Concept Art

As mentioned previously, I've been working on a fairly complex tower defense game for about eight months now with some very talented 3D and concept artists. Although I'm not at liberty to disclose full details of our upcoming game, for which we've set a demo deadline of September 2010, I can show off some concept art. As a programmer, I'm learning the importance of having quality, researched concepts from which our 3D artists can generate models that are animated in the game. Below are a couple defense units and a couple enemies to show a small piece of what we're working on.

Defense: Light Infantry
The light infantry in our game is the player's first line of defense against attacking enemies. He wields a javelin and is a bit clumsy at first but improves his skill (e.g. throwing more than one javelin at once) when upgraded using cash earned from killing enemies.

Defense: Heavy Infantry
The heavy infantry does more damage than light infantry and attacks rapidly in a wild rage when upgraded. A couple possible renderings are shown.

Enemy: Cyclops
The Cyclops is one of the boss enemies in the game.

Enemy: Minotaur
The Minotaur is another boss enemy in the game.

So those are just a sneak preview of some of the artwork going into our tower defense game. Note that this work is copyrighted by Insert Coin Interactive and may not be copied or reproduced in any way. I look forward to showing more work and hopefully also some in-game screenshots when we're closer to demo completion!

Making Games on the Side

As a hobbyist/indie game developer, I found the following Gamasutra article of particular interest. It describes some of the challenges and sacrifices required to be a successful game developer, whether your definition of "success" is actually breaking in to the industry or simply making games for the love of doing it. Hope you enjoy the article as much as I did.

Making Games On The Side: Development In The Real World

Exciting Announcements!

I can hardly believe it's been two months since my last post. Where does the time go?!? I haven't been posting lately but have a feeling that will change soon. And I have a lot of exciting announcements I couldn't wait to share!

First, and I know I promised not to use this blog as a personal forum, but I simply must share that my wife and I are expecting our first child! She is actually due to arrive today, so please cross your fingers, wish us luck, and if you are inclined to do so, pray for us and our baby girl. If you're interested in more updates please feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook.

Second, I just discovered today on the IGDA NC forum that EA is hiring software engineers for full-time and contract positions. The NC branch of EA is located in Morrisville, so if you're a game developer living anywhere near the Triangle click the link above and submit your resume.

Third, I learned recently that Ian Schreiber is doing another summer online course, this time focusing on Game Balance. If you enjoyed his Game Design Concepts course you will most likely be interested in checking out Game Balance Concepts.

Fourth, check out Darius Kazemi's GameLoop unconference. It looks like an awesome time to learn about all things game-related, so you should totally check it out if you live anywhere near Cambridge, MA.

Finally, I've been working on a tower defense game that I alluded to way back in January and I'm happy to say my team and I are making outstanding progress. But a number of things have changed. Instead of it being a 2D game, we're now doing 3D (and understand why 2D isometric tower defense is near-impossible). We've also switched our platform from XBox 360 to the PC, and are making some dramatic changes to our original art style. It's amazing to see what our graphic artists can do, and I plan to post some screenshots soon. Tentative plan is to have something we can demo at an upcoming conference in September.

So there's a lot going on, which hopefully explains the fewer posts, but I have been learning a ton of cool stuff that should make for some interesting tutorials right here on GDJ. Until next time...