Christian Game Dev

OK so this may not sounds like exciting news to people who know I’ve been working with 3D games for years. But I’ve never made a game all by myself before! This is a little 2D ap that I made to help teach my children Elvish. As I make more lessons, it will become a Quenya/English language course. (My son chose Quenya for his foreign language this year.) We are quickly learning that you have to substitute some Sindarin words for Quenya words (and also the other way around, neither language is totally complete) so the vocabulary is a bit mixed, and “Elvish” is a better choice as a description than just Quenya. Anyway, I formatted the “game” or ap to fit on a mobile phone. But I haven’t figured out how to get it on a mobile phone yet. So that is yet to come. But I am excited I actually got it to work! YAY! I will put the Windows PC version for download on http://tinyzoo.com if you want to try it.

-Laurene

Do you have a model that needs rigging and animation?  I can help you.

I do animals too!  Quadrapeds and birds included.

I charge $30 per animation for existing models.  If you need me to make the model also, contact me for an estimate.

Yes, I can import BVH animations to a human model, but it must use the same skeleton or else I will have to rig it with the BVH skeleton that you want.

Add $20 if I need to repair bad rigging or create new rigging. (Will do minor fixes on the fly for free, but if it’s really messed up and takes considerable extra time, or if there is no rig at all, then it can take a couple hours to get it right.) If I think you’re going to be upset with the quality of my animation due to bad rigging, I will fix it, because I don’t want someone else’s work to influence your opinion of my work.

If you want LOD (level of detail) on your model it is FAR FAR easier to get it rigged properly BEFORE I start animating it than after. I charge extra to add LOD after animation, because it can take several hours to get LOD rigged properly post-animation.
I can add 3 levels of detail to your existing model for $20 PRE-animation.
I can add 3 levels of detail to your existing model for $40 POST-animation.

This is a model of an eagle that I animated for a friend.  (Sorry, the sound is quiet, my microphone doesn’t work very well.)

I can get your model into DTS or Collada format for Torque, or FBX format for unity. If you are using another game engine talk to me and we’ll figure out if I can get my models into your game or not.

I’m not great at texturing but I can do it if you really need it. I prefer to use photos for textures whenever possible. Talk to me if you need help with this.

I do NOT own a Maya or 3dsMAX license. I can not import or export Maya or Max format models. If you need your model in Maya or Max native format I will not be able to help you, I’m sorry. I use Milkshape and Fragmotion primarily for my game art.

NOTE: If you have a model I need for my game and you’re willing to let me use it in my game as well as yours, I will give considerable discounts to pricing. (I don’t have any goats, for example, and I need some.) Let’s talk! If I don’t need the model or if I already have a model like that though, please don’t try to talk me down simply because I have something similar already and you want me to do the same work again for you on your artwork. If you want special work done I’m happy to do it for you but I need to pay my bills too, and I have my own game project to work on, so if I’m going to take time off from my own work to do work for you I would like to be compensated for my time. Thanks for understanding.

Thanks for considering me!
God bless you,
-Laurene Wells
tinyzoo@yahoo.com

Edited:9-7-2011

There is a change in the air.  I can feel it.  Something happened at CGDC that set things in motion which have the potential to bring about significant changes in the Christian game industry.  I hope my team can keep up.

I had some really great conversations, and some treasured memories were built at CGDC this year. I got to go shopping with my friend from England. And I got to drive the Director of CGDC to get hamburgers.

And after the conference was over, two friends stayed extra time in the parking lot talking to me and encouraging me, and formulating a strategy to help me get Visions launched sooner than later.  I love CGDC for the prayer, the encouragement, and the companionship of fellow game developers who love God! No where else on earth is there an experience like that. I miss it immediately every time it ends.

In the days that have followed since CGDC ended, some exciting things have been happening. The plans set in motion there outside the building at the end of CGDC have taken form and begun to grow.  Connections I made with people in the past are suddenly growing stronger, and deeper, and more powerful.

And the enemy doesn’t like it. New challenges, new stresses, new problems are arising that I haven’t had to face before. But God is in control. The God of the universe, the Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth is also Lord of my life, and He is leading me in the path we should go. He is helping me. He is helping my team. And we are making excellent progress.

Romans 8:31
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

I am not totally sure where this path is leading me, but I know that as long as I keep my eyes on Jesus, that I will not be led astray.  And He will lead me Home, to the place He has prepared for me. Right now, this path is taking me through some incredible experiences, some amazing, some not so fun, but significant. Making games is a lot of hard work. It’s not all fun and games. But you know? I think it’s still more fun than a whole lot of other jobs!

Thank You Lord for allowing me to use my gifts and talents to glorify You through making games!

Since my last posting I have experienced casual gaming from a player perspective through FarmVille. This has inspired me and my middle son to work on an alternate game idea that hopefully would not be so irritating as FV has become. Not quite ready to announce it as an official project yet, but have some good ideas for it.

We’ve also made some good progress in Visions. Couple of our programmers have broken through the animation bottleneck. On to bug fixing for that and porting over the login code now! YAY! One problem with creating lots of animated animals before the animation code was working right was not being able to test them in game to make sure they work. So now we have a heap of testing and editing to do. And we have more programming tasks than we have programmers, so juggling priorities for that is interesting as well. I don’t imagine that the need to prioritize tasks is unique to our project, but it does seem to be amplified due to the limitations of a volunteer team.

I’ve had some fun playing with textures and making new animals without having to create new models. Adapting new skins for an existing model is always fun.

And I did some animation work. Making sure animated models are facing the proper direction before rigging is important. Correcting it afterward is much harder!

I’ve been working on design documents for two weeks.  Mainly I’ve been updating old content with new revisions and copying valid content to the new document.  It’s necessary work. But it isn’t terribly exciting.  I realised this evening that I was avoiding it.  Not really intentionally, but I kept finding other things to do, people to talk to, messages to read…

I decided I needed to do something fun to kick-start the motivation again.  So tonight I created some new textures for the sheep.  I have some fun plans in mind for these sheep. Hope I can convince the programmers to write the code to implement my ideas. You can see a picture of them here on the Visions fan page.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150386295435232.620751.117145825231

I was motivated to make these textures as a result of playing a facebook game. Sometimes, in order to make forward progress, you have to stop what you’re supposed to be doing and do something fun.  It helps to stimulate the imagination and creativity, and get things rolling faster again. The key is to not spend so much time playing someone else’s game so much that you forget to work on your own game again.  If you can control your time spent in other games and still have time to make your own game, this can be a good way to infuse new life into your project again.  If you’re prone to game addiction though, you might want to read a book or talk to people about your game ideas instead, or your project may fade into nothingness.

Know yourself. Plan for challenges. Expect road blocks. Work around them. Get help if needed.

I went through more than a year of emotional, spiritual, and game development challenges and soul searching. During that time I allowed this domain to expire. No one really emailed me about it so I’m guessing it doesn’t even matter. I’m probably the only one who even noticed it was gone. But for future reference, that is why there are no comments for such a long time.

I struggled with questions like “If God really wants me to make games for Him, why aren’t we done yet?” and “If people really want to play Christian games, why don’t they support Christian developers with their dollars? Don’t they understand the power company and the grocery store won’t accept words of encouragement as payment?” and “Maybe I’m just not good enough to make games… maybe I’m just fooling myself and I should just cut my losses before I lose any more time chasing rainbows.”  Discouragement is such a shallow word to explain the despair I have been feeling.

I would like to report that I’m all better now.  But I’m not.  However, I have had many encouragements, admonitions, and confirmations that I really am supposed to be doing this, and I need to get back to work.  So here I am.  I have been praying for God to restore my passion, and He is faithful.  I have been more diligent about working on advancing game progress weekly, and using that progress to encourage my team, and that seems to be working.  God sent a tutor to teach me how to do 3D animation, and my skills advanced tremendously, as did my self-confidence.  And this week, I started re-writing my game design documents.  It feels kind of weird to go backwards to move forward.

Design documents are such an integral element of continuity for the development team however, that there is no other activity or publication that can replace it. We’ve tried using a wiki to replace the design document, to be used as a sort of “living document” that can be edited by anyone on the team. It serves it’s purpose, but after 4 years of wandering away from the design document it has become apparent that the wiki should be used as a supplement to the design docs, not a replacement.  There is a continuity, and concise concentration of information found in a design document that can not be found in a fragmented wiki format.

So we’re restoring our Design Documents to active use.  This means that after 4 years of not looking at them, and yet continuing with design modifications and development, there are a lot of changes that have transpired that are not reflected in the original document. So now I am starting over with a new document, trying to filter through 243 pages of the original, plus countless pages on the wiki, to produce a comprehensive overview that will give both new and existing members of the development team a better understanding of Visions, and what exactly we are doing here, and where we are going with this thing. It is more than a little daunting. I’ve spent several hours just staring at my computer trying to figure out where to start and what to do with the mountain of information at hand.   I’ve made a little progress,  I’m on page 62 now. I have a long way to go.

Please pray for me.

I don’t know when I will be back to write some more on this. If you don’t hear from me for a while, and would like to, please feel free to email me. Blessings to you.

So much for one post a week… or even one a month!  This blog completely fell off my plate. My intent was to make posts about what it’s like to be a Christian game developer.  To give people an insight into what life is like for Christians who make games. I wanted to talk about the trials and tribulations that we face, the goals we have, the needs that oppress us along the way, the schedules we try to balance, and the battles that we wage (prayer) war against. But I have been so busy working, balancing, and fighting the spiritual battles, that I have not had time to add another blog to my list of things to do. I will make no more proposals about how often I hope to post here. But I will keep trying to post. If my words are a help to anyone, please let me know. I would like to know if this energy spent is worth the effort.

I established this blog a month ago, and then got hit by Holiday chaos, and a myriad of other frantic activities. I hope to start posting to this blog regularly soon. My goal is one post a week. With my children acting in 2 Shakespeare plays, my involvement with coordinating the CGDC Winter Retreat, and the upcoming launch of our first beta test for Visions, blog posting time may be a little tight!  We’ll see how it goes for the next 3 months.