Only Indie Developer creates 3D animated characters for the Space Opera role-playing game - Reallusion Blog
Will Iverson
Will Iverson has worked in information technology and computing since 1990. His diverse background includes developing statistical applications to analyze NASA Space Shuttle data, product management for Apple, and developer relations for Visual Cafe. by Symantec.
Clients over the past two decades include Sun, BEA, Canal + Technologies, AT&T, T-Mobile, Washington State, and many, many others. From 2010-2016, Will grew Dev9, a leading Seattle-based consulting firm focused on continuous delivery solutions for a wide range of businesses, including the backend for many large entertainment companies.
Starting in 2017, Will moved to independent game development, with a new company, Double Robot, where he used it iClone e Character creator to complete his game.
I simply couldn't have had those animated characters without CC3 e iClone, period. I was able to build characters from my biblical story and animate them in a few days.
Will Iverson / Unity Game Developer
D: Hi Will, it's a pleasure to have you in our history. Please introduce yourself, your study and your journey in game development.
Hello - and thank you for taking the time! My name is Will Iverson and I'm the founder, the owner, the lead… well, everything… for Double robot. I have some people who help me with social media and promotion, but otherwise it's just me.
I've been programming since I was a kid - I actually started out because I wanted to make games. I have spent a long career in the field of technology, starting with C / C ++ / Java development tools and finally a long period of consulting. A couple of years ago I decided to focus on games.
After a few prototypes I finally settled on an "Asteroids the RPG" concept. I showed that to a group of people from the platform at GDC in 2019, I got a favorable response, and here we are.
D: Your BlazeSky game is Space Space RPG, you are a solo developer. How the hell (or space… chuckles), did you manage to create an RPG on your own? And how long did it take?
Yes, it's kind of a joke in the running industry that indies (and solo developers in particular) shouldn't do role-playing games. Ignoring all the design and preparation work, the first engagement with GitHub for this game was on August 1st 2019.
The most important thing he helped was building all the RPG systems - missions, inventory, locations, stats, monster generation, etc., all in a headless C # project. This allows me to write automatic tests for all the guts of the game - for example, I can run all the missions to make sure they are all valid in about a second. All visual elements in Unity are just one level of view. The game was solid for four days straight on a not-particularly-powerful gaming laptop at PAX East without a single crash - I'm pretty proud of that.
It's not finished yet - the game should be out soon in summer 2020. I just finished writing the entire main storyline - about 13.000 words of dialogue and player responses - last week. I'm quite happy and I think I'll be able to hire voice actors.
I've written several books on software development, so I got an idea of what was involved in writing that type of volume, even though it was non-fiction. I knew I could write thousands of words a week without a problem, even though it's more like writing scripts, so it's less about word counting and more about choosing the * right * words. I have a very clear idea of scope, including a long list of things that are * not * in the game. This is the only thing that keeps me sane.
D: BlazeSky's graphics are pretty good. It reminds me of a Space RTS that I liked in the 90s (Homeworld). What would you say is the difficult part when creating a beautiful game?
Homeworld it's great - they recently released a great remaster! My main inspiration was another classic game from the 90s, Escape speed.
Very, very complicated visual arts. Color theory, framing, animation, sound… many things. That's so much to learn, especially when you also think about the software development side. I've always been very interested in filmmaking and the art of cinema, so it's a great help. Stuff like just knowing and worrying about flipping ACES for color grading in Unity.
The biggest challenge I'm facing right now is lighting and brightness. Now I know why so many AAA games start with a brightness setting - every single monitor I test on seems to be different.
I highly recommend anyone looking to make a great looking 3D game to really think about the camera system. I am using a Unity package called cinema machine - simulates the body weight of the camera which really helps to sell the speed in the game. One thing that isn't immediately clear from the trailers is that the game is actually a 2D game with a 3D camera system - the controls are really easy, just pick up and play. I wanted the beautiful graphics of a modern 3D game, but something my son and his friends could learn to play. We had a five year old boy happily blasting asteroids at PAX East, which was really cool.
D: BlazeSky has animated characters created with Character Creator 3 and iClone. What were the advantages of these tools?
I simply couldn't have had those animated characters without CC3 e iClone, period. I'm still learning the tools, but I've been able to build characters from my story and animate them in a few days. I am able to precisely choose the body shapes, clothes and animation that I need.
Will Iverson / Unity Game Developer
The current characters are a first hit - it only took me a couple of days to build, animate and export them to Unity. Considering how fast I'm building this title, it's incredible. I'm going to go back and do another step before release - I want to go back and work on the lighting and add some additional accessories.
It seems that I have enough memory space to increase the textures that I am exporting from what I am doing now, which will make things like faces more beautiful. I'm adding some additional characters, including disturbing aliens. I need to modify some of the animation controllers in Unity to smooth out the transitions.
Honestly, working CC3 e iClone it's so funny that it seems a little bit crazy compared to a lot of other things I'm doing.
Will Iverson / Unity Game Developer
I watch video tutorials in the evening after my son goes to bed. I'm still exploring things like dialogue-mapped facial animation. It's really clear to me the only limit is my time - these are powerful tools.
Q: As an independent solo developer, what advice would you give to someone who has a game concept, but have no idea how to get started?
If you have no idea where to start, pick something and start building. There is a saying for writers that everyone has to come up with some bad books before they can write a good one. Choose a small ludom or game loop to build, and then another. Try tying them together in interesting ways. After you do that, you would eventually overtake the tool and switch to another, but you will know enough to understand * why * you are choosing another tool.
For people who want a more detailed answer - if you agree with the 2D start, use something similar Build o GDevelop. If you really want to do 3D, Unit e Unreal they are both fine. If something in the middle works, like Godot o CopperCube, it's okay anyway. Just choose one and start following the tutorials. Keep in mind that these are all huge and powerful tools. Just start by trying to recreate the old Atari 2600 classics. Start with a simple recreation, then maybe try turning them into techno remix versions with lots of juice, or making them multiplayer or any itchy scratch. Maybe make it really cute, like Lovers in a dangerous space-time, or gory, or whatever. Learning to make a coherent visual and audio theme is powerful.
My background is mainly Java. I started with libgdx and then transferred to Unit. It took years to get comfortable with everything: shaders, meshes, textures, animations, lighting, physics… that's a lot. I am a book reader so it was difficult to switch to watching video tutorials. Breathe, give yourself permission to take your time and have fun!
Twitter: @DoubleRobotComSteam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1208980/BlazeSky/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmzYk1d7uV7uT9u4ms-aApA
Website: https://doublerobot.com/blazesky
