New Images

I've finally worked through a concept sketch for Caitlyn and Doug. I've also improved the quality of the concept for Alitheia. Please see the Images Page.

A lot more scenes and interlinking

Since the last posting, I've created a lot more unity scenes in the prototype that will equate to game levels. I have yet to fully develop these scenes, but for now I'm stringing them together via coded prefabs to let the player warp from one to the other and explore each on a very basic level. I'm just taking care of the essentials in a crude form right now: put in lights, sculpt out and paint in some rough terrain, throw in a placeholder song, and test that the warppoints and spawnpoints work as expected. I've also further developed several key songs for the game with Dennis Latina, which are coming along quite nicely! On the data end of things, I've setup starter objects for most of the game's major players, bosses, and songs inside of the ORK toolkit. So, the recent round of progress is not terribly visually stunning, but necessary for the game's development. Oh, and I completed a first draft of my marketing research for ASF. I will post that to the blog very soon.

World Map Terrain is almost complete

I have built a world map terrain from a heightmap and so now I have a unity scene with a "life size" terrain of the entire world of A Signet Forever in the game. I have placed the oceans, cities, major sites, and most of the mountains and topographical features onto it. I have a working airship for the player to cruise around it and I've optimized it's properties so that it has what I feel is the proper amount of speed, turning speed, vertical speed, drag, angular drag, and so forth. Also, I am almost done setting up scene changers around the cities so that you enter the city when you collide into the city with the airship. I still have a few more programming tweaks to make for that to get it right. Then I still need to set up the warp areas on the north, south, east, and west borders of the world so that when you drive into the northern border, you reappear from the southern one, creating the illusion that you are circling the globe and coming around from the other side.

The Word is Getting Out there

I'm excited to see the first mention of the ASF project in another blog today! My good friend Philip Nelson has created a new blog called The Tower Perilous that discusses books (especially books dealing with matters of faith). Philip has given me a lot of tremendous feedback on the first book in the ASF series and is a writer of the first degree. Like me, he writes Christian fantasy, so if you like A Signet Forever, you'll definitely like his stories, as well.

Doing More with ORK

I'm currently trying to get an airship flying properly in my game. Actually, right now it's a helicopter, not an airship. I have the flight controls working, but I need to figure out how to deliver control from the player to the vehicle and back. This is a technical challenge for me right now. Besides for this, I've made several placeholder status effect icons, and I've entered a whole lot more skills, status effects, and formulas that the battle system will need. I've also learned how to extend the menu system and event system of the ORK framework.

A Whole Slew of Progress

Wow, did buying ORK really make things faster! In just 2 days, I've created all my status types and items, and several of my skills and weapons in the Unity ASF prototype. In fact, prototyping the game out is so fast with ORK that I'm probably going to stop prototyping in RPG Maker XP altogether and just put everything in Unity now. ORK is lacking some features that ASF will need, but I'm confident that some of those features will be added into later releases, and I will customize the toolset to build in the ones that aren't.

I bought ORK for Unity

I just bought a framework for Unity called Okashi RPG-Kit. It has an impressive set of features and editors to make creating RPGs much easier inside the Unity Game Engine. I have already begun to teach myself this framework and I'm very impressed with its power and flexibility. This will make A Signet Forever much easier to program! I hope to port my prototype from my current version over to this in the coming weeks. The good news is that this version doesn't rely on sqlite, but on xml files, so I can compile a version that will work without the Unity IDE. This means I can finally post my prototype on the blog for download! I'll post it as soon as I create it.

New Team Members

Dennis Latina recently joined the ASF team to arrange music for the game. He has already converted my hummed version of "Waiting" into a nice piano score. He plans to add in the violin and other suitable instruments and effects next. I will showcase the sound file here on the site after we produce a number of songs and get them copyrighted as a group.

Nathan Petersen has also joined the team and will create 3D models. His first project will be to model, texture, and rig Alitheia.

Both Dennis and Nathan are very good at what they do and I'm excited to see their final products!

New Concept Sketches Posted!

Please check out the images page of this blog. I have added 2 new sketches: one of Alitheia and one of King Esarhaddon. I've been tinkering with designs for Caitlyn's outfit, but haven't settled on anything yet. I'll post it when I get that one right.

Latest stuff

Here's another list of stuff I've done:

• Drew a sketch of Alitheia - this time I'm satisfied with the outfit I designed for her.
• Created many more maps in RPG Maker XP for the ASF 2D prototype.
• Made good progress on the outline for book 4 of the series.
• Spent another 10 hours learning 3DS Max and over 3 hours learning Maya.
• Worked on the design of the ASF logo.
• Wrote another 15 songs, including a theme song for Caitlyn.
• Bought the Academic version of the Autodesk Suite. Began familiarizing myself with Motionbuilder, Mudbox, and SoftImage.
• Practiced making textures in Photoshop using the 3D Game Textures book.
• Networked much more to try to find more talented people willing to help with the project.

I would have accomplished much more than this if I didn't have a take home Calculus II test that took me over 13 hours to complete last weekend. What I major life event that was for me.

Focus on Art

For the last few weeks, I've been really focusing on improving my art skills, and making more concept art for the game. Here's what I've done:

• Spent 6 hours practicing drawing the human figure and face, with an emphasis on various postures and perspectives
• 12 hours working through Lynda.com video tutorials on 3DS Max - 3d modeling, texturing, and lighting
• A lot of practice texturing a human head in 3DS Max.
• Made a few detailed area maps of Catharsia - outdoor areas around Valtiar.
• Created rough concept sketches of Danasche, Gninrom's Palace, and Eliason's keep.
• Read the first 100 or so pages of 3D Game Textures by Luke Ahearn.

Stuff I've done besides art:

• Wrote over 20 new songs
• Began high-level event planning
• Planned out many more items, skills, and gameplay ideas.
• Taught myself to make games for the Android using Java and the Android SDK.

Slow and Steady Progress

I've written about 20 new songs for the game since my last post, done a bit more recruiting for the project, and I'm almost halfway through outlining book 4 of the series. Not bad for 2 weeks, I suppose. I've also gone back to debug some minor annoyances from the prototype of the game in Unity. Oh yes, I have also started to make a quick prototype of the game in RPG Maker XP, just to get a sense of balancing character stats with enemy stats, funds awarded against equipment costs, and where to place buildings in relation to one another. This mini-prototype will also help me evaluate what songs to put where and may even point out the need for songs that I didn't previously realize I needed. I'll make downloadable executable files of this available once I get it a little further along.

I can play a few of my songs now

I started back practicing the piano this week. It's been a lot of fun. I've managed to figure out how to play a few of the songs I've composed for A Signet Forever on it. Well, the basic notes anyhow. I haven't started with chords yet. That's the next step. Also, D.J. Davis and I worked on many of the songs yesterday and I'm excited to see how well the music comes out when we get all the instruments together and we put some polish on the compositions. After we get the songs to a high enough level of production, I'll submit a batch of them with the Library of Congress to get copyrighted. After that takes effect, then I might post a few for download here on the blog. Stay tuned. (Pun intended - I usually intend my puns)

Book 3 Outline is Complete

I finished outlining book 3 last night. I'm very pleased with it. It'll be fun to write. Too bad that won't happen for quite some time! Sorry I can't divulge the outlines here, but that would spoil the story for everyone. I'll just say that the end of book 3 has some clever surprises coming from both the good guys and the bad guys. I've just started on the outline for book 4 and I'm already excited about it.

The Movie Inception

I saw the movie Inception this past weekend and really enjoyed the plot line about dreams within dreams. But, my books have that idea in them, too. I wonder if people will accuse me of stealing that idea from the movie? I hope not, since I wrote book 1 of A Signet Forever two years before Inception came out in theaters. The idea of lucid dreaming, which forms the basis for the movie, has been around for millenia, so I guess I'm not alone with using not-so-original ideas. It's funny that I didn't know anything about lucid dreaming until years after I wrote ASF. I had no idea that a similar concept already existed. Still, my rendition of dreams within dreams is quite different from that of Inception and lucid dreaming, so I do retain a thin strand of originality.

New songs

I've written a few new songs, including what I think might be the song to be played in Danasche. I've also taken many songs I've previously recorded on my cell phone and have re-recorded them into my computer via Audacity. I have them stored as .aup project files and .wav files. Now, if my cell phone is lost or broken, I won't lose all those compositions forever! The next step is to make a basic score for each of these in noteflight.com. That will take me some time since I'm a bit slow with my musical tablature.

New stuff on this site!

I've just put a new page on this blog: "Why ASF?" See the link at the top. This page has a marketing statement for the book and game that you can share with friends, family, and possible developers and investors in order to help spread the word about this life-changing project.

Also see the new "Images" page to get easy access to images I've posted a long time ago that are now pushed out of view. The "Needed Materials" page is a wish-list for the ASF development team. Please take a gander at that, too.

Book 2 Short Outline Complete!

I have finally finished the short outline for book 2! I haven't firmly decided the title for book 2 just yet. I'm thinking it'll be "The Ancient Branch", but I'm not positive. I've started the short outline for book 3 today. I plan to complete a short outline (10 to 15 pages) for books 3,4,5,6, and 7, and then go back and make a full, formal outline for all of them before I finish revising book 1. By the way, the subtitle I'm thinking of for book 1 is "Contest for Souls".

Planning the Rest of the Series

I've begun outlining the entire series of A Signet Forever books. I'm planning to make 7 books in total, and it's my goal to create a 30 page outline for each one before I bring the first book to print. That means I've got 180 pages of story planning to do for the next 6 books. The good news is, I've already outlined the first half of the next book. I got a blast of inspiration two nights ago from an eerie dream I had and I'm going to incorporate much of it into the series. It was one of those dreams that sent me Googling to see if the technologies in it were real. Yes, I had a spooky dream about new, spiritualized technologies.

More Chapters Revised

Since I started this blog about 2 weeks ago, I've revised 9 more chapters and read the bulk of 3 more books on writing.

I'm Looking for Help!

To see a list of all the things I will need help with to finish developing the game, please see the to-do list. If you see anything you'd like to help with, please reply to this post.

Post Feedback for the Novel Here

I'm always looking for feedback for the book, both positive and negative. Please feel free to reply to this post with any comments you may have. Thanks!

Main Menu GUI for the game (rough draft)

Story Summary Statement

Rescued into Greater Danger

In a time when sea monsters made ocean travel impossible and enraged land animals drove people indoors, the Kingdom of Catharsia had long forgotten God until two young friends swore to find Him. Through being kidnapped and sword-fought and whisked away to lands thought imaginary, God found them and trained them to undo the evil forces that enslaved the brightest and most influential minds of their world.

World Map

Here's a world map for the story:

Complete List of Progress Made to Date

Here is a Complete List of All Progress Made to Date:

• Rough Prototype of ASF in the Unity Game Engine (I'll make a download available soon)
• Over 15 songs for the game are composed as rough drafts, one of them is scored out in http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/e0288eb79e6f1119a8002340b2decb2ea123cd90
• Database created in Sqlite3 and connected to the Unity Game Engine. Most character stats, items, weapons, status ailments and augments, and game save slot info tables are populated with rough draft data.
• Real life models selected for several characters: Caitlyn-Ben Ryan, Alitheia-Sarah Rowlands, Doug-Sean O'Brien
• Wrote the novel/game design document for ASF. See side panel for more details.
• Got ASF, in rough novel format, copyrighted by the US Library of Congress. I have certificate in hand!
• Menu GUI screens roughed out in Photoshop and used in the Unity Game Engine rough prototype.
• Started making overhead area maps of Catharsia, Cerulean, and Seren.
• Informally recruited the following people to help with the game: D.J. Davis-music, Ben Ryan-Concept Art, Sean O'Brien-novel review, Philip Nelson-novel review, Evan Gunther-3D art
• Drafted out a world map for ASF in color and in black and white.
• Made rough draft of a game rules and design document, including a vocab and grammar instructional plan for teaching Mandarin Chinese to English speaking players.
• Began Excel spreadsheets with character, enemy, and weapon stats calculations for the purposes of balancing out the difficulty of player advancement.
• Drafted an art assets pipeline plan for 3D artists to follow.
• Created a team agreement form and photo release form. These have not been reviewed by attorneys, but I'm confident they will do for now.
• Took panoramic facial photos of models for Alitheia, Caitlyn and Doug. Created composite facial textures with these in photoshop.
• Began modeling the head for Alitheia and Caitlyn in Blender.
• Downloaded many free and free-to-use 3D models from various websites and began optimizing them for use in the Unity Game Engine: Correcting surface normals, poly-reducing where appropriate, and replacing blender-produced materials with uv maps that will appear in Unity.
• Created the first level of a video game in Unity for ECPI that taught me a ton about game development in Unity.
• Graduated with my bachelors in Game and Simulation Programming at ECPI.
• Began rough outline for the sequel to ASF. About halfway done with it. I'm currently stuck on how to approach the climax for it.
• Prayed for an investor and God has potentially lined up a significant financial partner for ASF!

Welcome to the Workshop!

By popular demand, I've decided to post all developments for the A Signet Forever Novel and Video Game project here on this blog. Please swing by periodically to see the ongoing efforts of this revolutionary evangelism-by-video game project.