Announcement: Seeds to become free for reading in subsequent releases

Starting from next week Friday, God willing, Seeds will be released as a free reading novel from this blog. It will be out in 28 instalments, give or take. Each instalment will be posted on a weekly basis, every Friday.

Seeds is a novel about a young girl's perilous journey in a planet populated by clones. Its writing began 4 years ago and its first version was completed in two years. It has gone through several publishers, none of which showed interest. It also almost went through self-publication.

Next week we will start with the prologue and the first chapter of the novel. I look forward to sharing this exciting story with all of you.

EDIT(17/2/2009): The writing of Seeds is no longer available for free reading from this blog.

Hello Purple Flame

Arrive late. Work. Neighbouring co-worker sets his music loud. Typical. Office mates starts to chat among themselves. Sometimes I join in, but most of the time I couldn't barge into the conversation, and hence pretend like I'm so deep in my work that I didn't hear them. Lunch time, someone says. To cool to stand immediately me, had to do a bit more of work (as though it couldn't wait) before joining the march to the restaurant downstairs. There, eat food while listening to co-workers chat. Now and then I try to interact. When I can't interact, and when listening to them for too long turns me into a nodding zombie, I would glance around for any pretty chicks instead, and humour myself to ask for their number. Never happened. But I will one day (*cough*). Back to work. Boss appears to assess work. Cool he says. Thanks I would say. Maybe some changes here he says. Okay I would say. 6pm finally. What? Yes, I came late this morning. Bye. Rinse, repeat.

Pretty neat stuff of creativity are brewing at Purple Flame. Here at this humble red chair is where I do my work. Currently I am working on an online 3D Science Museum where multiple users can enter simultaneously. Aptly named Virtual Science Museum (VSM), it features plenty of hands on interactivity experience with science exhibits (okay okay virtually hands on).

Think of the possibilities! Entering the gateway to the world of Chemistry, you enter an abstract world of floating molecules (like one of those abstract world in Super Mario Galaxy) with your avatar, working on experiments that are too difficult to do in real life museums---pretty cool right? And to top it off you can chat with other fellow visitors as well (and maybe even work together, or compete with one another). That is the vision of my boss, Rogue (that's his nickname if you really had to ask). One of the great things about working here is the creative freedom that Rogue entrusted upon me to do my work.

The VSM is currently in its early stages of development. At the time of this writing I had just finished modelling and texturing the main lobby of the VSM, which houses the gateways to the various disciplines of science (though I am pretty sure that I will return back to make several tweaks during the later stages). The progress of work is posted on the company website. So it's like a blog of sorts, and you can follow the shaping of the VSM on a weekly basis. It's been going for several weeks now so you may want to check the older posts there too. Do visit the site by clicking here.

There is also a working prototype program that features a controllable avatar on a space station (Daim, you may want to check this out, because the avatar is a 3D model based on the character art design that you drawn during your short freelance work for Purple Flame). Play the program directly by clicking here.

P.S. A plugin is required to run the program (shockwave player), which your browser would automatically redirect you to download if your browser doesn't have it. I hope you would kindly download the plugin because all of my work in Purple Flame would be published in this format. Thanks.

Jayisgames.com reviews The Last Canopy

Jayisgames.com, the site that hosted the 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, has reviewed The Last Canopy (TLC). Considering that TLC won the competition, it was pleasingly an expected positive review.

You may read the review by clicking here.

The Last Canopy emerges as the winner!

Earlier today The Last Canopy (TLC) was announced as the overall winner by the judges from the 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition at jayisgames.com. TLC also won the audience award for garnering the most votes from the community.

This is great news for our team (Hazmer, Dzaid, and me), and it is especially important to Hazmer, who is the head of the project. As a game designer, it is his dream to create great games and this success brings him closer to creating bigger and better games, God willing.

A thank you to everyone who supported our game and an extra thank you to those who voted for our game. Be on the look out for more excellent games from Easy Only! Games.

On a seperate note, Daim (another close cousin of mine) has won an artwork contest held by Udon (a league of comic artists licenced by Capcom). Daim's artwork had to compete with more than 1300 entries to be among the 163 fan artwork to be published in an upcoming Street Fighter tribute art book. So congratulations Daim!

Designing ships under The Last Canopy

As many of you already know, I was involved in the development of an indie game called The Last Canopy (TLC). TLC is the brainchild of Wan Hazmer of Easy Only! Games. He's my cousin you see.

I was in charge of the enemy ship designs in the game. Hazmer told me that the art direction of the ship designs has to be similar to Cassius Pearl's art direction, as seen below.

I nodded. For the inspiration of the ship designs, I referred to Homeworld 2...

...followed by Ikaruga...

I sketched some ideas after that, and finally I fire up Inkscape to draw this:

Well it looks better when it is animated. Here are a two more highlights.

The First Boss:

The Second Boss:

Talking about the second boss brings me to the promo banner. Hazmer wanted to promote the game through some image banners, so he asked me to draw one of the bosses facing the screen while unleashing some bullets. I decided to draw the second boss because I thought it would be fun to draw it in 3D. This is what I came up with:

I drew it with the fastest method I could figure out for a decent artwork. I modelled the ship in Blender with a rough mesh, render it, import into Inkscape as a reference, draw over it, and voila, it's finished. Here's what Hazmer did with the drawing:

Pretty neat huh? The brave fairy standing next to the menacing enemy boss is drawn by Dzaid, who is also my cousin.

If you haven't played the game yet, then I urge you to give it a try. You may play the game by clicking here.

And if you really like it and have a dollar to spare, then do vote for the game. Specific instructions on how to vote for the game can be found here. Thanks.