Greetings and Salutations!

This is the first of what I plan to be a series of activity blogs I'll be writing over the coming weeks, focusing on what I'm doing with Torque3D and the various people I've had the pleasure to work with until now. My intention is to let people know who I am and where I'm heading, and will cover a broad range of topics. I'll try to keep things concise, but as an artist I reserve the right to digress without warning.

So, who am I?

For the visually challenged, my name is Dan Webb, and I'm the Founder, CEO and Janitor of PsyCandy Games based in tropical (actually it's sub-tropical, but tell that to the sweat trickling down my back) Brisbane, Australia.


Some of you may know me simply as That Terrain Guy, due to my work with Torque and World Machine 2.

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I am not this man, but he looks like someone I'd like to meet. :)

No, unfortunately, I am this man:

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What have I been doing?

This is an excellent question! The fact is that while I am very active on the forums here, I have yet to contribute in a tangible (or intangible) way. I've not released any resources, as such, and I've not released any work to the community. Indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking I do nothing but troll the forums all day. Sadly, this is not the case.

To my great amazement, I receive several emails a week asking for advice on terrain generation procedures and workflow. It is through this interaction that I've had the pleasure to meet many wonderful people from this community, and I'm all too quick to jump on board projects without considering just how much work could be involved. I'm an artist, remember?

Several months ago I became acquainted with Kory and James Stanley, of Kory Imaginism and got myself involved in their Magnum Opus Nightmare: Origins as The Terrain Guy. Work was fairly straight forward for the most part, and it was a great opportunity for me to refine my workflow and content pipeline using the aforementioned World Machine.

It is during this time that I met the very talented Ron Kapaun of 3td Studios, who most will recognise as a prominent figure here at the GarageGames community forums, and also the creator of the much lauded Conifer and Tropical Forest Packs.

Ron has been a huge amount of fun to work with, and he shares with me a passion for environment art which is not seen often enough, in my opinion. So it's been quite a refreshing experience overall. Cheers to you, Ron!

What am I doing now?

During development of Nightmare: Origins I had the great honour to meet both Tim Watton and Paul Yoskowitz of WinterLeaf Entertainment, LLC who pestered the hell out of me for days on end with questions about terrains in Torque3D. I was flattered, to be honest. This lead to them revealing to me that they'd just "lost" their terrain guy to the mysteries of fate, and after some discussion I decided (perhaps foolishly) to help them out in this regard. And so I began working on what, quite frankly, is the most massive and epic project I've ever been a part of, terrain wise.

It soon became apparent that I'd bitten off more than I could chew, and that I'd have to let one or other of these various projects go. I was beside myself trying to decide which, and in the end I decided to break the news to James that I needed to leave the project. Broke my heart, that. But James, though quite possibly disappointed took it in his stride and wished me the best of luck, and thanked me for the time I'd put in. It was all very humbling, truth be told, and I thank James for his understanding.

So, what's happening now?

Whew. Now I'm working alongside some very talented and lovely people from all over the world on what is shaping up to be a very polished game - Dawn of Ascension. And you know what? I couldn't be happier!

To be continued......