Nov 27, 2010

Interface Aesthetics Tidbit #1

Another productive day comes to an end and I am glad everything turned out exactly how I wanted it to look like. Editing the general interface, no, not only that, editing the whole game at all has to be treated with huge respect because the originals had just it's own unique style and dedication I've yet to find in any other game.
So I rather spend days or weeks making something good and respecting the work of the original Fallout devs, instead of throw some half-assed stuff in. ;)

Anyway, Picture Numbero Uno, the Dialogbox, a thing you will see and have to take care for a lot during the game (obviously, when it comes to text-heavy games):



You can see the general text font used in there. I fiddled around with it a long time till I found a font which is actually readable and looks good. I really like it and it looks gorgeous ingame. Opposing to the "cold", "sterile" but yet fitting font of Fallout, this one is a bit more "mellow", looks like handwriting. Thus it represents the general aesthetics of my mod, everything is handmade, everyone is more caring for themselves and their own survival. The general look of the Interface has more warmer brown tones, as opposing to grey-metallish tones, as seen in the little comparison picture I made:




Well then, what's left? The worldmap! I worked a bit with it and already loving it, but it is still heavily Work In Progress. It's meant to be rather a handdrawn old "treasure" map then an accurate satellite map like in the original Fallouts. There are many "Landmarks" drawn onto it, I hope you people like the aesthetics.



I really really like it and it looks beautiful ingame.


Anyway, that should be it for today, see you next time around, I'll keep you in touch if some new things are coming.

Regards,

Frank

Nov 25, 2010

Media Roundup #1

So, let's not waste time, aye?

This media roundup shall feauture a few of the music tracks which will be ingame, along with some other ambient music you might like, composed and recorded by myself. Few of you might have already heard it, but it never hurts to introduce someone new to it.


So, here's the first little album  I recorded in the past and take some samples/loops for the game:

Ancient Horse, Full of Glue

1-  Birds Song
2 - In Vains
3 - Birth Of A Star
4 - 23 and 43
5 - Finally We Know How To Delay Our Struggle
6 - Let's Build An Ocean Full Of Flies
7 - Kansas City
8 - The Vats
9 - Barbarossa
10 - It Fades
11 - Great Queen Elizabeth the XIII
12 - White Mice
13 - Ludwig&Bartholomeus Part2


It feautures some very ambienty drones I recorded with experimental audio editing and shifting, using just a tape recorder, aswell as traditional Ambient thingies and some post-rocky tunes. You'll see which parts of the EP will be used in the game. ;)

___

And here's the next one, tada! :


Tunes of a Doomsday Tribe




1 - Hunters Territory
2 - Everythings Asleep
3 - Wood
4 - Forlorn Regions
5 - 310 Seconds Before The Fall
6 - Devastation
7 - A Sacred Place
( incase file "Wood" is not working, grab it here )


This one is pretty much inspired by the music Mark Morgan has done for the two Fallout Games.
If you like the soothing tunes of the original Fallout games, you probably like one or two things in there too. I took some tracks out of this for my game too. Enjoy!


If you don't like to download the packs, let me tease you here a bit (all on Soundcloud):

Hunters Territory by fschimski

Wood by fschimski

Forlorn Regions by fschimski


That's it for now, regards,


Frank

Introducing!

So, as this is now the first post on this new and shiny Internet Blog thingy, I thought it'd be a clever idea to explain the reasons why I want to do such a game, right? Well then!
I like Fallout. You probably like Fallout too, since you visited this page. We all like Fallout, don't we?
We do. And I like Fallout 1 and its dark, unforgiving and yet melancholic atmosphere even more.
And what does one do if one likes some particular thing? Right, demand more! But as there is no Fallout1² the need of a mod arises. That's where my part comes in! Of course it is not my intention to just copy something, besides the fact that I can't even do this, it would be pretty boring and no one want to play a bad duplicate.

But I do not only like Fallout 1/2, I like cRPGS, preferrably from the late 90ies too! As one big influence I want to name Planescape:Torment here - a game which completely blew me away, especially when it came to its unique setting, excellent atmosphere (music/SFX/graphics) to just gorgeous and detailed writing. One could literally spend hours and hours just talking to NPC, hearing their stories and find more about their particular backgrounds. This - mixed with the grittiness of the fallout world and of course my own little ideas and styles - I thought will be the best of two worlds combined - I always wanted to play such a game, so I decided I just do such a game.

That's how I landed here. Created spreadsheets, design documents for NPC, locations and the world in general, learned how to script and handle the engine and made some music and sound effects. This all ended in some nice little build which is already playable and I am very proud of - maybe I can release this little gem of a demo in the next few months when I polished it a bit.
I have loads of fun to put my creativity in use and see how it slowly shapes itself and becomes "alive", enjoying the music, enjoying the atmosphere, the characters are haunting me. So I hope you'll enjoy it the same when it get's released, maybe you got the time to read the news here from time to time.

Until then, with best regards,

Frank