Here's a concept I made recently - hopefully the first of a set. It's the first real digital drawing I've made with my new iPad Pro (using Procreate) and I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Will it ever become a game? We'll see!
For now, more concepting, and more practicing digital sketching.
Here's a time-lapse of the sketch:
The seasonal Summer Games event is back in Overwatch this year, and it comes with another collection of cool hero skins. As always, I want a bunch of them.
Who can argue with the Mermaid skin for Symmetra? I can't.
I've been using a Surface Book for my digital sketching since the device launched, back in 2015/2016, and it's served me well. For a first-generation device, it's a great machine. Were it not for its waning battery life and increasingly slow feel, I'd probably keep using it.
So I've been eyeing an upgrade for a while now, following the release of the Surface Book 2 and then the Surface Book 3, but noting several issues with each iteration of the hardware: pen input jitter, battery volatility, specs that aren't even close to cutting edge, etc. It's been disappointing watching the Book line be relegated to the back of the pack.
I'd hoped this year we'd see a refresh that made an upgrade worth it - even at a premium cost - but I don't see any updates on the horizon, especially with the global chip shortage looking like it'll continue on into next year.
Where does that put me? Well, if you remember some of my really old blog posts, I'm eating crow. I'm trying out an iPad Pro as a replacement.
It's Microsoft's loss, honestly. I've been an evangelist for the Surface Book since I've owned one, and I still like the device. But it just doesn't make sense for me to wait another 6-12 months for a half-step upgrade. Especially when it might still have the same issues people are facing now. Especially with the less accurate pen input. Especially when it will likely cost more.
I might come back to the Surface Book in the future, but for now, I'm going with an iPad Pro for digital drawing. Let's see where that takes me.
So I'm a little on the fence about Starfield, but this trailer gives me hope.
I don't know a lot about Starfield (does anyone, really?). I guess it's going to be an RPG in space. I expect it'll feel a little like Fallout, but I don't have any good reason to think that, other than that Bethesda is making it.
This trailer though... it's short and it doesn't show gameplay. But it's in-engine footage, and the score sounds hopeful/aspirational. I sorta like it.
And now I'm sitting here waiting to see how Starfield will turn out.
When I was a kid, I loved reading books about ghosts, aliens, and other paranormal stuff. Did I ever believe them? It's hard to say from this far out. They certainly scared me sometimes, though.
Stories of haunted ships scared me in particular, though I don't really know why. I never spent time on boats as a kid. Tales of ghost ships, still stalked by apparitions of their former crew, and doomed to repeat their final, ill-fated voyages over and over... that freaked me out. It still kind of does! Back then, the closest I ever got to that was playing around on a relative's boat that got parked on our property for a while.
As an adult, I've grown away from those things. A world where ghosts exist is one that doesn't seem rational to me. I often find myself bemused whenever anyone makes a serious attempt to claim that ghosts are the explanation for something. I am similarly skeptical of aliens, and alien-abduction stories, but the possibility that alien life exists (or existed in the past, or will exist in the future) seems infinitely more likely to me. At least there is a naturalistic explanation for that.
In my opinion, a mind that is taught to believe extraordinary stories, without also requiring the necessary evidence to justify the belief, is one that is primed to accept a number of things that might appear intuitive, but can't stand up to the faintest skepticism. It's a breeding ground for magical thinking and paranoid thoughts - the kind that are absolutely pervasive in American society today.
Nothing is off limits. Literally everything is justified by conspiracy theories, many of which are so dim-witted they make the old ghost stories seem absolutely believable by comparison. I'm just sick of it.
If you have beliefs about how things should be, that's fine - even if I don't agree with them, or even if most other people don't agree with them. If you want things to be a certain way, and that's how you choose to vote, go for it. But don't hide behind conspiracy theories to justify it. Just own it. Things would be a lot better that way.
Initially, I wrote off Two Point Hospital as just another cheap-o hospital management/simulation game - I think it was something about how the character renders looked. But after a friend recommended it to me and I gave it a try, I was hooked; it's actually a pretty entertaining game, and the way Two Point Studios managed to take on the rather serious topic of managing a hospital and make it goofy and funny is excellent.
So I was delighted when Two Point Campus, a collegiate-themed sequel, was announced during E3 2021, and I'm excited to try it when it releases in 2022. It looks like it'll be a great follow-up to the first game!
It took me a long time to try out Plague Tale: Innocence, even though it was on my radar, and in my game library, for a while. I remember looking at screenshots and thinking they looked pretty neat, and I even bought the game once it went on sale, but kept it on the back-burner as I worked on other games. When it hit Game Pass, a friend of mine played through it and recommended it to me, and I finally played it - and instantly regretted putting it off for so long.
I've grown a bit wary of games with grim settings, and so that was one thing keeping me from trying the game. I don't mind that stuff, but it just feels tiring to enter one bleak virtual world after another, each one befallen by a different catastrophe, but with the same dirty, dull end-point. APT:R is full of color, however, and the levels are varied enough that you never feel like you're covering the same ground again.
I think, also, I just wasn't sure what type of game APT:R would be. It turned out to be mostly a stealth game, with some puzzle elements, quicktime sequences, and boss fights thrown in. The skill level for the game was tuned just right, in my opinion, and I breezed through it, enjoying just about every moment. I'm glad the focus wasn't on combat, most of the time, because it would have betrayed the powerlessness the child protagonists were meant to feel.
That Asobo used a custom game engine for the game is remarkable - I assumed it was an Unreal 4 game until I found out otherwise. They put real-world scanned assets to great use, making the game world lush and believable (while simultaneously alleviating their artists from a lot of grunt work). The swarms of rats that act as the game's ever-present menace are also a technical feat.
Anyway, that's a lot of words for the short message I mean to convey here: I'm looking forward to A Plague Tale: Requiem, the sequel to Innocence!
Today, I released the first update to gamemaker-3d-io, a Blender addon I created to help get 3D models from Blender into GameMaker Studio 2.
This update brings some new functionality to the addon: in addition to triangle lists, it can now also export line lists and point lists. Some neat effects can now be achieved!
I also refactored the addon a bit, splitting out the data prep and output-building functions into their own modules. And I cleaned up the export menu to be more organized in a better way.
Get the addon at the link above, or at Github. If you happen to use this addon for your game, be sure to leave me a note and let me know what you think!
So Psychonauts 2 is coming later this year, and it looks a lot like the first game, with eccentric characters, zany levels, and a number of twists and turns in how each zone plays out. The original game came out 16 years ago, and it's a testament to the game's creativity that anyone still remembers it.
Part of my memory of the original game is complete frustration; the final sequence, in particular, had a number of tricky jumps and it took me many tries to complete it.
Most everything else I remember of Psychonauts is pleasant, so I'm hopeful that this sequel smooths over those difficult moments somewhat, as Double Fine creates such amazing experiences, it feels extra bad when you can't muster the skill to see all of it.
There wasn't much to show for The Outer Worlds 2 at 2021's E3, but that didn't stop Microsoft/Bethesda from dropping a bombastic trailer for it. I watched this directly after Redfall's trailer, so it almost felt like a dig at the rest of the show - but that's very much in line with the humor of The Outer Worlds franchise.
Is it a franchise yet? I guess it might be, after a successful second game, anyway. Obsidian created such a fun world to explore with the first game, I can't wait to see what's next.