Back in Business

Hey there! Miranda here.

Sorry we haven't updated in a while. We had some stuff come up over the last few weeks, but I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.

I'm currently getting my hands dirty with Unity and learning how it works. It's a very interesting tool thusfar, and pretty easy to get the hang of.

Hopefully I can take on setting up the environments for Shade (Instead of just sitting over his shoulder and telling him where each box should go). This means he'll have more time to code some really cool game features we have planned. :D

Anyway! Just wanted to let you all know. Keep tuned for upcoming posts. I'll have something to show within the next week or so. :3

- Miranda
www.MirandaMarchant.com

Spooky scary Halloween

Hey guys, sorry for not reporting for a bit!

We've been really busy over the last couple weeks. Over the weekend a lot of packing had to be done, and the last few days have been overtaken with Halloween. I did a pretty complex costume of a deer spirit, and prepping and harvesting a pumpkin proved to take a lot of time.

Since our initial post, we did over a lot of the interaction stuff. Looking is a lot more smooth thanks to a Unity script, but the biggest thing that I did over was interactions. Instead of activating a button in trigger reasons, you can press the interact button at any time and it will shoot out a little ray to see if it hits something you can interact with. By standardizing the methods for this, I created a couple extremely simple scripts to make animated objects, like things you can open and close. So I made the doors moveable, and you can open both the fridge and freezer. This groundwork is really important as it will enable us to do much more complicated environment interactions in the future.

I also started playing Fallout: New Vegas, and have been looking at a lot of the stuff it did. There's something incredibly something about how their terminals work, simultaneously being simple and archaic, and futuristic and powerful. I'm thinking about how we might implement more advanced UI elements, though for that I think I might need a UI state system of some sort. There likely are some on the asset store, so I'll look into it.

I'm planning to work on some more atmospheric elements as we continue. We updated the lighting to be warmer, more in tune with today's warm LED light bulbs. They're whiter than incandescent, but it's still a comfortable yellowish orange. The kitchen and bathroom have whiter lights, more like simple LEDs or CFLs. My big thing will be whether or not I can implement a good lightning effect, which will take a lot of exploration into Unity's capabilites. I don't think Unity Free can do screen shaders, which may really limit some effects. Regardless, I'll work around it.

Anyways that's all I've got to say for now. Thanks for staying tuned!

A week after Asylum Jam

Hey there!

Miranda here again. It's been a full week since Asylum Jam ended, and I wanted to let you know we're both still working diligently. As Shade said earlier, we've decided to spend the weekends on development of 23 Mountainrow, and the weekdays on our job search.

There's already a considerable difference in the game since the demo. We took all your suggestions and critique to heart. The aiming is smoother, lighting is more accurate, the camera is higher up, and some of the textures are looking much better. I'm currently modelling a lot of plot-relevant pieces, and adding some grunge on the existing textures for realism.

Hopefully we'll have something really cool to show you soon!

Cheers!

Miranda
www.mirandamarchant.com

Shade incoming

Ahoy!

Miranda has already made her introduction, so I'm making my own as well. I thought I'd also give you a low-down on what our current plan is, so that'll be after I explain myself.

Me

I'm a programmer, writer, and maker. I can have a strange way of writing things, a strange way of thinking, and an odd way of connecting to other people. I'm going to be doing all the wetwork that makes this project tick, putting together all the bits and pieces that Miranda constructs, into the final product we're trying to make: a creepy atmospheric horror game.

You can find all my stuff through my site, at http://www.shadenexus.com.

Plan

Right now, we're planning to keep development work to the weekends as we're pouring a lot of work into three main things: 1) Portfolio work, be this art for Miranda or writing and programming for me. 2) Housekeep, as since we are in a financially weak situation, we are currently staying at my parents' place and doing work for them as part of that. 3) Job hunting, so we can create a more solid routine which will allow us the funding to actually go full-in to the projects we want to do.

I'm not sure when Miranda plans on making posts, but I'll probably make most of my posts mid-week. It's just kinda how I roll.

I hope you guys find this project interesting! I'll touch up the blog in a little bit, when I've got some time for web development work.

Asylum Jam Aftermath

Asylum Jam may be done, but we're far from finished!

Hey there! My name is Miranda, and I'm a 3D Artist. I'll get Shade to make his introductory post later.

We're a pair of game developers currently working on 23 Mountainrow - the first of our games to be set in the fictional town of Noctowne. We just finished a rudimentary demo this weekend which you can play here. So far all you can do is walk around the apartment, but we have many more mechanics and story-telling that we intend on implementing.

While we're ironing out the kinks, we're going to keep you guys updated on this blog.

So sit back and enjoy a cup of tea while we get back to work doing what we love.

- Miranda
www.MirandaMarchant.com