Thursday 21 March 2019

2019 Q1

Thanks to Phreak comment under the Tech Demo 2 video I reflected upon my behavior and decided to do some update regards project progress :] 

Because in the last year I didn't had too much occasions to do and D&D I will try to do it in most epic way that I can :D But first let's me check when the last Post was and what it was about because at this point of time even I forgot what I wrote about last time. 

Introduction

"December 2018 - March 2019 " dark times in history of the Little Big Adventure Remake. There is not many people who could say you what happened then. But people like that exist and they hiding among crowd ... If you don't know them don't worry I will tell you the story better than them because I was there.

But before I will move to telling this story we will do small recap of what happened so far: There was this guy, who was a dreamer and wanted to remade a game (You can also read this as: was stupid enough to do it. Choose which one you prefers). 

This was not any game ... it was "The Game". It had everything. It was Little .. and it was Big ... and had Adventure ... and there were two parts of it but well we will focus here on the first part. It was loved by crowd but with time it slowly aged, new games came and put it into the shadows of the past. But there were still this who loved it and they found their hiding at magicball.net. One of them was mentioned chosen one (or once again if you prefers: stupid enough to do it).

He starter his remake with his own engine. He done a lot of iterations which followed with even more iterations and then came conclusion that this was not what this remake should look like. Sad with this thoughts he thrown all content he done so far with goal to do it better this time. He approached stuff again and worked hard on new version of remake. It took long hours but it started looking better but it was still not what he wanted from this remake ... It was still missing the soul it should had. So he scraped content again and decided to do crazy thing and change the game he loved so much and make from it more modern version. Version that will charm people young and old. The one that already love The Game and the ones that still not love it but they may soon. 

The name of that person was: Greg.

December 2018

(Location: Secret Headquarter of Coffemonsters ... old continent)

Nine years passed from the faithful day when Remake started but there is still no game. Tech evolving rapidly but also decaying almost as fast. This is mystery how it survived so long but it is still there in mesmerizing harmony of creation and destruction... 

Greg stared on the white letters in the black windows of Visual Studio. His eyes were slowly getting tired but the thought of working on yet another complex solution to entity system was holding him awake. This was a long task that took him already good few weeks. In the end he didn't care: He knew at that point of his life that creating game of his dreams wouldn't be fast and for sure not easy. 

Tired, he stretched his arms and made the decision to take a coffee break. He stand up and went to prepare his Greater Black Mana Potion. He grind the ingredients which filled room with nice aroma ... then turn on stove to heat it up. Only thing that left was waiting....

Moment of relax made his thoughts going to fairy-tail Islands he worked on. Standing there he was seeing it right in front of his eyes almost like he could touch them. Decision was made - Time to work on some visuals of game - Thought Greg just when smell of Greater Black Mana Potion filled the room.

Time to use new instruments that were recently brought to Headquarter : Blender 2.80, Substance Designer, Substance Painter. Greg know that he sucks in usage of all of them but he also seen in his mind vision what he can achieve with it and this thoughts allowing him not to give up on trying.

Day after day passing without bigger results without any reward but with pure satisfaction of looking chaos straight into its big eyes. This was road that he chose and this is road he will follow till his goal is reached.... And then ... Christmas happened.  

This time mean one thing: closing all running processes, shutting down computer and leaving to spend time with family somewhere in the middle of beautiful Poland. "No work on the project while I'm there" - he thought ... Flight was relatively fast with small stop in Warsaw. After it came days spend with friends and family. But like with everything that is good this time came also to the end the  January 2nd.

January 2019

(Location: Somewhere in sky above old continent) 

Sitting in his plane seat Greg got lost in his thought. What waiting him ? How much longer it will take to finish Remake? And is it really worth it to spend so much time on a dream?

In this moment he felt lonely in this world. But isn't this how we all feel when we are left with ourselves ? This long moment was interrupt by flight attendant asking if he want a drink. He smiled and asked for Greater Black Mana PotionMoment later hot drink was in his hands. One sip of it brought new perspective to life: It wasn't so bad so there is no point of think about all this negative things. Lets look into the future and care about the problems when they will show.

(Location: Back in Secret Headquarter of Coffemonsters)

Tired after flight Greg entered his lair. There was no life in it for long time with all of the machinery waiting in the silence. He unpacked his luggage prepare some warm drink and pressed  magical button that brought whole place one again to life. Machine awoke from their slumber and well known "Bip" announced this to whole lair. Thanks to the SSD technology it just took a moment to get to the place where whole magic happening. Few secret signs granted Greg access to the Remake universe.

This universe was waiting in the hibernation for returning of its creator. Now when he was returned whole mesmerizing fight between creation and destruction could resume.

 Time to continue dangerous game of making dreams come true.

This was thought that spawn into head of Greg and a lot happened after that: new location were born, rendering systems evolved, profiling tools upgrade and a lot of content was created. I could talk about all of them for hours or even days and you could listen about this stories if you wanted. But we don't have time for that so I will fast forward a little bit and leave this side stories untold.


February 2019 

(Location: Secret Headquarter of Coffemonsters)

Once again we can find Greg in front of his machinery. I would like to say that everything was going smoothly but looking at his face it wasn't. Delicate balance between creation and destruction was on its limit. Last change resulted in almost destroying it. Elements of whole complex system started to dying one after another.  This is not the first time that it happened but each time bringing thoughts that this may be the last time. 

At this point Greg was at his limit. He would love to fix all the bugs that were crawling inside the game universe and its machinery but he run out of time. Big ceremony of "age field" upgrade was right ahead corner and there were some preparations to be done. He focused on this work which resulted in great banquet filled with food, drinks and good friends. What else you would like to have in a day like that ? He didn't wanted nothing more. Week past and whole machinery once again failed into slumber and universe development was halt. This time because of the vacations....

March 2019

(Location: Back in Secret Headquarter of Coffemonsters ... Again)

... When Vacation Ended. Greg entered empty headquarter filled with stuff he know so well, unpacked his luggage and watched some movie. His mind was still in the sunny place where he spend his last three weeks. Somehow returning back to reality wasn't so easy. It took a while to find strength to overcome laziness but it slowly happened ....

There is no constant in this story. Game universe changing, technology that run it evolving, there is sprout of new way of doing animations and of course there is experimenting how to make it look the best how it can be. You may not see it right now but somewhere there Greg hiding in his lair and working on the game he dreams about ... maybe you guys dream about it to who knows ?

What I know for sure it is still not a time to reveal what is done. But give him some time and you may be surprised by what you will see ...

See you then 
your Game Master

3 comments:

  1. Great story Greg! Thanks for keeping us up to date. It has to be quite lonely sometimes but you are not forgotten. You're still keeping it up after nine years, that's amazing!
    Thank you for your work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm really impressed by people like you who follow my work. I don't showing so much in recent months I'm really bad with sending updates and you guys are still there to support my attempt to recreate L.B.A. . I can only say that I will try to pay back this debt in form of awesome update when I will finally reveal what I working on.

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  2. Glad my comment helped :)

    Everybody would love a new LBA game, but ultimately personal projects are about having fun and learning, and hopefully doing something useful along the way.

    All the best

    Phreak

    ReplyDelete