When 3pm rolls around in Hawaii, it’s 10am in Japan, so the studio there starts working, and I sit in on their meetings. Once that’s done, I start on my own work. By the time I pour a cup of coffee and head to my desk, it’s not quite the middle of the night in Japan, so I have a chance to briefly catch up with staff there in real-time. If it’s a pretty one, I spend some time taking pictures of it. My office connects to the roof, and I start my workday by stepping out there to get a good look at the sunrise. Going out to the ocean while it’s still dark and watching as the sunrise reflects on a sea of glass - it’s magical. There’s no substitute for these experiences. I’ve ridden waves and seen the beauty around me in brief moments standing on top of the ocean. As a surfer, I’ve paddled right next to sea turtles. When in Hawaii, I’ve relied on e-mail and video calls to get work done the pandemic hasn’t been a very big change as far as that goes. I’ve split my time between Japan and Hawaii for the past twenty years or so. Which means I have until then to get my hands on a PlayStation 5! I’m looking forward to playing it once Fantasian part two is out the door. Final Fantasy VII Remake came out right while I was busy developing Fantasian, so I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Since they’re old comrades of mine, it’s always fun to catch up. I’m still in touch with Kitase, Matsuno, Tabata, and a few other people. I still have to play Final Fantasy VII Remake It was a very complicated process, so we had our work cut out for us. It also let us apply various post-effects. Since we had the 3D data, we could use it to let the dioramas interact with the digital 3D character models. It’s like you’re actually walking around on those diorama photos. The result is something that feels more real than just applying a texture to a 3D model. We used a technique called "projection mapping" to apply those studio photographs to the 3D data. Then we had to take a whole other set of diorama photographs - this time in a studio with proper lighting. Then we used a tool - the same tool they use to make 3D models of cities from drone camera footage - to render the dioramas as three-dimensional data. We took around two or three hundred photos of the dioramas in Fantasian, capturing them from all sorts of angles. One day, I held one of Terra Wars‘ dioramas and thought, "it’d be fun to walk around and have an adventure on this." That idea led to using dioramas in Fantasian. Before Fantasian, I made another game called Terra Wars, which also used dioramas. I think that has a major impact on Fantasian. There’s a physicality and tactility to the dioramas that I think will make players feel like they’re reaching out and touching them - even if the screen gets in the way! Everyone feels things in a different way, of course, but I think we’ve hit on a nice synergy between the touch interface and the game’s look and feel.īack in school, I was a modeling fanatic. I still consider that shocking first impression part of my origin story as a developer. Of course, it had Wizardry and Ultima, but I also felt a sort of culture shock just seeing the CP/M operating system and business tools like VisiCalc, which laid the blueprint for modern spreadsheet software. The Apple II was my gateway to the games industry. Since the focus changes at what’s more or less the halfway point of the game, we decided releasing it in two parts would make that shift in focus play out more naturally.īefore Apple Arcade, the Apple II got me into the games industry Part one of Fantasian is linear and story-driven, while part two is more quest-based and allows for a lot of free exploration.
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