SpaceSimCentral

I pondered long and hard about doing a video game based on my own scifi universe, and I could keep pondering about it, and about all the stuff that could go wrong, but life is short and if I'm to make my own philosophical space opera, I better do it while I'm still not batshit crazy. I'll begin with pre-production, which at this point to me, means painting concepts like there is no tomorrow while I figure the details of the project. Another dimension to it is that I want to attract as much attention to my patreon as possible as a way to gain my own financial independence and so, later in the project, money will be necessary to complete work I'm not proficient in. So expect high resolution files, .psd and videos to be monetized, I will still obviously document my progress and share what I can here. (I also have a[/url] mirror devblog at polycount) . Check out my[/url] Patreon. What can I say about this video game? it's mostly science fiction in a near future, it will have hard scifi elements but also really wonky stuff and the main system will be an space flight sim. Main inspirations are probably games like Freespace, Homeworld, and movies like 2001 and Interstellar.So, let's get down to it.

As I said, the state of human tech is near future. I will attempt to design ships with enough thrusters, no wide megalomaniac corridors, no super magical drives, civilian ships will be more flimsy, while military ships will be more armored/bulky. There will be 4 different races which will be put on some kind of technological evolution continuum. but first, the humans

I made a series of more drawings developing the small ships, guns and other props I could think of. There's one called ww3 which depicts an assault on a large ship during World War 3. In the current timeline of the [Working Title] there was a war that came to be known as World War 3 in which some human powers resurrected old feuds and generally fought for resources and land. Current year will be 2082 I'm painting this one currently and it's possible I'll stream that this week (if not today) on my[/url] twitch channel (thanks for comments in advance, I'll try to keep my multiple posts to a minimum, but feel free to critique, comment and ask questions)

I have painted my World War 3 piece and here's the result: 

Awesome looking stuff here, Xeoncat! I shall follow your updates with interest  auryx

Awesome looking stuff here, Xeoncat! I shall follow your updates with interest  auryx Thank you very much! There's a long road ahead and I'm trying not to wrap my head around all of it at the same time and get ahead of myself.But enjoy the moment, which is a state conductive to creativity (I hope) =)

Last week my websites got hacked so I had to restore my backups and ended up with more website management work than I wanted, but anyway, I was in the middle of transferring my thehologram.net to a new host and is now tidied up, everything in one place, this devblog, commission information and all of my links. Also I haven’t been drawing because I’ve been taking care of documentation a writing my ideas for the game, but I should get back to drawing soon. I can’t really show much of this at the moment, and it’s probably the one thing that will stay mostly hidden from the public at large. But it can be said that this game is going to stay away from a large exploration/mining/trading types. I’ll go with mission>base>mission formula. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have a big open ended universe, but the old Freespace 2 type of game is a lot easier to make. The only problem is that games like that are not common anymore for being too limited, but I think that with enough graphics, immersive mechanics and a mature story, those limitations can be overcome and deliver a solid experience. Games nowadays are easier to make, but it is more difficult to attract the attention of the public because of the sheer number of games being made. Finances is also a thing that worries me deeply and is what’s keeping me up at night, but I believe I’ll find more paid stuff to do (as always). The good news is that I feel my paintings have improved a lot on the last month (more than in the last year). This tutorial (Thanks Muzz) essentially talks about how to think in RGB instead of HSV, and this made it easier to apply much better all I know about color theory. Colors and values shift much more naturally now and it’s easier to focus on the creative side of the piece. I still feel I'm going with too much saturation, it makes everything look cartoonish, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with these techniques at the moment.

Thanks for the update.....sorry to hear about the server hack! Glad you were able to recover. To be honest, I think your artwork is pretty spectacular already, certainly of commercial quality so well done on that front! Either you're naturally gifted or you followed the tutorials well  auryx

Thanks for the update.....sorry to hear about the server hack! Glad you were able to recover. To be honest, I think your artwork is pretty spectacular already, certainly of commercial quality so well done on that front! Either you're naturally gifted or you followed the tutorials well  auryx Thank you very much auryx I'm shooting for commercial quality. And speaking of which, clickable link > www.thehologram.net[/url] As for natural gift, it's not quite, I've been drawing since like forever, and I've been serious about digital art for 5 years. I don't feel progress was as fast as many other artists, but I feel pretty comfortable now (with art, still need money, lol). What I say to aspiring artists is always the same, work hard on the fundamentals of drawing and painting and keep going, because we all suck when we start out. So talent, tends to be useless without hard work and also looking at what other people are doing (I looked a lot at star citizen's ships recently and I play Elite Dangerous), and it ends up showing I think.

 Sent out hi-res pics to patrons, and, first alien to make an appearence on the [Working Title]. Kyrios is a mysterious figure and belongs to a very advanced civilization of aliens whose history was already ancient long before humans came into existence.Some humans who were unfortunate to meet him asked "Which god are you?" and his repressed twisted laughter was the last thing they heard I also remodelled www.thehologram.net[/url] (my art dump site) to accomodate this devblog and commission information

 I have painted the other sketch for the human flight commander, Esther King. A Canadian war veteran, she’s now in charge of the Rapid Response Force, a WSO Unit in charge of Peacekeeping.I haven’t been recording my paintings because I’ve been watching Space Battleship Yamato 2199 while I paint. It gets me a lot of inspiration and great ideas and totally recommend to scifi fans. I’ve been thinking about the spaceship window dilemma and I noticed some interesting things about ships with windows. They allow the pilot to be seen from the outside, potentially showing his face. That in the case of this game wouldn’t make sense, because pilots will have a full helmet without glass parts, and that’s not up for debate. Another thing is that sunlight is allowed to enter the cockpit and can cast shadows. I noticed this in Elite Dangerous, rotating a ship and see the light shine on the cockpit is really an interesting and immersive feeling. Other things about the nature of the main character are up for decision, but it’s something that will impact heavily about everything. Anyway, I want to star prototyping the game, Unreal 4.9 is looking really bloody solid and I can’t wait to put my hands on it again, but I also have tons of ideas for characters that I’d love to paint, so much fun to be had, so little time. I'm also looking for work, commissions[/url] included

Devblog #8 - Name it!It doesn’t make much sense to hold back the identity of my IP, especially by obscuring it with a title as generic and bland as Working Title. So, the actual name for this project is The Hologram. Most of its universe was written almost a decade ago as novels, so no lack of lore here. The plot is being ret-conned and characters restructured because I wrote a convoluted plot while trying to figure out everything. That rarely produces good stories.At the moment I have the basics of the story up to the end of the game which is usually the most difficult part in any kind of fictional creation. Now it’s time to let the stuff breathe, characters will soon bring themselves to life as soon as they are put in certain situations.At the moment I’m designing the main character, but will only show when finished. Patrons on Patreon are getting progress images. -- I also painted Europa, the Pleadean that engineered the humans in the solar system, she's one of the main characters 

Designing iconic characters is difficult. Especially in a world soaked with visual arts. Besides that is not the only concern in design, the character has to appear functional, for the same reason you don't draw ice picks on a desert dweller. In my case, designing a robot as a main character removes a lot of problems that goes in designing humans, but adds other problems. I could very well design a cubic block with reaction wheels for moving and wireless computer connection, that would be how a real space agency designs a robotic pilot, and if he has to move mass around, just stick a pair (or more) of arms in it and it's good to go. (Dextre from the Canadian Space Agency) How it's done IRL The thing is, empathy is necessary for a proper connection with the player, I'm sure my robot can bend all his limbs backwards but he will have the basic proportions of a human being. The juri is still out on the head screen with emoticons, but it's a nice idea I got from Chappie. It could very well be just a computer screen like TARS on Interstellar. Or maybe I'm being too picky with this because my actual main characters during gameplay will be space ships and not people Next, I'll be sketching some characters of all the different factions before going back to ships

Some brilliant work here Xeoncat looking forward to see where you going with this.

Some brilliant work here Xeoncat looking forward to see where you going with this. Thank you. Me too :crazy:Just yesterday I was thinking about everything that goes into making games and started wondering what I was getting myself into

 Just completed my painting of the the reptilian commander, and sent out the hi res and process images to patrons. Stay tuned, because I'll deal with unreal engine prototyping this month and I'll share later what I learned in a video Support this project at http://www.patreon.com/xeoncat[/url]

I dropped the b in Devblog, that's what I have to say this time... no, just kidding. Just did that promised video with spaceship movement and firing, it's probably very boring, no sound, but it's my first serious incursion into the unreal blueprint black magic. The video shows in detail what is done, except pawn possession, so anyone can learn from the shown blueprints  This was fun to do, because difficulty was just around the curve. It got a bit frustrating when dealing with the multiple turret aiming, but I finally managed to get it right after learning that I had to convert the direction coordinates to local space with the InverseTransformDirection node.Anyway, this little incursion happened because I feel a bit stuck in the main ship design and story design. The story is complete, but it doesn't pack the punch I want. It doesn't convey the wisdom, or the themes of humans as one organism and human cooperation I want to pass to the player. At the moment, things happen, there's certainly wonder and incredible events never seen before, but they would translate best to a linear game, and not a game where the player feels he's in control of his own story. In short, I want the player to feel that stuff happens to him, and that he influences the events, completely immerse him in the game.In concept art I need to go back to ship design, maybe if I start with every other ship and then go back to the player's ship, I'll have some more ideas then. But first of all, I have an idea for another character painting, Zeus to be precise, and I intend to do that first, then it's time for spaceships.

This is a nice little demo, so it looks like blueprints can create an entire game for you for the most part. The Unreal folks have outdone themselves, I am going to have to download UDK 4.0 and play with this, maybe things are getting to the point where you don't need to be a coding mastermind to create a functional game. Guess the tough part is knowing what to use and how to link it all so you get the desired outcome. Nice video.

This is a nice little demo, so it looks like blueprints can create an entire game for you for the most part. The Unreal folks have outdone themselves, I am going to have to download UDK 4.0 and play with this, maybe things are getting to the point where you don't need to be a coding mastermind to create a functional game. Guess the tough part is knowing what to use and how to link it all so you get the desired outcome. Nice video. It's a lot easier to create a game than before, although I wouldn't go as far as to say you don't need a programmer to finish making a full game, because I'm sure that at some point there will be something from the engine that might not be exposed to blueprints. Another thing I noticed is that the logic you use to make these blueprints is very similar to the logic used when you're programming. You just don't have to worry about C++ syntax and all that, it's a lot easier to see what functions are accessible and what they do, the tutorials are also easy to understand. But just like a programming language, it may take some time getting used to and it's a lot easier to use if you have programmed before, especially a language with classes like C++ But to dive right in and take a look, the barrier to entrance is literally none, their video tutorials are incredible, long and intensive but it pays off > https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Videos[/url] < i suggest starting with basics, then level editing, then blueprints. their full game tutorials are also standalone, but it's better if you have seen the basics first. I recommend installing 4.8 version because that's what it's used the most in the tutorials and it's almost the same as all previous versions

Finally, I'm back at The Hologram. Ran into a few troubles in December, lost my computer and then I got sick. I didn't really stop working and completed quite a few paintings, but had to stop with The Hologram for a moment there. I also had time to brush up some "research" into other video games like Elite Dangerous and I finally got Homeworld Remastered Collection which is kind of my source inspiration. Homeworld is a great lesson in economy: of design, polygons, visual storytelling, etc. I'm highly motivated to push this forward and naturally I started with a painting of something I always wanted to do: the Pleiadean Council, where gods get to debate life, the universe and everything. It's a place to debate current creative technologies and philosophies and where general Pleiadean laws are issued. The current Council is composed of Wadjet, Zeus and Svarog. At first I was expecting to add more characters and make it more like its source inspirations: Hémicycle by Paul Delaroche and the School of Athens by Raphael. But as soon as I started, it became clear that I put more on my plate than I can chew, so to speak, and solving the illumination for this was a challenge unlike any other I've had before. It's far from perfect, but I think I achieved at least a reasonable light bounce on the three main characters and I refrained from adding more people and instead, give the buildings some personality. If you see the full resolution image, there's also a wink to cellular biologists, who might recognize the aminoacids circle in Zeus palm projection. Next week I'll get my head around visual development, so, enjoy and see you later