Drake´s Legacy 3D-Visualization

Senior 3D-Artist at Pirates Ahoy! - community´s indie game development "Hearts Of Oak"

In May 2014, I decided to close my „Crysis©” modification „Drake´s Legacy” and started a cooperation with the community „ Pirates Ahoy! ” (short „PA!”). The timing was chosen on purpose. „PA!” had the idea to develop their own game, named „Hearts Of Oak” and discussed in their open forums about this theme and a possible engine. Their former main projects were mainly the modding of all „Akella´s” Pirate Games. The community there seems very well organized and after my registration I found a lot of helpful information about the great age of sail. And of course a very friendly team! On basis of my experience I was able to convince the staff about the „CryEngine© Free SDK”, although they had started their own research into the „Unity©” game engine before. Based on my written tutorials and presentations of my already finished content, could we convince the programmer „Jehremie Woods” as Senior Developer for „Hearts Of Oak”. In August 2014, just 3 months after starting the development in the „CryEngine© Free SDK”, the whole team had to make the decision to switch the development to the new „Unity© 5” game engine. In August 2014 „Jehremie Woods” had tried all possible options to realize the game in the „CryEngine©” but too many blockers prevented this. The change of the engine was needed. For many features, we had needed full access to the source code, but the Free SDK didn´t have it. After switching the engine, I left the active part of engine work and focused my power on asset development. „Jehremie” got new support by the other Unity programmer „Justin Howell” and both moved the coding forward. In July 2015, „Jehremie” decided to leave his position as Senior Developer and switched his focus to his own „Unity©” engine based game „Letters Of Marque” . In 2016 he expanded his efforts and renamed the game to „Tides Of War -Letters Of Marque-“ and started (besides its development) official projects for historical customers. „Justin” and „Christian Tornholm-Lehn“ followed him into this two-sided development. After „Jehremie´s” decision, I decided for myself to leave my position as Senior 3D-Artist too. Not only because „Jehremie´s” decision. My high level of detail and quality provided a very high polycount. A circumstance no game engine can handle easily. Please do not understand this statement wrong. The technical evolution goes forward and with the right setup those models are sure usable, but I have found my major interest in the creation of content „without“ borders. And please note, this method is my best compromise between result and available time. Whenever developers talk, the next question is predictable. „What engine is better” can´t be answered simply and is no part of my website! I work in more than one Engine and love their different advantages. When you are looking for a game engine, please test them. In the meantime many of them are available for free, so you can find out what fits best for you. Long story short: When you work as small entrepreneur besides your real life job and family, you don’t have much time. The only correct solution was to limit my engine work. Despite the separation of active paths and development chains, all involved people are still members in the “PA!” community, maintain a good connection and help each other. Below a few impressions of the time we worked together in „Hearts Of Oak“. Our Senior Programmer „Jehremie Woods“ released many movies on youtube, about the development progress. Here is one of them:

The community „Pirates Ahoy!“ publish regular updates too and spread the word in all common social plattforms, like Twitter , facebook and a youtube-channel . Like I have written in the text above, „Jehremie Woods“ founded „Wolf Pack Games“ together with „Justin Howell“ and „Christian Tornholm-Lehn“ and started the development of their own game „Tides Of War -Letters Of Marque-“ . Although all information will shared between us all, I have linked the relevant pages in this text. Here the link to „Wolf Pack Games“ youtube channel . And „Jehremie Wood´s“ youtube channel . New cooperations will bring us regularly together again. To convince customers about new techniques (especially „Virtual Reality“ (short „VR“)), „Wolf Pack Games“ started some reference projects for historical exhibitons besides its game development. The first outstanding work you will find is the „HMS- Unicorn“ project . To expand the possible options for the future, we will add maybe my researched gun patterns (Albert Borgard, 1716 and John Armstrong, 1722). In this period of my references I won’t add much more media because most of my assets correlates with the ones I used in my former „Drake´s Legacy” modification of „Crysis©”. Additionally, the official regular news of the development of „Hearts Of Oak“ contains all work I have done for the game. Many people work and worked for this project and I won’t miss any copyrights. When you are interested to read more about the Indie-developments please browse its homepages or social media resources, I have linked in the text above.