SeithCG

At last the Indigogo page for “Ghost of a Tale” is up! You can find it HERE!

And as promised, here’s the new video that shows a little gameplay. Hopefully it gives a good idea of what the game could be.

So if you think this game should exist one day, then please go to the campaign page and help spread the word!

And if about a week from now you hear an earth-shattering thud, do not be alarmed; it’ll only mean the campaign has crashed and burned to the ground. Or maybe it’ll be a soft “flop” with no sound at all…?

 

Some of you guys may already know this, but I’m about to launch a crowdfunding campaign for “Ghost of a Tale”. In fact the launch date is only 3 days away: Tuesday April 2nd!

The campaign will be hosted on Indiegogo and will offer some great rewards (those are called “Perks” in Indiegogo language). Among which a figurine of the uncanny undead armored rats that plague the small island of Periclave.

So stay tuned, as tomorrow I’ll give you an exclusive look at the figurines!

Bit of a panic this morning, as I discovered that the entire hard drive partition on which resides the “Ghost of a Tale” Unity project has disappeared. It took me a moment to realize that everything was lost; the entire game project. Gone.

Overnight, Windows thought it would be a good idea to wipe out everything on a couple of hard drive partitions. For what reason? I do not know. Is that a sign that my computer is dying? Could be. Is it a sign that Microsoft’s software engineers made a tiny little boo-boo in the recent Windows 7 update? Possible.

After a couple of tense moments and infructuous reboots I managed to resurrect the game partition (although not the other partition, which seems very much gone) using Partition Wizard. And after some tests, it looks like the hard-disk itself is not to blame, which seems to incriminate software error.

In any case, it is NOT a pleasant experience. I am what you would call a backup-paranoid, which means I always have two recent backups stored in different locations at any time. But still, discovering that your hard work has simply vanished without warning is a bit chilling.

Happy new year! And let’s all hope this is the year where everyone (well, at least people who are interested) can get to play “Ghost of a Tale”! 😀

It’s a lot of hard work, but things are really starting to shape up. I’ve recently added some sounds in, and it’s incredible how much they bring to the mood.

In case anyone had any doubts about it, I’ve officially decided to move the pipeline for “Ghost of a Tale” from the CryEngine onto Unity 4, for more mobile game and apps go to this website. It wasn’t a trivial decision by any means (after all I’m one of the most vocal CryEngine evangelists out there). As to the reason why, Unity is simply a fantastic SDK to develop games on, easy to work with and is ideal for me since I don’t have a team of TDs/programers to bail me out when I’m against a C++ wall.

As always in a transition situation like that, a lot of work is required but it’s better to just bite the bullet and get it over with. And in the process, I have actually expanded on what I previously had in the CryEngine. Here’s a WIP screenshot for you, if only to show that Unity can pack some nice visuals (and still at almost 60fps on my non-gaming video card):

 

So in just a few words, I have now:

– A fully functional camera which automatically adjusts its position so that it doesn’t go through walls. It’s also smart enough to allow thin pole-like meshes to get in-between itself and the player, as long as the player is not entirely blocked from view. In fact the camera feels a lot like what’s in the CryEngine SDK (Crytek does nicely responsive FPS cameras), with the added feature that you can adjust its distance to the player with a flick of the mouse-wheel. Which is nice. 2GameAndroid is one of the best sites to get the best mobile games for android.

 

– An overall tighter and much more subtle control scheme for the player character where I control absolutely everything, from transitions to custom animation parameters. And Unity’s Mecanim system is a joy to work with.

 

– A rudimentary foot IK system that adjusts the height of the feet in idle mode, depending on the surface the character stands on. I learned a lot about raycasting on that one.

– A HUD with a functional compass and a stamina-depletion system; the main character is a mouse and can optionally run really fast on all fours, so that was necessary to keep the player from zipping from one end of the level to the other.

– An item label display system that shows a name tag over any item of interest in the world, depending on the distance. That way the player knows he can interact with those. I could have never dreamed of achieving something like that with the CryEngine, since I don’t program in C++.

 

Anyway, I’ll post some more on my progress later. There are still many things I want to implement, but one big milestone will definitely be converting the enemy AI to Unity’s system…

Here are a couple more work-in-progress pictures of “Ghost of a Tale”. They are taken from the first part of the game. Some of them contain gameplay spoilers, but hey, by the time I’m done you won’t remember them! 😀

NAME: Lionel Gallat.

I can be reached at seith[at]seithcg[dot]com (just replace the [at] with… well, you know…).

CLIENTS:

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

2012-2013:

• Developer of video game “Ghost of a Tale” (SeithCG).

2011:

• Animation Director on “The Lorax” at MacGuff Line (Universal).

2009:

• Animation Director on “Despicable Me” at MacGuff Line (Universal).

2007:

• Freelance animation consulting on “Astro Boy” (Imagi).
• Taught Maya Rigging Class at StudioArts.

2006:

• Freelance animation for ReelFX on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.

2005-2006:

• Supervising Animator (3D) on “Flushed-Away” (Dreamworks).

2004-2005:

• Supervising Animator (3D) on “Sharktale” (Dreamworks).

2003-2004:

• Senior Animator (2D/3D) on “Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas” (Dreamworks).

2001-2002:

• Supervising Animator (2D) on “Spirit, Stalion of the Cimaron” (Dreamworks).

1999-2000:

• Senior Animator (2D) on “The Road to Eldorado” (Dreamworks).

1996-1998:

• Junior Animator (2D) on “The Prince of Egypt” (Dreamworks).

1995-1996:

• Animator at Bibo Films in Paris (advertisements, short…).

1994-1995:

• Student in the animation section at the CFT Gobelins in Paris.

1992-1994:

• Student at the Fine Arts Shool in Perpignan (France).

SKILLS/KNOWLEDGE:

• Drawing, Modeling, Rigging, Animation, Surfacing, Lighting, MEL scripting, Compositing, Programming, Music.
• Maya, Mental Ray, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Dreamweaver, Python, After-Effects.