New Monitor on the Way!

Ok lame update. I have a 21" wide-screen Dell UltraSharpe. Picture/quality has been great for years. Still great, so much so that I never felt it was really worth it to upgrade. So I always work on a smallish screen. Welp today's different. UDK is hard to work with only 1 screen. With all the window optimizing, and customizing in Maya I got along pretty well. UDK doesn't have nearly the same, so you're always closing, minimizing and looking for windows.
My second monitor, will be my new first, a 24" Dell UltraSharp U2412M that I got with a techbargins cupon code for $319 ($354 shipped) I'm happy. I dreamt about a 27" or 30" but still way too expensive. 24" is the perfect compromise for me for size/screen quality/price.

Eat3D iOS Mobile Game Production DVD Review

Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong knocks it out with this one. I'd say Eat3D's iOS Mobile Game Production DVD is the best DVD so far for UDK, altho not for beginners. If you've gotten a good foundation in UDK then this is well worth the money. Every video has something or lots of things to add to or build on your pre-existing knowledge. 

I'm going so far as to give it 5 stars! It was 4-4.5 until the last 2 where he goes over The Ball iOS conversion, such great valuable information I highly recommend this DVD. 

I'd love to see him (or whoever does it for/with him) do Enemy/Bots/AI the only thing "missing" from this series. I say "missing" in quote b/c its not really missing just something else I'd love to see a series on. 

Fixes 'n Tweaks

Fixed the anim tree last night, so the tail now moves with him in a semi-dynamic looking way, or based on direction. Added blocking volumes, and removed the wall paneling that I felt wasn't worth the modeling. I'll do something better but for now I have just flat walls.

Tonight, updating Skeletal Mesh with new model/texture that was the second paint over.

GamePlay 10/17/11 Update

Getting things together, was mainly focusing on the visual quality. Still a ton of things to do of course. Next up is getting Pollock character update to the new mesh and texture. Get his anim tree back to the point it was before where there was better tail reaction. Along with all the level tweaks to get it up to par.

...then Bots and AI.

Re-Paint Take 2

So why care about re-painting the character now? Why not just keep pushing forward and making game plan 'n such? Good questions, well I've gotten to a new point where I'm happy and am pushing forward on the game. I wanted to get closer with the main character b/c his style will set the tone and look of the world he lives in. While I have some more ideas and things I want to do this is good for now. My friends (mostly Sergio Santos) at work gave me some good notes, and helped shape the direction.

I've been also reading up on what it takes to make enemies, after I get this level and textures into Unreal and all things back playing (this weekend) Enemies are the next up.

Pollock Re-Paint

Been working on colors and baking AO + GI but so far that's not looking good, here's the current re-paint

I wanted to get that dark patch working on the nose, which was harder than it may look here. Its getting there but not "there" yet. I'm going to move on to other things, you know, its a process.

Side Note: Early Inspiration

After going to IndieCade this weekend, I was reminded of the first games I played on my dads Atari, it was a desktop computer, something along the lines of this:

can't say for sure since I was 5 years old at the time, but you get the idea. Anyway the 2 games I remember playing was (after searching and finding either the closest thing in my memory or actually the game) "Rogue" or "Roguelike" or "Super Roguelike" hah, I remember it looking like this but being black and white so... who knows but it looked like this

The other game was "Battlezone" or something like it but looked a heck of a lot like this either way, but I also remember that being black and white. 

Could it be that our computer was black and white monitor? could be, I don't care to research it to that depth, but I wanted to share my earliest game experiences, that still are genres that I love, FPS and Dungeon Crawlers/hack 'n slash, altho I don't get in the mood for hack 'n slash very often, it needs to be more RPG than just simple hack 'n slash.