End of Year Update

My last post caught you up on where I left off, working on a game called Prophecy. Well there was more news to that then I let on. Yes, we were working on an auto battler called Prophecy and yes we did let it see the light of day for a short time. However, we pulled it down and decided to take the game in a different direction, one that is actually an entire different game!

Here is what it look liked before we pulled it down:

Furthermore, as part of that small team that was working on Prophecy, we officially split off from Hi-Rez to form our own completely independent studio which happened back in February. Now Hi-Rez had just recently gone through its own transition of solidifying its new internal studio structure. Before Hi-Rez had multiple teams all working under the Hi-Rez name but now Hi-Rez has multiple self-contained studios working under a centralized Hi-Rez umbrella. But again, the team working on Prophecy is not under that umbrella.

With my current options available I could either stay at Hi-Rez and join a specific studio, potentially keep working in a strike team capacity supporting multiple studios, or join a new team. So I tendered my resignation with Hi-Rez and moved into a new building to give this new company, also called Prophecy, a go. It is 90% staffed by old vets from Hi-Rez and we have a team of ~20 working on a new Unannounced Title. 

The reason I chose to go with the split is because I love working in an incubation capacity, getting in on the ground floor of a budding IP and helping it sprout is currently far more fulfilling to me than working on an already stable project.

Keep in mind, that my studio transitioning occurred back in February before the pandemic took hold. Once March hit, I began to work remotely from home and the experience has had its pros and cons. Being an extrovert, I definitely miss the day to day buzz working in an office brings. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed this "calm". The game industry is notorious for crunch and moving at break neck speeds so having things slow things down a bit has been surprisingly enjoyable.

2020 Made The World Slow Down
-Ben

Time Flies

Where has the time gone?! It’s almost been 2 years since my last update and there is so much to cover and update you all on. Last post left off revealing that I internally switched teams at Hi-Rez to begin work on a new IP. Here is the backstory of that.

Paladins was doing well and with the battle royale hype train in full swing across multiple developers, Hi-Rez wanted in on the action. So a small team within the Paladins team spun up to take the Paladins IP and make a battle royale. The first prototype was done within the Paladins engine and codebase and was called Paladins Battlegrounds. I was one of the few who worked on this prototype while still supporting Paladins proper. After much deliberation it was decided that this new game would be spun up but as it’s own game. Enter Realm Royale. This is when I stepped down from Paladins and joined the new team, Heroic Leap, charged with getting Realm Royale out the door. This occurred roughly around the same time Hi-Rez was doing some internal re-organization and making all the game projects their own teams.

Now Paladin’s Battlegrounds prototype was kicked off in 2 months and teased in January 2018 and then Realm Royale was released 5 months later in June 2018. Talk about staying busy! After we officially launched Realm Royale, things shifted into long term content support (making content for new battlepasses, weapons, and equipment) to keep players engaged. This continued for roughly a year and I was the only Tech Artist supporting that game. A ton of cool stuff was created from scratch for Realm Royale such as the weapon system, handling multiple devices, hit reactions, lean tech and ground alignment for mounts, and much much more. Like I have said in previous posts, that’s the kind of game creation I’m addicted to. Taking a problem and figuring out the system to handle it.

Then came the next transition in early 2019 as I was asked to join a small strike team that was spinning up. The goal of this strike team was to take our extensive knowledge of making games and to objectively look at any of the games in Hi-Rez's library to provide feedback and help. Our first client was the team working on Rogue Company! Some things I tackled were hit reactions, weapon exploration for the sword, overall knowledge dumping on the best way to handle weapon swapping (since I helped create the system of weapon swapping on Realm Royale), as well as a ton of game feedback.

That lasted for about 2 months until I was once again asked for my expertise on a new IP. The new IP already had a small team working on it but they needed more manpower, so I joined the team and began putting my skills to use. Roughly 1 year after I joined and many many iterations later, welcome Prophecy. Prophecy is our take on the auto battler genre using licensed Smite assets. Being the sole Tech Artist on this IP has once again kept me really busy. Especially since the team behind Prophecy is now its own studio independent of Hi-Rez.

Boy does time fly!
-Ben

Looking Back

It's almost been a year since I last posted an update, but things have been pretty crazy work wise, so let's dive in! It's also Memorial Day weekend and I'm sick so I might keep this post a bit short.

Since last August I was promoted from Senior Tech Artist to Lead Tech Artist. I helped ship 14 new Champions for Paladins (you can see them in the Gallery section) as well as a ton of content such as champion reworks, skins, mounts, sprays, etc. I saw fellow devs come and go and I watched as the studio grew to almost 400 people. When I started there was 150! Not to mention all the day to day tasks a dev experiences when a project like Paladins isn't afraid to add or rip out systems for the benefit of the community. Needless to say it was an interesting year full of ups and downs. 

But that was the past so let's talk about the present. After my birthday in March of this year I stepped down from Paladins and I, as well as a few other Leads from Paladins, joined a rapid prototype team. Our goal was to take the Paladins IP and flush out a battle royale as quick as possible. It's now coming up on 12 weeks since we started and if you keep up with any of the news or play our PTS then you will know just how fast we move. We still have a way to go but it's been worth it. The ability to dive in and create a new foundation with new tech and problems to solve is something I crave. There is still some downsides but I love helping projects find their feet with a small core team!

As for the future. I plan on writing a post, rather soon actually, giving more detail about the systems and content you can find in Realm Royale and try to give a recap of the whole experience.

Till then. Keep on keeping on.

-Ben

Turn & Burn

Where to begin? A lot has happened since my last post. I went to GDC for the first time ever, we shipped 2 champions and a butt load of content, and I've been training up the new tech artist I got...all without skipping a production beat.

So lets' start with GDC. GDC was amazing! I met plenty of developers, visited a lot of booths, and got a bunch of swag...but I didn't go to any talks because I had the expo pass since I paid my own way there. So with that in mind here is some things I learned, liked, and hated. For first timers I highly recommend the expo pass that way you don't feel overwhelmed with all the stuff there is to do. I also highly recommend really really REALLY comfortable shoes because of all the standing and walking you will be doing on hard concrete. On top of that, make sure you plan your trip super far in advance to get the best deals within proximity to downtown as that is where you will want to be most often because of the convention, good food, and after parties. Beyond that, how you visit the expo floor is up to you. You can take it a booth at a time like some friends and I did so you can see the latest tech or the new hotness and meet the developers. Or you can bounce around to whatever piques your interest.

It's really impressive that when you first meet someone, they first look at your badge and then to you to see what you can bring to the table or how knowledgeable you will be so they know how deep to go when explaining something. A good instance of this was I was talking to an Amazon Lumberyard programmer about the way they did lighting in their engine and handling/calculating transparency and at first he took a step back and was a little blown away, because no one else had asked him that yet, and then he looked at my badge...saw that I was a tech artist and then a big smile appeared on his face and we had a really good discussion. It's important to note that everyone there is super friendly and they want to meet and learn people just like you do, so don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and network.

The food at the convention center is so-so and is great if you need a quick bite or a pick me up but I highly suggest you leave the convention center and explore some of the restaurants downtown. The food is great and it's a nice break to allow you to decompress and discuss what you saw, or who you met, or to even network some more. We went to this Chinese restaurant and when we were seated the owner came over, asked us if we'd ever been here before as he was beginning to pass out menus, and when we said no...he took the menus back and said he'll take care of us. What followed next was plate after plate of deliciousness beyond words!

It's also worth mentioning to allow you some time to arrive and depart a day in advance. We got there the night before the expo floor opened up and we left Saturday morning and boy did we feel rushed. After all the staying out late and drinking, you don't get much time to rest. GDC is definitely not a vacation. The amount of energy required to rally and keep the momentum day in and day out till the convention is over is pretty demanding. 

For my next trip, I plan on getting the big boy pass so I can go to the talks! Especially if I can convince my company to send me (I did help them out this year by showing up at our booth and taking interviews for potential candidates).

Moving on to champions!

We shipped Inara who is this nature stone maternal mother-esque champion who harnesses stone magic to her will. Her kit involved some new tech to be spun up to handle the way her ammo scales out when firing, as well as some new tech for her wall. Her wall took many iterations and quite a few whiteboard discussions to figure out how we were going to tackle it and the scenarios in which we had to account for, like going through doors or over uneven terrain.

Here is her reveal trailer:

The other champion we shipped was Lex. A dual pistol wielding lawman who passes judgement on other champions. This champion was in a great state before we all took off to GDC, but when we came back there was a kit change that affected his main inhand weapon to allow him to gain ammo back, and since we had heavily relied on the slides to dictate ammo...we needed to create tech to adjust slider position when ammo was granted. There was also another request to allow him to fire while sliding. Both of those put a huge weight on the programming and tech art departments to make the tech needed to fulfill these changes. We probably ripped up his animTree 3 or 4 times to get it to where it is now. There was definitely lessons learned and processes put in place to prevent these last minute surprises but that is after all GameDev. You have to be ready to scrap or pivot very quickly and still put out something the community wants.

Here is his reveal trailer: 

On top of all that we still shipped regular content of skins and we are coming up on another champion being due while working on yet another new champion at the same time. So sometimes it feels like we are moving at this death march pace and that can be overwhelming. Especially when you feel like you can't really take time off to decompress. I was watching this show on Netflix called Chef's Table and there was an episode where the chef was talking about how the freshest ingredients make the best dishes and I immediately equated that to the gamedev cycle. If you have people who are burnt out or overworked, they aren't going to be putting there best foot forward and that in turn affects what we put out. There's a reason this industry has a very high burnout rate and that's because people work so hard for such a long time trying to deliver content that the world can enjoy and they never take time for themselves to go on vacation. I know I've mentioned quality of life before in past blogs but it's definitely worth mentioning time and time again because it always crops up time and time again. Needless to say, I think I will be scheduling some PTO time soon to recharge my batteries to come back and tackle the next big list of champions and content we have planned. Hopefully.

Wrapping up, I've been helping our new tech artist find his footing and spinning him up on how things work and the way we do things. It's always interesting to look at something from a teacher's point of view because normally you just do a task as if it was second nature. But when you have to explain to someone how it works, why it works, why we do it that way, and so on...it reaffirms your skill set and knowledge in those moments and in actuality I think makes you a stronger leader by allowing you to identify your own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to certain systems.

 Try not to relax your brain, but your body instead.
-Ben

Tech Debt

To quickly reiterate, I started this blog as a retrospective to reflect on the work I've done to see if and where I'm growing or what lessons I've learned, as well as to give updates to those that care. It's been a few patch cycles since my last update so here we go.

First, let's catch up on the champions I've helped put out since my last post! Torvald is a gauntlet wielding shield recharging champ. For this guy I was responsible for his 1p character and weapon tree while training the new associate artist on his 3p character tree. Beyond the regular setup, Torvald required some material work which I took on (my last job had me doing this quite a bit so I enjoyed jumping back in). On top of that he required some new tech to be made to lock on to champions and have an IK feeling of the wrist.

Here's Torvald's introduction video:

Up next we have Maeve, the cat-esque dual blade carrying champion. She was also a lot of fun to work on because she got new tech as well (a double jump) and her duality of the weapon made for some interesting troubleshooting. For this champion, I again was responsible for her 1p kit and monitoring her 3p kit progress by the associate tech artist and jumping in when needed. 

Here's Maeve's introduction video:

Overall, creating champions and setting them up and then maintaining them is something I'm very comfortable with. If there ever is a champion that truly does stump me I'll be sure to do a focused retrospective on it. Which now that I think about, may be one of the champions we have planned coming down the pipe since they will be the first to do "X".

Now that those are out of the way, I want to dive into the deeper part of what I've noticed for a while but figured I'd put into words and share. A lot of studios share similar traits and hurdles. By that I mean, no matter where you go there is going to be days where you feel like you're having deja vu from a previous studio. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Studios need to turn a profit to continue making games even if it disagrees or conflicts with your own personal agenda. Which being a Tech Artist might happen a lot because there is something that can always be done better or something that you want to fix that just doesn't, or can't for that matter, make the patch build no matter how hard you fight. So what I've learned from my time in the game industry is that if you want to get those things in, you have to go above and beyond. Now this may seem a little counter intuitive to some, as they may see it that they get paid just to do A-C so they never bother exploring or fixing or working on M-O but a well rounded Tech Artist has the ability to do A-X, the problem is they just need to find the time. 

When I got brought onto Paladins, it was in its closed alpha stage where significant foundation work was being implemented, ripped up, and rebuilt. This equated to a lot of quick iteration and not necessarily the best practices or processes. Fast forward to today and I've already made great strides trying to resolve some of these lingering issues but there's quite a bit left to tackle. I have a personal list that continually grows faster than shrinks that I'm constantly trying to chip away at in my free time. Some patches I can, other patches I can't. For the most part, the items on the list have no major impact on the game itself or if they do, they aren't immediately noticeable by the community, so trying to quantify it in a way so that it gets added to the schedule is next to impossible...especially when my department is pretty small and up against the clock. However, there is pros to getting them fixed, not just forward facing but internally as well because it holds merit to the devs whether they themselves know it immediately or not. Mostly I get messages of praise from my co-workers days, weeks, or even months after I've fixed something letting me know I made their job easier or that they learned I was the guy that quietly did this in the shadows, which is rewarding so I continue forwards. The downfall to this however is that you can easily burn yourself out. There has to be a happy balance of "I know I have this much work to get done this patch so I can take on this back burner task" and you have to be willing to stay late if need to be to see everything through.

Beyond all that, I am getting another new associate tech artist! Which eventually means after I train him up I then will have 2 associates that can take care of the lighter loads that still require attention while I can knock some tech debt down much faster and stress free. Plus, relying on them more will allow me to start getting some really cool forward facing functionality in which is what I love doing. Hopefully I can continue to train them as well as I did the very first associate tech artist I had, and they too will come to understand the principles of going above and beyond by doing quality work that supports the entire team that they can be proud of.

Lastly, I am going to GDC this year! I am so excited and eager to finally be going. Ever since I was in college I had wanted to go and now 6 years later I am making my first trip with a few guys I work with. It was either put it off another year or pull the trigger and make it happen. I will definitely have a post about how GDC went, if it met my expectations, give a recommendation if it's worth it, and decide if I'd ever go back. Until then I started tweeting. There's so many social platforms out there to keep track of, I always just considered Twitter to be a distraction, but because of my decision to go to GDC I decided to be more active by posting "In the Life Of" tweets and start following other game devs. Plus, I'll be updating my portfolio this weekend!

Keep on keeping on.
-Ben

Retrospective

So...it's been a while since my last update, I apologize. Things here at Hi-Rez shifted into high gear after releasing Makoa. The studio was in full swing trying to get ready for Open Beta and that meant a lot of work. 

Ah where to begin?

After releasing Makoa we found a good cadence of doing a champion every other patch and for the in-between patches we would ship cosmetics as well as features and bug fixes. With that said, I undertook a big task on my personal time to retroactively get all of the previous champions that were done before I joined the studio up to par. This meant touching every single 1p, 3p, lobby, and weapon packages for all 17 champions. Going in and cleaning out the trees, adding functionality to the trees (like making sure that if you are standing still and you rotate you actually move your feet rather than sliding), optimizing the animsets, normalizing key nodes across the champions, and doing a massive blend pass, up to 56, for each champion, and some other tasks to make sure that the quality I now put out for future champions isn't overshadowed or lost as you go back in time to older champions.

On top of that, I was getting more buy in at the studio and people respected my insight. Since this wasn't my 1st rodeo working at a studio I did bring in some experience and know-how on how to get things on track which allowed me to better get my department up to snuff. Albeit, that meant lots of meetings and side conversations to make sure I had what I needed to keep the team, and the game for that matter, running smoothly while putting out a product we could be proud of.

So beyond a lot of process setup and maintenance there was also a culture shift at Hi-Rez. By that I mean the studio came up with a new way to manage multiple projects across an ever growing team. This meant that my previous associate, after having came in "green" and being trained up under me, was now moving onto another IP and I was getting a new associate to train up. It also meant that my lead was now transitioning into more of a managerial role across all projects so that left me as the principle tech artist on Paladins. I still report in to him but I'm the pseudo lead on the project which allows me to stretch my tech artist wings and while the responsibility increased, it's nothing new to me and I embrace it. I feel like I am very good at what I do and I can translate that down to other teams or even my new associate. Enough tooting my own horn. Back to the recap.

During this time we also started spinning up new features that we could monetize which meant creating new tech. Anyone that knows me knows I like new tech. So it was a fun time to dive in and get the functionality we needed to present our cosmetics. Though, this meant going back into all champion's trees again and adding the new hotness. I think I dove into all the 17 champion's trees and packages over the course of the last 4 months at least on 4 separate occasions. We would add something new, test it, and then give it the green light to be done on all other champions. There is no make a character and move on here mindset...they have to be constantly maintained and updated. 

With all the "tiny" details out of the way we also put out 2 new champions in this time frame as well as a ton of cosmetic content such as Star Slayer Ruckus. The first champion was Mal'Damba. I was responsible for getting his 3p stuff in as well as making sure his 1p was being done correctly by the associate.

Here's Mal'Damba's reveal trailer:

The 2nd champion we put out was Sha Lin. I was responsible for his 1p on this one and again making sure his 3p was being setup correctly by the associate.

Here's Sha Lin's reveal trailer:

During the production of these 2 champions and with the culture shift occurring at Hi-Rez there was quite a bit of a workload and there was a few long nights making sure everything will ship on time. Which brings me to my postmortem, I have a text message from myself that I remember writing just for this very moment.

All the P's!

Planning, processes, prototyping, production, pipeline, polish, perspective, playtesting, and (s)pine.

I must have thought about these topics more than anything during these last 4 months. Anyone who has been in gameDev knows that it can be very erratic and you have your ups and downs. For me, a big part of focusing on the P's was because of foresight. I have been told I am very keen at identifying a problem before it becomes an issue and I do that by relying on the information I currently have at hand to go off of.

If the planning is over-scoped or everything is not accounted for things fall apart fast.

If there is no processes in place to deal with a new feature, than we have to make them up as we go and it's slow.

If your fellow team members fail to prototype or account for issues then it can be a train wreck since everyone is working full speed on the hope that what has been dictated will in fact be what we put out.

If production has to slow the train down or if they aren't equipped to handle a task then something somewhere went wrong.

If your personal perspective is off then you will have a rough patch cycle.

If you only playtest once everything is final only to find out you have a cracked foundation it's a scramble to repair the crack.

And lastly, I know it doesn't start with a P, if you don't have the spine to say what you mean then you are not only letting your team down but you are doing a disservice to yourself. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with someone and having a conversation around it.

These were some of the things I thought about and experienced, either directly or indirectly, over the last 4 months and all the variations in between.

You have to love what you do.
-Ben

Cowabunga

With our new champion Makoa ready to make an appearance, while everything is on fire and with the bugs coming in, I figured now was a good a time as any to do a retrospective! As mentioned in my last post, this patch was centered around me focusing on just the 1st person view of the new champion while making sure his 3rd person view, that was being done by the associate tech artist, was up to snuff. 

Now we knew going in that Makoa would need a lot of RnD and iteration, but I can definitely now say that we surpassed not only what we had envisioned (since new uh-ohs and oh craps came up each day) but as well as the time scoped to figure out how to make his kit function...slowly kept expanding. From the early stages of concept to prototype, from rigging to animation, from implementation to kit changes, he saw a lot of rework and took quite a bit of learning. Since his kit was the most unique thing we had done yet, it meant regular white board discussions and trips down to the programmers to request new anim nodes, expand functionality and logic of current nodes, and to fix the way some of our old anim nodes worked. Not to mention, the give and take we had to ask from designers to hone in on a functional but enjoyable champion spurred many topics of discussion.

It's safe to say I learned the pit falls of some of our current tech, while also pushing the envelope for new tech. It wasn't just enough to hack something in, I wanted to make sure it was future proof. Now, that's not to say there isn't hacks for this champion! His tree adapted and grew every time I touched it or had to troubleshoot it because it didn't work with another feature.

We re-worked his abilities a few times and we pushed his deadline back. Ultimately, he ended up shipping 1 week after scheduled. I scheduled time off to go take care of life in Florida thinking he would have already shipped but that wasn't the case. As I was away, I was getting constant emails and chats about last minute kit changes or the current state of the game. Needless to say, I came back the day after content lock and had to dive in to fix as many things as possible before we pushed the patch live.

However, it wasn't too bad because before I left I created a list of things to do and gave them to my associate and caught my senior up to speed and I'm proud to say that they tackled them like a boss. Which is a very important part of gamedev, you need to be able to trust your team and rely on your peers to come through. Not to brag, but I have that here. I am surrounded by creative and passionate people who understand the importance of getting a task done.

In hindsight, Makoa was a testament to people's hard work and commitment. It showed us the flaws in our pipeline and taught us how to manage our personal "salt mines". In the end we still produced something that we've never tackled before and I think it's safe to say we're all pretty stoked on how he turned out. Plus, he's my second character here!

Here's Makoa's reveal trailer:

Constant pivoting and fluctuation in priorities keeps this job interesting. 

-Ben

Life in the Industry

So after my layoff from Trendy and after doing the quick 3D scanning project, I put out my resume to a select few studios. The results were great! 

I had a phone interview with High Moon Studios, an on-site interview in Irvine with Amazon, an on-site with an indie studio in Florida, an art test from Epic, and an on-site interview with Hi-Rez in Atlanta. A few other studios, like Telltale and Blizzard, got back to me letting me know the position was filled but the overall experience of having to reapply and prove myself to a new studio was overwhelmingly positive. 

I ended up taking the offer from Hi-Rez and I started my first day of work on May 23rd on the Paladins team! Now at Trendy I was a Tech Artist and was a jack of all trades, mainly in charge of making the rigs and setting them up in engine and getting them playable (among many other things like material creation and custom collision setup). However, here at Hi-Rez my roles as a Tech Artist have shifted to be engine side only doing a lot of Anim Tree creation and polish for the unique characters Paladins puts out for both 1st person and 3rd person views. So right away I began ramping up on how Hi-Rez and the team I work with operates while they were putting out Bomb King. Here's an introductory video of him.

With Bomb King shipped, the team began spinning up on our next champion, Viktor, who I was in charge of getting in. He was the first character I owned fully from beginning to end for both 1st person and 3rd person and it was trial by fire as it was only my second week on the job. Yesterday Viktor shipped and I'm proud to say he received great reception not only from the community but from the in-house team as well! For such an easy kit he actually turned out to need some quite complex logic, for all of his transitions between abilities, to get him feeling like an FPS character the FPS community has come to expect. Here's an introductory video of him.

Now, I am working on the next champion but only his 1st person this time as the associate Tech Artist I work with will be undertaking the 3rd person. Looking back though, I am happy with my choice to relocate to Atlanta and call Hi-Rez home.

Making Games Is A Passion.

-Ben

The Future of Games

As promised, I said I would write about what I worked on during the past few weeks after I was laid off. Before I get into the details, I want to thank all those that helped me during this time, you guys know who you are. It was a pleasure being able to create such an innovative prototype in a field that is just now being pioneered!

After being laid off, I didn't put out my resume right away like all my fellow colleagues did. I took my time to spin up on something that has been capturing my imagination as of late, VR & AR. Now this may seem like bandwagon hype because everyone is trying to take this niche technology and make it a viable medium. But, I just didn't want to make content for the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift. I wanted to take 2 fields that have seen some amazing growth due to technological advances and bridge them together. Welcome VR + 3D Scanning.

Luckily, I am friends with some awesome developers over at Paracosm (paracosm.io). They do 3D reconstruction from point cloud data. Which was perfect for what we wanted to tackle. The premise was simple: Allow gamers to gamify their own personal spaces!

Paracosm took the point cloud data from 3D scans and converted them into usable meshes, then handed them off to us so that we could use them inside of UE4 and add gameplay mechanics to them.

As a side note, I am a very talented tech artist or so I've been told. So jumping over to point cloud data and trying to figure out the best way to make it work with our idea was actually...very intuitive and fun! I knew quite a bit about photogrammetry and 3D scanning going in and even made one of the Dev's over at Paracosm get excited by how much I knew! The feature list I would have requested, if this project was a success, would have been awesome to track.

I just want to take a second and iterate how freaking awesome this idea is. It has many applications beyond games such as medical, law enforcement, automotive, pre-visualization, and so on! To allow a consumer to use a device, such as the Google Tango, to scan their house and then use gameplay templates to play in that world is revolutionary!

Now unlike AR where it's done in real time, this media would be cooked out and shipped as a product with modding tools, in the vein of Gary's Mod. So you have rapid world creation with simple drag and drop game mechanics. Plus, the possibility to throw VR on top. Beautiful!

I'd almost be as bold to say this was probably the fastest rapid prototyping and Kickstarter project to ever be done and I could also go into the ups and downs of trying to launch a Kickstarter...but I won't. Time and money are arch nemesis especially when bills come due. So we did what we could with the time we had while trying to retain talented Devs to work on a "hobby" project for free. Keep in mind we had a budget of $0! I am extremely proud of what we accomplished and I hope that one day people will understand what we were trying to do.

When you don't have to wake up and go to work, you still want to wake up and work on something. This was mine. It also further proved the strengths of my skills as a tech artist.

Here's the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/465844857/scanspace

If that link goes bad, you can download a PDF of the project.

Here's some articles that picked up on our Kickstarter.
http://segmentnext.com/2016/03/18/scanspace-transform-surroundings-game/

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2016/03/scanspace-scan-then-convert-your-environment-into-game-and-play/

http://geekdad.com/2016/03/5x-video-and-5x-tabletop-27/

http://www.igc.news/#!Kickstarter-Watch-Recap/pzo8f/56eeea740cf26ad9615aa97f

Fail Fast, Succeed Fast.

-Ben

Exciting Tech

So after I was laid off I took some time to reflect, some time to update my website, and some time to network; which was the most important....because I met some really cool people pioneering AR & VR tech! Which is a huge dream of mine to be able to get in on the ground floor of something so innovative. It's where I see society heading. Especially considering Magic Leap is in my top 5 of companies I want to work at.

So, as any good Tech Artist would do, I put together a rapid prototype team to pump something out. I'll tell you more once we release it, but we're coming up on the final version this week!!! No matter the outcome, good or bad, I'll update here about the success or failures we ran into.

Onwards and Upwards!
-Ben

The Beginning of Something Familiar!

A really good colleague, and friend I might add, recently told me that it would be wise and rewarding for me to start documenting my work in a reflective way. My previous employer had a Daily Checkout system where I would describe what I worked on, but that was for the game studio to track my progress...so it wasn't necessarily the best medium for me to scribble my thoughts. This however, is going to be for me. A way for me to track the problems I run into and the solutions I come up with. A way for me to be open and lighthearted. Or quite possibly just a way for me to post things that inspired me to start working on my next side project. One thing that I'll try to do is to post any WIP's I dive into. That way I can keep my Gallery section for final media only.

Now I will say, I have done something similar to this before and that was when I was in college. First, I documented the information I was learning each month or so on a Blogspot account I made (which has since been set to hidden or deleted, I can't recall). Secondly, I recorded how many hours it took for me to complete a task in a little book I carried around in my bag (which also has been set to hidden...due to all the times I've moved since graduating). That process of being able to put my thoughts into words on "paper" was actually a tremendous learning experience in and of itself and yet also very humbling to look back on and measure how much I have grown.

I love what I do so I should take the time, whenever I have it, to sit down and write what I'm passionate about. 

See you along the journey!
-Ben