2014 will be the next generation of "Snowconesolid Games", Maybe the best?

     Hey everyone. It's been weeks since the last blog post. I feel like I should post this update to talk about what I have been up to lately in indie game development, computer graphics and what I have planned for 2014. I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about so this is going to be a big blog post.

Current project:
I will first start  from where I left off. In the previous blog post I said I was working on a new "secret" game project. After that I have not really said much about the game. It is still early in development and I do not have very much to show at the moment but I have been working on it. If you have been following my twitter or seen me on the unity forums, I have been posting screenshots and stuff from the game project often. Here is some screens from development if you have missed them.

Here is the main character from my new game that you see in those screenshots. His name is "Choco". He rides a bike and wields a large frozen fish which is used to break frozen objects.

I have also put up an alpha build of the first level from the game for you to try out. I have made a lot of changes since this build and the level you see here is completely different now so this build is kind of outdated but still its interesting to try out if you want to see how the game was going to be like earlier on.

You can try it right here Level One Alpha build
It is also up in the "Prototype/Demonstration" projects section of the blog as well.

As you can see by some of the screenshots, this game is going to be a toon styled game. My goal is to create a unique visually appealing cartoony graphic style and achieve it with this game project. Going for kind of a gravity rush and skyward sword graphic style with my own touch.

So anyway, this is my current game project at the moment. I will talk more about it down the road in upcoming blog posts. This will be my first game release of 2014. I am planning on finishing it and releasing it early 2014. So far I think its turning into a great game project. It will be a step up from my other game projects and I look forward to sharing more news about soon.


Next Gen Snowconesolid:
Now I want to talk about other things I have planned. 2014 will be the "next generation" of my games (I like to say that). So, while working on my current toon game project I have also been working on something else on the side. I am always working on and practicing improving my art skills such as 3d character models and stuff to really create great quality game assets and artwork.

Here is my newest original character model I recently finished. I call him "Nxgen Alien"

I put in a lot of work in this character model and I think its a major step up compared to my other characters that is why I decided to name it "Nxgen Alien". While my previous character models have a more toony look, this one has more of a pseudo realistic look to it.  It also fully rigged, ready to be animated and is game ready.

Here is a screenshot of the characters rig in blender, rigged with riggify.

 So the reason I am showing off this character model right now is to kind of show off how much I have improved and what you can expect from my future game projects. This is a small preview of what "next gen snowconesolid games" will look like. Actually, I do have another game project planned which this character will be in but that is for another time. But after I finish my toon game I plan on working on a more graphically realistic game project.

Here is some screenshots of my "Nxgen Alien" character in the unity game engine. I just placed him in the scene I am working on for my toon game project.

In the second image you can see two versions of the "Nxgen Alien", the one on the left is the toon shaded version with a more cartoony look and the one on the right is a more realistic version of the model using the bumped specular shader and the normal map I created to let the details of the model pop out like the warts on his head, clothes wrinkles, etc. After comparing the two I really liked the more realistic shaded version more.

I have created a webplayer that has my "Nxgen Alien" character model in it so you can have a look at the model in the unity engine yourself. I encourage you to check it out.

try it here Nxgen Alien model viewer

 (This demo is also available in the "prototype/Demonstration" projects section of the blog)








In conclusion, it looks like 2014 is going to be a really good year for "Snowconesolid Productions". I think this might be my best year as an indie dev and a chance for me to really show off what I can do with blender and unity. I think I will have some of my greatest quality game releases this year. Already I have two projects planned, my current toon styled game project and then a more realistic styled game. I am the type of person who likes to change art styles often because I think it gives me as an artist more of a challenge to try something new instead of making one art style and sticking to it. I have a lot of  goals and things planned that I want to achieve in 2014. I think its going to be a really exciting year and I am really looking forward to it.

So I guess that is all for now. This will be my final blog post of 2013 so I will see you all next year.
Hope everyone has happy holidays and a good time.
Thanks for reading. :)

New seceret game project in the works.

     Im back again!   
The title says it all folks. I am working on a new game project. I have been for the past two weeks actually. Of course, the game is still in its very very early development stages and there is not really much to show at the moment. However, I did already create a couple of important game assets for my new project such as the main character which I will be revealing in time of course.

For now, my new game project will remain a secret until I have more of it finished. Well, it's not really a secret anymore because now you know I am working on something new. If you have seen me on the unity forums or follow my tweets on twitter you might have also noticed a bunch of screenshots I posted of very early development images from my new project.  Such as this one,

and many more. What you see in the above screenshot is from one of the prototype levels I created. So nothing in it is final. I hope it gives you a good idea of what to expect though. I'll be aiming for fresh gameplay and a nice art style with this new project as it will be one of my most polished games ever.

I can't wait to reveal details about my new project and show off some screenshots from the levels in the final game. I might even have a teaser trailer out later on. Very excited about my new game project and I'm looking forward to revealing it in the future.

Stay tuned!

Forest Soup now available on Kongregate

     Hello again everyone!
As you know I released my game "Forest Soup" a couple days ago on Halloween for Windows, Mac and Linux. Since the Unity game engine is so good at deploying games across multiple platforms, I decided to also release a webplayer version of "Forest Soup". I have put the game up on Kongregate and now "Forest Soup" can be played directly in your web browser. No download required. This is good for anyone who has been wanting to play the game but for some reason could not download it.

You can play Forest Soup on kongregate HERE

There is a few things I want to say though. I still recommend downloading the game for your target platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) instead of playing the kongregate version. I say this because those versions have slightly better quality and a few other differences like the main menu and other small things. I had to make changes to the webplayer version because kongregate only allows 20mb max file size for game uploads and Forest Soup was around 30mb. So I had to reduce the graphics a bit and make a couple of changes in order to reduce the size of the game down to 19.9mb. It is still the same game as the downloadable versions and nothing major or important was changed or taken out but you will notice a few small differences in the webplayer version I have on kongregate such as graphics and menus, etc. Things I already mentioned.

So there you go. "Forest Soup" really is available for everyone now. Its now on Windows, Mac, Linux and webplayer. I guess I can say this is my first real multiplatform game. :)

Whats next?
Now I am truly done with Forest Soup. What I mean by that is, this is my final post/update about this game. Forest Soup has been my project for the past month. I finished it. I released it. I went back and released an updated version and now I am releasing it on webplayer. It has been really fun and I think my best game project yet. So now I guess its time to just let this game exists online on its own and time for me to move onto my next game ideas and projects. I thank you all for checking out "Forest Soup" and stay tuned for my future games.

see you later. :)

Forest Soup Version 2 released! Bug Fixes

   
     Hello again! Hope everybody had a great Halloween last night.
So yesterday was my big release day for my latest horror game project "Forest Soup" and everything was going good until people actually played the game. It turns out that there was a very annoying bug that made the players constantly trip and fall on their faces over and over again. This made the entire game nearly unplayable and also very un-enjoyable.

The tripping is something that I actually left in the game purposefully at first because I thought it would be funny to have the player trip and fall down randomly every once in a while when they played through the game. And when I was testing the game the character did not trip as frequently as he did in the final game. He would trip occasionally every once in a while. In the final game however it seems like there was a bug that was triggering the player to trip all the time and this made the game very annoying and just not playable.

So anyway, I am here to fix that issue. The tripping was my fault and I would of left it out of the game if I knew it was going to cause all these issues.

After getting feedback and learning what a pain this bug was I went back in and fixed it and now there is no more tripping. So everyone I bring you Forest Soup Version 2 which is 100% tripping free. So if you have already downloaded the game and tried playing it and experienced this issue I hope you give my game another chance and try out the improved version. :)

Downloads:

Forest Soup - Windows - V2

Forest Soup - Mac - V2

Forest Soup - Linux - V2

BugFixes Include:
   +No more tripping/ falling on your face bug!
   +New improved camera for skydiving level so its easier to see whats below you and where to go.


Once again sorry for the bugs in the previous release and I hope you find this new fixed version to be more enjoyable. Thank you for your time.