Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EkIchiGames]

Greetings, I am the founder of a new game development team, EkIchi Games. We're getting our feet wet with a fan-game for the Star Ocean series (a sci-fi/fantasy smashup), but have original ideas planned for the future, using this fangame as a pilot to gain some experience in various programs.

EkIchi represents 'beneficient blood', our mottos being 'The new blood in nextgen entertainment.' and 'for the gamers, BY the gamers.' We are mostly comprised of young individuals who want to grow into a team until it becomes a profiting game development company, possibly extending works to other media as well.

I am new to anim8or and do not know much of it. Some of our guys have 3Ds and Maya and are learning 3D modeling via those programs, but I wanted to give anim8or a nice try. I have a question about this program.

 How efficient is this program for making models for games? If someone has used the program for game modeling, please answer. For our main game we are doing mostly outer space CGI, and may possibly be modeling via anim8or and putting textures, special effects in with 3Ds or Maya.

 I am currently looking for inspired modelers (doesn't matter your experience level) to help model simple things for the game. Texture artists and animators are also needed. Most of the models will be environments. For our pilot game, we will be using the 'billboard' effect to create pre-rendered towns. A sprite character mounted as a texture on a 3D plane will be used for the player.

 This is a new project and will require serious work. While nobody currently on the team is getting paid, we are working our way up to making profits so that we can earn things. Most, however, feed cash into the team as a whole. We're not in it for the money, but for the experience and passion of game creating. However, if you are serious about joining and require payment, perhaps we can discuss something out.

 We are also looking for long-term workers who may wish to help the team from this day on, so both project-specific and long-term workers are accepted. Those that remain after the company profits will recieve payment for the work done in commercial games.

 Our deadlines are not strict and we are an active team that likes to aid each other and provide input on all creations. So worrying about time retraints should not be much of a problem.

 I will provide a lengthy description of the game we are currently working on. If you are interested at all, have comments, questions, or suggesstions then please contact me here on the thread, via PM, by e-mail (cubia@epitaphttc.com) or via the EkIchi forums.

I will keep you updated on progress here if there is interest shown.

----------------

Current Project

This is my game team's current work in progress.
Title of Game: Star Ocean: Fallen Angels
Genre: RPG Fan-Game
Producer/Publisher: EkIchi Games
Release Date: N/A - Development started Late November 2008
Engine: Custom Engine - Ogre Graphics Engine

 Star Ocean: Fallen Angels is EkIchi Game's pilot game and will be the first majour game released from the development team. The game is a prequel to all other Star Ocean games, including 'The Last Hope'. SOFA, as we like to call it, takes place in the period when Nede was the dominating power of the universe, which is before Earth became populated with humans. Having established an almost 'ideal form of government', the planets in the system bent towards Nedian will willingly. However, due to some small factions plotting an uprising against this, the Nedians, with their superiour intelligence and mastery of the Heraldic arts, devised the 'Ten Wise Men' project. Using heraldic-altered Nedian genes, they sought out Nedians to implant with this DNA, making them the perfect form of biologickal weaponry.

 Dr. Lantis was the overseer of such a project, and began to scope out the most fit Nedian persons to fulfill such a destiny.

 In the far future (after Til The End of Time, even), a hostile dispute has led the top-quality space-pilots to gather in a small section of deep space. Kayci Arpegllo, a human on the force fighting to control inter-planetary disputes, is reknowned for her bravery and consistant tring of well-fought victories. Her inclination to play 'the hero' has made her an idol to many. Whilst on this mission, she pulls a heroic effort to save an innocent tourist board and finds her fighter-ship damaged after making a near fatal mistake. By means of destiny she is pulled into a time-space warp and transported to planet Nede of the distant past.

 The Ten Wise Men are foremostly average Nedians...before they are injected with the heraldry-enhanced cells, they lived out lives of near-peace and sometimes adventure on Nede. Kayci stumbles upon the intellectual scholar Indalecio (you will recognize him as the ultimate antagonist of Star Ocean: The Second Story) and gets sucked into an adventure of epic proportions. The ten are about to recognize each other's existance, but first they must come to terms with themselves...and enlist the aid of some very powerful Celestial beings, the Fallen Angels.

 For those who know, the Japanese names of the Wise men each coorelate with an angel. These angels will be depicted in the game.

 This game will chronicle the lives of the Ten Wise Men before they become the Ten Wise Men, DURINGtheir transformation, and up to the time period before they are confined to Eternity Space. Direct links to the second Star Ocean game will be provided and abundant, so the connection and flow will match the actual series.

Graphics:

 The graphics to this game will heavily resemble that of Star Ocean: The Second Story/Evolution. Anime face-graphics will be present, but unlike Second Evolution, these will be animated with speech/blinking. CGI and anime cutscenes will be present.

 The environments of the towns will have the 'billboard' effect like the SO2 game, with sprite characters on top. Overworlds and battlefields will be 3D with sprite characters.

 GamePlay:

* Private Actions
* Extensive Item Creation
* Full-active Battles
* Character Relationship Meters
* Killer Moves and 3D Spell Effects
* Co-Op Killer Moves
* Celestial Transformations
* Nearly fully voiced over dialogues
* Anime and CGI Cinematics
* 18 Recruitable Characters
* Skill Leveling System
* Multiple Endings

Soundtrack:

 SOFA has a completely original custom score. Multiple soundtracks and remix CDs will be on sale. Our musick has been stated (by players anticipating the release of our games) to be "better than 90% of the 'professional game musick' out there today", some going as far as to say our composer is the next aspiring Matoi Sakuraba (composer acclaimed for creating the soundtracks for the Star Ocean games).

My Favourite quotes from a fan who reveled after they listened to some of our tracks:

Deii: ...Why the hell isn't this as famous as one winged angel or Jenova or some other shitty music?
This is awesome
Jenn: Yea
It's not popular because it was just made in the past dew days >_>
Deii: Oh >_>
Its awesome still
Jenn: This is probably my favorite song for the game so far
[link]
Deii: ...Wow, this is better than most professional game music

Some Sample Tracks of SOFA

youtube.com/watch?v=ombkjFamrc0[/youtube]&feature=channel_page]Main Theme (extended version...it will be used for the main game trailer)


youtube.com/watch?v=hYsGcDs0aNI[/youtube]&feature=channel_page]The Visionary - Theme of Indalecio/Gabriel

youtube.com/watch?v=WUrbl-oeVoA[/youtube]&feature=channel_page]The Morning Star - Theme of Cyril/Lucifer


youtube.com/watch?v=W2nYyNuz9QQ[/youtube]&feature=channel_page]The Flare - Theme of Decus/Michael



Please do NOT steal our musick. We have had this happen in the past with people ripping from youtube, forcing us to stop making musick updates for everyone to enjoy. We recently started trying to share again in hopes people would respect us. Please be courteous and don't steal. Our musician works very hard on our pieces. If we find that our musick has been ripped and stolen, we will take down our videos again.
-----

Comments, ideas, suggestions, and questions are more than welcome. One thing we like to stress at EkIchi is 'For the gamers, BY the gamers.' We're here to listen to what our audience has to suggest and apply it to make a better gaming experience for all.

Hope to hear input from you guys! I'll have graphical updates soon enough provided we get nice input.

[Raxx]

Well, it looks like you've got a good plan so far. While I won't be offering my services I can answer your question.

Myself and others have used Anim8or for creating a variety of game models. It's a very good polygon modeler and easy to get started with. So for modeling, yes it's efficient. As for UVMapping/Unwrapping, however, it depends on what you need. Anim8or has basic UVMapping tools that are good for inanimate objects that don't require specialized unwrapping. It offers planar-, spherical-, and cylindrical-based mapping. Anything complicated would have to be unwrapped in another program, however...unless you have a lot of patience.

If I may suggest however...to try and make a few small simple demos before attempting such a large-scale game. A lot of people underestimate game development and start big when they should have started small. Try to figure out a good workflow/work pipeline with said demos and it'll also help determine who your key members are.

[EkIchiGames]

Thanks for the information! We have indeed had a few small game releases, but we consider those our 'mini-games'. Our latest mini-game is to be entered into a contest January 3rd and is entitled Grenzenlos: Glass Eternity. It is a mecha fighter game with GameMaker. I mostly work in the 2D art area for the games, as well as some game mechanics, musick, and writing/planning. We have an MMOFPS released by one of our members who makes games on his own as well in his spare time.

You could say this is our big step right here in applying what we know into a more epic-scaled game. My biggest concern so far is the lack of writers. The art and programming sections seem to be the most popular, but I stress depth in plotlines with these sorts of games, so I hope the 5 or 6 people in writers section I have are enough. However, we have earned much support through gaming communities, so hopefully we'll be seeing some growth soon for that particular project.

Using anim8or for partial of the animation sequences and texturing and the like in Maya/3Ds which is where most of our talents lie so far sounds like a nice plan. I just wanted to get myself started with hopefully helping in the area of modeling.

Thanks for the swift reply! I should go back to my sprite animating now. Creating sprite-sheets can sometimes be a pain (but thankfully I have experience in that area). Haha.

[KearBEAR]

that is quite ambitious what your doing, i plan to work in game dev and animation for a career and i am very much inspired, i hope anim8or will be a stepping stone to greatness . i cant say i would be any help to your team as all iv done is a bit of css and html programming, but it would be nice to know of your success. good luck.

[3D Joe Wiltshire]

What are the writers needed for?
Advancing the plotline, or scripts and conversation?

Helps a bit to know what sort of writers are needed.

[EkIchiGames]

Both would be great. I'm decent at writing, but dialogue is my weakness. So any help there would be awesome.

Sorry I haven't been on. I've been working on said game, plus my internet doesn't seem to like me at all lately...

Thanks for the encouragement as well. Things are going pretty smoothely. Could still use some extra hands in 3D and animation or even a few writers here and there, plus more pixel artists are never turned down.