Hi all,
Here we will see some reasearch i made for the musical identity of “Excellence”,
and the different ways i tryed to open.
Just some musical ideas…
Music research
2
Moving in and moving on your mobiles.
Hey folks,
While Niiico and Alex kept adding contents to the game, I was pretty busy. A month ago, I moved to Montreal – Canada for work, and now, I’m a proud Game Programmer at Gameloft. Needless to say I’m happy of my new job. :]
But what Gameloft have to do with Excellence? Well, not many things, except I won’t be able to release the game while I’m working there. Yeah, it’s some bad news, I must admit.
BUT, It give me more time to think about Excellence, and the last ideas are not to displease yourself. Laurent Gomilla, the author of SFML, is finalizing the last release of its 2D graphic API, making it more flexible, and he implied that OpenGL ES would be the next addition to SFML, extending the compatible device to all OpenGL ES compatible smartphone, meaning Apple’s Iphone and Google’s Android!
So yeah, in addition of the PC release, a port to Iphone and Android mobiles are now in the process queue.
I’ll have plenty of gameplay and ergonomic ideas for theses. :)
Well, I first have to finish the game engine when Laurent will release the new SFML 2.0 revision. during that time, I’ll finish to install myself in this gorgeous city that is Montréal. :D
To the next news!
(I change the comments settings to make them easier to post. Feel free to write a little word!)
Render Test
First render test for Excellence. We want it shiny, colorful, fast, clear and texturless to speed up the process.
For this test I used the 3dsMax plug-in “greeble”, great tool if you want lot of détails without spend hours and hours. Of course this is for render test only, the final modeling will not used it that much.
With some mental ray shaders I can render diferents layer that I compose in photoshop or give to Spidyy who used it to made some nice in-game shader like water, glow or shadows (and maye be a lot more very soon : ) ? ) which add a lot “life” and details.
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Stage 01 music
Hi people,
Here we will see the 2nd track i made for Excellence.
Art direction was the same, but i wanted to make something more dynamic and modern, so i leave the Epic side.
More Guitar, more bass, more drum … lets rock…
I let you hear it and tell me your opinion.
Software architecture
Hi folks.
I found some time to write a post, so here it is!
There is no better way to begin than start by the beginning : how did I organize the project and what library did I used?
SFML
Well, It isn’t a surprise if I tell you I’m using SFML as the base for the software. What is SFML and why did I used it?
I partially answered in the Project Page. SFML is a multimedia library that allow a fine and easy use of 2D features and primitives through OpenGL. It allow to draw 2D stuff with the benefice of hardware acceleration. But it is not all it can do. SFML give also access to nice shaders effect, True Type Fonts, windowing, input management, sound and network features.
The main point of SFML is that it is Simple (first ‘S’ for SFML). It is designed to be used by beginners as by more advanced programmers, and it really suits me.
Excellence Engine
SFML is the base. It allow to have access to low-level features. But I need something more efficient and complicated to create a good quality game. No existing engine proposed enough 2D features for my needs, so I need to create my own engine. I started Excellence Engine (or ExEngine) as a supplemental layer, a level above SFML. I gave it many useful things, as features to manage my game screens, game resources (images, sounds, …), my graphical assets (animations, shaders, rendering), display operation (resolution, aspect ratio) efficiently, in addition with math and physics functions, GUI support and debug tools. Well, the engine is still in “Work in progress” state, as I continue to add stuff I’ll need later in the game development. I’ll write some specific posts about ExEngine later.
Excellence Editor
The benefits of writing ExEngine is to prepare the future of the game following Excellence, having smaller compilation time and smaller bug fixes to download, but also to easily do a kind of bridge between the game and its editor; because it is nearly impossible to create a good game without a proper level editor.
Excellence Editor (or ExEd) will allow me to manage my resources, my objects and my level with some standardized stuff thanks to the ExEngine. I mean, nearly all classes of ExEngine will have their proper editor in ExEd. I use Qt 4.7 for the editor GUI. I could have used another GUI library as wxWidget, but I’m particularly interested by the Graphics View module de Qt to create good-looking editors, and most of all, a fast and intuitive level editor.
At last, here is a little drawing of the global architecture of the Excellence project :
Excellence software architecture
Concept gallery
Ok, first, just a few concepts. I will not coments this ones because I see this more like a “gallery” than anything else.
Let’s just say that this works will be helpfull to build 3D models and Background. They don’t have to be particulary define since it’s “just” a way to know in which direction I have to go, especialy for the “landscapes” where it’s more about “feeling” than schemes .
I will update this gallery from time to times.
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Niiico. Arts part.
Hi,
I’m Niiico.
I’m working on the art part of Excellence, in close proximity with Spidyy who write the story line and create the seeds of the Excellence’s universe.
Excellence is not my first game since I have already work on pc/360/ps3 AAA games, but the first “home made” in a team, which one I enjoyed work with.
So, in my next post you will see a piece of my work, from concepts to “3d in game” …yeah it’s a 2D game, but graphics are made within 3dstudio max and photoshop + some nice in-game shaders made by Spidyy… but we will speak about that in other post : ) .
See you Space Cowboy.
