Tag: videogames

“Changing Direction” – March to May 2023

thereccyLeave a comment

Well, it’s been a few months since I wrote an update! I’m going to make this a short one because to be honest, I haven’t been making a lot of progress. I forgot how hard it is to find time when you have a full-time job, so I’ve put the monthly Blender renders on hiatus until I finish my game. Speaking of which, I’m at a bit of a loss on what to make.

In my last update I mentioned I’d start making prototypes, and to an extent I did, but it was more to figure out basic workflows in Unreal Engine 5. I also know I said I’d start prototyping game ideas in Godot, but I decided against it because I’d rather focus on just learning UE5. With my limited time, I’ve learned how to do some very simple things such as import assets and animations and then create animation blueprints to play blended animations. All very beginner level stuff.

The progress has been at a snail’s pace, and that’s mainly due to the fact that as mentioned before, I don’t have as much free time as I used to – and I also don’t really know Unreal Engine 5. So realistically, I’m better off going back to what I did back in 2021 and making tiny games to learn the engine.

This is something that does frustrate me as I want to make more complex and interesting games, but to be honest, I really need to get experience with the engine first. Even trying to scope my game for October has been impossible because I don’t know how long it takes to do anything in UE5.

The other aspect is I don’t want to work on this every weekday. I make games now as part of my day job (yay) – but that does mean that most nights when I get home from work, I don’t want to do anymore game development. I also just have other responsibilities. Plus, it would be unhealthy to work on this every night anyway.

So yeah, I’m going to go back to making *tiny* games. Just to actually learn Unreal Engine 5 and to warm myself up for the bigger games I’ll hopefully get to make. It’s a bit frustrating and feels counterintuitive, but I’m going to make those tiny games again. It won’t be 1 Game a Week, but they will be very small games. That feels like a lot less pressure to me, because if a game is bad, it’ll be a few weeks before I get to the next one – which will hopefully be good! I’m also no longer making a “big” game for October that I feel needs to justify the months of work on it. The risk is a lot lower.

So yeah, that’s it! tl;dr I’m going to make tiny games every couple of weeks. The goal is to build up my experience in Unreal Engine 5 until I’m comfortable enough to start expanding to larger games. I’m also going to put the Blender projects on hiatus until around October.

This post was a bit of a ramble but I just needed to write this down somewhere public, to give myself permission to work on smaller games again. If you’re interested in seeing some small weird games in the coming months, keep an eye on this blog.

As always, thanks for reading my post and I hope you have a great day!

Blender Project: Ocarina of Time

thereccyLeave a comment

Continuing on from my Master Sword render in January, I decided to continue with a Zelda theme for my next project. I thought the Ocarina of Time was going to be fairly simple to create, but to be honest it was a real struggle. My main issue was topology, specifically trying to handle the holes and the Triforce.

My original plan was to make the Triforce part of the same mesh as the Ocarina, except that it was embossed into the material. It took me a few evenings and I just couldn’t figure out the topology for it, which is a shame.

I also decided to use the subdivision surface modifier for this render as practice. I didn’t really enjoy it. I found playing around with the mesh to make the subdivided render look correct was very tedious. Also it doesn’t really match what I want to do with 3D modelling, which is to be able to make simple game meshes. I did use the subdivision surface for this project, but in the future I’m going to just do standard modelling.

After scrapping the original project after a few days, I made a simpler version where the Triforce was simply a different object on top of the Ocarina. It doesn’t have the effect I wanted, but it still looks okay.

Trying to model the holes was frustrating too, but I at least learned about using Loop Tools in Blender. These are a set of extra tools that includes a way to turn a vertex into a circle. I used this to create the circles where the holes should be, then I extruded them in, scaled them and transformed them to give the illusion that you’re looking inside the Ocarina. In reality, it’s just a cylinder.

I made some very simple materials, and added an animation. And here we are!

The Ocarina of Time spinning around.

I really did want this project to turn out better. I was just stretched for time this month and ran into so many weird topology issues that I couldn’t quite hit the bar I wanted. I haven’t even started prototyping the game I want to make, so I’m going to take a break from Blender until after I release my game. Hopefully that means I’ll finish the remaining 9 renders after October, and I’ll have gained more Blender experience by making the simpler assets for my game.

If you’re reading this and you have any advice or comments on how I could have made this render better, please let me know! I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

Blender Project: Master Sword

thereccy2 Comments

For my second blender project this year I wanted to try and make the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda. I’m very happy with how the model turned out, but I wish I could have made the render look a bit more polished. Currently I’m working on an underpowered laptop because of my move to the UK. This has made the iteration times very long between test renders, so I didn’t have the time or processing power to learn how to make more photorealistic materials.

I’m happy with how the glow turned out, although perhaps it’s a bit too much? Either way I think it looks pretty cool. I’m sure there’s a lot to be done with the lighting and composition to make it a more interesting render, but I’m happy with how it turned out from the perspective of a beginner.

I thought it would also be interesting to upload some WIP pictures where you can see how I refined the shape of the Master Sword and then began adding the simple BSDF materials.

The middle ones have quite subtle changes – they’re mainly subdivision surfaces and changes in lighting. I also was originally going to try rendering the Master Sword resting in the stone, but I decided against it since I didn’t have enough time. I got what I wanted from this project and overall I’m quite happy with it!