Monthly Archives: May 2010

No More GDC Austin

By Rubes | Published: May 29, 2010

Well, not the usual GDC Austin, at least. It seems that GDC has decided to reformulate (and rename) the former GDC Austin as GDC Online, which is now geared towards “connected games including casual, MMOs, virtual worlds, and social networking games.” So instead of a smaller version of the more general GDC, it’s now focusing primarily on online games.

I’m disappointed, but I think I can understand the move. I really liked having a smaller, more accessible GDC than the big one in San Francisco. It probably makes more sense to have a meeting that focuses on a particular area of game development, rather than just another “mini” GDC, especially with the rise of other conferences and meetings like PAX and IndieCade, both of [More...] Read the rest

Posted in indie games, miscellaneous | 2 Responses

Adventures with NPCs Redux: Lucca

By Rubes | Published: May 28, 2010

Here we resume our efforts to bring our NPCs to life, beginning with bits and pieces of text from the IF version of Vespers and ending with a modeled, animated, and voice-acted 3D character. Last time I discussed the development of Constantin, the large hulking monk with a short temper. This time I relate the development of Lucca, who had some interesting and unique challenges of his own.

Lucca was going to be a tough character to convincingly recreate. He’s the youngest member of the monastery, a teenager who recently joined the order. He’s very attached to Matteo, one of the monastery’s father figures, and is generally an emotional character during the course of the game. Again, we didn’t have a lot of text [More...] Read the rest

Posted in 3D/if, characters in games, Vespers | Leave a comment