Testing out Affinity 2 for illustration – not bad! Also, I can’t possibly be the first to translate this tintin meme into Seinfeld, right?
Year: 2022
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The Birdies and the babies
Hey there! Last time I told you about my new game Project Art Thief, and shared some work in progress shots from the prototype. Since then, I’ve been working with a 3D artist to replace some of the grey boxes with more pleasant things to look at. It’s by no means finished, but I’m pleased to present the main character: Robin “Birdie” Van Rijn!
I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time designing a character for one of my own games, but I wanted this one to be just right, and it was important to document it in great detail because the 2D design had to be interpreted by a 3D artist.
Birdie’s 3D model was made by Renske Peeters Weem, I painted the texture, and I’m very pleased with the result. It’s great to see her in motion, running and sneaking around the level, but more about that next time.
In the meantime I’m working more on the guard AI, level design, and the narrative together with my writing intern Lauren (not to be confused with Laura, who is an art historian friend curating an exhibit for the demo level).
Lots of exciting things, but lots to do still, too!
In other news
Which brings me to this next part, because progress is slow, but that has a very nice reason: we became parents in September! Our boy Lucas is doing very well, but also demands a lot of attention, so in a way I’m working on two big projects right now!
That’s all for this one, folks. Speak to you soon.
~Tim
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Announcing Project Art Thief
Project Art Thief (PAT) is a third-person stealth game where you’ll get to wander around the beautiful museums of a european city, map their weak spots, and sneak in and out unseen to replace pieces of art.
“Replace”? Yes. You see, you’ve discovered that your late grandma was an art forger! In an effort to save your family name, you decide to swap back the real works she stole with the forgeries she left hanging in the museums. Whether grandma’s ghost has something to say about that remains to be seen…
Inspired by some of my favorite stealth games like Hitman and Splinter Cell, I wanted to take a more lighthearted, non-violent route, and explore a different side of the genre that is typically headlined by bearded soldier men.
I’m currently developing the prototype for PAT with funding from the Creative Industries Fund, which I’m very excited about! Currently it’s all gray boxes while I work on the gameplay, but I’ll have more to share soon.
Here are a few shots from development:
As I said, I’ll have more to show later this year. I’m also working on a proper website and presskit and everything, so I’ll let you know when all of that will start appearing,
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Keep driving
I’ve been thinking about my drawing style again lately.
I’ve had a fairly recognizable black and white ligne-claire style for a long time, and it’s still my go-to style when I sketch something out quickly. But for the longest time I wanted to get good at color. Dimme McWood taught me a lot about silhouettes and color harmonies, and the past few years I’ve been experimenting with it a lot more as you may have seen.
I think it goes hand in hand with my gamedev skills improving, to where I can simulate the real world a lot more accurately. And so I’ve been doing that in my 2D work as well, getting more detailed and working with light and shadow a lot more. But that style, it doesn’t really feel like me yet. In particular, sometimes it looks like a photo at a glance. So I’m experimenting with ways to bring these two things back together, and in doing so, finding a sort of recognizable cohesion that binds my work together again.
Today I feel like I got a step closer to that while working on this image. I started with color shapes, added detailed lighting but avoided blending it too much, kept the face details abstract, and at the very end added the outlines, and I like this a lot more than what I’ve been making lately. So I’m going to keep ‘driving down this road’!
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How to add Steam cloud saves to your game
When I released my fist Steam game, I wanted to add cloud save support, so you’d be able to pick up the game and continue playing on any platform. Googling for how-to guides only turned up forum posts from gamers talking about it from a user perspective, and most of the Steamworks guides I watched on Youtube glossed over this feature. Eventually I did find the cloud save section in the Steamworks documentation (shoulda looked at that first maybe, huh), but still, like most things about Steamworks, their explanation was a bit more complicated than I feel like it needs to be.
So here’s how I did it:
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Damsel in the dark
I should take a week off more often I think, I’m well in the mood to draw again! I wanted to do a portrait painting exercise for capturing a likeness and rendering it realistically, without losing myself in too much blending and detail work. So I only used my default brush that I otherwise use for linework.
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A quick sip
Dit weekend was ik in @paradisoadam voor @son.mieux. Eerste show weer sinds Het Grote Gedoe, en het was euforisch. Mensen gingen los, Camiel brak z’n voet, Tim Hofman stond erbij en keek ernaar, het was een hele happening. Maar ook Amsterdam lag er prachtig bij op deze lenteavond, en het herinnerde me weer aan alle mooie dingen die we de afgelopen jaren niet of nauwelijks hebben mogen beleven. Het was een lange droogte, hoog tijd om weer eens een slokje te nemen.
Deze metafoor met dank aan Maud, die ergens halverwege de avond afdaalde in de gekleurde mist die op het podium hing om een drankje te pakken. De belichting was precies fantastisch, en dat zijn het soort momenten dat ik denk “tering dit zou een toffe illustratie zijn”. Helaas had ik geen camera paraat, dus heb ik getracht het vanuit geheugen te reproduceren. -
Really basic coding tutorial for the new Unity Input System
I was really curious about Unity’s new input system. Abstracting player inputs from all different platforms and devices into a single actions set is really smart – I mean, I’ve been working like that for years thanks to the Rewired plugin, it’s great. So it’s exciting that Unity now has a native way to achieve the same. But the big difference is that while Rewired makes it stupidly easy, the new Input system (seemingly) does not. It CAN, but Unity’s documentation is bad at explaining this, and frankly so are most of the tutorials I’ve watched or read, which is why I’m writing this quick guide.
(more…)For the purpose of this guide I’m going to assume you have some basic knowledge of the input system, like how to install it and create an Input Action asset. If not, this is one of the nicer tutorials I’ve seen so far to get up to speed (you’d only need to watch the first 6 minutes).
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The House On Holland Hill out now on Steam!
My first game release on Steam is now available!
The House On Holland Hill is a 15-20 minute first-person narrative game in which you play a food delivery guy. Through a series of vignettes, you cross paths with the residents of a beautiful house on Holland Hill road, where you make frequent deliveries. In the wake of tragedy, something ominous looms behind their front door.
This project started as a gamejam game a couple of years ago. I had to cut some ideas to make that deadline, and afterwards it didn’t seem useful to keep tinkering away at this perfectly playable little game, so I carried on making new games. But the project stuck with me, and from what I hear, many of you felt the same. Fast-forward a few years, and I had learned a lot about Unity and game development in general, and when I replayed THOHH I felt a strong urge to give it some love. Alongside that, I also tackled a new frontier: releasing a game on Steam.
Here are a number of highlights from the changelog:
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Evening encounter
“She appeared out of nowhere.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the light of the setting sun catch the golden adornments on her evening gown. When I looked up, she paused and looked back at me from across the room. For a moment we remained motionless; only her curls swayed softly in the breeze that blew through the marble arches we stood under.
Where did she come from? What was she doing here this late?
These questions remained unanswered, as with a graceful flutter she disappeared back into the shadows. The faint patter of her bare feet on the granite floor echoed away into the unseen.
I don’t think I ever considered finding out where she went; it felt like she had a divine purpose, and I was merely a silent observer. I returned to what I was doing: mopping the floor.”Some #sundaydrawing. In a way she did appear out of nowhere when I started with a blank canvas. As did this little accompanying story I wrote. I’m not sure why, I guess it felt wrong posting this without a good caption to go along with it ?
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The Wide Open
Honestly, for me the best part of being my own boss isn’t the financial independence, or that I get to choose which projects I work on, it’s the fact that I get to take my dogs on a midday walk. When I first started working from home, that felt like such freedom. There are great nature preserves around here, and on a day like today, nothing beats that.