ZLYTHY

Zlythy Development New Location

2010-06-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

I've moved all my progress and updates to my Shadowjack blog: http://www.shadowjack.info/

Zlythy - My Notgame

2010-04-08T16:57:00.001-07:00

I've made a decision about this game project. Because of delays (with a potential coder), and my own inability to code anything, I've decided to make my project a full-blown notgame. It was barely a game to begin with. On reflection, to a certain extent, I believe I was attempting to candy coat it - to make it more "gamey" and less artsy.

As an artist and musician, I've always felt like the three were separate, which was always a frustration for me. Zlythy will allow me to combine all three. It will be my next project and will include my music and video work as well.

So

2010-04-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

It looks like I'm on my own again. The coder got a regular job. It looks a bit like I suspended development for two months for nothing. I'll be returning to Blender as that's what I know and it's cross platform.

I'm going to get back to it as soon as I finish up with a couple other projects I'm working on. Though it could be a while as me and my wife are moving to the UK soon and I'll probably be working a part-time job.

Shadowjack: The Industrial Years, 1997 - 2005

2010-03-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

While my game development has slowed down, I've been keeping busy with other projects. Here's another cross-post from my music blog:

UPDATE: As I was digging through all my CD backups (8 years worth) I noticed that the actual dates on the files didn't line up with my recollections of the dates. These songs were actually recorded over a period of 8 years. In fact, the last four songs were all recorded in 2005. There is some overlap with one of the songs on The Fall of Man, which was originally demoed in 2005 but that was around when the direction in my music started to turn back to Doom/Stoner/Metal.Those four songs represent the last spurt of Industrial that was left in me at the time. Plus, the new title is the first I came up with in the first place. :)

10 songs, ~~10 years~~ 8 years (I'm not so good with dates, what can I say) of Industrial. Coming soon.

Playlist
01. It's Called Easy
02. Angel
03. Lucky Number
04. Elation
05. Worth
06. Bleed
07. Keep It Together
08. Insect Boy
09. You Can't Hide From The Sky
10. Broken World

New Shadowjack Song!

2010-03-06T11:47:00.001-08:00

This was previously available as a not-so-great demo on MySpace. You may also notice the all new artwork! It's from a painting I did back in 2006. I tried several times to design artwork for the album and was unhappy with it every single time. I was going through my old art and landed on this piece I painted called Last Denizen of a Dying World. It was perfect - not to literal, not to abstract but still got the concepts and general feel of the music across.

Download I'm a Man (On the Moon): HERE!

The Magazine Format is DEAD, GET OVER IT!

2010-03-02T06:17:00.000-08:00

HAS EVERYONE'S BRAINS FALLEN OUT??? THIS IS NOT "COOL!" This is not the 90's! Magazines are dead, we now have a thing called THE INTERNET and WEBSITES!!! STUPID WIRED DEMO

Myst Online: Uru Live

2010-02-21T15:12:00.000-08:00

It has returned!!!

ZBrush WIP

2010-02-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

I downloaded the ZBrush 30 day trial. This is the first thing I did with it. It's not complete and this isn't the highest subdivision level, mainly because Blender chokes when trying to load such a large file. Plus I had to use decimate on it to knock it down so I could get Blender to do anything beside show a slideshow while moving things around. The low mesh density is obvious around the eyes in the closeup. I'm still learning it and trying to figure out a proper workflow so hopefully, I'll get these problems worked out. I may have to buy more RAM and switch to Windows 7 64-bit for better performance.

Anyway, I wanted to see how ZBrush stacks up to various FLOSS sculpting-style modelling tools. There's no comparison, ZBrush blows them all away. I think I'm going to have lay down the cash for this application.

Zlythy Team

2010-01-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to stumble into a real live, experienced game programmer on deviantART! I guess dA is finally useful for something after all these years. His name is Steven Tomlinson and lives in the UK. I believe this is his first indie project however he's work on quite a few AAA games on all the major consoles for the last 15 years as well as PC. Most of his experience is with Windows. ~~However, we are going to be using cross platform, open source componenets so it should be fairly easy to port to Mac and Linux.~~ We are moving from Blender Game Engine to ~~Ogre~~ a proprietary 3d engine that Steven created. I will still be using Blender to create all my 3d assets. Other components we will be using are ~~Bullet for physics and OIS for input. We still need to decide on the audio engine. Maybe OpenAL?~~ I have no clue at this point.

I also have a guy doing some soundscaping. Mattias Häggström Gerdt from Sweden. Here's a demo track he did for me: Zlythy 1v2.mp3
Listen to his music and be sure to download his awesomely chill, free album "We Express Ourselves With T-Shirts" - http://anosou.com/

This is a big shift. I'm part of a team now. I've quickly gone from one guy to a three person team spread across Europe! This is really cool! :D

Caval - 6th World Screenshot

2010-01-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

I'm still not completely happy with it but I need to move on to the next world.

Caval - 6th World Concept

2009-12-10T03:01:00.000-08:00

Unlike the other levels up to this point, Caval is visually "open." Whereas the other worlds are swimming in fog and long shadows, Caval by contrast has virtually no haze at all. Unobstructed views will show an ocean seemingly visible all the way to the horizon. I've never done anything like this so I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish it. I'm essentially making this up as I'm going along.

One of the things I wasn't paying to much attention to was the number of faces, though I knew I shouldn't have too many for performance reasons. At first they were all quads but I went back and knocked down the size of alot of the meshes and converted them to tris. I still don't know what the hell I'm doing, probably just making a mess. :D

Muusont Screenshot

2009-12-08T00:06:00.001-08:00

New in-game screen:

From ZLYTHY

Trite But True

2009-12-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

People that seek genuine-ness in art can spot a fake. It sounds trite but you do have to be true to your interests, feelings and inner senses. That is the only satisfaction if you desire to be a "hard core" artist. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making a buck off your work but you need to ask yourself, "is this enough for me?" If the answer is "no," then you probably won't be very happy pursuing that path in the long run. Now if you can make a living doing what you love, that is the ideal, isn't it? Hell, as an artist, you're lucky if anyone even considers your art, let alone PAYS for it.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be afraid to do what you love. Wear your influences and your heart on your sleeve. If people laugh, hey, at least they noticed.

And remember, irony is for cowards.

Creature Run Cycle

2009-11-30T23:26:00.000-08:00

Run cycle for a creature you may encounter in the 5th world.

Lieton Preview and Screenshot

2009-11-29T01:50:00.001-08:00

Box of Crayons

2009-11-27T13:47:00.001-08:00

If anyone is reading this blog and/or interested in this project, please let me know. Other wise I'm not going to bother with it anymore. This will be my last update for a long while unless I hear otherwise.

So anyway, work has ground to a halt. I have to learn some Python. I'm sure I can learn it, it just a matter of the length of time it will take. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone would be willing to code for me. I don't want a collaborator, especially if they flake on me. I guess I can continue to do the graphics but I fear I'll have all this work on the graphics side and no way to pull it all together. I'm not sure how to structure the levels once they are designed - do I have a bunch of separate .blend files for each level or one big file? How do I keep track of items collected by the player and save their progress? That's rhetorical really - the answer is Python of course.

My approach to this, from what I've seen, is not the way most game creators do it. Most seem to be coders that struggle with graphics while I'm a graphics artist struggling with code. Also, coders tend to look down on artists, like they are just idiots playing with a box of crayons to make things pretty and add nothing of value to the design of a game (or any software for that matter).

Maybe I shouldn't let the code stuff distract me at this point and keep pushing forward with the my box of crayons. Well, in this case, it's more like a box of charcoal but you get the idea.

Linux Game Development: Death by 1000 Paper Cuts

2009-11-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

Though I've done a fair amount of work on the game on Ubuntu Linux, I've decided to move my main development to Windows 7. The short version as to why: too many "paper cuts." The slightly longer version is, there are too many frustrations to deal with that have nothing to do with developing the game and instead eat up my time screwing around trying to get basic things like video and audio working. This last one did it for me - buzzing, crackling audio in the Blender Game Engine. With a bit of googling I found out this had nothing to do with Blender but instead is a problem with the Pulse Audio ALSA plugin. I got nowhere trying to fix the problem. I don't give up easily on these things but I need to move forward on the game.

I like Linux but I need my operating system to just work, not burn up my time demanding I google constantly, comb through obscure forum posts and bug reports to get stuff working. I think one of the big problems is that DESKTOP Linux isn't stable. Fast development is good but kernel updates that sometimes come within a day of each other and break vital desktop functionality is just a tad too fast. Even Ubuntu's 6 month cycle is too much. You can't even get new software updates unless you reinstall the whole operating system! It's insanity.

I'll do my best to continue this project as cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) but the bulk of my Blender Game Engine work will be happening on Windows from now on. Hopefully I will be getting a Mac in the near future so I can get the game working there as well.

Teaser!

2009-11-16T03:16:00.000-08:00

The music is by Blind With Rain.

Screenshots!

2009-11-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

I now have the graphic assets done for the first three levels! Teaser trailer coming soon!

ZLYTHY Game

2009-11-04T01:08:00.000-08:00

I've decided to turn my Zlythy project into a game. Look for updates on this blog. I've got the game concepts http://shanesemler.deviantart.com/gallery/#Zlythy and I've already started on the controls in BGE. There is one more card to do but I've decided not to show it. It's the final stage of the game so I want there to be some surprise.

Games

2009-08-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't given up on creating a game. I'm currently researching PyGame. Specifically, I'm looking at retrogamelib. I found I can easily change the resolution and I don't know shit about python programming, or any programming for that matter.

F'Ra.C'S' is Too Ambitious

2009-05-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'm going to get any help with this. I'm not a programmer so that's the end of that. If I want to make a game, I'll have to do something simpler that I can manage with a minimal amount of simple scripting. I'm going to do some brainstorming. I have a vague concept for an atmospheric platformer with puzzles and adventure elements.

F'Ra.C'S' Concept Work - 02 - Gas Giant

2009-05-26T19:03:00.001-07:00

New track concept - Gas Giant:

F'Ra.C'S' Concept Work - 01

2009-05-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here's some of the work I've been doing on my new game project. It's a 2d/pseudo-3d or 2.5d (I haven't decided yet) futuristic racing game. I'm not a programmer so I'm going to be looking for someone who is who would be interested in collaborating with me on this.

Vehicle Concepts (click image to view larger):

3d rotation of the SOL-JGR-921 (paint details haven't been added yet):

Track Concepts:

New Gallery

2009-04-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not using deviantART.com to host my art any longer so for now I'm using Picasa Web Albums. Go here to view: http://picasaweb.google.com/shanesemler

Lists I

2009-02-04T21:38:00.001-08:00

I'm not a big horror movie fan. However, there are some horror movies I really dig. Here's a list of them, in more or less the order they came out. Some people may be annoyed at my lack of some obvious choices but these are mine, not yours. Make your own list. You'll notice a lot of old movies on this list and that's because I think the old movies were done best. New isn't always better.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Nosferatu (1922) - The blown-out, grainy, scratchy images accent the weirdness and horror. The first and the best. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Dracula (1931) - The 1999 video release with a Philip Glass score, performed by the Kronos Quartet is nice as well.
The Mummy (1932)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Psycho (1960) - I know I'm in the minority here but I think the Gus Van Sant version is great and worth watching as well.
The Thing from Another World (1951) - surprisingly intelligent and has an unusually strong and smart female character for a movie from the mid-twentieth century.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) - This is a classic. I've not seen the remake and I don't care to.
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
The Fog (1980)
The Evil Dead (1981)
The Thing (1982) - a rare remake that actually improves on the original.
Demons (1985)
The Fly (1986)
The Hitcher (1986) - I can't fathom why they would remake this.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Paperhouse (1988)
Dracula (1992) - I can't adequately express how much I love this version of Dracula. It's campy, scary, beautiful, over-the-top and it has Gary Oldman! Also stars Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Richard E. Grant, Cary "As you wish" Elwes, Tom Waits (WTF!!!?? He's great in it but still, WTF!!!???) and Keanu Reeves with an entirely unconvincing British accent. It's awesome!
Frankenstein (1992 TNT TV version) Extremely underrated and faithful adaption of Mary Shelly's classic. It stars Randy Quaid as the monster!
Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
House on Haunted Hill (1999) - I love Geoffrey Rush in this!
Thir13en Ghosts (2001) - Mostly hated by everyone but I enjoyed it. Pre-Monk Tony Shalhoub!
Silent Hill (2006) - way way way underrated. I recall some moron on a random horror website berating the movie for the use of CGI monsters, which is idiotic considering that all the monster effects were done with practical makeup and costumes.

That's all I can think of atm.

Last Post

2009-01-31T15:14:00.001-08:00

Two followers on my Shadowjack site. Other than that, I might have 3 (maybe a half dozen if I include family members) people in the world are vaguely interested in what I do. There's no reason to keep these blogs up.

Depression and My Art

2009-01-29T10:59:00.001-08:00

I have serious problems with depression and have had them since at least HS. Every now and then, it creeps up on me and overwhelms me. The despair becomes incredibly intense and it's almost more than I can bear.

That said, I probably won't give up on my art and music. However, seeing as how few people seem to care about what I do, I don't know that I have much incentive to share it with anyone any longer.

The few of you that are interested, thanks. I hope you continue to visit these blogs and twitter. I can't make any promises about new news on my progress though. I doubt I'll be going back to deviantart so don't look for my art there. If there was more interest, I'd probably feel differently but this is the way things are.

I quit

2009-01-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

At best my art and design is mediocre, it worst it's amateurish, irrelevant shit. I clearly don't have enough talent, skill, determination... whatever. I'm sick of trying to convince myself I'm an artist. I wanted to do work that was inspiring. It's not. I've been wasting my time for the last 20+ years. I quit.

The Fall of Man/Groovfuct Album Cover

2009-01-04T15:19:00.000-08:00

I did the album artwork last night. It's almost exactly what I saw in my dream. I'm not sure I'm going to use it though. It's kind of a big ol' bummer, very realistic, especially in light of world events. The narrative of the album goes in a more sci-fi direction, though it starts out realistically. I just don't know.

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

2008-12-31T10:53:00.001-08:00

Have a great 2009!

Boris Vs. The Cycloctopesce

2008-12-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Finished my latest piece, Boris Vs. The Cycloctopesce.

shanesemler.com

2008-12-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

My domain now points to my blog instead of my old (suspended) hosting account.

I'm still working on the new piece. It should be done in the next day or two so look out for that. :)

Blog Customization and New Art

2008-12-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

I updated the layout, colors, etc in the blog. In other news, here's a WIP shot of my latest piece:

Gatti

2008-12-15T02:07:00.000-08:00

I've found that I get a ridiculously large amount of satisfaction from painting/drawing cats. Most artists have a "thing" they do. A consistent idiom they pursue in their work. I've never found it. Well, until now anyway. Better late than never I guess. :)

Website Down...

2008-12-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

...for the count. My website has been offline for a while and will probably stay offline for the foreseeable future. Not only do I not have the money to pay for hosting but I figure, what's the point? I can use free online services to get the exact same functionality. So my new website is now here. Yeah, it's Blogger but hey, if it's good enough for Ashley Wood then it's good enough for me. :)

UPDATE: I added links at the top to various websites I use. I'm going to start cross-posting my entries to deviantart. I also need to customize my blog design. I'll get around to it, eventually. :D

This is My New Website

2008-12-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is going to be my new website. For years I've had my own web hosting but I don't see the point anymore with all these services from Google (plus, I simply don't have the extra cash). I'll be posting all of my news and thoughts here and my art on Flickr or Picasa Web Albums.