The good thing is that it was hard to do and I'm eager to get back to work. I'll try not to go so nuts with the all-nighters (except on weekends), but I think I'll be able to keep up a good pace.

In related news, I'm looking forward to buying another stick of RAM to max out my computer soon. It should speed up some aspects of my work a lot and allow me to push things a bit further with the assets.

Next up: Deandra in costume.

Deandra- I went a different way.

I wanted a warmer look for this character. She doesn't look particularly Mediterranean, but the Empire is huge. Rome itself was a very multicultural society, and so is Brendir, its partial Mystic Space analogue. She'll look more like a member of such a culture once I model her dress and sandals.

I changed the original model because, as I said, she looked pretty cold and in the story mode of the demo, Deandra needs to have a heart. I also think that she has more character now. She was beautiful before, but she seemed to lack humanity. At least to me.

Unity Game Engine now in version 2.5

I know, the thread title sounds like an ad, but I assure you, I'm just a psyched newbie. When I first got into this project, the Unity site mentioned that 2.5 would be coming, with features like standalone Windows binaries, etc. It looked great. I'm glad I've waited to download the trial, so I'll get to use the new version.

I may be remembering incorrectly, but it looks like the Indy version's price came down, too. it's now $199. Very doable. If I publish with it, my game will have a splash mentioning that it was made in Unity, and I won't have access to some of the lighting and other features. I'm also not allowed to make more than $100,000 dollars per year from games, but since this is a free game, it won't be a problem. Not a bad dilemma to have once the time comes, though.

I'm also starting to suspect that my "high poly" models aren't as unusable as I think. They may actually be usable as is or close. The game engine has some pretty impressive-looking methods of minimizing the computing costs of running the game- stuff like flattening objects that are far away into a 2d image (common in other engines), and organizing the tasks that need to be completed in ways that I don't fully understand.

I do know that I've played a very beautiful game made with their engine with the settings relatively high on my Pentium 4. It's definitely next gen level with no slowdowns on my pretty old machine.

I'm optimistic.

Thraxian pilot update-Deandra.

I'm still working on the game every day, despite the lack of daily updates. I'm taking my time on the female character, "Deandra". I think that aiming for finishing the demo this summer is pretty realistic- some things are quick, but others take more time.

I've attached some preliminary images of her, without formal textures. I do have some textures on her but I'm not happy with them yet. I can't show her entire body because I haven't modeled her clothing. It's no more explicit than a naked doll, but it's better safe than sorry for the public blog.

Feeling run down tonight...

I'm getting a bit sick from pushing myself so hard. I'm going to knock off earlier than I planned to. Right now I'm working on the pilot of the Thraxian (ancient world) ship. I decided to make her a woman, and I've come up with more interesting backstory for her. Plus, I think a Greek-styled dress is more visually interesting than a toga. I'll see if my wife wants to do her voice.

Compared to this stuff, a video game should be a piece of cake.

I can't seem to imbed the videos easily enough for my sleep-deprived mind to handle right now, but I wanted to share two links:

The Mona Lisa , Pong and more done with a herd of sheep wearing LED vests...

And The Mona Lisa painted in pure HTML. That's right- no images, just pure code.

These guys are awesome, and it's definitely encouraging to see what kind of things are possible with determination. As for the HTML painting, however, that's just genius.

WHALES... IN... SPAAACE!

My Son calls this thing a "Whalien". I call it a Tanin (Plural: Taninim), after the mythical celestial whales from Hebrew Folklore. This is the Mother, and there will be a calf as well, which I'll create from the same mesh.






These guys are important to the demo scenario. One culture reveres them as godlike beings, while the other culture hunts them to harvest their magic. The protagonists are in conflict over events related to this issue.


I'm not going to go preachy with it, but it's a plausible scenario given the game universe.


A bit about them:


They come from an ancient water world that was destroyed long ago. When this happened, they and many other creatures from that sea were given the ability to survive in space by a mysterious Power.


They propel themselves on an energy wake, and travel the stars between various asteroid fields, nebulae, and Terrestrial planets. To cross huge distances, they submerge into this wake and travel at FTL speeds. They're migratory.


They dip into an atmosphere or even an oxygen-rich nebula for air, and can hold their breath for months. They eat tiny spacefaring creatures that live in asteroids and in space dust. Though similar to a blue whale, instead of baleen, they have these:

These powerful mineralized grinding plates can pulverize asteroids to powder. After the creature filters out the nutrients and water from this paste, the fine powder gets blasted out of its blowholes.


Yeah. I think too much about the fiction I work on. Hopefully that will add depth to the demo. I plan to show many of these traits and behaviors in the game. They'll be going about their business in the area. They will avoid confrontation, but can be attacked and the Mother will try to protect her calf.

I might make a few changes. I think spikes and horns might be cool (or maybe not), and I might try out doing something similar to what I did with the tail to the six fins- open loops. I picture these having something to do with channeling the magical energy to emit the energy wake.

Next up, an actual character model.

The Astral Talon

Here it is. The other ship. It's called the "Astral Talon". The purple crystals are for propulsion, and the red ones are for firing weapons.


The Reddish metal bit on the chest is hard to make out, but it's the cargo bay doors. There are smaller tall rectangular doors in the mouth and at the back of claw that holds the cockpit. I figured pictures of those might be a bit boring, though. To board the ship, the Eagle lowers its mouth to the ground and opens it. You walk up the lower beak to the back of the throat. Then you pass through the Eagle's body (above the cargo bay) to the steps up to the fuselage. Then you reverse course to the front of the ship and pass through the door in the back of the large claw into the cockpit sphere. As you can see, this ship is much larger than you might expect for a single pilot fighter (As is the steampunk ship I posted earlier.). I think it says something about the philosophy of the larger setting- ships are seen as things to be made beautiful and grand.


It's a fast and maneuverable ship that's powered by the spirit of an Eagle. In fantasy terms, it's like a golem. All of the Thraxian (the ancient world planet) ships are powered by animal, elemental or monster spirits, and resemble the spirit powering them. Its weak defenses and mediocre basic attack (called "Lesser Eldritch bolt") are more than compensated for by its speed. If it needs to do a lot of damage quickly, the eagle spirit inside can astrally project and fly through an enemy ship. The catch is that the Astral Talon (the ship) is left defenseless and cannot be maneuvered until the spirit returns. It will maintain speed, however. It also has a screech attack and the ability called "Phase Astral" that lets it go insubstantial and invisible (phasing into the astral plane) for short periods of time. This last ability will probably have a fairly long cool down, but imagine being chased by an enemy, Phasing Astral, and slowing down so your enemy passes through you (he can't see you, but you can see him through a haze), then speeding up, dropping the insubstiality, and attacking from behind. I think that could be cool.

This is the cockpit, and since the opalescent texture is so nicely transparent, I plan to do a Greco-Roman-styled interior that will be visible from the outside. It will likely be a ring of pillars with a throne in the middle, with magical looking controls for the pilot.

This last one's a bit dark, but I'm including it for completeness.

A bit about the way I work...

If you've been reading along, you might notice that I say "I'll do X" and when I post the next update, it turns out I did something a bit different. Sometimes in the previous post it might have seemed like I was very firm in my position, so the change comes as a surprise.

That has a lot to do with the way I've always done creative work. If I come up with a better idea, I'm willing to change something no matter how far along I am, or how thoroughly I've thought something through. Nothing's fixed until the project is done. Not much anyway. For example, with my last book, it was two weeks before the deadline when I threw out everything I had done so far and started over. I made my deadline, and got better reviews than the book I'd done before it, which took a year.

I just thought I should make a formal post on this so that when I inevitably change my mind about something I've seemed sure of previously, no one's surprised. Usually, when I change my mind it's not to make less work for myself at all. I usually end up doing more because I realize that it's what the project needs to be its best.

Time to redo the other ship...

My first attempt at the Ancient world ship was pretty basic, but I'd like to detail it a bit more. I'm only posting the above to show you the basic motif. The ship above was the first attempt. I'm going to go bit heavier on the bird motif- detailing feathers, facial features, and giving it talons. The fuselage which holds the crystal cockpit above will be mostly the same, but the talon motif that holds the cockpit will be a bit more obvious. Also, as you can see, the power crystals (which are meant to provide thrust and emit attacks) are a bit too transparent. The cockpit itself will probably get more interesting too.

Finally, the whole thing is a bit too clean. I don't want to go Battlestar Galactica with it, but the ship should look well kept but used. Maybe a light covering of space dust and a haze of scratches on the finish. It is fantasy, though, so it will likely look fairly meticulously maintained.

I think I want to start from scratch rather than change the mesh above. That will give me the chance to incorporate the polygon saving techniques I've learned to allow for more detail where it's needed without adding much where it's not.

Yataa!! Meet Andros, the Androgynous Base Mesh.

Ok, here are the pictures of Andros, the Androgynous Base Mesh. This is a unisex mesh, from which I can make male or female characters- which is why it looks so bizarre. The important part is that whichever I need, I have the vertices for. I just have to move them around. I ended up taking my hand-built mesh and sculpting, altering, and further developing it, rather than sculpting the whole thing from scratch. I threw this chrome texture on it hoping it will give you an idea of its flow.

Live and learn...

A few more delays on the human mesh.

I've been doing my humanoid mesh the hard way, and it's been looking kind of mediocre. No worse than the character models of a few generations ago, but still not as nice as I'd like for a modern game. Maybe the video tutorials I was using were old or based on methods from those times?

I probably could have used it, but it would end up taking a lot longer to get right. I was starting to worry that this project would take forever.

I'm going to try a different method. Luckily, I've played around with this method before, and it comes pretty naturally to me. It's the method I used to create my first few models- sculpt mode in Blender. I thought that I couldn't keep my meshes small enough with this method- falsely believing that sculpt mode added polygons. So I've been modeling face by face. It's a bit tedious, honestly.

But no- it turns out sculpt mode doesn't add polygons. That's awesome news. For any non-video game playing readers, video game models need to conserve polygons so that they can be rendered in real time.

I can start with a cube and give it several levels of "Multires" to add the number of faces I need to work with, which progressively rounds it out to a spherelike shape, while adding faces. Using this method I can carefully decide how many faces I want the final mesh to have.

Then I mold it like clay. I might have to do some hand editing on the joints of the mesh at the end to get it to animate right. This mesh will have the right number of polygons for a game asset. Even better, I can then save the file with a different filename, add a few more layers of multires, and add as much detail as I'd like the final model to have. From this, I can create a "normal map", which I will apply to the low-resolution mesh like a texture. This will give the low res mesh the look of the higher-res mesh in everything but its silouette. Ultimately it will look great. That is, if it works like I expect it to.

I'll let you know how it works out, and post pictures then. If it does work, I've just sped up my work a lot. If not, I'll eat a bit of crow. :)

Another update...

I had a few issues with my male mesh, and it's taken longer than I thought. I just want this one to be as good as possible and easily adaptable to any humanoid form I need- meaning a set of generic features that can be distorted or exaggerated as needed without adding any new polygons- which makes it more challenging for a beginner like me. I just have to do the ears, teeth(texture-ready ridges, really), and tongue and I'll post pictures. It should be up by the end of the weekend.

Quick Update

I'm working on basic character meshes for the intro movies of the demo. I'm doing a male and female generic human, which I'll alter to create specific characters. Both are of average proportions, not video game proportions. :) My characters will likely be a bit more cartoonish, but it's good to have average as the starting point.

For the intro movies, I'm thinking of showing a bit of downtime on the ships leading into the conflict. I'll probably just need two male characters and two nonhuman characters, but I might as well get assets made now for any later work I do.

Pictures, as promised.

This is the high polygon version of the Steampunk ship, obviously. As a high polygon model, it's not suitable for game use, but if I do an animation sequence or intro movie it will work well.

I'm calling it a P.E.C.E, for "Pugilistic Ether Conveyance Engine". It's not complete- I still need to add weapons, a cargo port, and change some details, but it's starting to look the way I want it to. The first four images are self-explanatory, but the last image is the pressure gauge dial on the right boiler.

The strange structures on the sides (below the 5 port windows) are thrusters. They'll curve to thrust in the correct direction when the player uses them. I like that they're evocative of masts.

The red banner thing is the masthead. I'm going to emblazon the ship's proper name (It's a P.E.C.E class ship, not "The P.E.C.E") on it. Any ideas on what to call it? I colored it red to make it stand out in a render until I figure out exactly what I want to do with it.

As for things I've changed my mind on or refined, I want to give the exhaust nozzles a more bulbous look up top, and the "hood ornament" structure at the top might turn into a statue. If you can make out the nautical-styled door near the main thrusters, I've been thinking that there's a rope ladder that gets pulled in before flight, but I might add extensible stairs to the outside.

If anyone replies to this, go easy on me, I just started learning 3d modeling a week ago. I can honestly say that 95% of it looks exactly the way I intended it to, and I know how to fix the stuff that doesn't. This ship looks a bit blocky, but it's supposed to. The other ship, which I'm still working on the textures for, is more graceful. I may actually redo it completely with some of what I've learned since. It was my second model ever.

Introducing "Mystic Space".

Now, a bit about my first project. I'm calling it "Mystic Space". It's going to be a one level demo of a space combat game. After it's done I'm hoping to expand it to a full game. I won't say just how ambitious I hope to get, but the demo will be a testing ground for the larger concept.

The one level demo will be a pre-beta test of the concepts and game play.

Unlike most space games, it's not science fiction per se, but space fantasy. Space is much as we know it- no gravity, no air, stars, nebulae, planets, asteroids, radiation, etc. There are also some tropes more common in science fiction- weird entities that live in space itself, spaceships with faster than light travel, aliens, etc. The twist is that all the solutions to the problems of space flight and space combat are solved with magic instead of technology. Each culture in the game will represent a different flavor of fantasy, if they had to become spacefaring (for a plot related reason). They each solve their problems in their own ways.

For example, the two cultures in the demo will be a Pseudo-Victorian a.k.a "Steampunk" culture, and a metaculture based on the Ancient Empires (Greece, Persia, China, Mesoamerica...). The part of the greater culture that I'll be using in the game will be an analogue to/amalgam of ancient Greece, the myth of Atlantis, and Rome. The Steampunk subculture I'll be using in the demo will be very British.

That brings up a side point- I'm avoiding monolithic cultures for worlds. Each world has a style, but many subcultures within that style. There won't be a "White folks planet", or anything of the sort. Each world will have a plethora of subcultures within its theme. There also won't likely be a million planets to encompass all the subthemes- each space empire will strongly promote a theme and there will be no duplication. I'm going deep rather than broad. The cultures I'm using so far will be humans (with a good backstory reason for why), but I'm not limiting it. There will be nonhuman alien races eventually. Don't expect a lot of elves and dwarves, but there *might* be one world with them. The overall theme that unifies it all is more of its own thing than typical Tolkeinesque fantasy. Back to the description though.

The Steampunk culture believes its magic is science and it has a mad science feel to it. They use a lot of brass and cast iron, their ships are powered by steam, they have ray guns that do things like shrink or freeze their opponents, etc.

The "Ancient World" fantasy culture is just as magically advanced, but they use spirits and crystals to power their devices. They're more blatant about the magic element. Their ships resemble the fierce animals whose spirits power them.

For the demo, I'm doing one ship for each culture- a mid-sized fighter. they're single pilot ships, but they've got breathing room. In the setting, a ship often serves as a home to some degree.

Both pilots are good guys, but they're driven by mutually conflicting cultural influences. Playing from either side will give you the full story on the conflict. It's going to be a straight up fight, but the environment will be interesting and hazardous. It's going to be a destroyed space temple in an asteroid field. I'm planning to include some sources of gravity that will have an effect on trajectories, some hazards and fun exploits to maximize tactics. Each ship will have some special magical tricks up it's sleeve.

The steampunk ship will be tough but lumbering, and the Ancient World ship will be fast and graceful but fragile.

Next up: Pictures of the Steampunk ship in progress.

Another Indy Video Game company.

I've been working on the preliminary stages of a video game. I'm doing the whole thing alone, minus some royalty free assets like sound effects. I'm a pen and paper game designer who hasn't been able to get a shot at designing video games, so I've decided to do it mostly alone (Who needs those other guys?). I'll be asking friends for help with things I can't do, like female voices, or extra assets I don't have time for.

I'm lucky enough to have led a life that gives me most of the talents and abilities I'll need. As I said I've designed pen and paper games, I taught myself to draw during a stint as a security guard, I've done impressions and voices since I was a kid. I'm working on screenplays in my spare time.

I like to think I have a good sense for what's cool and fun in high concept media.

The one area of weakness I have for this job is that I'm not fluent in any programming language. I am a quick study when I care, but so far, I know a bit of Javascript and a smattering of Common Lisp.

I do have an ace in the hole, though. I'll be using the Unity Game Engine. I'll get the Indy version to start (which is under $300), but upgrade to the Pro version (over $1500 or so) later. When I get to that stage, I'll be able to create binaries of the game for Windows, Mac OS X, the iPhone, XBox 360, Wii, or even the web, all in 3d. It's even possible to create an MMO out of the box. If I get to the point where I hire real coders, there's a source code license that allows you extend its capabilities as far as you need to. To save money, I'm waiting to download the free one month trial until I have most of my assets ready.

The Unity game engine is powerful and others who have used it swear by it. One guy claims that he doesn't know how to code at all, and is able to make a decent living as an indy designer.

Coincidentally, it allows you to code in Javascript.

The first game will be a demo, and will likely be free to gauge interest in the concepts it uses and build interest. I'll talk more about this game in the next post.

As for my "Company", it's not actually a company at all. Not in any formal sense. But for now I'm calling my one man operation Counterpoint Games. I figure that title sums up my feelings on the industry. What follows is a brief digression bordering on a rant, but a bit more polite. Feel free to skip it and get to the good stuff in the next post.

The reason I'm calling my operation Counterpoint Games is twofold.

Firstly, I feel that there needs to be a "Counterpoint" to the machine behind the game industry. Big, lumbering and slow. Conventional wisdom says that a 3d game design company has to be big, with a corporate structure and heads of this or that department with peons under them. I contend that in this day of free open source software, powerful cheap computing, and information available online, that any reasonably smart and creative person can do it themselves- and come close to or surpass the quality of the big boys. I probably sound arrogant or naive, and I may be the latter, but I'm not arrogant. I'm just confident. I have nothing to prove to anyone except for myself, and not even much of that. I know I can do it- I just really want to see the worlds in my head come to life.

I'm not doing this to thumb my nose at anyone, but because it's the only way I can see the ideas I have take shape without getting hired at a "major" company and putting in the years on projects I may or may not care about until I get a shot at the things I'm passionate about. You see, I never went to college, and established game companies tend not to like that. My game design resume is a bit thin, and pretty much empty when it comes to video games. But don't count me out.

The second reason for the name "Counterpoint Games" is that I intend to design games my way. I'm very into simulation of worlds. I like to design strongly flavored settings and make them feel as plausible as I can. I prefer to eliminate or minimize the purely gamelike elements of video games- things like "1-up" tokens, floating ammo refills or health boost tokens, etc. That stuff doesn't help immersion. I like to play games like the Mario series, but I never forget that I'm playing a game. For my own creations, I prefer a sandbox approach.

That doesn't mean I don't like cool elements like "buffs" (I hate that word), or special game play, but I like to it fit the context of the the setting. You can have action and very cool game play elements while still maintaining a player's suspension of disbelief. Buffs will be commodities in a setting-either technology or magic, or whatever's appropriate. Immersion comes first, but my job is to design worlds where what makes sense allows for fun game play.