Welcome to TardyGamer.info!

Wow, long time no see, huh?  Yeah, it’s certainly been a while, and a lot of things have changed.  I suppose I might as well start there.

For one, I am no longer an energetic modding lad looking for that open door.  Indeed, circa July 2008, an open door did present itself, and I clambered through eagerly, if a bit clumsily (I nearly knocked over a small table).  I am now gainfully employed at a lovely game studio called Three Rings, based in San Francisco.  We’re mostly known for Puzzle Pirates, which is kind of funny if you look at my portfolio; I don’t think anybody would have expected me to find a fit here.  I fit here rather nicely though, I think, working away on our top secret unannounced game.  In fact, I have difficulty thinking of it any other way at this point in time.

That also means that I’m living in San Francisco now.  Packed up my existence  and left on a jet plane.  This has arguably been the more momentous change; life in San Francisco bears little resemblance to life in Indiana… but I’ll not go into all of that here and now.  It’s amazing though, and like I said, momentous change, most of it for the better, but I also left some good habits back in Indiana.  For instance, I had a massive mp3 collection back there, and was pretty aggressive on exploring new music.  Somehow, that harddrive didn’t survive the move, and my music-listening habits may never be quite what they were.  The more relevant good habit I lost, however, was that of blogging, or any sort of writing.  The exercise of writing is an immensely beneficial process for me — it’s the laboratory where my scattered thoughts are examined, challenged, and hopefully refined down into something that can be usefully communicated.  Its absence has been as though a part of my inner dialogue has been missing.

That brings me to this post, and this blog.  I intend to start posting here again.  I have no Mission Statement, and only a vague idea of what manner of content I’ll fill this space with.  I start from the idea that I will be posting here for selfish reasons.  As I said above, writing is an immensely beneficial process for me, and my writing here will be chiefly for my own benefit.  I hope not to devolve too greatly into frivolous bullshit, but I’d probably not be staying true to myself if I tried to do the serious every-post-is-an-essay sort of thing.  I also have no delusion that I have terribly original thoughts to share, so I’ll try to avoid covering ground that has been well-trodden by greater minds than my own. We’ll see.

One thing that’s certain is that I won’t be your go-to guy for the hottest new games.  My playing schedule often has about a five year lag — to wit, my current big undertakings are Final Fantasy XII (that’s twelve), the first STALKER, and Dragon Quest V on the DS.  I’m not completely lost to the past, mind you, but I don’t feel terribly compelled to be a part of the immediate, contemporaneous game discussion, especially for the AAA blockbusters.  This all means that I’ll have pretty unsatisfying GotY posts, I’m sure.

So, with that, I’ll see you around, you handsome devils.

Mantis dude COMPLETION MIRACLE SUCCESS

My Dark Sun / Mantis dude portfolio page is now updated, and barring any further issues, it’s done. Now I can proceed with Operation J.O.B. G.E.T. (an acronym, incidentally, for “Jerome, Outlook Bleak? Gain Employment Terrific!”).

Some links to share:

Feet of Clay
Once upon a time, I very much enjoyed the blog of game designer Dave Rickey, until I went to visit one day and found it mysteriously VANISHED. Now he’s back though, and I would not hesitate for a second to recommend his blog to anybody interested in MMO theory. He is a VERY SMART MAN.

Not Addicted.com
Also returned from the nether, after a long period of having no front page. It’s sort of a comedic digest for the MMO space, from a Flowers of Happiness pedigree. Glad to see them back up and around.

Lots of Valve stuff on the latest episode of Game Trailers TV
I don’t know if any of it is new and exclusive, but I suspect a great many of us are interested in hearing all we can from these developers who can currently do no wrong. There’s good footage of Left 4 Dead, as well as a very brief fly-through of Gold Rush, the next official Team Fortress 2 map.

Warning though: there are some Portal spoilers in Part 2.

Speaking of TF2, I’ve barely played it at all for the past couple weeks, and I really ought to rectify that.

Mantis dude WIP

As proof that I am pretty rubbish at this blog thing, here is a post I meant to write well over a week ago.

So, only a few days after my second post in this blog, in which I proudly declared my portfolio site to be complete, I decided that this was not, in fact, the case. Specifically, I’ve decided to go back and complete the Thri-kreen mantis guy, which previously only existed as a high-poly model. That portfolio page was, I felt, amongst my weakest entries, and this should give me the opportunity to turn it into what may be among my stronger pieces.

I will take it as far as the rigging stage, but will not animate or implement it. Other 3d game artists often do the same — producing work simply as an exercise, with no specific game engine in mind. The reason is that, well, animation and implementation are difficult, time-consuming, and not always as rewarding as the initial creative process can be.

In my case though, it’s a time issue. As I complete this piece, I have put my job hunt on hiatus, and this is very personally frustrating. I’ve been waiting years to go professional — to finally gain the legitimacy of earning real compensation for what I’ve poured so many hours of my life into (my family will be happy to learn that, no, this game development thing is not just one big scam that never pays out). At the same time, there’s a voice saying, “hey, you’ve waited this long, what’s another couple weeks?” You only get that one first impression after all, and perhaps having another completed character model in place of a page of unfinished assets will tip the odds in my favor just that necessary amount.

I’m trying something a little different with the diffuse map. First, I am specifically avoiding photo overlays, and shooting for a more hand-crafted look. Blending in photographs are a quick and easy way to achieve that high-contrast grungy look, perhaps best displayed in my Gatehouse textures, but I don’t necessarily want to make games that look grungy. In fact, games may even be tending away from that classic gritty photorealism, towards a more gameplay-driven visual design. Rather than simply making each art asset as detailed and true-to-life as possible, artists would be required to ask, “what must it communicate to the player? what is the visual goal of this asset?” For characters models, it’s to be distinctive, memorable, and emotive. For background clutter objects, it’s to enrich the environments without distracting the player’s eye from what’s important, gameplay-wise. Etcetera etcetera.

Getting back to the thri-kreen texture, the second thing I’m trying differently is to seperate the light/darkness shading layers from the coloration. As you can see from the render above, he’s got mottled brown stripes, significantly darker than the rest of his flesh. To achieve this without interfering with the diffuse map’s implication of form, they’ve been seperated into different layers, and this is actually working better than I expected. Here is a look at the grayscale light/darkness layer (ignore the palette and bright orange eye).

The diffuse map, as a whole, is still a bit plain and boring, and I hope to introduce some implied texture without going overboard (he also has a normal map, mind you), as well as greater richness in the coloration. The goal is for the texture to remain smooth and creamy; visually interesting without being visually busy.

Ye Olde Grande Opening

Ladies and germs, welcome, welcome to this humble internet abode. You’ll have to forgive that I’ve not tidied up yet. Don’t you worry though — as soon as I’m able, I’ll strip out the unnecessary side links and replace them with obnoxious embedded flash widgets. If at all possible, they’ll also play startling ‘beep’, ‘bloop’, and ‘click’ noises on mouseover. It’s called Web 2.0, get used to it.

So, I’ve decided to finally make an update here. My portfolio website is complete, barring any errors or minor rewrites I may want to do. I implemented the fourth and final embedded video earlier, on the Clay Golem page. This one demonstrates some of the model’s combat animations. I had wanted to use in-game footage for the combat video, but decided against it. The game refuses to use the supplied animation “event” tag file, so combat hits don’t quite register correctly. Instead I just did a bunch of renders in Max and stitched them together as well as I could.

My resume is effectively complete (though I should perhaps provide a .doc version), so wow, now I just need to compose cover letters.

Oh, I also wanted to touch on what this blog is ABOUT in this here first post. My goal is to stay informal and succinct, because if I let the tone become too formal, I’ll spend too much time composing my thoughts and probably never end up actually updating.

It’s unavoidable that I’ll be making posts about games, so another goal is to confine any criticism to a constructive and respectful tone. There’s nothing to be gained from dismissing other peoples’ hard work, especially if I’m going to be making a career in this industry.

Aside from commentary, I’ll use this space to occasionally dissect and explore my own ideas and thoughts. Or maybe I’ll just post funny YouTube videos. We’ll see.