New Screenshots

I've been working really hard to write a story for my new game, as well as create maps for it. Right now there's only one map, and so to show you guys what I've been up to - here are some screenshots:

Hope that helps. This level is most likely not going to be used in the final cut of the game and was created more for testing, but who knows.

Sincerely,
Blake Gillman

The last 5 months

It's amazing how quickly time flies! It honestly felt like I released Deep Space only a couple months ago yet here we are nearly 5 months later.

So what has Blake been up to in all that time? Well, its been a rollercoaster of things. In that time I've gone through project after project and each time getting depressed, because I'm not doing what I want to be doing.

After Deep Space I started working on voxel-based procedural generating for the first time, which came in the form of a project called "Deep Sea" where you were going to build a submarine and do missions on an alien world:

But soon after I decided I didn't like the setting and decided to take on something more ambitious - Perlinia! Cube World was absolutely one of my favorite games to play with my friend when I was younger and its been really sad seeing it get no development. So I set out to make my own voxel-based RPG!

An unreleased screenshot of the player with equipment on

An unreleased screenshot (from the editor's point of view) of
"Point of Interest" locations being determined (Spots where things
like cities or dungeons might spawn)

It was loads of fun and taught me a lot about optimization, but I just didn't see it as something I could complete in a reasonable amount of time.

I worked on a ton of other projects during this time too. Far too many to give a full explanation on each one so here's a breakdown:

Project_War2 - A turn-based strategy game set in a medieval/fantasy setting

A recreation of DOOM but with COD Zombies mechanics (Made for a Game Jam)

An RTS where you pick a faction in a civil war and fight over the country

A Unity editor extension I named "Ultimate Stealth Engine" that I was going to sell, it'd allow people to make stealth games easily inside of Unity3D

A SimCity game where you play as the Klingon Empire (This one was made as programming practice - never intended to release)

A menu concept for the civil war RTS

Some work on RTS procedural generating

Some work on RTS procedural generating

A low-poly "Men of War" strategy game - this was the map editor
I was making for it

That list is in no particular order - a lot of it is out of place. But as you can see I haven't been idle these last ~5 months. Its been nothing but hard work, yet here I am without a game to show you! During all these projects the process has been the same:

1) Think of something big
2) Try to reduce it to a reasonable size that could be completed in a reasonable amount of time
3) Get a few days (or even a week) into making it then wonder who would ever play it
4) Get depressed
5) Spend a few days trying to come up with a new idea
6) Restart the process

Each time I did this I got more and more depressed and it took longer and longer for me to recover. After all those projects though I finally said 'fuck it'. I recognize that what I'd been doing wasn't making me happy - so I decided to go back to my roots, what made me want to do game development in the first place? What are the games that I enjoy the most?

The first thing that popped into my mind was Final Fantasy 12 & Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Both for PS2). The story, the narrative - but I think above all else: the company. Maybe on its own Baldur's Gate isn't quite the game I think of as groundbreaking, but I'll never forget the endless hours I spent with my brother fighting over loot and questing. Although as someone without access to a console & PC's not exactly having good couch-gameplay ability I knew that I was more limited. So I decided to set out on telling a story.

I knew that I couldn't create quite the grand epic of a game like Final Fantasy 12 (due to all the amazing worlds in my head being way more graphically complex than I'm capable), but I did know of another game which featured a grand story and was singleplayer too - Half Life.

I never played the original Half-Life but I do own Half-Life 2 & Episode 1, 2 & Lost Coast. I only played these games recently (May 2018), but they were still loads of fun. It really got me thinking about old vs modern scene design & storytelling.

So now, I've finally decided - I'm going to work on a singleplayer grand story game. A lot of people give games crap for being linear, but I still think they're great - they let the writer express a rich and colorful story and that's exactly what I want to do. Finally, I'm going to start work on one of those grand projects you think about when first getting into game development.

Everyone has their set of 'dream games' when they get into game development. I've got 3, and now it's time to finally cross one off - after 5 years of work in this field, it's finally time to create the grand journey I've always dreamed of creating.

I'm not quite sure what the story will be - but I was so excited I started work on a concept level:

I'll be posting any future updates to this blog!

Sincerely,
Blake Gillman