Particles - It's What I Do

Hey, everyone. If you haven't been following my blog or haven't looked at the "about me" section on the side of the page, I am a Game Design student at SCAD. This also means that I make games, but I haven't really posted anything about that on the blog yet...so...why not start now, eh?


Over the past month, I've been helping with a senior project that a few of my friends were doing. We were making a mobile game using UDK. My job on the team was the Technical Artist. As the Technical Artist, I was in charge of some of the more complex materials like water and others that involve glowing, moving, pulsing, or anything else really cool. Along with that, I was also in charge of the particles in the game. Particles are basically the special effects in a game including fire, water spraying, explosions, and other similar things. Rather than describe all of these, I have posted a video of the particles I did to make it more interesting.



Also, Dead Island releases on the 6th...which is actually in about an hour. And that's when it unlocks on Steam. I am personally pretty excited about the game because its a zombie game on a tropical island. Since tropical islands are awesome and zombies are fun to kill, this game sounds like it might be promising. But you can't judge a game until you have played it, so I will post later with my review of it.


Another thing that needs to be pointed out is a new "project" I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks or so. It can be found here http://thezombievacationjournal.blogspot.com/ . So keep an eye on that page for an update in the near future.


That's all I have for now. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know in the comments. Also be sure to follow the blog and twitter. Thanks for reading and happy gaming!

News Update

Hey, everyone! Lots of new things going on in the world of games and many of which I am pretty excited about. So let's just get to it.

First and foremost...a series I have been waiting to hear about for a few years has finally announced something big. I'm sure most people have heard of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but not everyone realizes that it is actually the fourth game in the series. A few days ago, the fifth game in the series was announced with a name, trailer, and release date!

I do not own anything in the video nor to I claim to own it.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been set to release on November 11th, 2011. That's less than a year away! Let's see if it this date will stay or change. It has also been revealed that it will use a brand new engine!

Another big thing I'm excited about is Minecraft going into Beta. If you have never played Minecraft before, click on the link and play the the classic single-player minecraft for free just to get a taste of what can be done in the game. It is currently in Alpha but will be going into Beta on December 20th! This doesn't mean the game is almost finished. In is actually far from finished. The developer still plans to put a lot more content into the game. If you buy the game while it is in Alpha, you can get it for 50% off and get all future updates for free. But I guess I should answer the question...what is Minecraft?

Minecraft is a simple game in which the player mines, builds, fights, and survives. But there is a lot of depth in this simple game. Players can farm, build, mine, craft, create, fight, and more. This is the amount of things to do currently implemented with more to come. There are some fun physics in the game as well as dynamic lighting. The classic free mode is fun but only gives you a small taste of the things that can be done. Try it for yourself to see exactly what I mean.

It is also getting very close to the release of Dungeon Defenders (I hope). The game was already delayed due to some issues with consoles and their weird policies, but this is not a bad thing. The developers have already promised us even more content because of the delay. Dungeon Defenders is a tower-defense action role-playing game. Think of it as tower-defense meets Diablo. It is played from a third-person point of view in which you control a single person who can place defenses. The Diablo aspect of the game comes with the fighting. You can use your character to fight off the monsters invading your castle so the defenses you place to have to do all the work. With killing monsters comes loot...also much like diablo. And who doesn't like getting better equipment. I'm looking forward to this game very much.

And did I mention that Dungeon Defenders was made in the Unreal Development Kit (UDK)? This makes me even more excited because I know how to use UDK and it shows just how powerful this development tool is.

That's about all the major news that I am currently excited about. As always, keep an eye on Steam for good deals on games. Especially since Christmas is just around the corner. Thanks for reading my blog. If you have any suggestions, I'm always open to ways I can improve my blog. If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to leave me a comment and I will try to answer it. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter.