"Ghost of a Tale"
The crowdfunding campaign is still going on right now: http://www.igg.me/at/ghost-of-a-tale and with 23 days to go the campaign is only at about a third of the budget. So if you would like to give "Ghost of a Tale" a chance to exist, please go to this page and see if you can help... :icon60:
Here's the alpha trailer video I mentioned earlier:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOi04BRQI1k"]Ghost of a Tale - New Alpha Trailer - YouTube[/ame]And here's just a quick little turntable video to get a better view of the main character:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLazhXN8hs"]Ghost of a Tale - Mouse - YouTube[/ame]As I say in the video description, this model is a very temporary asset, so many technical things are not yet sorted out, among which:
- Cloth shader is extremely basic
- Fur shader does not yet support self-shadowing or even cast shadows
- Body texture and mesh are far from final (especially the feet!)
- Etc...
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Original post:
Hi guys,
So far my only contribution to this forum has only been in the MayaCE3 thread (the CryEngine Maya exporter I wrote a while back). But today I thought I'd talk a little bit about about the game I'm working on, called "Ghost of a Tale".
You play as a little mouse exploring the mysterious Island of Periclave, which is reputed to be haunted!
The development itself is going quite smoothly and I'm learning every day! I use Unity 4.1 and so far I really like its simplicity and elegance. The animation manager is amazing (Mecanim). Which is really important for me (I've supervised animation on a couple of Dreamworks movies), as I can easily and visually control transitions in a pretty granular manner.
Here are a couple of screenshots of the project:
It's really exciting for me to be able to work entirely on my own, after so many years of working in teams (movie-making is really a collaborative process). It forces me to face my own limitations and learn to improve. So I guess it's also a bit scary. But most of all it's really A LOT of work!
I'll be launching a crowdfunding campaign tomorrow (April 2nd), so I wanted to get the word out. Since I don't know anybody in the video-game business (or specialized journalists) I'll have to rely on word-of-mouth...
I'll post a link to a new gameplay video tomorrow. Anyway, I hope you like the project!
Cheers,
Seith
Replies
@e-freak: Heya! Indiegogo it is.
@elementrix: Thanks! Let's hope you like it then!
Here's the new video showcasing the alpha trailer. The crowdfunding campaign page just started today. I guess now we'll get to see if an unknown project that's under everyone's radar stands a chance among the onslaught of new titles being announced every day...
The campaign page is here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ghost-of-a-tale/x/1588326
The video is there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOi04BRQI1k&feature=youtu.be
So if you think it's a worthy project, then please spread the word!
Cheers,
Seith
Btw, I'm AxelDev if you remember
@mospheric: I'm sure the little mouse wouldn't mind a few more bones thrown his way...
@Stoop_Kid: Thank you, Sir.
@YoBung: Sure I remember! And yes, I saw they closed the thread. Can't blame them for that. For now to follow the game's development it's just www.seithcg.com.
I'd recommend emphasizing giving the props a more natural, rather than manufactured, look to emphasize the size of the hero. For example, make the lute from a walnut shell, and the boat from a gourd (or even large leaves held together with twine). Give the cloth an extremely broad weave, as though a normal piece were used to make a teeny hat. Make the rats' weapons from cut-down pieces of silverware...
Have you thought about a color study for the mouse? The gray seems a bit bland, and tends to blend in with the gray scenery in the first two shots. Perhaps a poll question on the project site, with a few options showing various simple color swaps. I'd go for a nice mousy brown, myself, with a more gradual blend between the lighter belly fur and the darker fur on the back, interspersed with a few darker hairs.
Here is my reasoning: in the "Ghost of a Tale" world there's no humans. So to me there's really no clear advantage to depicting the world as gigantic, over-sized for the characters. Again I though long and hard about it and I decided instead that the only size-relationship I would play with would be between the characters. The races have different heights and they'll be mostly consistent in size-relationship with what we know. For example the mouse in the game is about 1.1 meter (3.6 foot) tall. And the rats are about 2.2 meters (more than 7 feet) tall. Although I expect there will be some artistic license here and there.
As to your second point, I think that's a great suggestion regarding the mouse's hair color. And I agree that gray isn't necessarily the best. It's just that if he's brown he has a tendency of blending in even more with the soil in some places. But one thing I did already (that's not shown in the video) is to make his hood much more visible. And it helps a lot already.
oh! and big thanks to you for the Maya .cgf exporter.
best of luck with the game, its look hott!
- I can't program in C++.
- I don't have a dedicated team of animation TDs at my disposal for technical support.
- As a single developer I couldn't afford to pay the licensing price.
- I wasn't entirely convinced about giving away almost a quarter of the game's total revenues.
But I guess all those are simply the price to pay to be able to use the most visually amazing engine on the market today. Because in my opinion it still is.
It looks like it will be an awesome game.
It's interesting to hear you mention Mecanim. I was looking at your Cryengine clip of the walking rat skeleton a while back and was impressed by how smoothly everything blended - would you say that Mecanim makes this kind of stuff even easier to setup ?
Every success to the project!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=137704546
[ame="
As I say in the video description, this model is a very temporary asset, so many technical things are not yet sorted out, among which:
- Cloth shader is extremely basic
- Fur shader does not yet support self-shadowing or even cast shadows
- Body texture and mesh are far from final (especially the feet!)
- Etc...
The crowdfunding campaign is still going on right now: http://www.igg.me/at/ghost-of-a-tale and with 23 days to go the campaign is only at about a third of the budget. So if you would like to give "Ghost of a Tale" a chance to exist, please go to this page and see if you can help... :icon60:
My sis just shouted "I wanna play this!" hahaha!
The protagonist is really damn cute. I love his hoody!
[ame="
@TAN: I can't program in C++ and with Unity I discovered life didn't have to be so hard...
Here's a new character sneak peek video, by the way. Beware of the frogs!
[ame="
His hands don't seem to be grasping the spear. You might need to play with the anatomy a bit, anthropomorphize him a bit more to get a better grip.
[ame="
The campaign for getting a budget for the game is nearing its end (a bit more than one week left) and it looks like it might not make it. So now more than ever, if you feel like playing this game one day, please mention it to your friends or followers. It's kind of important: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ghost-of-a-tale/x/1588326
And as a reminder, "Ghost of a Tale" is on Steam Greenlight (in the Concepts section). The page is here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=137704546
You can help the project there by upvoting it...