Knock knock

Who's there?

Updates are coming... (soon'ish after some sangria and Ron Trinidad)

I often feel obliged to write something here when there's nothing to write other than endless meandering dribbles of uninteresting facts about this and that. Today however I decided I would write something, so here's some text... oh hang on a mo.... I've already finished....Oops...

Here's a pointless sketch about arrows..

The wit that follows will astound, amaze and have you scratching something in bewilderment, hopefully your head but anywhere else is fine...(hang on again.. erm you really should have that looked at don't you know.. eww looks kind of... infected..doors over there... yep see ya...(phew)) 

 

I should remind you , yes you with the wild eyes, iPhone, you phone, we phone, who phone Blobbit is still going strong it's just on hold until Mark and I finish our contract jobs. Then it's manic dev time again.. yay taday tomorrow and last week!

What?? HD art for iPad?? Oh.....Erm... right then..

I've been rather busy of  late creating, converting and tweaking various art assets for inclusion into Blobbit iPush. Some via Unity as rescaled sprites, others taking the form of  new 2D & 3D art, not bad! One thing I didn't really want to do just yet is take on the seemingly mammoth task of up-scaling the original game art to iPad and HD resolutions. Arghhhhhhh!!!

Ok well perhaps that's a bit of an overreaction but with a looming deadline for the iPhone version on the horizon and time at present being very precious for me a bit of thinking was called for.  Ponder, ponder...

Here's a tree from the Sand Sludge Bog level, or to quote from me book, a G'Wahlah'lahlah tree. This version is from the original Web game and was drawn in ProMotion a few years back in good ol' retrotastic pixelvision.

Now then, how do I get that scaled up from 25 or so pixels to something that is probably going to push 60 to 100+ without loosing definition and quality? Scale - No. Apply some fancy filters - No. Vector art the sucker - Yes!!


So after a short fiddle with me Wacom pen and a few reference pixels I think I've sussed it.

Not only does the new version look clean and crisp it is also totally resolution independent meaning I could use it on the iPhone version too if need be. Niiiice!!!

(Shadow edge is pants, I know) lol

A little test anim to pass the time today

I've been experiencing a few problems importing some anims into Unity from Blender recently and decided to take some time out from the hair pulling with this being the result.

Bit flakey around the edges but not bad methinks! Now I know how to use the 'node' editor in Blender the possibilities are quite staggering . A few tweaks here and adjustments there will yield some quite nice results I reckon.


The more I use Blender the more I love it!!

Box Droid Concept Prototype 001 Sketch

Late 2006 I started designing the sprites for Blobbit Push  and one of the characters I came up with was a small droid known as a Box Droid which later became a series of droids all based around the same box like design.

With the new game in development and the totally separate but loosely linked book on the back burner I wanted to create some proper art for the Blobbit characters. There are various reasons for doing this but the main reason unquestionably is I just want to see these characters visualised how I imagine them rather than as 48x48 pixel sprites. Of course having proper images also helps to create 3D versions and will also do wonders for marketing the game(s) later on.

Anyway here's the initial pencil sketch I did of the Prototype Box Droid with which all other Box Droids were based upon. I suppose you could say this one pre-dates the sprite version seen in the games. Initially drawn on Saturday afternoon over a cup of tea or two, proceeded by the finished illustrated version Monday. Cheers me dears! -Stoo-

Design & Images (C) Copyright Stoo Cambridge 2006,2010

Is there anybody out there?

I was just thinking as I look into my Blobbit stars, 'is there anybody out there?'  Then it dawned on me, what I need is some space junk and some stuff to plonk in the background.

Background - check

Twinkle stars - check

Big Moon - check
Stuff - Yes 

That's that then.

Do I use the 2D illustrations mapped to quads or do I recreate the drawings in 3D with the drawings mapped onto the newly created objects?  Hmmmmm.... Maybe a mixture of both I think.

Ramble, ramble, mumble, mumble...

Ahh so that's what the 'd' means!

'Rot' or 'DRot' what the ??

Ahh now I know! Rot is an absolute value overiding the object's values and DRot is added to the current value! Ta da! 

Same applies to scale too. 

Stars are now converted to use Drot D??  where applicable! 

3D is now my best buddy, (this week anyway!)

      
I've been spending an awful lot of time learning all about IPO curves and key framing this week, which you could say is all fine and dandy. Ahhh but the real smile factor comes from looking back over the past few days and seeing how this thing is starting to shape up, how it is fuelling further art, details  and refinements to the design. Magic!!!!!


I like the mix of taking my 2D illustrations and whacking them into this unfriendly looking, techie laden ingested program called Blender which beneath the well published hard exterior houses one big bundle of cuddly lurve! I really must commend all the people who have helped create such a wonderful piece of open source, free to use software.Sorted!!

Next week I'll be introducing chilli to the mix for some extra heat!

*using Blender 2.49b

Titter ye not for I been mostly usingTwitter !

Over the past few days I've been using Twitter. I can certainly see the appeal of quick easy straight to the point updates of information. I registered ages ago but never really got into it, until now!



As you can see if you glance over the to the right of this blog I've added me last handful of Tweets which is working wonders for my web presence linkage. LOL 'Tweets!', see I'm learning the lingo too!


Over and out for now, I've got some stars to finish animating...

Tron desk v1.1

After the rewire and attaching of the lights to the desk, power is now back on and my desk is no longer at the mercy of the Master Control Program!

When I can source the parts my next trick is to turn the desk into a giant light box to aid my illustration work. It works to a degree at the moment but having white light underneath will give me a much better result.

Animation Time Offset is my friend!

Animating what seems like a zillion and one stars is not a desirable way to pass the day so I was so pleased to discover the magic animation time offset setting in Blender.

After animating one star I can now link to it from a duplicate, change the offset of the new one and wayhey  we have two stars animating from the same data block but at staggered times. 

Simple things please simple minds and that's cool with me as it's saving me lots and lots and lots of time! 

Ta da!!

Tron underdesk lighting. DONE!

Overted a desk disaster. Wire to one of me desk led lights got severed. Works again now. Soldertastic!

Wire does it hurt?

Spring clean phase 1
Unplug and remove gear. So many wires. :-(

As Blair is in the news....

Here's a little something I did a few years back... 

An old Footy gif

Whilst trawling through some old files in my documents folder I came across a directory which contained a couple of old animated GIF's created for past projects. Sadly both projects never saw the light of day but it's always nice to see work files one more time before they get filed away for another couple of years in darkness.

The first was created for a mobile phone game about fishing called 'Footy'. ;)

As you can see it's nothing to do with fishing!

Actually this was really starting to look good it was just a shame the phone hardware at the time was dog slow and just couldn't handle the sprites , scrolling and ball at the same time!!!

I'll probably add a section about this game to the new Hobeka site when I get round to updating it.

I especially like the skating players!

Blendertastic knicker elastic!

Development of the front end continues with the addition of my Rydek-12 illustration which is sitting inside Blender rather nicely now.

Next step is to get the stars all key framed up and jiggling about doing  their thing.

Just discovered a cool Blender material button located in the Material panel called 'Shadeless' which is great for profiling stuff on the quick without having to worry about setting up lights. It saves valuable time trying to get the render to look the same as your 2D mock up. Sorted!!!!

 

Blobbit sprite conversion

Rather than just do a  quick conversion job resulting in a load of blurred undefined sprites I've been adding extra glow and opacity to some of them.

When we did the original game the sprites were for the most part quite old school and were drawn in 8bit with no alpha channel data. Not bad but the iPhone has nice transparency effects we can use, so why not use them?

Here's a Binscee Droid before, during and after a little bit of subtle editing...

I've highlighted the transparent liquid bit.
Cut out the area that needs to be transparent and set it at 80% so it's still mostly green.
Next I paste this back into the original frame and the sprite frame is now complete.Ta Da!

Taking this image into an editor you will see that the liquid is indeed transparent which should look quite nice when it's in situ.

Here's the original animated 8bit version...

Damn that Ursula, me tea is missing.

An empty mug of tea simply will not do.

Had to be done

Nice.

Game developer fuel

Another mug or five.

Blobbits' love Unity!!

Having written the new GDD(Game Design Document for those not in the know) for Blobbit iPush which also includes a few concept sketches and illustrations, the next step is to start some proper development work.  A little bit later than planned but hey, better late than never I say! Ta Da!!

After a few seconds of thought and a couple of emails to Mark it become clear that Flash wasn't really the way to go and Unity the rather most spiffingly excellent indie developer friendly 3D engine and game dev system would do the trick rather better.

Enter Unity...


It's been a few days now since I began my tinkering about with the editor and generally got my head around the Unity interface which is really rather straightforward once you get past the initial bewilderment associated with something new and alien. Well it is to me anyway...So far so good.


I've spent most of today and some of what was left over from last night converting the Blobbit Push sprite set over to Unity. After a false start and a dodgy mouse button which has incidently got worse, I can say that even the added bit of alpha blending is making an appearance on the enhanced set of sprites. 

Look it's the death anim... The sprites may be smaller than the original set but I've managed to retain the detail and given them a bit of extra smooochie smooth stuff for their outing on the iPhone. Lubberly!!

-Stoo-

Cool hat!