RTS Project Over

Well I'm sad to say that I was fired, or as I'd like to call it "let go". No I was fired,  head of the project wanted the game released as soon as possible and I simply wasn't able to texture quick enough for him as it really isn't my strongest area.

I remained professional of course and wished him luck with his project, no hard feelings and all that, and I won't be mentioning him at all by name.

Although I can't help but feel treated a tad unfairly. Hear me out now, don't get me wrong, I'm still a student, and I still have lots to learn and there's plenty of people out there who are better than me at what I do, and so it's completely understandable that I was replaced.

However I disliked the way in which I was fired, messaged on steam, saying yeah sorry but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to let you go. No verbal warnings, no "hey can you try and pick up the pace?", just boop, gone mate. Gone.

Still I remained friendly about it all, said hey, well I worked on this model for you for 10 hours yesterday, you might as well have it, yknow? This was the Town Centre model I did earlier. To which he responded, "no the other guy's already done that". So he's had this guy working away from him, behind my back, and not letting me know, just happily letting me waste my time. Just a tad unpleasant, to know I just wasted a day.

Cheers mate.

Although I guess this does mean I can focus on other personal things and take some time to learn mudbox and get some practice with it.

I would like to end this post though stating that while the whole firing process could've been smoother, I do wish these guys all the best.

Town Centre

Next I then began work on the Town Centre, the building that would be placed on top of the "Unclaimed Settlement", which the player would then be able to use to start building a new settlement.

Comparison of the Town Centre and Unclaimed Settlement

Added Pillers and more geometry to stay in line with the Greek Architecture

Finished model of the Town Centre, unwrapped with labels on the unwrap

Some Food Stalls

I wanted the Town Centre to have a lot more detail than the Unclaimed Settlement with a water fountain, food stalls, barrels and a lot more decor around the buildings.

The model can be viewed in 3D here

Thacthed Cottage, Finished

Below is the finished model for the RTS project in all it's splendor. I am quite happy with it and how low poly I was able to make it, although it is quite obvious that I have a tilable texture on the buildings and so perhaps a creeping bit of moss is in need to add some variation to the buildings to break up the patterns.

First version of the model presented in UDK

512x512 Diffuse

512x512 Normal Map

The model can be viewed on p3d

Next building to do will be the actual Town Centre itself.

Thacthed Cottage, Texturing has begun!

So I have unwrapped my cottage and begun texturing it starting with the thatched roof, which is quite difficult as it turns out.

512x512

What I've been up to

Since my moment of silence I have been contacted by a lovely fellow by the name of Kruma on the interweb to help him in create an RTS game built on the Source engine. My role in this endeavor will be to create the buildings that the player can use to assemble their base. Still isn't character design , although I am ready to leap at any opportunity to get some experience under my belt of working within a team, meeting deadlines and ultimately have the ability to say, "yes I worked on this", and hopefully I will be proud to say so.

The game in a nutshell is an Age of Empires 2 clone however the placement of towncentres is limited to only a few locations as they must be built on top of old abandoned buildings.

Which leads me to the first model I have made for this project, an old thatched cottage to act as the abandoned building.

The blue cylinder represents a person, just to maintain scale throughout

Hopefully it'll turn out alright.