I went to Pax East last Friday and took some pictures.  You can see them here…

PAX EAST 2012 PICTURES

It was my first time going and I was not disappointed.  The original plan was to visit as many game development seminars as possible, but I caved in and became a giddy consumer instead.  There’s so much to see and do in the expo hall – no wonder they offer 3 day passes.  Next year, we’ll be getting those!

PRE-ORDER NOW!

The other day I went to a local comic shop in search of a new game I can play at lunch with some co-workers of mine. At the time, we had a few versions of Fluxx and (vanilla) Munchkin. But I wanted to add some good ol’ D&D to the mix. I was thinking about whipping up a tighter version of Encounters with miniatures and stuff, but that never came to fruition. I thought anything D&D-based would be out of the picture until I stumbled upon this little gem…

It’s a really simple, fast-paced dice game that involves 3-6 players, who each control a random adventurer in a tavern brawl.  Depending on the result of your dice roll, you’ll be either tossing a chair at a person to your right, throwing a punch at the person to your left, or using a unique “power” on the person with the most victory points.

Apparently, this game came out in 2007.  I’ve never heard of it before now – otherwise, I would’ve bought it a long time ago!

So if you’re in the market for some fun and quick tabletop gaming, I highly recommend D&D Inn-Fighting.

Hey Everyone,

I don’t know how many of you know about this, but there’s this sweet indie film being worked on about the greatest Dungeon Master…EVER!

OFFICIAL SITE

Awesome – can’t wait to see it!

Hey Everyone,

Long time no blog! The modding scene has been pretty slow lately. Lots of great games coming out, just nothing solid in the tools dept. Bummer… eh?

So I recently decided to take a serious shot at modeling a next-gen asset. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I asked Jonny to pretend he was a client who needed something. Turns out, his game was missing an Old Medieval Wall – So I got right to work!

Phase One:

I exported a simple rectangle from 3ds max and imported it into Zbrush. From there, I subdivided the model to around 5.2 million polygons and started the painstakingly slow task of carving out each individual stone. I must say, it felt like the good old days of shaping terrain.

Phase Two:

I used some global modifiers like Inflate and Noise to bring out the shape and course look of the stones. Two simple modifiers can make such a big difference when the settings are right…

Phase Three:

From there, I went back to some final detailing on the mesh before texturing. For the textures, I used simple rock and dirt photos from cgtextures.com. One of the hardest parts for texturing this thing was applying the Masks so that only certain parts of the model would receive information. Once I nailed that, the rest went pretty smoothly…

Final Phase:

Now it was time to take this high poly stuff and apply it to a low poly model so it can be used in games. Remember, the sculpt was around 5.2 million. But anyways, Jonny had a huge hand in this part because I’ve never done it before. We used TeamViewer so he could take over my machine and show me what to do. The program that strips this all down and takes the ache out is called xNormal. It extracts all sorts of maps from your high poly model (normals, ambient occlusion, cavity, etc.) and applies them to a low poly version. Here’s the low poly version (around 500 polygons) inside the Unity engine.

As you can see, the normal maps hold up well to the few lights I stuck in front of it. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. I don’t believe it’ll get any use in NWN2. Maybe something up the pipeline…

Next Assignment:

So now Jonny’s new assignment is to work off some concept art. He sketched this up real quick and sent it my way. Looks like a cool chest. I hope I can do it justice. I’ll post another workflow thingy when I’m done.

Hello everyone, I know its been a while since we’ve posted anything here, but I wanted to share with everyone that we have released Grokion on Kongregate today which is available here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/DodoDomination/grokion-inception This means you can play it for free

If you like it, please rate it, a high rating will help us greatly in developing the second chapter as well as the third down the road.

Thanks for all the support!

We’re psyched to announce that Grokion: Inception is now available on the App Store for $0.99!

http://itunes.apple.com/app/grokion/id375585053?mt=8

Hello Friends – it’s been awhile!

I’ve got a couple of Original Soundtracks for you:

Download Misery Stone OST

All of the original music from Misery Stone can now be yours.  It also includes a Bonus Track too heavy for theaters… I mean, the module – Sweet!

Download Grokion OST Vol. 1

This is the OST for our upcoming iPhone/iPod Touch game, Grokion: Inception.  I composed & recorded it on a  2G iPod Touch using an app called Music Studio.  The small keyboard was a bit tricky to get used to, but being able to pace & compose was awesome – I love to pace!

I hope you guys enjoy the tunes!

Here is a Gameplay Trailer for the upcoming iPhone/iPod game we’re working on.

Patching the Stone:

I’m pulling the team back together for some patch work.  Zach is on board for some additional writing and companion interaction.  Laurence has been helping out with some bugs, and I’m taking care of the small stuff like minor bugs, encounters, balance, etc.

We’re going to try and put as much work in to make it worth a replay, so it’s going to take some time.  There’s been a lot of feedback and we want to address as much as we can.  At this point, we’re probably looking at mid-march, give or take a few weeks.

The module has been really well received so far.  It means a lot to know we’ve created something people are really enjoying.  We want to thank all of those who took the time to come back to comment and/or vote.

Polishing the Biosphere:

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far from Firglore, Jonny and I have been wandering around the Lunar Biosphere with our overalls and paint brushes – polishing up the place for a March opening. On one of our breaks, we decided to take a look around and stumbled into the main character’s dressing room. We started toying around with some of his cool stuff (like a grenade launching arm cannon – no Jonny, I will not pull your finger with that on…) when suddenly, we heard the sound of heavy metal stomp in behind us – and there we saw him…

Say ‘Ello to our Lil’ Friend!

LDU-1  stood there in his awesomeness.  As I looked, all I could see were our melting faces in his reflective mask.  But he was totally cool and we talked about the lame superbowl half-time show and how hard it is to find a good pub on the moon.

We’re almost done with the iPhone game we’ve been working on – Alex ported a demo build to the iPhone and it’s Slick – the fluidity of the controls is something people will notice right away if they’re used to playing sidescrollers on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  For those who’re interested, it will be on the appstore no later than March – more updates to come!

Some WIP Screenshots