How games are made.

Awright perhaps the title is a bit misleading. It should read "how this game is being made", since the actual process for developing a videogame these days is monumentally complex and not quite as straight to the point as the process I'm outlining below:

STEP 1: Planning.

The story and gameplay (how the game er... plays) are hashed out at this stage. Everyone gets a foot in and it's a fun time filled with boundless optimism and wacky outside the box ideas.

STEP 2: Design.

The game designer gets to work, plotting out the overall flow of the entire game into a signle all encompassing flow chart. I can't show it to you here since it'd pretty much show you what you need to do to beat the game. Suffice to say it's pretty complex.

STEP 3: Design Part Deux.

Here the game designer starts designing each individual level one at a time. They look a bit like very simple blueprints. I've included an image below that should give you an idea...

Once the game designer is done he sends this image over to me for me to make it pretty...



The game's art is produced with HD 1080p resolution in mind, so some of the maps are relatively high resolution, the one above for instance is actually over 4,000 pixels wide. It's a "hub map" which leads to other levels, levels that will eventually be between 10 and 20 times as large.

STEP 4: Well we haven't technically started step 4 just yet, but it involves music and animation. We're currently looking for an animator, but we've got some music (you can have a listen here).

STEP 5: Make lotsa munny. Well not really, but it'd be great no?

Level 2 Artwork

Okay, so remember that Usher game I'm working on? Well here's an update. This is level 2, it follows the prologue level I linked to earlier and it's something of a "Hub" level rather than an actual gameplay level. It serves as a sort of landing point when you first start the game, and leads to a bunch of other levels. I'm still working on it, primarily detail work and some shadows left, but for the most part it's intact. I'm considering adding some hunting trophies :)

Yet more mural stuff

The building is still being constructed, but each one of these four panels is meant to fit on one of the main walls of the building. Once again they'll be done using ceramic tiles.