Brent Knowles's Blog, page 4

Falling back…

I promise this will be a short post. Quick. To the point.

The past few months have been exciting. My guiding star has been a desire to return to spending my time doing things I really love doing. Some of that is writing, but a lot of it is actually Dungeons & Dragons. Both the playing of it, but also the preparation and the design work required to run multiple campaigns.

I have really, really, enjoyed this return to the things I loved doing many years ago.

So I promise, in a month or two or three, I’ll have more to talk about how I am pivoting my life to focus on these things that I enjoy.

In the meantime, if you have found yourself playing D&D again after a long hiatus (or maybe you’ve somehow managed to never stop!) I’d love to hear from you, either here or maybe the Twitter?

Hoping All is Well

The truth is that I have (often) intended to write for this blog again over the past couple years but every time I tried it it seemed that there was a huge event in the world happening and that my little announcements or questions just didn’t seem that important.

I am realizing that there will never be a perfect window to talk about myself or my projects. So I might as well just go ahead.

Here’s a short update in regards to what I have been up to:

I have been working with a technical college (NAIT) as part of a research team on virtual reality and augmented reality projects for the past 2+ years… probably the most notable thing we’ve accomplished in that time is the construction of a Vicon-based motion capture studio Over a year ago I started running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign set in my former co-worker’s campaign world. I dungeon master for my kids and their friends. It has been going very well and they are having lots of fun with it. (If you are curious about the campaign, check out Odyssey of the Dragonlords over at Arcanum Worlds.) We started playing D&D in person (and I even began building a digital tabletop to use with miniatures) but COVID has had us transition to Roll20. For the most part we are enjoying the transition … and it has facilitated me starting up a second group of playersI have not really picked up my fiction writing in any significant way but I have started looking over some of my old work. I have a lot of completed (or almost completed projects) that I may pick up again sometime…

Probably the most important thing for me that I am remembering how much I enjoy running, playing in, and building Dungeons & Dragons, campaigns. It has been nice to get back to the basics, the beginnings, of what led me towards writing fiction in the first place… and what led me directly to the videogame industry.

Anyways, not sure if I will start updating this more or not, but if I do — and if there’s interest — I might start sharing some of my in-progress D&D content, as well as my thoughts on the process itself.

Regardless, I hope all of you are well (or as well as you can be, considering the current situation in the world). Take care!

Odyssey of the Dragonlords

Super excited to receive my copy of Odyssey of the Dragonlords. This 5e campaign was created by my former design lead… James Ohlen with help from other BioWare folk like Jesse Sky and Drew Karpyshyn.

I had access to a digital copy of the material a while back and started a campaign that I am running, with my kids and their friends. We are only a couple sessions into it but everyone enjoyed the greek-themed character creation and the epic backgrounds that were introduced. And the main campaign is fun and engaging.

It was great to finally have the physical copy in hand though! Here’s a couple pics. I will try to add another picture doing justice to all the incredibly detailed maps that were included.

For more details you can visit the kickstarter ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworlds/odyssey-of-the-dragonlords-5th-edition-adventure-b ) or the publisher page at Modiphius ( https://www.modiphius.net/collections/odyssey-of-the-dragonlords).

And here’s the main Arcanum World’s page – https://www.arcanumworlds.com/

NAIT’s Motion Capture Studio

A little over a year ago I joined the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (NAIT) Industry Solutions as a Senior Technical Theme Lead for the Centre for Innovative Media. While we primarily focus on project work — virtual and augmented reality solutions primarily — we are also building infrastructure.

Our main offering will be a medium-sized motion capture studio. It will open later in 2020. Construction is set to begin early 2020 but we are still evaluating hardware, services, and props. If any Edmonton area company is interested in renting space in the studio once it opens and influencing the features that will be available, please do get in touch. Contact us at cim@nait.ca.

Our hope is for the studio to provide a service to mid-sized or larger gaming studios as well as any other company requiring motion capture in their simulations — whether they be virtual reality, digital twins or training applications. We will be open for business for anyone with a need for motion capture. So please chat with us about what you might need!

Unrelated Note: — If you missed the announcement earlier this year, the last game I worked on at Beamdog — Axis & Allies Online — is available on Steam. Do check it out, the team is making continuous improvements to it. I would invite you to play, but its too damn addicting and I need to actually get work done :)

A Chat with Matt

This morning I had a fun discussion with Matt Barton from Matt Chat. We spent a couple hours talking about my time at BioWare (from 1999 to 2009). We discussed what BioWare was like back then, the games I used to enjoy (versus now), and my design philosophy.

The interview will air sometime this weekend, so keep on an eye on his twitter: https://twitter.com/mattbarton

I tend to avoid interviews, especially since departing BioWare. But I enjoyed the conversation…  thanks, Matt, for the opportunity.

(Also thanks to my girlfriend for talking me into accepting the interview since my default response to these requests is almost always, “nope, busy being a hermit!”)

Iceland!

Last month I had the opportunity to take my kids on a week-long vacation to Iceland. I have long wanted to visit the country but was waiting till my kids were old enough to enjoy the experience.

And what an experience it was! We only explored a very small portion of the country but enjoyed (almost) every moment of it.

We were home-based in the Reykjavik area and visited most of the nearby popular tourist sites. I spent a lot of time driving us around the south-western portion, exploring ice caves, volcanoes, and visiting Heimaey (I don’t advise taking the ferry over during rough weather — my kids and I never quite found our sea legs). The island was really cool to explore though despite being hit by a late winter storm while we were there.

In non-vacation news, I’m settling into my role as the Technical Lead for the Centre for Innovative Media at NAIT. We are working on several interesting projects spanning machine learning, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Definitely a different experience than any I had in the video games industry but certainly building on the skills and experience I have acquired.

(Also, my last project at Beamdog was announced a couple months ago: Axis & Allies Online! This is an incredibly fun game to play and I’m excited for it to be released)

Anyways,I’ll end with a few pictures from our trip:

Boom!

View from our house on the island

The three of us slept in this cozy little house

An Ice Cave

Outside the Blue Lagoon

Anyone know the significance of this?

End of Year Check-In

Hello all.

Life still finds me pretty busy with chasing after my kids and work, not doing much in the way of writing. I am working on my own game in my free time, but it is too early to share details there. In terms of other updates, I left Beamdog a couple months ago to join NAIT, a polytechnic in Edmonton. It is quite a change of pace from what I’ve done in the past but it is exciting. I’m not actually teaching. Instead I’m the senior technical lead for the Centre for Innovative Media. Which basically means a lot of my experience in the games industry is going to be transferred into the wider domain of industry in general. Details still being figured out but here’s a link to NAIT’s Industry Solutions of which our centre is a part. You can also check out our profile page.

In terms of non-fiction, I’m throwing several of my Lazy Designer game design books on sale on Amazon starting on the 18th. Here’s a link to get you started if you haven’t checked them out before.

I’m also putting my two novels, and a couple collections, on sale as well:

The Pool

Feast War

Anyways, I wish you all a fantastic holiday!!

– Brent

Summer 2018… what’s going on?

Hello. I know I’m still not updating this very often. Thought maybe I’d poke things to see if anyone is out there anymore.

If I were to start posting anything more often — and I apologize, I know I’ve asked the question before — what would you like to see? Bits from the Lazy Designer game design books? Commentary on other games? Board game notes — the kids and I play a fair bit & I’m always looking for new suggestions.

I could also post pics of my recent woodworking projects, though that has slowed down with a busy summer. I think since my last post I’ve stained the bookshelf I talked about there, built another bookshelf, night table, and a doll’s bed.

I don’t have much to talk about, writing-wise, since I haven’t done anything with that (though I am revising the Lazy Designer books and reviewing my other existing material). And I can’t talk about my work with Beamdog at this point.

Anyways, thoughts and suggestions, would be appreciated and I hope everyone is doing well out there. I’m off on vacation soon and will be focused on having a blast with my kids.

Take care.

Neverwinter Nights

Almost twenty years ago I began my game development career at BioWare. My first title to do design work on was Baldur’s Gate 2. My second… Neverwinter Nights.

I eventually become co-lead designer on the game, which was both a RPG as well as an online Dungeons & Dragons campaign “facilitator”. In the hands of players it was used as a small-scale MMO, a teaching tool, and many other things. I have always been really proud of the game.

Last month Beamdog released the Enhanced Edition for Neverwinter Nights. I have been busy on other projects and have only been tangentially involved with NWN:EE but at home, I’ve been playing around with this updated version, primarily showing my kids — who weren’t around back when the game originally came out. I’ve been pleased to watch them mess around with the toolset and check out their creations in-game. I am hoping with the improvements and future updates that this promises an even longer life for Neverwinter Nights!

Check out the Beamdog blog post if you would like more information: http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/03/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition_27.html

My second project…

Hope the New Year is treating everyone well.

I’ve been very busy at work with Beamdog… but can’t really dive into what I’m doing so I’ll keep it quiet on that front and just discuss my second wood working project instead.

After building the large entryway organizer I decided I would tackle something simpler. The previous owner of my home had a tall and narrow bookcase near the living room window and I wanted to duplicate that (at this point most of my books were still in storage!) I found some stock plans and modified them — my bookcase was going to need to be narrower and taller. The construction went okay. I took my time, followed the plans, and learned some new techniques that I hadn’t discovered on the prior project. All in all it was a better build (though really heavy!)

This is the shelf before staining

This is the shelf after staining.

My next couple projects after this were self-designed but I used the general building approach I learned with this bookcase on those. More on that later.

Take care.