Back of da Van Games
You only know where you’re going by knowing where you have been.
This project started when life was a little like this. Being dragged through the water upside down and backwards.
After being being robbed, the only computer I could afford came with a 1050GTX. It was like catching a new wave.
Completely stoked to see where I could now go. Decided it was time to brush off some old skills and install the UnReal Engine.
My brother begged me to come beta test Fortnite with him… I gave in, and I’m glad I did. It really sparked my curiosity in the new technology.
From my stand point… I was thoroughly impressed… super excited and running with wild ideas already.
Still focused on cinematography, I start to become well aware of the new potential that is with in my hands.
Back of da Van Games
Getting reacquainted with an old friend.
Excited to just dive in and make something, I decided “Shipping Container Island” is a great place to start honing my skills.
Excited to exploit the Unreal editors potential for photo-realism we started digging in to the textures and materials supplied by Epic Games.
The first road block. How do you make a hole? Seems simple enough… not when your doing it all wrong… and we learned that we know nothing!
Apparently you’re supposed to use a landscape material instead of the thing I constructed… who knew? ...everyone that watched the landscape tutorial maybe…
After begging my brother for help, only fair since I played Fortnite with him… No answers, just firm redirection to the learning material. Well, we learned something, and voila we have made a hole!
About a year and a half earlier my brother gifted me the island of Maui… in the VR world… He made this nice little video showcasing his work. I never had time to check it out until now. I’m amazed, and its to scale too.
It was time to go find that map buried somewhere deep in my Dropbox, or Google… quickly I discovered he had given me only the terrain mesh only.
Building skills, we’re going to need some roads… Of course I’m thinking VR Maui at this point.
As well as a terrain material with tessellating textures. The world is not flat nor is it smooth…
Back of da Van Games
Back to da water! 10th Annual Olukai
It’s not all just programming.
It was the best in the world, and then there was me. #natorator
Mean while, well… I now know what its like to shovel water for two and half hours straight without stopping, in 20 foot swell no less.
We survived, the board survived… It’s time to eat!!!
Back of da Van Games
Exploring virtual Maui.
#staycation #outofgas #vanlife
Rocks and a Moon Rover, most important for any project… we have roads too, but whatever. We have a Moon Rover!
Yes… we have the technology to do amazing things now, as well as a space ship!
I learned something while painting this Island. Getting intimate with all her hidden cracks and crevasses.
I learned this isn’t my job, I’m going to save this task for someone else. Painting the Aina felt wrong… this should be bigger then me.
As it will be! It should have great purpose. That’s why it’s here on this web page, its tied to the no.9 concept.
It will be a means to tell stories, share community events, eCommerce. It will now be called “Home-less in hawaii” and serve to inspire.
Back of da Van Games
Lets build a game!
Still mainly in play mode. Putting the spline tool to use we built a race track. (Purely for development reasons)
The first thing to do was make something deploy-able to the devices we have at our disposal for testing.
Behold, it installs on da phone. However this is where we started to learn more about textures, LOD, and triangles… “ONE MESH TO RULE THEM ALL”
Back of da Van Games
MAUI KITEFEST 2018!!!
Back of da Van Games
Boolean, Integer, Float… What?!?
REPLICATED???
Feeling like a boss, knowing the first step will be in all the back-end work. Networking first, cross platform second. or so we thought.
After looking at the available examples for game development, I elected to go with the Steam platform to start.
It had everything I wanted to start this experience. Multiplayer platform from the ground up, not for the faint at heart.
Networking support via TCP/IP protocol suite was quite exciting to implement.
Being schooled as a network engineer, it was compelling to see the software side things.
All Right! We’re in da lobby.
Now we get to change it and make it our own.
Adding new levels and testing out this blueprint to finding out how it works.
It took one month of solid effort, hours and hours every single day to finish the Steam tutorial. Worth it!
Back of da Van Games
Taking a break and making objects with Photogrammetry.
There are a lot of Photogrammetry options out there. I found 3DF Zephyr had an actual working Demo.
First step, do the tutorial. Make the tree stump.
Kanaha rock in 3D space. Applying what I learned in the real world environment.
Back of da Van Games
Diving into the Online-subsystem and Google Play services.
I’m not going to lie, this is where things started to get gnarly!
0hhhh do we have so much to learn. Things were going so smoothly too.
After pulling things all back together, we learned this is a task that can take place at a later time.
Back of da Van Games
Time to develop a road-map and start making some waves!
To this point I have been acquiring skills and entertaining wild ideas of what could come.
It is time to decide exactly what we are going to do. Sit down and plan out a clear road-map of where are we want to go.
This is the week Maui was hit directly with a hurricane… LOL #vanlife
Well we’re going to need a Van for this journey, best get started on that.
A lot is going on here. Messing around, trying do decide the next step… maybe make a video for inspiration.
…I’ve been avoiding you my entire life… now here you are… (Windows 64 bit build)
Rubbish!!! System performance is atrocious at best. Bottle neck is clearly the Hard Drive.
Before doing something like this. Make a copy and take a screenshot.
Figured I would swap the characters out with something else, while all the blueprint data was still fresh in my head. Found the sphere demo, and thought “perfect”.
I always seem to want to make a race car game, it doesn’t seem practical though. I’m not feeling the stoke.
This is going to be a lot of work in a direction I don’t want to go. There should be a progression in what we do, it should lead us somewhere.
Back to Kanaha to do more photogrammetry on rocks. You have to keep playing with the skills or you lose them.
Back of da Van Games
Figured out what were going to do, and what to do first.
Time to tame this bottleneck with the HD!
No fear!
One hundred and fifty dollar upgrade… Speechless….
Yes… we now know what we want to do, and it’s going to take Ballz!!!
Kind of like this, but not that simple and a lot more fun.
Shootz! Automatic!!! He’e Tournament coverage.
Back of da Van Productions
Fourth annual He’e Tako tournament, Maui.
I love Black magic design’s DaVinci Resolve. Powering though this edit, this is the color grading workspace.
Learned a lot of things about audio while making this program. Something I would do differently, try harder to get microphones.
First time I ever did anything like this, it was a lot of fun and I am totally thankful for the experience.