Announcement, and first dev screenshot!

Hello, folks!  I'm very happy to announce the CAVE team have recruited our lead programmer for the project: Mr. Alec Lanter!

Alec's profile entry has been added to the blog.  Alec comes to us from the Volunteer State, and brings with him a whole host of ideas around AI, procedural cave generation, and skyrocketing our replay value.  We're very excited to have him on the team.

In other news, we have our first development screenshot!  Still in a very early alpha, here's a shot of the sign welcoming visitors to Mammoth Cave National Park.

Our first development screenshot!

Team Profile: Alec Lanter

Member Name: Alec Lanter

Position: Lead Programmer (Dear gods, what have you fools done!?)

A digital wunderkind since the days of the 8088, Alec Lanter has been programming from the tender age of eight, when he designed a TRON-style lightcycle game on his Tandy 1000. Having grown up a proud geek, Alec graduated from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and now enjoys a position as a professional

software architect and developer gripped by a strange fascination with weasels.  He has over fifteen years' experience in professional software development, in virtually every language there is.

"I’ve been programming basically since I could read, and I somehow tricked someone into letting me do it for a living once so it stuck as a career."

Alec's background includes research into AI systems for personal projects, from state-machine based behavior coordinators to self-organizing maps and neural networks, and he has experience working in the Unity engine.  Further, he has designed algorithms for procedural cave generation that should serve to be immensely useful in the project. Alec is a fan of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and other masters of the macabre.  His interests in the supernatural and spooky are shared by members of his family, including his brother-in-law.

Dev Team Update, 1 July

Hi there, folks!

Things have been really busy around here.  The team's slowly growing, which is outstanding, and progress is slowly being made.

First bit of good news:  Our script for the title sequence and tutorial level is complete.  We've also got the opening scenes storyboarded (Dan's hasty stick-figures for the most part).  We'll start working on an animatic soon.

This also means we've got some lines for our actors to read during auditions, and we have an upcoming audition for the lead role.  If all goes well, we may be able to introduce you all to the face of Paul Carter, soon.

In other news, our 3D scanning rig is nearing completion.  Once it's built (and once Carter is cast), look for stills from our test scans on this blog.

Finally, some fantastic news: We have our soundtrack!  Well, most of it.  You can look forward to some dark, twisted ambiance as you try to creep through labyrinthine tunnels to escape the horror that hunts you there.  We're hoping to reach out to a publisher soon regarding licensing a commercially successful rock tune to add to the eerie, haunted tracks we've accumulated so far.

The field trip to Mammoth Cave has been scheduled.  Not sure who is going just yet, aside from Dan, but it looks like the trip will be Saturday, the 2nd of August.  We'll be taking plenty of reference video and stills, and will post a few on this blog.  Keep an eye out.

Speaking of images, we've finished the game's first wallpaper.  See below for the link.

We'll check in with you later.  Have a great one, everybody!

CAVE wallpaper, 1280x720

CAVE wallpaper, 1920x1080

Team Profile: Dan Purdy

Member Name:    Dan Purdy

Position:                Lead Designer

Dan was born in the mythical land of Canada, in the forgotten, long-ago era of the 1980s.  He was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and later in the great state of Kentucky, which he now calls home.

Dan has been a gamer since his family bought their first Nintendo NES system in '85.  As a gamer, he prefers adventure (traditional point-and-click, classic Sierra titles, and modern epics like The Longest Journey, Uncharted, or anything by Quantic Dream), thinking-man's shooters (basically anything Tom Clancy), and Japanese RPGs.

Dan is a professional data analyst.

Dan's favorite author is Stephen King.  By far, the Dark Tower series is the best he's ever read.  And as King is the master of the modern creepy tale, so too was Lovecraft just after the turn of the century.  No stranger to Lovecraft's works, Dan chose the story, The Beast in the Cave, as the inspiration for his first ever full-length adventure, CAVE.

Side note: The short story mentioned above contains MAJOR SPOILERS.  We don't recommend reading it until after you've played CAVE.

Dan's introduction to Lovecraft's works came at the hands of another team member: Paul Shamhart, our creative consultant.  Dan:

"Lovecraft wasn’t really on my radar until [Paul] introduced me to his works.  We started playing the Call of Cthulhu D20 game shortly thereafter and I was hooked.  It was, I think, particularly due to Paul’s storytelling style and the way he wove many different Lovecraftian themes into each adventure that hooked me; to this day, I get nervous around 4:30 every afternoon."

Dan has a strong background in computer graphic design, with areas of focus in 3d modelling, animation, and 2d raster art with software tools like Autodesk 3DS Max, Adobe Photoshop, and The GIMP.  Borrowing from his professional experience, his skill set also includes project planning and execution, team leadership, cycle testing, and project support.

What does Dan want most to see in CAVE?

"The biggest thing I’d like to see is a polished, finished work.  I’m not speaking of the graphics, though they will go a long way toward player immersion.  Rather, I’m speaking of playability, enjoyability, and replay value.  I want people to really enjoy this experience.  Game element-wise, I’d love to see some first-person platforming; I’ve had this vision of Carter dangling by his fingertips on a darkened precipice overlooking a stygian abyss."


Look out for more team profiles, coming soon!

Dev Team Update, 10 June

Hello folks.  Well, it's time for another update from the dev team.

We had our first official brainstorming session to discuss plot details and toss around some ideas for gameplay elements.  CAVE is shaping up to be a lot larger than we initially projected; the possibilities are really exciting.  Not sure at this time how many of our ideas will make the final cut, but so far things are looking really, really good.  We're also formulating plans to

Our project plan is built and finalized with everything from scriptwriting and revisions to AI development, voice casting, and gameplay testing.  The plan is subject to change as we continue to recruit talent and gather more details on how long each step will take.

This weekend, we will be wrapping up an exciting mini-project: our full-body 3d scanning rig.  This will allow us to scan an entire human form and drop it into our 3d software for rigging and animation.  Referencing the high-resolution scans as normal mapping over lower-polycount models will allow us to offer high-performance, hyper-realistic character models.  We'll debut a short video demo of the rig in use once it's complete.  Watch for videos on this blog.

Finally, look forward to the first of our team bio's, that of Dan Purdy, our team's project lead!

Have a great week, all!

CAVE Overview

Well folks, it's time for the first update to the CAVE dev blog.  Of course, since this is the first entry, and seeing how CAVE hasn't really been publicly advertised as yet, it would behoove me to tell you a bit about the project.

The man in black fled across the desert,
and the gunslinger followed.

CAVE started out of the desire to bring a game to the public based on the works of Stephen King.  Say the name, "Stephen King," and likely you'll conjure imagery of child-eating clowns, world-ending plagues, and creepy-crawlies galore.  King is known chiefly as a horror author, but perhaps his finest work -- certainly his magnum opus -- has been the Dark Tower series: eight books spanning thirty years of an illustrious career.

Sai King, if you're reading this: Hile, talespinner.

King often licenses his short stories to independent filmmakers and creative minds in other media, for the paltry sum of $1.  The projects, which he calls his "Dollar Babies," adorn a special shelf in his home.  I began the CAVE journey sifting through his various short story collections, hoping to find the next Dollar Baby.

Sadly, while Sai King's stories are masterfully written, very few seem to lend themselves to the video game medium.  So it was with great reluctance that I put aside the works of King and took up the works of another master of American horror -- indeed, the premiere horror author of the 20th century -- H. P. Lovecraft.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote nothing but short stories his entire career; there were no novels, no novellas, no scripts for stage or screen.  What's more, though I had some initial trepidation about venturing from the Dollar Babies (licensing a libretto from another creative mind can be a very expensive proposition!), I was relieved to discover that Lovecraft's entire collected works are considered public domain, given their age.

Our studios (which consist of our living rooms and home offices) can be found in central Kentucky, which posed another problem: Were we to cast voice actors from local talent to produce a game based on Lovecraft's work, we'd find an incongruity in the regional dialect.  In plain English, the accents would be dead-wrong.  The overwhelming majority of Lovecraft's works were staged in New England, an area of the country he knew quite well, having spent most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island.

Scouring his collected works, I quickly realized we'd either have to localize one of his New England stories (which is challenging to say the least, given their often-oceanic subject matter), or find another author.  I was not about to spend the next indeterminate amount of time working toward an unsatisfying adaptation (like the film, Dagon, which isn't even based on the short story of the same name, and was changed to take place off the coast of Spain for no discernible reason).

It was then that I discovered a smaller, forgotten tale of his titled, The Beast in the Cave (SPOILER ALERT).  I was so excited to uncover this gem, which takes place in Mammoth Cave National Park in western Kentucky.  Perfect, I thought.  This means casting and localization won't be a problem!  Further, the story takes place almost entirely underground, through complex tunnels and massive caverns.

It was from this story that CAVE was born.

You are Paul Carter, a young professional and recent college grad living a quiet life in central Kentucky.  It's Memorial Day weekend, and to celebrate the long holiday, you've decided to visit Mammoth Cave with a couple of friends from school.  On arrival, you join your friends and enter the Cave's historic entrance as part of a large and diverse tour group.  At some point during the dull, overly-rehearsed tour, you become separated from the group, wandering off into the dark recesses of the cave.  You find yourself lost in the labyrinthine maze of tunnels and sarcophagal chambers.  As you venture deeper into the mire of twisting limestone catacombs you come to realize you're hopelessly lost, losing what little light you brought with you and with it, any hope of rescue.  One other thing... you are not alone.

The Mammoth Cave

CAVE will be a great project to work on, over the coming year or so, and we're very excited at the prospect of releasing a game of such magnitude.  We're also looking forward to showcasing some of the technologies we're using to breathe life into Mammoth Cave, our wayward adventurer, and all those around him.  Some of the topics we'll be featuring in upcoming posts:

• The software: Getting the job done with GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program and Adobe Photoshop, and Autodesk 3D Studio MAX
• The engine: Unity's powerful tool set and compatibility with virtually every file type and asset editor out there.
• The action: Full-body and facial scanning, as well as marker-less motion capture, all using Microsoft Kinect Sensors
• The people: Developer and actor bios - Get a look at the people behind the scenes of CAVE.

Stay tuned for more information on the CAVE project.  Hopefully we'll have our landing page up soon.

Have a great week!

Dan Purdy

Project Lead

Development Blog is open for business!

Welcome folks, to the CAVE game development blog.  Look forward to posts from the developers of the game here, including development screenshots, updates on our progress, photos from our journey into Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and much much more!  Check back for regular updates!