Areia rangers exploring the lands around Jotheim, the main town of Durno.
Concept illustrations. Durno soldiers.
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Monthly Archives: April 2013
Concept illustrations. Celea soldiers.
Fierce people, able to walk over the golden sand of the desert without feeling pain or harming their feet, the soldiers of Cêlea march to battle with a short lancet to keep their enemies away, and protect themselves with golden bucklers whose reflection they use in order to blind their enemies under the sun of the dessert.
Concept illustrations. Tamvaasa explorers.
Concept illustrations. Khärn warriors march into battle.
Warriors of the Bäzhl tribe march into battle under the red sun.
From the very beginning (II): Perforce and UDK
Hi there!
In the first “From the very beginninng” post (http://thebladeremains.com/blog/from-the-very-beginning-redmine/) I spoke about some of the different software options available for project management. But, when talking about videogames, a version control software is a much more important issue.
When we started to think about Skara development, it was easy to decide which versions controller software to use. As long as we want to develop our game with Unreal, Perforce was the only valid option. UDK supports integration with Perforce, and even commits from UDK editor.
But let me tell you the truth: To be honest, Perforce hasn’t got any magic inside it. It works properly well but, for sure, it is not the best version controller I’ve used. It is everything but intuitive, and once you start to use it, you soon realize there are a lot of issues in which Perforce relies on the good practices adopted by the users.
We will speak about those practices later, and probably one of our programmers will be the most indicated person to do it. But for now, I will tell you about perforce installation.
Perforce installation
- First of all, you need to download Perforce server from Perforce web (http://www.perforce.com/)
- Install it on a machine. It will work better if it is a server, such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012.
- Install Perfoce client on the client machines.
- You will need to edit Perforce typemap in order for Perforce to automatically detect which files stored in the server are binary or text data. (If you need more information about this step, or step 5, I fully recommend to visit this web)
- Besides, as long as we will be using Unreal Engine, we will need to add those UDK specific extensions.(.u, .uc, .upk, .udk).
- Finally, enable source control in UDK. This can be done editing the file DefaultEditoruserSettings.ini in your folder UDK/UDKGame/Config.
- Be careful with your binaries folder. It shouldn’t be versioned, given that there are some files wich are machine dependant, and UDK installation does not run properly if this folder’s content is replaced with the versioned binaries folder content. So far, we haven’t found a better solution. And we’re not very proud about this one, so, if anyone can throw this light on it, any idea will be welcomed.
Anyway, this have been a quick guide with only a few steps and some indications. If you’re really interested in this subject, you should…er, no, you must visit this tutorial in gameindustry.com. The truth is it wasn’t so easy as this seven steps to have Perforce and UDK running together…
Good luck and have a nice day!
Concept illustrations. Fight among the trees.
A Shinse warrior facing a Durno soldier among the trees of Kerta, one of the main city of Taamvasa.
Art pre-production. Celea concept art
In the southern lands of Skara, the people of Celea has established its dominance over the whole coast territory. Breed of sailors, the warriors of Celea wear bronze armors and big shields to repel enemy attacks, while menace their rivals from distance with long spears.
Celea troops are organized and effective, and approach the enemy in closed regiments, protecting every brother in arms with their shields. They are lethal in the middle distance with their long spears, but also with the bows, which they use with accuracy to decimate the enemies before direct confrontation.
Our concept artist Maki Planas created this amazing illustration of a Celea´s fighter, wearing a light bronze armor and the distinctive spear of the Enlora realm.
From the very beginning: Redmine
¡Hi there!
How’s it going guys? Well, I know it’s been a long time since I wrote my last post, but I’ve had to cope with some issues here at Skara headquarter which have kept me quite busy.
Yeah, I’m the Game Designer, and that sounds pretty cool. At least, so it sounds for me. The whole day talking and arguing about such questions as “How fast will the characters run?”, “Where do we put this stone?” or “Which character will be the strongest one?”. But before we came to that, there were a few thing that had to be done, and I was the one who had to do it. As long as we’re trying to make of this blog something useful for all of you dealing with your first game development, I’ll try to refer how to do it, and what you will need in order to have everything ready to start developing. So, there we go, first of all… Project management!
When you’re trying to develop a big game, you soon come to realize that you need some sort of management software. There are a few alternatives that you may consider. Let me tell you about them:
Pivotal Tracker: A really good choice. And even better if you’re using scrum with your team. The bad point is that you must pay for it. And that’s not a very good idea for those of us who are starting in the industry, with lots of enthusiasm but not so much money.
Fulcrum: It’s a clone for Pivotal Tracker. I think it hasn’t been updated for a long time. But well, you´ll get almost everything you would find in Pivotal Tracker, and it’s free and opensource.
Trello: It is not opensource as Fulcrum, but at least, it is free. And it has very good point on its side that I would like to mention. There’s and App for both iOS and Android. For those working on a real company, with a physical place of its own, that may not seem very important. But for those working with their friend, from their houses, or with other real jobs, it will show up to be very useful to manage your issues while you’re traveling by train or in the tube, or even having some beers with your friends. (Yeah, we developers do that kind of things, too. Not always in our confortable caves surrounded by games and comics XDD) But well, let me warn you, on the other side, it doesn’t support bug tracking.
And finally, here we have it, the one we chose for our team:
Redmine:
It’s quite complete. It supports repository systems integration, versions management, and even holds a Wiki, so, you will not need to additionally do it yourself. It supports several projects management. Besides, it’s free and there are webs such as Bitnami (http://bitnami.com/stack/redmine) where you will find virtual machines fully prepared in order to have your Redmine system ready and running. That’s exactly what I did, and now we’ve got our Redmine working in order to manage our issues. Since then, we feel more as a serious company. We never said we aren’t, did we? Hehehe
Have a nice day!
Art pre-production. Khärn ossuary.
Inside the Khilma mountains Warriors from the Bäzhl tribe pay tribute to the Bähl goddess, the horned serpent. In the caves they accumulate bones of countless victims of human sacrifice, erecting sculptures and raising walls with the remains of the dead.
Amazing concept art from our Art Director David Güell. The 3D modellers have a lot of work to do!