My prized SEGA Dreamcast copy of Rez 😊

I first had the pleasure of playing and owning this game on the Sega Dreamcast. Rez was one of many great games that launched on the ill fated console. It was a game inspired by a medical condition called Synesthesia.

“A phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers, such as tasting colours or feeling sounds. Some people describe it as having wires crossed in their brain because it activates two or more senses when there's only a reason for one sense to activate.”

Clevelandclinic.org

More information about the condition can be found at the link above.

At its core, REZ is an on rails shooter. Each level is split into 10 layers (sections) if you take down a special enemy at the end of each section the level and music evolves. if you miss this enemy the game continues but the music and level remains the same unless you eliminate the next special enemy. The game is very old school SEGA. simple mechanics, hard to master. The pursuit of perfection, attain 100% rank on all the areas. There’s 5 areas in total. All with unique music and environments. Most actions in the game go with the beat. Although it doesn’t affect your score if you don’t nail shots on the beat. Most of your actions are automatically beat matched.

So how does this relate to my game Phantom Complex? I’m hoping to make a game that’s as simple as possible to play. Gamers can have a lot of fun trying to get really good at it just for the sake of enjoyment. I don’t see this a lot in games these days. Games have such high budgets today, they simply can’t afford to fail. So creative was lost and a lot of blueprint games emerge. Copying what’s trending at the time. I’ve purposely looked towards SEGA Dreamcast, Sony PS2, Microsoft XBOX and Nintendo Game Cube games for inspiration. For me this was the last time it didn’t matter which console you had. Each one was stacked with cool original games to play. For me Rez was one of them.

I’m currently trying to get 100% again on Rez Infinite on my Meta Quest 2. Got 100% for Rez on the Dreamcast, PS2 and XBOX 360 versions. Rez always seemed like it was designed for VR and it’s cool to play that way. Rez was the Only reason I bought a Meta Quest 2. Could say I’m a bit addicted to this game.

The main player controlled character Garrett was designed by Mio Furukawa. A talented graphic designer I met after I moved to Prague, Czech Republic from London, UK.

After a few false starts looking for a character concept artist. I’m so glad Mio lent her skills to my project.

I wasn’t looking for super detailed character sheets and turnarounds. I had a rough idea what I was looking for. I knew Mio could nail it with the right reference images, creative space and time.

I met Mio while she was doing life drawing sketches of people at my local church. So I knew her style was a match, luckily I was able to convince her to give my project a try.

So far, the main character Garrett has been finalised in 3D. I’m currently rigging the character for animation. This will be a full character rig including facial controls for full performance animation.

Mio now resides in Japan continuing to do awesome work of witch you can see here - Mio Furukawa. You can also buy some of her work here - Mio's Art | By Furukawa.

As you can see the main character is a black guy. The reason… I’m a black guy too. I’d like to make a game where the main character looks like me that’s it. That’s not to say Garretts story can’t be relatable to other people I believe it can. This is not a woke game there’s no agendas being pushed in this game. I’m personally sick of the woke agenda nonsense in all forms of media now, I’m not adding to it. My focus is to make an awesome super cool character in a very bold and enjoyable game.

Lastly, bit of a spoiler the black guy survives the game. No dying first or in the worst way 😂.

This a quick update. I’m doing it… I’m going to try and learn Houdini. Run out of road to run away. It’s the best tool for what I need to do.

Side FX Houdini is a quality tool, that I honestly find daunting. There’s a variety of assets I’d like to add to my environment art that simply makes more sense moving it to Houdini.

I jumped the first hurdle, bought a year long license. Now I just need to find the courage and time to learn it. Need to make a lot of random rocks, damaged walls and tiles, broken glass etc. Thanks to some kind masters of Houdini and Youtube there’s a wealth of free learning material out there. I just need to narrow my search. Hopefully I can find some specific tutorials that cater to my needs or close enough. I could just models these parts one by one but It’s better to work smarter.

Houdini has some amazing tools for procedural generation of assets. I’ll make sure to post an update of my progress, wish me luck.

The biggest influences on my game would be Exhumed and Metroid Prime for gameplay. Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuild and Second Sight for art style. Halo 4 for Narrative style and delivery. I’ll go over each IP to explain fully.

Exhumed aka Power Slave

I probably the biggest influence on my game overall. Properly showing my age with this one, I was playing this game in my teenage years on the Sega Saturn. I picked it up cheap in a saturday marking in Kent England no clue what type of game it was. Boy was I lucky, a real surprise for me. It’s basically a mix of old school Doom, Egypt history and Castlevania style progression. The graphics weren’t ground breaking but the execution of the gameplay was so good. My brother and I played this for hours. It’s still very good today, worth a play on PC if you have the chance. Loved the exploration and puzzles. A good amount of gun battles and actually worked pretty well on the Sega Satrun control pad before analogue sticks became common place.

Metroid Prime

I played the original release on the Nintendo Game Cube. Now I’m enjoying the remaster on the Switch. The game still holds up today. It’s a lofty goal but I’d like the graphic quality of Phantom Complex to be at this level. The remaster looks excellent on The switch and runs at 60fps. So there’s hope I can achieve the same level of graphical quality and performance.

At it’s core Metroid Prime is an adventure / exploration type of game. It just so happens to be an FPS. It’s similar to Exhumed. Lots of platforming sections, back tracking to open up new areas, solve simple puzzles etc. choosing to be an FPS cuts down on the amount of animation to be done. Also saves a lot of headaches getting the player camera to play nice with the environment. Whilst designing Phantom Complex I came to similar conclusions. I’m a team of one for now so I need to play to my strengths. An FPS adventure game makes a lot of sense for Metroid Prime and I’ll look to replicate some of it’s success in Phantom Complex.

Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuild

This one is for all the die hard anime fans out there. This anime series / film series had a profound effect on me. I watch the Rebuild movie series at least once a year and still find interesting visual and story elements over a decade later.

You can find out more about this film series here - Evangelion: 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 + 1.01

I simply love the aesthetics of the film series. It’s very minimal with great composition and use of subtle nad vibrant colours. The world has a massive sense of scale through out. While presented largely in wide screen format. I really hope to replicate this with my game. I feel the visual style lends itself to low poly scene construction. I hope to bring my game project to switch platforms without out compromise.

Second Sight

I was very fortunate to see this game before it came out. Although I didn’t know the game at the time. Pretty sure the guy broke NDA to show us but I’m grateful. While at university we had various industry professionals come in. We got to chat to a 3D animator from Free Radical Design. Really cool experience. What stuck with me was the character designs and the animation style. Characters from their games had humanoid proportions but the animation was similar to classic animated films like The Iron Giant, Titan A.E. or Anistasia. It was over expressive like Disney but not aiming for photorealism. In modern gaming Over Watch, Fortnite and league of legends would be the closest in terms of animation. I hope to get to this level of quality with my project Phantom Complex.

Halo 4

I’m probably in the minority for this, but I really like Halo 4 for it story delivery. The interactions between Master Chief and Cortana is just incredible to me. The cut scenes are just pure cinematic gold. The writing is so beautiful the voice actors for Master chief and Cortana really brought their “A” game. What I love most about Halo in general is the in game voice acting that helps to progress the story while not overriding the gameplay. I’m not a fan of modern day heavy narrative driven games. They end up being more film than a game. This has spilled over in to 2.5D platform games that prioritise cinematography over gameplay. Great to look at but gameplay just seem like a chore only to get to the next visually pleasing shot. Even with film the cinematography is meant to serve the story not its own gratification. For me cinematography / cut scene in games is meant to serve the gameplay progression. I get the heavy swing towards film like features but this comes at a cost of game identity. Modern games have spent too much time trying to get acceptance from fellow piers in film than just solidifying it’s own place. The games industry is now bigger than Hollywood. Games industry no longer needs their acceptance it’s probably the other way round now.

I’ve set out some high marks to achieve with Phantom Complex. If I aim for the stars but only reach Mars that’s still a massive achievement. Instead of standing still on the pavement in Croydon town centre.

Onwards and upwards.

I spent the best part of 14 months deciding which engine to use. I had a lot of prop assets to make anyway so I could take my time with my choice. There was very plausible reasons to choose each engine for very different reasons.

Unreal Engine 5

Main reason to consider this engine was the artist workflow. I love that it works almost the same as Maya or Blender. I simply setup my scene and light it. I can then rely on the renderer to sort out shadows, ambient occlusion, global illumination etc. No need to bake shadow maps, global illumination etc. I can easily iterate on the art without worrying about re-baking the lighting each time which can take days to sort out. This work flow does come at a very high price for me. I’d be locked to mid to high end PC specs, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Not a bad thing, but as a first time indie dev I need a large customer base to hopefully succeed. I would like to launch on Nintendo Switch and Mobile if possible without too much compromise. If I chose unreal I’d have to give up on a Switch launch.

Unity

This was going to be the engine I chose. It’s widely supported. Loads of learning resources and a wealth of Unity developers if I need to hire some help. Many friends of mine are Unity developers so I’d feel very empowered to go down this path. Unfortunately the recent Unity fees made me reconsider. This doesn’t take away from how good the tool is. It has a proven track record of producing quality games and experiences for talented studios around the world. A lot of my favourite devs use it. Maybe I’ll need to use it some day for another project, who knows.

The Unity fee changes have been reversed after the massive backlash which is a good thing. The trust is broken and it’s only a matter of time before something similar comes a long. Next time the changes will be legally iron clad for sure. I don’t like my fate being at the mercy of someone else if I can avoid it. I feel my investment is better else where even if it’s difficult at the beginning.

Godot

The hardest path for sure. If I go this path there’s very little help out there in comparison to Unity. Fun thing is that out of all three engines I felt most comfortable in Godot. I initially had a play with Godot with version 3.5. What I quickly found out was the render engine could not replicate my tests in Marmoset Tool Bag. Although I loved the work flow it wasn’t viable. I looked into further updates that could improve the render engine in Godot. A lot of what i wanted was coming in version 4.0 but there wasn’t a concrete release date. Since I had a lot of artwork to do, I simply kicked the can down the road. I froze my decision on my game engine choice until 2023 in late 2021. Around the same time I just started a new job and that tied up my free time largely until April 2023. I was able to carve out an evening here and there to do more asset creation. Not enough consistent time to learn a game engine and the scripting language. Over the period of time I decided to go down the path of Unity. As they had more learning resources and I had people i could ask for help. Even though I felt more comfortable with Godot.

Then the Unity fee fiasco happened and I suddenly had to re-evaluate my choice. In the short term the fee situation would not effect me at all. For me I like to hope for the best but plan for the worst. In the short term. It’ll be hard going if I use Godot. In the long run my studios financial future would be stronger. The last time I chose what was comfortable for me over what other said was learning Maya over 3D Studio Max or Softimage. Turned out to be the right way to go. Maya has its problems but I’ve made a successful career out of learning it. I don’t see why Godot will be any different.

I love this game so much. I’m no shmup (short for shoot em up) expert, but of all the shmups I’ve played over the years this game keeps me coming back. It’s a gift that just keeps on giving. I’ve never managed to beat the game, but it doesn’t stop me from appreciating the quality of Gradius V. It’s brilliant in every department. The sound track is so epic. I listen to it as I’m making assets from my own game.

What does Gradius V have to do with my game Phantom Complex? Narrative delivery and music. The game gives a small amount of voice over at key points that help flesh out the world masterfully. The amazing soundtrack fills in the gaps. The soundtrack beautifully describes the mood of each level. Perfectly ebbs and flows with the action, it’s not dynamic as stages are scripted. It makes the game feel cinematic.

This is something I hope to replicate within Phantom Complex. I’m not sure what style of music would suit my game. I feel that’s up to the composer to discover. I’m no musician, so I’ll rely on their expertise’s in this matter. Makes no sense to pay a professional then not listen to their skilled opinion.

I have an idea for a Shmup game. Perhaps it’s the next game I make after Phantom Complex.