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Yearly Archives: 2009

Things lost in the aether

As the title suggests, I have just spent quite a long time writing a long and interesting post about all sorts of exciting things. Sadly I took so long to write this epic my session timed out and I lost the whole lot when I submitted it. This is mainly as a result of some error in my website code. I’ll put the job of fixing it on my list of things to do once I finish my time machine. So in an attempt to present at least a little of the lost content and avoid the chance of losing it all again, what follows is a simple summary in the style of an FAQ. Why so long since the last update? Shortly after the last update, the site was subjected to quite a significant breach of security (through a hole in the comment entry page) several files were added to my server and my address was used as a platform for a phishing attack on a major bank in America. Don’t worry though; Anybody visiting the site as normal would never have been in any danger from the malign content (you wouldn’t even have been aware of it). It’s …

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Outsider

Outsider is one of H.P.Lovecrafts many short stories. In many ways it’s typical of his style. A running commentary (in the first person) of a mans journey through a series of carefully described ‘indescribable’ events that ultimately end badly for him. The horror. The horror!

I quite enjoyed making this track using a freely available reading of the short story as a base (and inspiration). It’s worthy of note that this is one of the first tracks where almost the entire drum beat track was constructed a single beat at a time (rather than from sampled loops). This was mainly because I wanted something a little odd and couldn’t find any examples of it. if it’s not obvious, I’m pretty happy with this one, even after all these years.

Hot Wheels

The Hotwheels game was basically a re-imagining of the concepts used in Cartoon Network Racing; only this time we had the chance to get all next-gen with our ideas. Extra weapons replace the special powers and now we had tracks with loops and stunts. Again I got free reign over the special effects and on this occasion I could really go to town on the shiny next-gen platforms. Cue the HDR and bloom effects for the explosions and lightning. Sadly my best efforts in the effects department did not translate to a great game and so, once again, the press mauled it.

Pimp My Ride

When I first heard that we’d be making a game for Pimp My Ride my first reaction was “How?”. Its a little hard to see where a set of game mechanics can be attached to the format of the show. Luckily it wasn’t a problem I had to deal with. Instead I was charged again with the creation of all the real-time effects and this time I had a little help, i.e. I’d gone from a team of one to a team of two. The final result looks pretty enough on all its release platforms (especially the Xbox 360). Though a little short (very short) on depth. As far as procedural effects go, it features everything from fire hydrants and collision sparks to flocks of birds and scatterings of rubbish and leaves.

Street Racing Syndicate

A very very long project if nothing else. Littered with all sorts of craziness, including a change in publisher and an almost complete rewrite half way through. The final result is by all accounts pretty good if a little short on morality. I must say that street racing is not really my thing, and given the choice I’d not have made a game about it, but as its my day job I tried my best to enjoy the whole thing and do my best on everything I worked on. Since release, SRS has risen all the way up the US XBox charts, so here’s to hoping that some royalties come out of this. (edit: they didn’t)  

Big Mutha Truckers

My first introduction into programming games consoles, I came onto this project after F1 World Grand Prix I didn’t really have a specific area that I could call mine in the same way as I had on the previous project but I wrote a lot of the interfaces and some of the game core. By the time it was finished I was one of the projects lead programmers managing the rest of the programming team. Despite a change of publishers half way through, the game went on to sell over a million units all over the world, everywhere from Japan through Russia and Europe to the USA. it even spent nearly 3 months in the top 5 games in North America.

Warp Demo

A sample of my first DirectX graphics engine. Complete with scripted particle system, realtime lighting, 3DS loading, multi texturing and (as is evident here) procedural space distortions. Sadly by the time it was at this stage it could be done better in DirectX 7, and by the time I got round to rewriting it we were up to DirectX 8. something of note; all this was warping was done before the age of vertex shaders and the like. Download  

Populous 3D

A nearly complete Populous clone I made for one of my university projects, I never quite got around to finishing it as time ran out, it needed handing in and I moved onto other projects (like my dissertation). the 5000 levels are all there though, shame there’s no sound.   Notes Populous3D is an OpenGL/Glut program if you dont have glut installed get it here and stick the dlls in your windows/system folder. the map area tends to mess up on a lot of graphics cards. mainly those that don’t like OpenGL fiddling with texture. Download    

Invaders

My second full game, an invaders clone with a ship upgrading twist (not a very new twist i know). It features 256 colour hand draw animations and different aliens with different strengths. Sadly over the years since I wrote it I’ve lost the final complete 200 level version, so all you have here is a cut down 20 level demo version. A shame really. It lacks sound I’m afraid, if you’ve every tried to code for the old soundblaster you may well understand. Notes Invaders runs at 320×200 modeX resolution, also written using the borland pascal compiler, it will also fail to run unless you’ve got a 386,486 or old Pentium. It does however run very nicely in DOSbox Download

Logic

This was really my first full game, a simple puzzle game the aim of which is to push blocks onto buttons to gain access to the next level, a full 17 levels are included. On start-up I messed with the current EGA pallette to make things look nice then did so again as it went into the main game. Sadly DOSBox doesn’t like such dubious behavior so once in game the pallette now retains the colours of the title screen. Nice title screen, shame about the brownness of the game. I’ll see what I can do about that at some point. For now, here’s the title screen.   Notes Logic runs at 1024×768 resolution using a custom and dynamically updated 16 colour palette the now ancient EGAVGA borland graphics interface so if you’ve got almost any modern machine it’s unlikely to even start. On a 386/486 it runs a treat and I’ve also found it runs quite well (with somewhat reduced colour capabilities) in the excellent DOSbox   Download    

The Principles of Optics

Somtimes it’s nice to go back to basics and make sure that all the technical art skills you learnt at college have not been lost.

Interestingly this is one of the few of my paintings that I prefer in it’s digital form.

Acrylic on Canvas 34′ x 25′

PrincipleOfOptics

 

Tree Fairy

So rare is the site of the perching tree fairy that it is often speculated
by the layman that they live their whole life on the wing.
The studious and patient can, in time, witness proof to the contrary.

TreeFairy713

The Beholder

Started as a large ink sketch in the middle of 2007.  After the lines were finished (on A2), it was scanned and all the lines redone for clarity then little by little it was coloured in photoshop

Ink + Photoshop – 40 Hours

Machinea_1920x1080

 

 

Dice Fairy

The ever fickle dice fairy. I did two versions of this image, this is the full colour one (and my favorite)
It probably won’t make much sense unless your into tabletop role play, Dungeons & Dragons and the like.

Photoshop – 9 Hours

This was my first real attempt to really colour using a graphics tablet, Its turned out pretty well but I’ve really got to get quicker.

DiceFairy 527x964

Big Mutha Truckers 2

By all accounts I think that this was probably a sequel that really should not have come about. The humour that had been used in the first of the series was all but used up, so trying to squeeze another title out of it was never going to happen. This compounded by a significant dumbing down of the game mechanics and a shrinking of the game world led to ultimately to the less than perfect final result. Perhaps we were all just a little burnt out from the epic SRS project.

Efficiency

My game engine code base has really matured over the last year as it’s feature set has had to match the needs of iO during it’s development. Finally I can really play with concepts as they pop into my head. So, while I was finishing off the game progression aspects of iO a simple game idea occurred to me, and for the first time ever I could quickly throw that idea together into a game. After about 2 weeks of occasional spare time writing it and doing the simple artwork, Efficiency is the product of that idea. It’s just a ‘beat the high score’ sort of game with a few elements you might find familiar if you’ve ever played Chu Chu Rocket. I think it could most easily be described as a puzzle game involving sliding blocks. Play it and see. Note: Sadly this version contains a bug that prevents it from running on Windows 7. I’m in the process of fixing it as time permits. However, the bug is basically the entire sound system so it might be a while. Download

Mandelbrot

Small toy app to view the Mandelbrot set. Very limited functionality, right mouse button pops up the menu to start rendering and clicking on the image zooms to that location. addictive in a “ooh I wonder what that bit looks like” kind of way. Notes Mandelbrot is an OpenGL/Glut program if you don’t have glut installed get it here and stick the dlls in your windows/system folder. Download

Assassin

By sketching repeatedly through layers and layers of fine tracing paper, this steadily went from a rough skeleton of a robot with a gun to the lines for what you see here. I traced the final lines onto a sheet of paper and shaded the result. I’m really quite happy with how it turned out.

Pencil A4

Assassin

 

Warmachine

1995 – Pencil – A4

Mechanoid soldiers and the dogs of war – eventually even genocide will be automated.

Another piece of work that’s a few years old. Its inspired a painting by an artist I can sadly no longer remember the name of. Stated here because even if nameless, I feel he should get some credit.

WarMachine

Gun Girl

Very cartoon (read “anatomically creative”) A piece of work from a many years ago now. It’s been said that she bares a resembalance to Lara Croft. I don’t mind but Its not intentional.

Gungirl