How to move from PowerPoint presentation to a Game Engine
aka. Project Electric Dreams: Part I
Prologue
It was an air-conditioned room.
The temperature sat at around 21 degrees and was relatively cold. Still, that didn’t stop the first drops of sweat from forming on my brow. Whether it was the tension or because of breathlessness speaking for several minutes straight, I couldn’t tell. I clutched the slide clicker in one hand, holding it gently enough so that the hard sides won’t dig into my skin, but tight enough so that the sweat forming in my palms won’t loosen my grip.
Behind me was a large screen displaying the last slide of the presentation I had just finished. “Thanks for listening” it read in bold red letters. It was detailed in a font that I’d thought looked fancy enough the previous night while I was getting prepared.
Now that I noticed it, it did look kind of corny.
I was facing 4 judges in the semi finals of a certain International Youth Entrepreneurship competition. Each one looked more intimidating than the next, as they should. From the get-go I tried my best not to let that get to me.
I was pitching my version of the “next-big-thing”. A product that would “revolutionize” a field of technology.
As with most projects it was over-ambitious, not very well thought out and not marketable by any standard.
In hindsight; it was pretty fucking stupid.
Nevertheless, I had come prepared…
The presentation I had was solid.
And my pitch was reasonably well written.
But there was a problem;
I had zero passion for the product. I didn’t believe in it one bit.
And the judges had seen it.
I don’t know what had given it away. Whether it was my face, my speaking style or that corny font.
But one thing was for certain; I was toast.
Anyone who’s watched even a single episode of Shark Tank knows what happens when a judge smells passionless projects.
I’ll give you a hint; they don’t call it “Shark” Tank for nothing.
Needless to say; I braced for the worst.
The most intimidating judge of all raised his head.
With a twinkle in his eyes he asked;
If this thing doesn’t work out, at what point will you admit that you failed?
Starting from the Bottom (2001)
I’ve been fascinated with video games for as long as I can remember.
Although I would never consider myself a gamer, the sheer technical skill that has gone into making immersive virtual worlds has always mesmerized me.
But the opportunities I got to engage in those virtual worlds were few and far between.
My parents could rarely afford to buy me bleeding edge PC hardware.
The same extended for purchasing of the latest release titles.
Plus, since I live by the coastline any desktop PCs that did exist in the household didn’t last more than a year due to rust accumulation.
My earliest gaming memory is of me and my father playing NFS II: Special Edition in split screen mode back in 2001. I was around 5 or 6 at that time.
This was on a measly Pentium II machine with about 1 gig of RAM.
However I distinctly remember that whenever I was playing alone in single player I’d often find myself leave the race altogether and go wandering along the sides of the linear track admiring the low res polygonal assets of the game.
It wasn’t the Game that seduced me,
it was the Game World.
Maximum Game (2011)
Ten years later; somewhere around 2011, my mother bought herself a brand new laptop.
By this time we’d given up purchasing desktops. Laptops on the other hand, which had far smaller surface areas and could be tucked away when not in use, fared far better in the coastal environment.
It wasn’t the best, but still a significant upgrade over what I’d had prior.
I was determined to get the maximum advantage out of this purchase. That was when a good friend of mine suggested a certain pirated game he had…
To this day, I clearly remember the very first time I played Crysis 2.
Even after turning down all the graphical settings to get the game to a playable state, the visuals still looked stunning. Everything in the environment felt visceral, tactile and most of all… real.
Crysis 2 was beautiful, and I wanted to know how the developers had made it so.
I needed to have a piece of this action.
Discovery! (2012)
It didn’t take me long to download the non-commercial version of CryEngine and start messing around.
No sooner had I done that, I got to know there was an upcoming 3D animation competition hosted by a local school. So naturally, I decided to take the leap and participate.
By this time I was fairly familiar with CryEngine’s “TrackView” keyframe editor; enough to create the 2 minute video required for submission.
After almost a day of mucking around, I finally got something presentable.
The render took almost an hour on the weak Intel HD graphics chip. Worse still, was the fact that the version of Windows installed was 32-bit. This meant only 2 gigs of memory was usable out of the 4 gigs available.
The system bulked under the heavy load of CryEngines renderer, reaching fan speeds so high for a moment I wondered if the laptop would achieve vertical takeoff.
In the end I was left with this…
A week later the results came.
I hadn’t won.
Enter the Unreal (2014)
Even though CryEngine was mine and many others’ renderer of choice at the time, I did cross paths with one other game engine that specifically caught my attention.
Back then in its 3rd iteration, Unreal Engine(also known as UDK: Unreal Development Kit) was a real competitor to Crytek’s offering. Extremely popular with many indie developers and veterans alike, the engine was a go-to choice for many.
The only problem was, it wasn’t as half as pretty nor as intuitive. It aced at creating enclosed spaces in contrast to CryEngine’s wide open world vistas.
It took me only a single download to realize that, after which I never looked at it again.
Then in the spring of 2014, Epic opened up it’s next gen game development tool; Unreal Engine 4 to the world, for free.
UE4 was leaps and bounds better than its’ predecessor, both in terms of graphical fidelity and usability.
Most notable of all was the lighting. It was a significant improvement over even what CryEngine offered, bordering on photo-realism so much that it made any UE4 render look like a Pixar movie.
After messing around with the controls for a few hours, even I; a complete noob, managed to cobble together some pretty decent looking renders using the engine’s pre-packaged assets.
The UE4 game engine was a game changer, literally. On top of all the features available the engine was geared with an eye towards the future, with built-in VR support.
Not that I could use any of it, but it was good to know.
Then one faithful day the laptop stopped booting.
There was no warning, not even a hint. It simply refused to turn on.
My one friend that had stuck with me through all those tiring renders had left me.
With my high school final exams looming and Mom having already gotten a new laptop from her workplace, she was in no hurry to get it fixed.
The unresponsive laptop was put into a bag and shuffled into a dusty drawer.
And that was that…
After School (2015)
The days rolled by, the exams came and went.
My school years were coming to a bitter sweet end.
By that time, me and another classmate; Chamodya had gained a reputation at school for creating presentations and elaborate “visuals” for various events.
We each specialized on a certain aspect; me coming up with the concepts, story boarding and wordings and Chamodya experimenting with the software; bringing the visuals to life.
We were messing around with various tools like the Adobe suite and Blender, but never a game engine.
Unlike traditional 3D animation software like Maya or 3DMax, we had the idea to use a game engines’ rendering pipeline to create an equally stunning photo-realistic look made using half the resources.
We were simply re-purposing a game engine to make a cool visual rather than a video game.
The idea; in theory, was sound.
With our school lives basically over, we needed to look beyond if we were to make something of our knowledge.
Neither one of us said it out loud but both of us had plans of a possible startup if things worked out.
But, we needed a good spring board to start off of. Something that would get everyone’s attention.
V for Vega (2015)
It was around this time that Vega came to our attention.
An electric super car made almost entirely with local knowledge and resources.
It was one of the coolest things to ever come into the Sri Lankan tech sphere in a while.
But Chamodya and I saw an opportunity.
On all the places the car was mentioned, it was always a spec sheet and a couple of renders.
Nobody had scene the car in “action”.
By action I mean performing as a supercar should, not driving under the speed limit in a semi urban area with an exposed chassis.
What if we could render the car in a game engine and simulate it?
What if the car doesn’t even need to be finished to show everyone how cool it’s going to be??
It didn’t take long for us to put two and two together.
I didn’t even have a LinkedIn account back then (hell, I was just out of school!) and no official way of getting into contact with any of the Vega team.
Lucky for us a close friend of mine had gone on an industrial visit to the place where the car was being built and had gotten the Facebook contact of the lead researcher.
It wasn’t ideal, but we had no other choice.
Hoping against hope I wrote up a lengthy message explaining what we were planning to do and sent it along with a friend request.
At this point it was do-or-die. In my mind, the worst that could happen was he’d block me and I’d never hear from him again.
We didn’t expect much, just an acknowledgment and some advice.
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I got his response…
That simple message took me and Chamodya on a relentless two-year-long journey to the edges of internet forums and through endless frustrating hours that finally resulted in a surprising outcome.
An outcome that taught me what it really means to have passion for what I was doing and how far is too far when it comes to achieving our dreams,
our electric dreams.
Part II can be found here.
