I can't believe it has been 3 years already. I've had a great time, learnt loads and made some really great friends. Below is my post hand in statement to the form wars crew. I was so lucky to have such a great amount of talented people on one project.

Well Bloody done everyone! Thank you so so much for all your hard work! it looks great!

Form Wars Beta, is not really a beta in fact its only the first real test of my code. I finished coding at 6 am and spent the next 5 hours integrating all your artwork and animation before the deadline at 12:30. Its very very unpolished, buggy as hell and kinda boring as a game without an AI so please consider it to be the first steps towards the finished game not the actual game. If your like me hopeful you'll get a kick out of seeing your work come to life. So have fun stomping a spider or branch whipping a doom jester to death. I'm proud of what it is so far, please pat yourself on the back for me and say "well done you!" in your best Irish accent for me.

Here is the Mac version

http://www.conormoloney.com/FormWarsBeta1.02.zip

PC version is uploading now. WARNING: this has crashed my computer once already. Its not harmful but be warned it could happen, so save all your work etc. before playing.

It is buggy as hell and I know it! no need to report them at the moment cause their are too many. On the next update I'll start a bug hunt thread.

Congratulations to everyone finishing another year or your last year. Big well done to Suvi and Nick and whoever else got that VFX thing-a-ma-gigger. Another Congratz to James, the man who made the music, he is getting married this weekend! see you all for well deserved pints soon!

We've had sme clipping planes issues with projection in maya. This seems to be solvable by switching off the default setting and manual adding your own settings in the projection "Transfer Maps" window.

Another friend join the Form wars production team. David Scot who runs the sound division of localisation company based in Thailand has agreed to have ago at doing the sound effects. I know he will do a good job.

Finally I'm focusing on coding I have improved a lot since I started. I can now write shader too. Above is a rim light shader in an animation test in built in unity. My code is all round more efficient but there is so little time left now >.<

I've made more tutorials form Lucas maxfeild, to help him create the environment for Form Wars.
I think he is struggling with Unity a bit and I have thrown him into the deep end but his stuff is looking great.

April 1st and no did anything funny today =( ... well that I saw

Just got the first music track for Form Wars from my friend james McNulty. He has done an amazing job, this is not the kind of music he usual makes. He has exceeded my expectation.

http://www.conormoloney.com/form_wars_1.wav

I just got the first Test animations from Nicolas for the jester. Its looking really good, he really understood how the character should move and he is clearly a very good animator too, I'm looking forward to seeing more.

We've have had more issues with the spider rig. The bone orintation was off on one leg. I've made another video for harry to fix it with a custom Mel script.

We had more Gilches on the Green King, It was the same parenting constraint problem we had on the Jester. However Elaine could fix them this time the rig is looking good!

Harry used the tutorials I had and he has produced a good spider rig. I'm glad they helped him. We tried plenty of other pre-maid tutorials first but nothing had what we really wanted.

I've made more Video tutorials. These were for harry to help him build FKIK switchs for the spiders legs.




 tutorials.
www.conormoloney.com/FKIKleg01.mov
www.conormoloney.com/FKIKleg02.mov
www.conormoloney.com/FKIKleg03.mov
www.conormoloney.com/FKIKleg04.mov
www.conormoloney.com/FKIKleg05.mov

I'm getting abuse off family members about changing to an All green profile in support of CG animators getting under paid. Its a slightly silly cause, a real 1st world problem! but I wanted to be supportive. Some facebook post are starting to look very green.

http://www.conormoloney.com/FW_Presentation04.mov

Sahara Grossman won the ffresh award and fair play to her, I hope it raises awareness of her game and sell a few more copies of Master Reboot.

Hopefully I'll be better prepared for ffresh next year with Form Wars.

Above is a link to the movie I used for my pitch to the sound students to try and find a sound effects artist. Unfortunately we didn't get one but we now have a 2nd composer to create the sound track for the game.

Dissertation time! I have to say I've enjoyed writing it and researching it. I've written mine on Ludology. However it has been very time consuming and I really need more time for Form Wars.
The Dissertation research has been a great help with thinking about "Form Wars" as a game, I've learnt a lot about game balance, imperfect balance and other stuff I need to consider to keep the game interesting. We have enough talent to keep it looking pretty but that doesn't make it a game game!

I've had to re-rig the jester model, unfortunately Elaine's rig has a lot of problems. I spent 3 hours picking it apart only to find the knot I was trying to unravel was really a labyrinth. The problem was a lot of controls were parent constraint to each other when regular parenting would have done. I hope Elaine won't be disheartened by me taking over this rig, it was a simple mistake to make and we are all here to learn!

Elaine is going to add some branches to the Green King Rig for Form Wars. I think this will look good in the animation. Harry has been having trouble rigging spider legs in Maya, He is new to Maya. I'll have to see can I find him some good tutorials.
We had another house viewing today, I think they are going to take it.... Hopefully, we seem to be constantly cleaning.

http://uk.gamespot.com/jack-vs-ninjas/videos/jack-vs-ninjas-official-trailer-6403433/

Jack vs Ninjas is finally here! Now to steal someones iPhone to play it on. My phone is so old it has a keypad with buttons. I will have to bully family and friends into playing it. I must say the Lads did a great Job it looks really good, I'm proud to have my name on it =D

An update on the Form wars Artwork from Pierre. Pierre has only been a 3D artist for 1 year he was previously an animator and has work is really really good. Now that the witch doctor is coloured it is looking great, I'm pleased I hope he is too.

5th February

The jester rig seems to be nearly done, I'm just waiting to hear final word on it.

Meanwhile Jack vs ninjas was posted Yay! now to find a link to it >.<

Yay! Jack vs Ninjas is finished and will be released for iPhone soon. As part of my 2nd year project I collaborated on JvN and created the Panda Character form Daniel Joseph's design. I had great fun on this project and I'm looking forward to seeing the Panda in action

30th January

Elaine Got back to me about the Jester rig, I am going to skin it for her because she has a lot on her plate at the moment. I have not been skinning in Maya in a long long time. I am sure I'll be an expert by the time the project is finished.

January 28th

Dai has introduced me to "Trello" an online project management system that will make life much easier. It will save us all from constant group emails. Trello lets you upload files too, people will only be getting emailed about what they need, I'm sure we can run the whole project off this website.

I met with Samuel Redfern today, He is the new composer on "Form Wars". He seems like a nice guy. From what he played me he seems to be good too. Looking forward to hear what he does.

25th January

I've had a lot of back and fort emails with harry about the size of the Minotaurs tail. By the time it evolves to level 3 its Huge but for now I've agreed with harry on the changes because it will Make animation easier and it will add to the sense of evolution later on.

19th January

It Snowed yesterday, The day before I found out I have been shortlisted for 2 ffresh awards. Link: http://ffresh.com/en/games-interactive-media-shortlist/
I was shocked when I found out. My two entries weren't finished games, they hadn't really been polished to a good standard but I'm chuffed I got nominated. I'm hoping "Soul Infinity" or "Master Reboot" win it because they both have products to sell and it would be good publicity for either.

Playable Link to Icy & Burny: www.conormoloney.com/Icy and Burny web/IcyBurny.html

And a Pic of the Time Machine above, its too big to make a playable link. Its shape is meant to represent an Hour Glass.

17th January

Above are some banners I did to promote Form Wars, I lined up Silhouettes of the character designs for each faction. The Banners seem to have had a positive effect with people. I've had friends asking about the game it would be nice to get a facebook page or webpage up and running soon to show off some of the work. The Logo has had enough criticism to let me it is just not working, I'll get back to the drawing board with it when I get more free time >.< 

Model sheets for my Major Project. I'm not happy with the design and I hope to change most or all of it as I develop the model.

11th December

We finished our Unity Project. Working as a team we made a functioning game of Xs & Os. I wrote the movement and gameplay main script as well as an AI to play against. It was fun to make and I learnt a bit. I've never tried to write an AI and while it was a simple one I'm less intimidated by it now, I'll consider making one for form wars too. Most of the scripts were achieved by running Array lists through For-loops to find flags to react too. Playable Link: www.conormoloney.com/xos/xoWeb.html
Arrow Keys or W,A, S, D to move, Ctrl to place an X. The game resets 5 seconds after it ends.