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Category Archives: Chris Talks

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AI War 2 – AI War 2 “v5.000 End Of An Era” Releases, with “The Neinzul Abyss” Final DLC

AI War 2, Chris Talks, Dev DiaryBy Chris McElligott ParkApril 22, 2022Leave a comment

The end of any era is always the start of a new one. First of all, we have a lovely new DLC for your perusal. The Neinzul Abyss is hands-down the largest and most impressive piece of DLC that we’ve ever made, and it’s larger than a lot of standalone games. Its store page explains…

Have you noticed a change in the way a game is developed throughout the years?

Advice For New Indies, Chris Talks, Game Design, Think PieceBy Chris McElligott ParkOctober 9, 2021Leave a comment

This is a doctoral thesis sort of topic. The short answer is that everything is changing, all the time. There is no stasis, period. The simplest way to look at this is hardware and tooling. In the past, you could code your own engine and that wasn’t an insane thing to do. Now it is.…

What tools do developers use to make an indie game?

Advice For New Indies, Chris Talks, Game Design, Think PieceBy Chris McElligott ParkOctober 9, 2021Leave a comment

If you want, you can code your own game engine. I don’t recommend it. I had coded my own from 2002 through 2009, but later ported my custom engine to Unity 3D in 2010. It’s a different time period now, and you want to be able to hit PCs, macs, consoles, and who knows what…

What are the different phases in a development cycle when creating an indie game?

Advice For New Indies, Chris Talks, Game Design, Think PieceBy Chris McElligott ParkOctober 9, 20211 Comment

My first advice is to go watch the series on Film Courage where they interview Jack Grapes. He explains his philosophy on Method Writing, on which he teaches courses and has written many books. There is not a 1:1 analogue with game development, but as he himself notes, his concepts apply to any field of…

Whatever happened to that Chris Park guy?

AI War 2, Chris Talks, Planning and SchedulesBy Chris McElligott ParkJanuary 25, 20191 Comment

Right – so I took a 90ish day sabbatical from work. What the heck was that all about? I said I’d update you guys on that (and be coming back to work properly) in January, so here we are. This was a really tough video to make, but overall I’m doing well these days. There…

Swizzle Lists! A nonintuitive data structure for AI War 2.

AI War 2, Chris Talks, Technical DiscussionsBy Chris McElligott ParkJanuary 25, 2018Leave a comment

It really seems like there ought to be a quicker explanation for this, but to explain the fundamental goals, the pitfalls, and the usage constraints of this data type… well, data types are hard to explain if they’re off the beaten path. This one is really useful, but also pretty strange. edit: Aaaand Badger figured…

Using Mantis Bugtracker, And What Everything There Means

Advice For Players, AI War 2, Chris Talks, Technical DiscussionsBy Chris McElligott ParkJanuary 24, 2018Leave a comment

Primarily for new moderator/admin Dune, but we know a lot of folks find this sort of thing interesting, so here it is for everyone. If any other indies are using a bugtracker, this isn’t a bad approach to take, incidentally — we’ve handled almost 20,000 reports over the last 7 or so years in this.…

Goodbye, Alloy, But Thanks For Teaching Us A Lot

AI War 2, Art Discussions, Chris Talks, Technical DiscussionsBy Chris McElligott ParkDecember 4, 2017Leave a comment

As of our upcoming version 0.610, we’re removing the Alloy Shader framework. The above is a tutorial for Blue, our artist, though if any modders who are creating custom models are also using substance painter, this shows you how to set up your setup, too. You can also infer pretty easily how to do combinations…

Some screenshots of newly-painted PBR ships.

AI War 2, Art Discussions, Chris TalksBy Chris McElligott ParkNovember 7, 2017Leave a comment

These ships are painted by Blue using Substance painter — well, overpainted by Blue.  These were ships that she had previously painted in photoshop directly in a cel-shaded fashion, and which now she’s overpainting to give it a mixed realistic look. It’s worth bearing in mind a couple of things: These are screenshots from Substance…

More AI War 2 art-related videos!

AI War 2, Art Discussions, Chris TalksBy Chris McElligott ParkNovember 7, 2017Leave a comment

Figured I’d cross-post this new batch: The above is a tutorial for Cinth on how to get things ready for Blue to do her painting in Substance Painter. It doesn’t handle the old-style of very-high LODs for us yet, but it gets all the rest of it. The above is a video for Cinth on…

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