Unsung Heros

I onced worked as an "in-office helpdesk support guy", there was this phrase I'd often hear from my boss. He said we were "unsung heros". I'm sure the phrase did not originate from him, yet those times of printer repairs and corrupt driver removals always come to mind when the phrase taps my ears once again.

The SteelPinion project has reached a size where similar unsung exploits are possible. Try as I might, the calendar keeps flipping rapidly and my own efforts to keep up with everything the team is producing falls short.

It's not like we are some massive team either! So without further ado, lets get right into some team exploits I haven't mentioned in the blog.

Mike soulful music

Not sure how Mike and I met; all I know is I am glad we did meet! He has a good ear for sound and an excellent track record. If you happen to have musical/sound needs, this guy plays multiple instruments, sings, synthesizes, you name it. rechenball10@gmail.com

He's made three tracks for us and I really adore his work. Here are two of em that we've found a place for in the game.

Bobby epic comics

Bobby has been steadily working on a story about some characters in the world. We've got this neat way of displaying comics digitally that we aren't using enough. So drag your finger (or mouse) and flip some pages!

We will explain more about the characters and dialog much much later. At least for now, you can know that it is in the works.

Leo Technical Artist

Leo and I have been learning Unreal Engine together over the year. There is some enjoyment and pain both in the learning process. It is nice to have a comrade to dive into the hard problems we have! Leo is developing the new graphics pipeline which we need to get the graphical assets ready for the Unreal client.

There is an immense amount of work and expertise required to build these kinds of pipelines. All of this model was made by Leo, from Mike's ship concept art. Leo had to rig this after modeling it so that he could do some cool stuff like this below.

The work gets additionally more complex once we have to blend static destructible meshes with skeletal animations.

Needless to say Leo's work has been invaluable in our new Unreal venture. Things are working out! Though it isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Troubleshooting model issues and Unreal nuances are becoming a regular part of life.

Closing thoughts

There is much more going on that we could enumerate, however, it is time to get back to the grind. Presently, I am both filling out the remainder of our game document as well as creating a better playtesting tool for us to balance our wild weapon designs.