This time, it's Persona(l).

 

It's nice to see some joy left in the world.

Hey there - welcome to June!!

This past week has been an exciting time for both the players and developers of video games. Why? 'Cuz Summer Games Fest and Unreal Fest, of course! We don't get true E3 any more, as all of the big players in the business just have their own separate presentations. But the excitement is still real.

I've got to hand it to Xbox - they had a killer presentation. The new ROG Xbox Ally looks like a really cool way to take your Xbox library on the go without relying on streaming. The only real questions that remain are:

• How much will it cost?
• Will MAKRANA be playable on it?
• Will GTA 6 be playable on it at higher than 8fps?
• Can it run Crysis?

The answers to these questions, and more, will all be revealed in time. 

But the REAL exciting news from the Xbox showcase was the official reveal of Persona 4: Revival. For those who've never had the joy of experiencing it, Persona 4 was an Atlus-made JRPG originally on the PlayStation 2. It received an "update" in the way that the Persona series does in the form of the much-loved Persona 4: Golden, which released on that oft-forgotten juggernaut we know as the PlayStation Vita. Fortunately it has since been ported to modern consoles, but all of these versions are essentially just ports of the PS2 version - a game that originally came out in 2008. 

Not only do I still have my old Vita copy of the game, but I made
sure to snag a PS4 copy from Limited Run Games when they became
available.

So why the excitement?

Last year, we got Persona 3: Reload, which was an amazing-looking remake of the third game in the series (also a PS2 title). It sold like gangbusters, and was seemingly loved by players as an amazing update to a classic. Persona 4: Revival looks to be P4's turn to get the same treatment, love, and care given to - what many would say - is the best game in the series. It's super exciting to know that the next time I go to live at my uncle's house in Inaba, it will look as good as this trailer:

I have P3R sitting on my shelf, but haven't gotten to it yet. My single player game for the last couple months has actually been Persona 5: Royal - a game that I have chipped away on for a year now. It's perfect on PlayStation Portal, and I imagine would be a fantastic experience on Steam Deck, Switch, or the afore-mentioned Xbox Ally. There really is nothing like sitting on the couch with the windows open, enjoying a nice breeze as you attend high school during the day and save the world at night. If you've never played any of these games, I'd heavily advise it!

You mentioned something called "Unreal Fest"?

Something less-known to the gaming public is Unreal Fest, a yearly week-long convention that is put on by Epic Games to show off all of the cool things happening in Unreal Engine over the next year. This year it was in Orlando, and I was sadly unable to attend in person. *fingers crossed for next year*

 I won't bore you with all the nitty-gritty details here, but they announced the release of Unreal 5.6, which has some cool new features. For those who saw the new Witcher 4 engine demo, this was shown at the festival. Let's just say that someday I'll make a game that has trees and foliage, and when I do, these features will make said trees efficient AF. In addition to updates to their already-awesome Meta Human character creation tool, it's really exciting too see and think of all the awesome possibilities that lie ahead for those interested in making video games (such as myself).

"These features will 

make said trees 

efficient AF".

- Matt Miller, just now

TL:DR

I'm really happy about the choice to switch to Unreal Engine, both for MAKRANA and for the future.

Aren't you supposed to be talking about your game?

I'll do what I want - you're not the boss of me.

But yes, development continues along! I hit several important miles since our last chat:

1. I hit my 1000th JIRA issue created. While some would say that this is bad because it means I've worked on the game for too long, I prefer to look at it as my obsession with documentation of the process is helping to keep me on track.
2. The core game loop is finally playable in the Unreal build, both on console and on PC. On my 3070TI/Ryzen 7 5800 rig, it was only running at 400-500fps. No biggie.

Now, hold your space-faring horses. That doesn't mean it's done.

But it does mean that I can sit down with a fresh save, and play through runs of the game, experiencing the story progression and accumulating points for upgrades and fashion. There's still a bit that hasn't made it's way into the game, but being able to sit and view it as an experience from my couch feels nice! As I continue to get things up and running in-game, I always have the old "what sucks about this" running in the back of my mind. Currently, I've been tackling some of the easy to-do's in fixing things as they come up. But as a rule, I don't really let myself get distracted on things that will take a while to polish up unless they break the game and/or make it unplayable. Once everything's built, I'll spend plenty of time tuning and making it feel better to play. That last 10% is really where the game comes together, they say.

All New Materials

I do have a cool thing to show off that I'm pretty happy with: the cargo containers got a big re-texture to bring them more in-line with the detail level of the new ship model and the asteroids. Take a gander:

All of the white lights that you see will - if I've done the job correctly - be glowing different colors, based on what level of cargo it is. For those who care about the tech, this is because I painted those parts as an "emissive" texture. Anything that that is in the emissive layer can cast a glow, and even emit light in games where that's needed. It's a great option that adds a lot of cool detail and saves on the cost of using *actual* lights in the engine. By making it white, I should be able to actually change the color of that channel to whatever I'd like in the game engine itself, preventing me from having to make a whole new texture set for each color I want. We'll see how well this plays out in practice.

One of the cool takeaways from this is that texturing can really add a lot. The above 3D model is the same one I showed off in early Facebook posts (before this blog existed), but it looks much more detailed than before. The geometry of the model is the same, but the texturing adds the appearance of depth and additional detail. Video Games really are just all smoke and mirrors, it seems.

So, what's next?

I'm going to spend some time on getting these textures into the game and working. The cargo objects have been in there for a bit, but it'll be cool to get to shoot something that looks a lot less like a boring white box.

After that, it's finally time to grind out the textures for the ship. As I showed in a previous post, I had someone make an updated model for the game. It looks awesome, but the task of creating textures for it is a very time-consuming process. Well, maybe it wouldn't be if I didn't care as much about what it looks like. But I do, so that's that. The process is really front-loaded in the time department: making the first texture set takes quite some time because of all the layers and masks needed to get things in the right place. Once the first one is done, I should just be able to duplicate and change the colors of the materials. Some of the later-game paint jobs will probably feature additional details like other decals or weird effects. Still, the first one is always the hardest.

Jetpacks Was Yes

I'd like to leave you with a couple pictures of something cool that happened this week. I finally got to see the band at the top of my "must see" list - Periphery. Needless to say, they were amazing, even if it was a much shorter set than I would have liked. If your worst problem as a band is "people want you to play longer", then I think you're doing great.

Periphery, opening for Coheed & Cambria at Vibrant Music Hall

 Now, your question is this: why do you, Dear Reader, care about some band I love that you've never even heard of? I'll tell you why: 

Because Misha Mansoor, that's why.

This man is an absolute inspiration for me.

 

Misha is one of the founding members of Periphery - a band that I've loved since I discovered them in college. I listened to Periphery II: This Time It's Personal a lot when I was working on my Capstone project. 

Most importantly, he has done amazing work in pushing the idea of DIY recording. All of their records sound amazing, and they were all self-recorded and produced by the members of the band. Misha himself has made a decent YouTube career on tutorials and how-to's in showing folks that they can make their musical dreams come true, even just in their home and on a budget. 

In addition, his love for video games has also lead to some amazing opportunities: Destiny: Rise of Iron featured his rendition of the Sepiks Prime theme, and he also did a bunch of work on Halo: The Master Chief Collection. In particular, he did some cool stuff on Halo 2 Anniversary. Remember how you were flying the Banshee in the level "The Arbiter", and you thought "this track is slammin', but I don't remember it from the original game"? Well, that's Misha. 

This sounds like a lot of, as the internet kids would say, "glazing". But I bring it up because of this:

I would not be here, writing this blog to you if it weren't for this man. 

I would not have had as much fun and success writing the MAKRANA soundtrack if it weren't for this man. 

Thanks, Misha, for all that you've done - for both heavy music AND video games. I'm going to do my best to make some good ones, and I know you'll do the same.

Until next time, friends.

- Matt