September Update

Hey guys! Again, it's been a long time since I've done a blog update!

So what's new?

I've continued to work heavily with Spiral Game Studios and been making a massive impact on their game "Orion: Prelude" and have been offered a studio job. Here is some recent progress of the game!

Note that Spiral Games have recently been at GamesCom and PAX! Was very busy times for our CEO..

I have now moved back to England to finish my university masters degree so hopefully that goes smooth along with my work with Spiral.. My main masters project will be based on creating a customisable character creation system for UE3 and I will post updates later in the year on that!

Game creator "Dan Da Rocha has asked me to create the outro cut scene for the up-comming puzzle game Q.U.B.E, so I also look forward to that =)

That's it really! I also have two new blogs, one on the spiral game studios forums and one on the game dev forum! Links are below..

http://spiralforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1876

http://www.games-dev.com/forum/topic/2498-scotts-tech-blog/page__fromsearch__1

2 months later

I just wrote my entire blog and the iPad decided to refresh the page :/ loosing everything.

So what's changed since my last update?

I'm now back in rainy Ulster with no hope of full time work :( out of the 8 or so studios I applied to, I only heard back from one, and that was a decline. On a happier note, I got my university results and passed with flying colours leaving only one year left to complete (postgraduate level)!

Work wise, I'm fixing computers for the locals which gets me some drink money but im also working for two indie companies:

Toxic Games - QUBE



Spiral games - Orion Prelude



Both are great projects and I get to use a lot of the UDK :D doing things from creating crazy creature rigs to implementing in game elements and features. Hopefully these projects will last until the end of the year which will give me some good industry experience for my CV and portfolio.

I haven't been doing much to my personal website, but very soon I will be doing a major overhaul including more recent work and a "prettier" layout.

Huzzah! I am blogging

I have began the journey towards the "Tech Side"

So I have recently finished my 3 three degree in computer games design at Staffordshire University! It has been a long struggle but it feels good. I handed the last of my work in on Tuesday and now awaiting my grades =) hoping to do well but time will tell...

I have been recently thinking upon my role within the games industry and some people have suggested "Scott, you love all the techy stuffs, why don't you become a technical artist". At first I thought... Rigging, scripting "Bleeeh". After lots of research and looking into the role of a technical artist, I have decided to start learning more tech related things.

I have pretty much completed my website: http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk and feel quite happy with it, although us artists shall never be happy >.< -

With my website completed I have began to look into the power of the script. I looked at an awesome website that a senior lecturer linked me: http://www.scriptspot.com/ I managed to download a complete collection of Maxscript videos called MaxScript 101 by John Wainwright, they were good but very hard to follow as I have little prior scripting experience.

From there I decided that I would make a script that would quickly prepare a game mesh for exporting to engine. I scripted a sequence that would reset pivot points and then move it to the very bottom Z point. Then it would reset Xforms and collapse the stack. For me it works perfectly and worked each time, unless you somehow manage to screw up the meshes rotation pivot. I have released this first build called 'Mesh Prep' and it can be downloaded from my website as well. http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk/maxscript/MeshPrep.ms I have used MacroScript so that it can be installed on the toolbar and so on =)

Final thing to mention is that I have been really busy applying for jobs and hopefully will hear back within a week or so from various studios in the UK. Fingers crossed.