Author Archives: David

The Sound Of One Gear Turning

December 18, 2013 by David Baumgart

Sound effects, wow! Pow! Bzam! Krakow! They’re important, they’re part of the game experience, and I’ve been plugging a lot of them into game objects lately and generally writing giant spreadsheets of sounds that need making. The talented Matthew Steele, or our sound and music man for Dredmor, is back again for Clockwork Empires so he gets to enjoy said spreadsheets. Nicholas is into music — brace yourself and ask about synthesizers some day — so he and Matthew have worked that side of things out. Meanwhile all I listen to is horrible ‘industrial noise artists’ from eastern Europe, so I’m taking point on making sound effects happen. And, horrifyingly, my terrible musical tastes are relevant because a lot of CE’s soundscape is in fact going to involve a good deal of industrial noise. I love it!

A Most Pleasing Noise

The littlest oven.

The tricky thing about these industrial sounds is that they have to actually be somewhat nice to listen to. Imagine a power-saw or a jackhammer — they sound awful and you’d better be wearing ear protection if you’re anywhere nearby. To have absolutely realistic industrial sounds would wear on the ears somewhat and, well, I’m glad I’ve got Matthew around to cook these up.

One of my favourite industrial sounds done so far is for the ‘small oven’; I find it really relaxing somehow:

Small Oven:

(Makes you really feel the holiday spirit, as if huddled for warmth around the factory boiler on a cold winter night.)

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged christmas bonuses this year will be paid in laudanum and beard oils, david was feverish when he wrote this wheres the tea its so cold so very cold, it always ends up between two grain silos in the Ukraine, it's hard to art direct while wearing this mask with a beak full of herbal tinctures, Matthew I am so sorry I attempted sound mixing on my own for this post, nicholas has run up the black flag in the office, only Foreign Communists refuse to huddle around the factory boiler on cold winter nights -- "holidays" indeed!, plague in Kent, plague in Mercia, plague in Wessex Sussex and Essex, plague season is upon us again, please remember to drink herbal tinctures this holiday season to prevent plague and enjoy hallucinations responsibly, treemurder, tried to work in a Colonel Corazon Santiago quote but sadly had to edit it out, your homework: listen to an hour of Merzbow then report back with findings
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The Codebase of Elemental Evil

November 20, 2013 by David Baumgart

Nicholas usually played as Nicholas (race: Half-English, class: Coder, specialization: Graphics, favoured enemy: Writing Documention). But this week we brought the snacks and he got to be the Development Master. That meant the adventure was his pick. We always dreaded his week.

Sean (Half-Scot Artist, specialization: Environment) made coffee of blackest night. Cups filled and SVNs updated, The Gaslamp Games adventurers assembled at the table. Once everyone had quieted down and settled in Nicholas began as he always did. With dramatic pause.

… … …

“This week we enter The Codebase of Elemental Evil: A story of Clockwork Empires.” he intoned.

Tremble, mortals.

Daniel, Viking dual-classed Executive/Programmer, spoke up immediately. “Dude, I don’t think this adventure will motivate team-building. We’ve got four artists, and since you’re DMing we’re down to just two coders. It’s inappropriate.”

Flustered, Nicholas responded “Well hang on! Joseph is sick this week so that’s just three artists, and David said he really wants to do this adventure.”

I chimed in: “Yeah, I mean I’m an Artist/Manager right now, but I’d like to multi-class one more time as a Programmer because the adventuring party could really use more gameplay abilities.”

“Indeed.” said Nicholas portentously.

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged David casts Comprehend Languages, I don't even know what to write here, if you are the wizard of lua why do you keep running the C++ compiler, Joe Diamond smoked twenty packs a day since he was a boy and he isn't going to stop now, like it or not your art director may be sucked into the hideous web of the occult or scripting, Mr. Diamond - the walls are bleeding in the east precinct, this is like some horrible self-insert fanfic about ourselves, up is down right is wrong and artists are coding
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Fixing The Economy

November 6, 2013 by David Baumgart

The weeks leading up to the release of the Clockwork Empires teaser trailer were focused on putting together visual polish and gameplay situations to fit a desired narrative. This all looks very pretty but it doesn’t develop the substance of the game — now, we return to substance: the economy.

(Well, at least I am. Other people are working on other stuff which is also cool. But I get to indulge in this post now because it’s my turn! So let’s get some adorable little icons going to liven things up… )

There’s more where these came from, believe you me.

Although we’ve all got input on the design of the game, in broad strokes we’re putting the responsibility for design/implementation of particular areas of mechanics on individual people. Daniel, for example, made himself an advocate for developing character personalities and relationships (see also: his posts about such things as relationships & event knowledge). Meanwhile, I have a passion for, paraphrasing Nicholas here, “optimizing transfer of goods between two grain silos in Ukraine” so, naturally, I’m taking on the role of advocate for economic matters in Clockwork Empires (see also: my posts on loading bays, and going way back, industrial logistics). Putting together a (first draft) of a (vaguely) working economy is my task for this week.

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged damn you zakharov your wacky antics have killed us all, DLC idea: epic adventures through ferrous metallurgy, every citizen will enter the burning flaming mines for it is their duty, I can't believe I let a reference like "fifth column" go unused, next week will be recitations from chairman yang's pain is just information before the senses book of bumper fun humour, not shown is how every mineral can be produced by punching the ground repeatedly and extracting it in square blocks, note the random drawings of a hammer and sickle, really who hasn't read the wikipedia article on how steel is produced, tinned bread the deliciously horrible treat, ukranian grain silo optimization simulator is best when you do it one grain at a time
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Clockwork Empires: Teaser Trailer & Website

October 30, 2013 by David Baumgart

Greetings, Colonists!

We’ve all been working very hard, driven half-mad by lack of sleep and an excess of the foul black brew known only as coffee. And we have a lot of fun stuff to show you. Just a little something:

We’ve also got a whole new website for Clockwork Empires! I’m going to link to it like three times here so you’re absolute sure not to miss it. Go! Go now! Or very shortly! Let’s make it easy:

–> www.ClockworkEmpires.com <–

It shows off yon video, a load of screenshots and fun pictures, a (new, smarter) Gaslamp Games mailing list signup (which you should sign up on to get steaming hot news straight from the boiler, plus insinuations about alpha testing). The site will be updated with all kinds of awesome stuff as development proceeds!

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Posted in Clockwork Empires, Website | Tagged and now to figure out why the terrain takes 800 megabytes and where all the memory's going, beware of small gray triangles and dump them in the lake immediately if you see them, citizens who cannot make it into the landing craft due to age or infirmity will be dropped from a zeppelin at a great height into the town square, clockwork empires, huzzah for the empire and huzzah for the queen, Quag'garoth, Quag'garoth should be spelled with the apostrophe and should definitely not be spelled "Quaggorath", quaggaroth makes a triumphant return after the destruction of new smugbuffer, the apostrophe is silent, the loveable echidna did not make it into the video for it was too loveable, the purple vehemence of the birthing encrustoid, the statue of quaggaroth is still the best make-out spot in town but only if you have one of these neat purple robes, the very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect, the YouTube generation, use PR magic to summon 2d6 journalists, video, we apologize for the low quality of tags in previous blog posts but our energies were clearly redirected, we did not show opium poppy farming, we haven't slept in over a week send help
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No Rock Is An Island

October 9, 2013 by David Baumgart

(– Unless, of course, it is.)

Let’s talk about rocks. And let’s start with a screenshot from in-engine:

Have a happy little mine. (Note that we're still working on implementing happy little mining accidents.)

It’s a happy little mine. (Note: we’re working on implementing happy little mining accidents.)

I hope we’re all familiar by now with how excited about the mundane I can get, see: loading bays, trees, etc. Rocks are totally mundane. But getting the mundane things just right is super important because it ties everything else together. High-poly fancy fantastic amazing show-off hero models & apocalyptic effects and animations are impressive, sure, but they need to exist within an artistic context that supports the claims they make and gives them meaning which resonates beyond their superficial visuals. Rocks tie the landscape together; The landscape is the stage on which the dramas of Clockwork Empires take place. Together they tie the whole game together.

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged all the hip kids were doing minecrafts back in 2012, concept art is intelligence warfare, hot rhyolite action, if you sue us we'll be forced to hire the Wizard Whitman to defend us although admittedly he's been lost for quite some time now in the Law Dimension, in this game bauxite is such a grudging source of aluminium that it causes mineshafts to explode, most of our fans are geologists, please don't sue us, soiling the internet with rock jokes, terrain, the magic of ambient occlusion, the miners are too stoned to work, very small railways, when shots we take in-engine look better than our fake promotional renders we know we're doing something right, why does the train coming out of the mineshaft have only two stops that are five squares from each other, woefully uneventful mining
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How Many Particles Can Dance On The Tooth Of A Sawblade

September 25, 2013 by David Baumgart

— Not nearly as many as can be emitted by a small oven, it turns out, due to what is probably a quirk of rendering that needs sorting out. More on that in a bit.

Nicholas has talked about particle system before in terms of technical development and something about the spelling of “aurochs” which, yes, we should all be on the same boat about now. This point established, the particle system has had some tools built and was turned over to the art team who, it seems, have a great deal of enthusiasm for making everything in the game sparkle, smoke, and on fire.

People are sleeping all over the floor of this carpentry shop because there aren't, in fact, any other houses in the settlement because this was set up for a screenshot. Thanks a lot, simulated people.

Sparking sawblades! (People are sleeping all over the floor of this carpentry shop because there aren’t, in fact, any other houses in the settlement because this is a Potemkin Workshop set up entirely for making a pretty screenshot. You can thank our character simulation for ruining the set-piece by making people sleep in the only existing shelter they could find.)

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged a poet failed to be inspired by a particle system today, clockwork empires, do you want to smoke forever, I cropped out the bit of the screenshot that contained a giant steak resting on a table; why on a table? because you can't very well leave a steak on the floor can you, Nicholas' Pain List is like the Wheel of Pain but for programmers rather than Cimmerians, particle accelerators, PLED actually stands for ParticLe EDitor which is one of those acronyms programmers use when they want to be dorky, repeatedly standing near an incredible smoking oven may cause you to experience the tingling sensation of bloat lung, smoke joe fishman cigarettes for that great fish in your mouth taste, someday we might even get that echidna you've heard so much about, stuff on fire, you have to use the gom jabbar on the programmer and stick them in the nerve induction box - "it only kills artists"
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Steampunk Central America: Adventures in Sort-of Verisimilitude

September 4, 2013 by David Baumgart

Well, we just wrapped up a two-pitcher lunch at the Sewer Brew Pub with a fan (hi Kris!), so you know that means: time to write a blog post! So Daniel has been cranking through biome stuff and asked- no, let’s start this over.

The sky above Vancouver was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel. Daniel entered the gently cultivated chaos of the art room and recoiled slightly. The chaos recoiled slightly back at him.

“After Steampunk Colorado, what’s next?” — Oh, well then: we could do a desert. Lots of bones, dust, salt, jagged rocks. No? Really? I thought it’d be pleasant. Then perhaps a swamp, something lovely; Lots of plants, molds, miasma, large insects, fevers. No? Not a swamp? If we must then, let us set our sights on:

Steampunk Central America

White sand beaches, tropical forest, volcanoes, cenotes, deforestation, strange statues buried in the sand at the low elevations and giant, scowling basalt heads at the higher; beetles grazing in tropical meadows before wallowing in warm streams. It’ll be lovely. And we still get those fevers in.

It starts with a palette of colours, the right colour for the right sub-biome from the top of the topology to the bottom. It’s all layered like some kind of terrible cake full of dirt and growing trees. Below is a quick sketch I did to give an overview of what could be going on in a roughly Central American biome set:

Literally the broad strokes. (And with apologies to our Central American readers — this is all about capturing a certain interpretation of a feeling of reality without being much arsed to be real reality. Which is about what CE is doing in general but with more steam engines. Would it help if I said the word “verisimilitude” here and waved my arms around? Good. It made me feel better too.)

I’m erupting with enthusiasm for top-down concept maps for biome generation. (If you enjoyed that, I’ve got more. So many more. Er, to clarify: I’ve got both terrible puns *and* biome concept art.)

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged at Gaslamp Games we don't call them "smiles"- we call them "up-frowns", biomes, CEO tips with Daniel: "When someone is smiling we hoist them into the air with a giant metal claw and rotate them 180 degrees.", clockwork empires, david attenborough baumgart talks about nature, David is never allowed to choose the pub ever again, fun in editing: Chrome wants to correct "cenotes" to "cenobites" which is probably a valid interpretation of CE, is there a market for steampunk tropico, more biomes, most of our fans are geologists, never accept rote shambling trope-zombie productions, Nicholas blew through the art team's carefully hoarded supply of amusing animated gifs last week so I had to make do, okay fine we'll put a volcano in the game maybe, please cast your write in votes for the loveable echidna, spite-based game design, the opening line of Neuromancer doesn't work so well in an era without analog televisions, the Sewer Brew Pub was chosen after Fleshy's Steakhouse received one veto, tropical fever is actuallyy the name of the coconut drink with the umbrella in it
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From The Humble Loading Bay All Things Follow

August 14, 2013 by David Baumgart

At some point last week we decided that what Clockwork Empires really needs is loading bays. You know, that bit of a building trucks back onto to load and unload goods. No, really. And it’s going to be great!

This is not some sign of utter mundanity, rather, it’s one intersection in a web of interlocking game systems which are forming in Clockwork Empires. And it’ll be key to so much more than a hole in the wall your labourers toss crates through; No, this is Exciting Logistics! This is how everything fits together through space and time, how the labour of your fickle characters is turned, by use of machines and production structures, into valuable commodities which may be improve the well-being of your colony, be used to construct massive factories — or weapons, or perhaps sold off for the greater glory of the Royal Charter Antipodean Trading Company and The Empire. (And that’s why I love Exciting Logistics so much!)

Logistics! Excitement! (This is what happens if you put a lot of effort into cleaning up your concept art. And I admit, I’d totally play a game that looked like this, distribution arrows and all.)

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Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged beware the highjacking of your loading bay doors by science criminals, david's secret desire to make alcohol out of ore and lumber, don't ask questions about how that boat moves or is steered, everything is perfectly safe, exciting logistics, factory ventilation has now been fixed although we currently have problems with oddly triangular houses, how precisely does one drive a steam lorry with only two levers on it anyway, it is our quiet goal to dominate the Old Man Murray start-to-crate review scale, It is perfectly normal for your Civilian Transport Cube to emit a soft screaming as it moves through the air, logistics, lord palmerstoke's recent expedition just returned with an enormous crate with one of those keep calm and carry on posters stuck to it, pedal powered swan boats are totally steampunk, technically speaking the humble loading bay doesn't actually follow anything and is just a depository for stuff, the civilian transport cube cannot feel pain but the civilians inside of it sure can hoo boy yes indeed, this system was not inspired by Nicholas's recent move at all
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Author Archives: David

The Sound Of One Gear Turning

The Codebase of Elemental Evil

Fixing The Economy

Clockwork Empires: Teaser Trailer & Website

No Rock Is An Island

How Many Particles Can Dance On The Tooth Of A Sawblade

Steampunk Central America: Adventures in Sort-of Verisimilitude

From The Humble Loading Bay All Things Follow

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