Decisions, decisions...

Ok people. It has been a very busy period for me these last few weeks. I have however rustled up some things to get the ball rolling again with this here blog-athon.

There a few things I need a little help deciding. Three things to be precise.

Here is the first.

1. Music

I have been trawling the net and Spotify trying to find some cool urban laid back beats that would pass the test to be the music of Mousetown. Out of what I found one band really caught my attention, this band go by the name; Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Give it a click, it's a Spotify URL link.

-(HTTP link: Bohren & Der Club Of Gore)

I would really appreciate some folks letting me know what they think. If you aren't sure about the visuals that will match the music have a little look at the tow videos in the video bar just to the side there. If you have any comments or suggestions for other bands just leave a little note on this here blog.

2. Film Noir Moments.

I intend for the 'cut-scenes' in Mousetown to visually represent the most famous film noir moments. Problem is I do not have the time to know all of these moments. So, if you know of any film noir moment that you feel is particularly wonderful in then drop my a line, again on this blog, and I'll check it out!

3. Also Mr. Michael Smoke needs a lucky item. This item harks back to a confrontation that he and his former partner had with some old town mobsters.

'Michael and his partner Lucas Fox were on a case, a big case. They didn't realise how big though. The guys they were tracking were not just mobsters, they were Old Town Mobsters. Real prestigious in the mob circle. They were investigating potential collusion with the MPD (Mousetown Police Dept). These guys weren't rookies though and quickly cottoned on to their tail. They led Michael and lucas down a dead end. Trapping them. Their was a shoot out. They got chased up a set of fire escape stairs, to the top of a tall building. Once up there the shoot out carried on, Michael was pinned down as Lucas made a shot on one of the mobsters, injuring him badly. The mobsters began to flee and Lucas moved out into the open. He was standing to close to the edge of the building, Michael was just watching from his covered position. One of the mobsters turned back and took a pot shot back towards Lucas. It caught him in his shoulder, just grazing him. It was enough to make him step back though, teetering on the edge of the building. Michael got up quick, raced over to lucas and grabbed him just before it was to late. The traffic passed underneath, the sounds of the city a haze in Michael's head as tried to get a better grip of Lucas than just (1. Badge, 2. jacket 3. ?????). Lucas was slipping though, the wound was enough to leave him weakened. Michael was still not able to reaffirm his grip. The (1,2,3) gave way and Michael watched Lucas fall to his death.'

This is a very very very rough draft of the story etc, but you get the point. Does he have a broken button? A Bent Badge? A damaged Belt Buckle? or something else?

What does Michael Smoke hold onto to help him remember how cliched the moment was his dear friend and partner fell to his death? Help me to deicide! Leave a little comment!

3. Things in Mousetown would be oddly familiar to us humans. Things like their phone box's, which are old drinks cans. and their lampshades in the factories which are old yoghurts pots. Can you think of any thing else that these highly resourceful creatures recycle to make their lives easier and visually quirkier?

Leave a comment let me know ;)

For now,

Chow.

Making the the first Mousetown...

Briefly, some technical bits...

During the first year of my MA I returned to the world of Maya, a piece of software used for 3D modeling and animation. This is the program I will be using to create the base of my visuals for 'Mousetown'. It is what I used to create the videos you can see on the side of this page. If you haven't seen them LOOK NOW! Anyway, I will talk briefly here about some decisions I made in the developmental process of creating the current Mousetown. One which I believe gives me the noiristic (you heard it here first) sense that I am trying to achieve. So without further ado... the first visual please...


A doorThis is a door. *Ahem* It is modeled using polygons and has offset proportions to make it look almost cartoon-like. The idea is that the door is reused on many of the buildings to economise time and effort. After all I am one man trying to make a big ol' game. Also in terms of a street/block/area you will find many buildings have the same doors and windows, thankfully. I created five different textures for the doors to give a sense of variation and randomness anyway.


Old street
This was my initial attempt. The offset windows, doors and railings were about the only thing that I took from it. This is generally what happens when in moment of inspired excitement you begin modeling without any sort of sketch. My mind becomes muddled with ideas crosses and overlapping then it explodes. It can be very messy. I go nowhere without a pencil and paper now. It's just much cleaner.

The apartment blocks
This is one of the variations of the apartment blocks that I designed. They were all made using the rule I applied to the windows and doors. This method has many advantages. It gives a real sense of place and even backs up the dystopian idea the narrative sets out to achieve, the lack of singularity, the uniformity and just the sheer stark drabness. The blocks are designed to look like cartooned versions of downtown New York style buildings. I think they achieve this quite well. In terms of texturing I initially thought of bump mapping a brick work pattern on them but it didn't look right. After a huge (small) amount of deliberation with my brain, I thought instead of placing separate modeled bricks and placing them out of the wall surface marginally. This had a really good effect and brought the flat surfaces alive whilst not overpowering the scene. Like the door, I created several textures for the buildings to add a little variation. Here are a couple more of the buildings too.















Lighting

This is a very important part of the project and is vital to how things will look and work in the end. The first steps I took really were to create a world dome. A huge sphere and a planar through the middle. This helps the light to 'bounce' around like it would on earth (ish) rather than it just dissipating into the distance of Maya on going 'space'. It also helps to create a virtual horizon that works much better than just two planars meeting somewhere in the distance. I then added a point light with a very low intensity whose job it is to emulate the stars and the moon. This is quite tricky because too little doesn't do enough, too much washes out and the closest to the middle I could find gives me very long shadows of my windowsills as you can see in the videos. The street lamps were also very tricky. I decided in the end to place a light in each street lamp. They emit a orange light similar to the texture on the glass of the lamppost's. They also have an environment fog with which once you have played around with produces a lovely haze to the scene. There were and are however issues, look here;


This is a rendered shot from above looking down onto the pavement. Notice the overlaps of the lights. There is a very undesirable doubling up (and so on) happening. However you can see how effective this lighting rig is from a lower angle.

From this angle you can see the hazy effect that the lights have on the scene, really giving a cool atmosphere. So this is a bit of an on going dilemma that I am investigating.

Post processing

Editing of sequences aside, I have been experimenting with a couple of photoshop techniques to produce a sort of cel-shading, though not as drastic. I wanted bold edges on the environment to give an inked sketchy look Mousetown. This is something which will in the end be applied to the characters also. For now the accented edges effect seems to work rather well and there will shortly be a video demonstrating the effect on the environment , in terms of an animation but for now here are two stills;

Without the accented edges

With accented edges

There are two very different effects to be played with here. Personally I think the accented edges really work well to reinforce a sense of atmosphere.

What's it all about?

An Introduction to Mousetown

“I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble...
It pays the bills. Problem is the rents overdue. What goods a town with no crime? What goods a private eye, when there is nothin’ dirty going on?
Somethin’ ain’t right, in fact it’s so wrong it stinks, thing is, seems only I can smell it.”

This the opening line of the first chapter of Mousetown, in which you play as Michael Smoke, a private detective struggling to make ends meet. There’s no crime in Mousetown, all the criminals have been caught and well, who knows what happens to them once they are in the hands of New Law, a secretive new law system imposed to curb the rising tide of crime. No crime means no work for a mouse like Michael. The rest of them, like him, are either out of business or in hiding. The only reason Michael is alright is the guise of his new office, an old barber shop (the rent was lower). The New Law use automated sentry bots to patrol the streets and spy on potential suspects. The sentry bots are made by C.A.T.S (Central Automated Technology Systems) a big corporate robotics business empire, now the biggest business in the whole of Mousetown. Michael doesn’t like the New Law, he preferred the old ways. There may have been more crime but it all just seemed a bit more honest.

With all this, Michael is finding it quite hard to advertise his business. After all who thinks of going to a Barbershop to hire a P.I.? Fortunately Michael isn’t alone in his despising of the New Law. Aequitas, (meaning justice in Latin) an underground rebel group thought to be merely an Urban Legend, find Michael and need his help. Michael is tracked down by Josephina Caroli, an Aequitas operative. Josephina explains that a head Aequitas agent has been assassinated, her peers think it was an inside job and sent her to find a neutral sleuth to bring into the organisation, someone fresh. She gives Michael some time to decide if he wants to get involved leaving him with the details of a first mission. Of course Michael Smoke P.I can’t resist and so the adventure commences...

Videos!!!

Hello,

Look!! A video bar with videos on!
Very rough Mousetown location videos.

You should have a look at them. There will be a post with more details on about the videos coming soon. Also with a breakdown of the scene and a small piece on my theoretical approach to creating Mousetown. Until then enjoy the videos!

And so it begins...

Well actually it began a long time ago. In fact I suppose it began when I played Discworld on the Sega Saturn. My first point and click adventure experience. The game didn't make much sense to me at the time. To a twelve year old boy it was mind numbingly cryptic, but I kept patience. I persevered and completed it in a record time of just under a year. I thought it was one of a kind, original in style and form. See I didn't have a PC capable of anything other than floppy discs at the time and didn't really use it for games, just reformatting for fun. Which got boring.
I then saw a friend playing Monkey Island 3, or rather his Dad was playing it and we were allowed to watch, 'It was too complicated' for kids apparently', (perhaps on mega monkey mode!). Well this got me researching and I checked out this whole 'point and click' thing.

I had just put a CDROM drive into my 486. This opened up the 'Sold Out Software' branch of games. My research informed me that I could pick up 'Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars' for a mere five pounds. This was the best move I made in my life, even better than getting engaged. This really gave me the taste for a good solid narrative in a game. Obviously I then moved onto more 'Point and Clicks', the famous ones, the Lucas Arts and such.

This taste for Narrative in electronic forms fulled my Undergraduate degree, I made interactive movies combining Live action and still photography panoramas. This wasn't enough though I wanted to make a 'Point and Click'.

So here it is, a blog that will cover the developmental stages and so on until the day of completion. Maybe then Charles Cecil will employ me to come and work for Revolution Software making the next Broken Sword game...