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We continued our walk along the coast, observing the piers that curve and stretch out into the faraway distance.

Alcatraz Island loomed in the distance, our plans already forming to visit it in the following days. Sadly, the tours for the Rock were booked for the whole week of our stay in San Francisco.

Continuing on a road leading to a park, we climbed a steep hill from where we could observe several residential and warehouse buildings (from the looks of it).

The Golden Gate Bridge still graced the panorama.

Finally, we arrived at the park, immediately noticing its palm trees adorning the surrounding open space. I couldn’t help but be drawn to the cloudy sky - the weather was getting worse.

 Yet our spirits were high and we once more set off for the bridge.

Even though it was my first time in the States, I couldn’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed at first. The arrival on American soil felt no more than a simple exchange of similar-looking airports. Only upon our departure from the San Francisco Airport did I began noticing the subtle differences: increased presence of security cameras, federal law warning signs, and audio security notifications. The BART transit system from the airport was convenient enough to get us downtown, from where we got ourselves Muni transit weekly passes (I believe Muni might be a cute way of saying “municipal” transit). I couldn’t help but compare San Franciso’s downtown to Toronto’s - the many subtle aesthetic differences raced through my mind. One of the first things that grabbed my attention away from the many tall buildings was a group of four police officers near the BART subway transit station, looking about. Though it might have been an odd instance for that day, rather than a usual occurrence, I felt a strange mix of safety and alertness.

Our travel bags gave us away as tourists in the dense crowd, which innevitably attracted what we later learned was a famous homeless guy of San Francisco. With great enthusiasm, he demanded our attention to show off his knowledge of the downtown area, pointing out some supposedly delicious places to eat. Taken aback by his extreme hospitality, we motioned our urgency to get going, which in retrospect we could have handled differently. The man made sure to point out our lack of tact with a few carefully chosen swear words to send us on our way. We stayed near the police officers during this time, before figuring out where to go next. As if to feel more like we were in Toronto, we chose to have lunch at an Asian restaurant. The food was quite good, though also quite expensive (later we realized how much this was true of groceries as well).

After getting acquainted with our hotel, we decided to explore the piers of Fisherman’s Wharf, known for its various seaside attractions, such as the tour of Alcatraz island, the Aquarium, and the Boudin bread bakery, to name a few. We heard there was a possibility of rain the next day, so we wanted to see as much as we could before GDC. So, we walked in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, keeping the option to cross it if we felt like it.

What was once a small speck in the distance became a giant walkable treat.

In the end, the scale of our walk became epic.

Note that the image above does not show the path we actually took. With the exception of crossing the bridge, we walked off the road, close to the sea.

Last week I spent a week in San Francisco attending the Game Developer’s Conference 2009. I went with two of my friends, Mark and Andrei, who are also my co-workers at FunForged. Our initial plan was to volunteer at the conference, not only because of getting a free all-access pass to the conference, but also because of the abundance of networking opportunities there while meeting other volunteers. Alas, Mark and I did not manage to secure our volunteer positions, which we later understood to be because of the sheer number of applicants, the limited number of available volunteering positions, and the established priority being given to past volunteers (which tend to come back each year). Unlike us two, Andrei, having volunteered at the conference last year, managed to secure his position this year. Because of this, it was not a total loss, as we ended up meeting some of the volunteers Andrei hung out with. Still, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for next year. Hopefully, one of two things will happen before the next GDC: either more volunteer positions become available or less alumni volunteers apply … the former being more likely.

Even though I felt a healthy dose of disappointment after receiving the rejection message (I admit, my hopes were high), I decided to press on, turning next to my savings account. I was happy to note that at the time the conference website offered early bird pricing; however, even the discounted amount was not easy to behold. After much debating - going back and forth between the Expo, Summit, Conference, and All Access passes - Mark and I finally decided to purchase the Conference Pass, coughing up little over $1K CAD. At the time we felt it was a necessary evil; in retrospect, a good investment, but one I am not fond of.

Since Andrei was volunteering, we left for San Francisco two days before the conference started. For Mark and myself, this meant we would be spending four days exploring San Francisco prior to being able to attend the second part of the conference we purchased access to. This arrangement turned out well, as we got to see some cool stuff around San Francisco - albeit, not without a share of perilous adventures along the way.

Cheese is War is a game I participated in developing for the 2008 Toronto Independent Game Jam or TOJam. We made the game using Microsoft XNA framework. The cheese physics were made with the help of Farseer Physics Engine. The objective of the game is to push, tilt or stretch a tower of cheese on your opponent mouse by shooting the cheese mass with your bazooka. Deep within the core of the cheese tower, there are mines that explode upon impact with your shot projectile, which send the cheese tower ripping apart for added instability, which can aid or hinder your chances of winning. The winner is the mouse that withstands the least amount of damage from being crushed by the falling cheese.

Making this game was tons of fun. It was my first serious try at coding in XNA and I learned a lot from it. Check out the links below for the download page and the short game video.

Cheese is War Download Page (hosted by TOJam)

Cheese is War on YouTube

Credits:

Andrei Petrov - Programmer
Andy Hammerlindl - Programmer (cheese string physics)
Ante Bralic - Programmer, Graphics
Jennifer Ruttan - Programmer, Graphics
Thuan Ta - Programmer
Liesl Anipare - Graphics
Darie Petrov - Sound
Barry Rowe - Graphics

Wheel of Space is a quirky adventure game created by myself and Mark Cautillo for the Game-Making Deathmatch 2008.

Download - 18 MB

The GMD 2008 competition ran for three weeks during which time the contestants need to create a game based on one of two given themes:

1. Deadly Viruses from Dimension N+1.
2. Planet Earth and Frogs with Potatoes on the side.

Now, Mark and I wanted to create an adventure game in the spirit of Sierra’s old Space Quest games, with all the ridiculousness added in, so we chose theme 2.We made the game in Adventure Game Studio. This enabled us to focus on the game’s silly humour, CG art, and sound (which included voice acting, sound effects, and music). There was minimal programming involved in this project, which was a departure from what both of us usually do for GMD competitions. In programming-intensive games, such as my Blood Vessel game made in Flash, I tend to challenge myself to learn a new programming (or scripting) language, whereas the development of WoS was a challenge in other aspects of game development, such as writing and art.The part that was most fun to do was voice acting.

We recorded about 240 lines of spoken dialogue, most of it adventure game styled narration (for looking at things, using objects, etc). We both played several roles. I played the majority of the game’s narrators, which was tons of fun. Mark voiced the introduction narration, the game’s hero and Commander Obama (a play on “Commander Adama”, from Battlestar Galactica Sci-Fi show). We used Audacity to remove the noise from all our recordings, and to tweak the pitch of introductory narration and Commander Obama. The computer voices we borrowed from the text-to-speech generated output provided by AT&T Labs TTS Demo.

The most challenging part in making WoS was creating the CG art. I was in charge of creating all of the game’s environment backgrounds and their animations. Even though it was a lot of work to complete within a short period of time, it was nevertheless time-well-spent in practicing CG painting and the general use of some cool features in Adobe Photoshop.

During the making of this game, I realized how much work there was behind making only a small fraction of the classic adventure games in the 90’s, from companies such as Sierra and Lucas Art; especially in terms of the amount of voice-over dialogue that needed to be recorded to cover the large amounts of game text. Even a simple action of looking at the in-game environment within a particular scene accounts for about a dozen lines of text - if the scene is simple, and even more text if the scene contains a puzzle that changes the state of the environment. Add to that the various items the player can use to interact with the environment, and a simple scene can take several days to complete.

Speaking of in-game items: in keeping with the second competition theme, we decided to add a potato to the player’s inventory, which the player can use to interact with the various parts of the game’s environments. The same holds true for the talk, look, and touch actions. Try them out.

UPDATE

This is a work-in-progress; it’s something I’ve been working on for the past few days, during my spare time. A while back I made a drawing of my SW:KOTOR 2 “Jedi Exile” character. I decided to CG-colour the drawing to practice some CG painting in Photoshop, using my Wacom tablet.

Looking at how other CG painters do their art, I’m planning on using three layers of shading for skin, clothing, hair, etc. - a starting colour with its corresponding lighter and darker tone. In terms of the character’s hair in the image below, you can see there is a basic underlying “yellow-ish” colour with a few highlights at the top of the character’s head and some darkened parts near the neck, which are not exposed to much light.

I’ll post updates of significant progress; with the amount of spare time I have, this will most likely take me a few weeks. Once I am finished with the work, you can find it at my deviantArt page, though I will post a low-res sample here.

Original CG portrait by Obsidian Entertainment:

Welcome to my game development blog! Here I will post updates on my latest game development, as well as any noteworthy information about my past projects. From time to time, I will also post about a game that I am currently enjoying, as well as any news about the steps I am taking towards becoming involved in the game development industry.

Please feel free to post comments about any of my future topics. Enjoy your stay!