The Rise of Dagon main menu now in Unity 5 PBR!

So I've been wanting for a long time (yeah about 1 year) to create a compelling main menu screen for The Rise of Dagon RPG that I've been working on.

It's something that I knew would take a lot of energy and talent .. perhaps more talent than I actually have.

Fortunately things came together the past two weeks between Unity 5, Mudbox, Substance Painter and Silo 2 3D tools that I have.

Oh yes and a crap ton of very time consuming and difficult art production!

While it does look good I actually had a few problems with it. The main problem near the end was the PBR textures metallic values are not coming across in Unity 5 as I expect.

Check out the main menu as seen above - then check out this screenshot of the shield as being textured in Substance Painter the metallic rim around the shield - and the pounded bronze metallic sun in the middle are dramatically different!

After some Googling I found suggestions that perhaps I had not placed reflection probes or light probes in my scene (I hadn't) and that those might fix it (they didn't!).

In the end I was not able to figure out how to get the metal's to look even remotely accurate but I hope over time with future experimentation that I will figure that out. (but hey if you have some ideas leave me a comment I'd love some tips!)

I will say Substance Painter was a real pleasure to work with once I figured out how to do the layer masking (seen in upper right hand corner) it was really slick and easy to work with!  As long as you have 'substances' (similar to a material) to paint with you are ready to do some truly impressive texturing with some of the most powerful and awesome tools I've ever laid my hands on.


Also I had hoped to cause the text of "The Rise of Dagon" to glow or have some other interesting particle effects as I purchased Particle Playground 2 -- but I ended up having significant problems there too -- apparently to do the particle effect with a sprite you have to mark it as read/write enabled and turn it in to an 'advanced' import type in the Unity import settings for the sprite and then set all the settings yourself manually.

I was able to do all that - but somehow only the bottom half of the text showed up and I was running out of time to post my shot today for #screenshotsaturday so I went with what I have for the moment!

So despite the fact that it looks quite spiffy -I do sincerely hope to make it even better and leverage the learning experiences in making it towards making The Rise of Dagon look even better!

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

How I implemented my first spell in to my Unity based RPG

Today I'm going to do something I haven't done before: attempt to share my complete implementation of a feature (my Spell system) in my Rise of Dagon RPG (made in Unity 3D) including some source code!

I know of course I'm no bloody genius and my code hasn't any unique ideas in it - in fact if your a particularly great coder you can probably spot some things I've done poorly.  (hey if so drop me a note - I'd love to make improvements!)

But also I hope that a few people might find it interesting - maybe you haven't gotten in to the new Unity UI, maybe you are just starting out on an RPG and seeing how someone else went about it will help you think your way through yours?

Maybe my game's code is a train wreck - and this will be a great laugh for you?  Perhaps a great example of what not to do?

As I'm attempting to share the complete implementation - this is going to be long! So hey if your the TLDR type; pan through the screenshots and bail now!

Otherwise .. here we go!

Deeper dungeons! Oh my!

This shot points out the three levels, the wall texture makes them blend together a bit.

I've been working on the dungeon editor this past week for Rise of Dagon  ,and while the level format has always supported dungeons of multiple level depth its only been recently that I've added that support properly in to the editor as well as the player movement behaviors so you could actually go from one level to the other.

That's quite a nasty drop off to the left, don't look down!

At this time all you can do is fall down to a lower level, I have not yet implemented stairs or ladders (not sure I will actually do ladders..) but I have a prototype stair in progress and hope to have that in fairly soon.

Next up I have been continuously working on my character portraits in Mudbox and Photoshop. I've found that creating a bust sculpt of a character in Mudbox, then using the Mudbox painting tools to give the character some skin tones and color the hair in works very nicely.  Then I take a screenshot and do some post effects, add in a backdrop, and a little retouching in Photoshop.  This has been working out for me pretty well and I've put a lot of practice in to that process; and it looks like it starting to pay off to me!

Here is the 3 main steps that produce a portrait.

I'm certainly not going to win any fantasy artist awards but I am getting to the point where I'm starting to actually like the way the output looks!

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Notch invests in The Rise of Dagon development...

So before we get any further, the topic here is a spoof.  Notch has not invested in The Rise of Dagon and I have no expectation that he is even aware I exist.

But I saw a tweet from Notch here and it really stirred up a huge amount of unexpected thoughts in me that I wanted to share today.

Notch (in real life known as Markus Persson) is one of the founders of Minecraft , and sold his share in the company recently to Microsoft for a hefty $2.5 billion dollars.

After recovering from shock at both the raw number and the fact that he sold and exited the company he helped create - naturally many hopeful indie developers probably have  had a fleeting thought that Notch could be a really powerful Angel Investor / Philanthropist in the indie community and seed some incredible indie projects around the world with much needed funding - potentially causing a game production revolution single handedly.

There are all sorts of projects on Kickstarter that want small amounts like $20,000, $50,000 and so on. Notch could pick one project a month under $100,000 and be funding projects for the next 10,000+ months if he reserved 1 Billion for his philanthropist efforts right?

Sounds great, lets get to work!

But then I stopped and really thought about it.  I mean really think about it.

What if he did invest in my project .. does he get a say in my development now?

Maybe I would be willing to to have him as an executive producer for the cash influx? But what would you have to trade for an investor?

Are you really just expecting an investor to throw you a bucket of cash and say "I truly don't care what you do with my money, buy a truck of bacon for all I care?".

But I thought I was an indie? All of a sudden I'm really willing to surrender some portion of my vision - this thing I've been telling everyone else (never mind myself) that I believe in so much!! SO freaking much!

But no apparently all it takes is Markus Persson walking up with $55,000.00 and all of a sudden I'm throwing shit out the window like I don't give a damn about my game just to make him happy?

I thought this is the entire reason I'm an indie so I can do it my way?

I'm not going AAA for a reason.

I'm not looking for a publisher for a reason!

I'm not looking to sell out to make a quick buck for a reason!

Because if I was I wouldn't be slaving over this blog for a year to build a community, and grinding architecture out late at night after I get off work from my day job and after I put my kid to bed would I?

I mean its  hard, its damn hard. But am I being honest with myself if I take this kind of money??

If your going to sell out - then don't ask Notch to be your enabler. Just sell out. Go get some AAA or hell .. these days in the mobile market I'd call most of these mobile studios single A studios - go get paid. Stop bellyaching.

And then there's this other thing that hit me - that made me write this.

Get this .. if Notch did invest in my project (or yours) then all of a sudden everyone would know (because of course you would proudly tell everyone someone so awesome as Notch invested in you right??)

So now .. everyone is looking at your project all of a sudden.  Everyone is wondering to themselves "What is so cool about this project that I missed - it's got to be there, Notch saw it!"

And everything will change; just because he invested.  Even if it was some small amount like $5000.00 dollars.

$5000.00 won't make a dent in my project; but the press attention, the community exposure, the freaking twitter storm?  You can't buy that kind of exposure!

So now - the world has changed ; you are on the map now man! All because Markus threw you a 5k drop in the bucket.

But every time someone sees your tweet - its in the back of their head and they are going to pay you one more notch of attention (no pun intended :-).

And when your game finally ships - you know all the news sites are going to mention that this is the game that Notch invested in right?

And lets say (for fantasy or arguments sake - take your pic) that your game ships and is a financial success.

When you sit back afterwards and the a euphoria has worn off  are you going to pat yourself on the back and tell yourself how right you were all along?  How your game's vision was just so awesome that it was destined to succeed no matter what? How great of a designer you are?

Or maybe, just maybe might you start to wonder - what would have happened if Notch never did invest?

Would anyone have ever noticed you?

This is your chance of getting noticed in the mobile market place today

Would anyone care about your project?

And to me that's heavy shit. I've dreamed of making this RPG for a long time.  But if I had to attribute all of its success to someone else's fame and investment rather than my effort, my design, my dream - to me that would be a bitter pill to swallow and I sure as hell wouldn't be patting myself on the back.

So in the end that little dream many of us have of someone swooping in and solving all of our financial woes when it comes to production doesn't feel as sweet to me as it sounds.

Finally  I admit even with doubts I am expressing here;  I can not dismiss the possibility of investors or crowd funding or other sources of income to supplement my development are interesting and would need to be carefully considered for their reward vs their impact on the project.

I (like many of you) wish I could have a self sustaining business and do this for the rest of my life - as I've been doing on the side for 20 full years.

But Notch buying my success with his personal gravitas is no recipe for sustainability. It doesn't make my studio in to a gold minting machine.

What happens when he doesn't invest in my next game?  Then, all of a sudden, I'm getting 1/4 of the sales and attention? Does my studio go out of business?

As indie's we have to find our way to sustainability, usually on our own.

And so I close with some thoughts and advice:

Do not dwell in despair over another person's success, even if it seems outrageous.

Do not overwhelm your daily sense of wonder and joy in creating games in jealousy over Markus's billions.

Do live in the moment, find joy in creativity, hope for wonderful things, and put a little bit of your heart in your game every day.

When you finally finish I hope you find a sense of satisfaction and a job well done, perhaps a few moments of truly uplifting euphoria - the kind that money can't buy.

Walk the path you've chosen without hope or despair, just simply enjoy the journey, sometimes that's all you get.