February Blues

Admittedly, the year to date has been sluggish at best. We had quite a scare when a rather invasive search bot (possibly Garage Games related) probed our online store and set off a rash of false sales info that caused me to take the site down overnight while our programmer figured out what was going on. We have since then tidied that up so it won't re-occur and instituted some additional security and reporting protocols.

I'm continuing to add content to the store. This weeks featured content is a Pub and Inn interior 3d model for the Torque Game Engine. I'm quite pleased with the detail and the way it came out. It is just under 1000 polygons - Not bad for a 2 story building with beamed ceilings, shelves, a hearth, and wall keg! I'm torn between creating a couple of 3d shops next, or converting some of our existing content to generic formats like .collada, .OGRE, and .map so that they will be available to more people.

Golem Graphics Online Store Goes LIVE

Our online store for 3d graphics game content is finally LIVE!!!! you can access the store HERE.

With our store going live last night (Valentines Day), I sat back and reviewed what a trek it was to get going.

When Treboc and I decided to create 3d content packs and license them for use by game developers, we never dreamed it would take almost a year to manifest that concept. On the surface, it seemed like a very simple thing, we are both 3d artists, we create some content, find a vendor and sell it.

As with many things the concept is a lot easier than the reality. The packs took a lot longer to create than we anticipated, there was fine tuning that needed to be done, conversions to different formats/game engines took longer than we thought. Negotiations with various vendors did not pan out to our liking. We tried a few online shopping carts but never quite got a commercial cart working 100% before turning to a friend programmer for assistance. Even getting the SSL certificate took weeks as it was a back and forth process between the certificate issuer and the web host admin.

Once in place the store had some bugs, those took weeks to iron out and get everything running smooth. The final days before getting the store online, I reviewed and revised over 850 files, organized them, wrote docs for them, and got them to where they needed to be.

Now it's time to sit back, hold our breath and hope our efforts were not in vein!

Ye Old Farm House

As mentioned in my last entry, I have created a small farm house which I intend to make available for Torque in our online store as soon as it becomes operational. Our coder says that will be some time tomorrow, but it may take me another day or two to get the web site revised and all the content entered properly and make the conversions to the appropriate formats.

The smithy and farm house are only available for use with the Torque Game Engine at the moment. I need to make them seamless in order for them to work properly with Realm Crafter. I have experienced problems moving the player avatar across non-seamless 3d objects in RC. The RC engine appears to treat the seem as a collision mesh or appears to be having an issue with the collision mesh or bounds of the player avatar extending slightly into the mesh below the walk plane which is causing it to get hung up.

At any rate, it will take some time to convert these models for non-MAP/DIF format use, but it is planned.

The Bedlam Heath Smithy

As always, you can click the image for a larger view. This is the Bedlam Heath Smithy. First in a line of interiors designed for the Torque Game Engine that I will be including in our online store.

The structure is currently in MAP/DIF format. It contains 2 floors and a ramped stairway to prevent avatars from becoming stuck on the stairs. The structure has been scaled so that the bottom of the windows are at the level of the Torque Orc's waist.

The original had lights, but the export software for the application I use to create the interiors does not place them correctly and I had to remove them.

Next, I have planned a small farm house, and then a shop row featuring a pub with merchant shops on either side. The idea is to continue to add quality interior content until an entire village scene can be created from Bedlam Heath interiors 3d content.