Breaking Bad Blogging Part 2: The Rebloggening

I'm actually doing art again! Templar has really been taking off so here's an entire post to his progress.

ReTemplaring

I've been playing around with different art styles and what I want with the feel of the game. Consequently, Templar's been in need of a little bit of a re work.

So I started with these;

And they were all well and good and all, but with the change in art direction, Templar had a bit too much detail. This meant it would take far too long to actually get him in game to the level I'm chasing.

So I took him back to the drawing board;

I started with the stereotypical hero pose. A step in the right direction but not quite there yet. I want him to very visually convey his playstyle in game, namely being able to take a lot of hits and hardly flinch.

He looks like he's an NBA all-star

At this stage, I decided on strong silhouettes and flat colours with cell shaded lighting for the visual style for the rest of the game. Templar needed a stronger silhouette to complement his playstyle.

Next Stop: Maya!

Then he got a sword and shield,

In a bit of homage to the old painting, I took him back to photoshop to finish him off. 

This is ultimately what I'm aiming for with the art style. He's much more visually distinct than his earlier versions and is finally in game. Apart from some animations, he's completely done.

More content is coming soon, I'm working on some enemies and environment assets to get in game.

CS 1 End: Case of the Skull Crabs

At least for this CS.

A little late, but...

Look At This Skull Crab Enemy

When there's cake on the horizon.

So all of his anims that I wanted to get done are done. He has a spawn, a run (see above), an attack, and a death. The skull crab is going to be a swarmer type of enemy when he's in game so you'll be seeing and cutting down lots of him.

Next up This July

Is CS 2. I'm going to motor through this one as much as I can because Alex needs these things.

• Tileable floor textures
• Tileable wall textures

I'd rather have some actual environment assets in engine for the test we're aiming for, but I'd also rather have the level generation working optimally before I start thinking about environments.

P.S...

This is a short update, but I've also been suffering from a wave of artists block so I've only been focusing on the things for the sprints. I'm attempting to find ways around it now so I'll have some more extra thing to add on to the blogs next update hopefully.

See you next week!

Jason

Update: July Is Crunch Month

So that basically means there will be changes to my pipeline over this month.

Context?

My work partner, Alex, wants to have a working test build of the game done by the end of the month so he can get some tweaking done to the core gameplay.

This means I need to crunch hard to pump out a whole load of assets for this test.

So Get To The Point Already

I will be halving my sprint timelines to a sprint per week. Quality isn't as big of a factor this month just so long as it is functional for the test build deadline we set out for us.

So!

Starting this week is a premature end to sprint 4, and the first of the Crunch Sprints for this month. 

Goals for Crunch Sprint 1 (CS 1?)

1. Basic Rig for anklebiter enemy (including skinned mesh and IKs(Inverse Kinematics, I don't really have time to explain so here)
2. Basic Animations for said anklebiter including
1. Idle
2. Run
3. Attack
4. Death

TL;DR

July is the month in which lots of assets are going to be churned out so that the game this is going towards has something to go from. I'm going to run myself into the ground trying to get all of this out and working.

Lots of coffee will be consumed to sate my needs.

In the meantime, here's the fruits of Sprint 4 before it was cut.

First bit of production art done! The character portrait for Templar.

I suppose you could say CS GO!

See you next week/sometime sooner if I finish the CS goals before then!

Jason

End Sprint 3: Apple, Updates, And Paperwork

So with Sprint 3 coming to a close, there have been a few things that've happened this week.

Not exactly what I would've liked, but I'm going to roll with it.

Let's Start With The Apple

I recently updated my Macbook to the latest OS version (10.11 El Capitan) and it's been playing havoc with my pipeline. Mostly because it has effectively made the drivers of my Wacom drawing tablet completely redundant and it was causing a lot of trouble for people. 

My first work around was a flop, however, I've got a better workaround for now. With any luck, I can get back on track with actual work.

The Update

The tablet works again now. 

And The Paperwork

Seeing as most of my time this week was spent looking for a way around the driver problem, I spent a lot of time refining the visual style of the project starting with the characters. For Inspiration, I turned to my staple for fantasy visuals in games, Fable.

Redesigns for the Templar and the Viking.

In the end, this style works much better aesthetically than what I was using before. The silhouettes are much more defined and you can more easily see who they are as characters and how they will move and play in-game. The Templar is obviously more tanky than the Viking, so I (to quote an XCOM post mortem discussion at GDC) 'Chunkified' the armour and shield. The same thing was done to the Viking, just to his arms to emphasise his offensive playstyle.

TL;DR, it's looking much better than it was before.

Other than that, I got a quick rig done on the old Templar model using mixamo, which also has some basic animations that you can use. I haven't exported those yet, but I do have this one horror shot.

Just imagine he has a sword and shield and it'll be fine.

That's pretty much what's going on with this pipeline. It's had a couple of hiccups but it's still going.

Moving On

I know not much happened this sprint, but get some basic assets out for sprint 4.

To do in Sprint 4:

1. Export basic Templar with Mixamo rig and animations so that some gameplay can get going.
2. Work on basic environment assets for testing purposes (with substances attached)
3. Some proper digital artwork for this project such as:
1. Mood art to capture the feel of certain levels
2. Character paints to help with the design of player characters and enemies

I figure I started out on the wrong foot getting back into this project out of the pantomime, that and hardware issues. The exporting of the basic stuff will give my partner, Alex, something to work with for actually building the game's core mechanics into something fun. I think what I need to really focus on this week is getting something out that I can easily build momentum from. 

Now that the hardware issues are behind me, I can actually start on getting something good out.

Also, I'll be posting extra drawings to my Facebook page so that it actually has some art on it rather than just being a signal boost for this blog so keep tabs on that.

See you in 2 weeks!

Jason.

End Sprint 2 - Out Of Time

This sprint was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. Not because of the work load, but because of the amount of outside factors that sapped all of my time this past fortnight.

Armour With Style

I did manage to get a decent part of the textures done on the Templar. There are still some details left to add but he's coming along fairly well.

Praise the Sun!

The two enemies are also ready for texturing, but I had no time to texture them.

There's a Whole World Out There

I also got some work done on environment concepts. 

The pillars will endlessly litter the area.

I took some inspiration from one of my favourite oil painters, Zdzislaw Beksinski. He is a surrealist painter whose given me a good idea on what direction I want to take with some of the environments. 

Moving Forward

I'm not going to set goals for sprint 3. I am going to be spending most of my time getting ready to move houses so I can't see too much dedicated work time going into the game. I will do what I can when I get some free time and will post whatever I manage to finish.

See you in 2 weeks!

Jason

End Sprint 1 - A Good Guy, Some Bad Guys, And a New Guy

Another fortnight gone, another sprint comes to a close. Mostly with lots of rendering.

Cutting it close to the deadline (within hours), I completed all of the sprint goals and a bit more.

Some Housekeeping

I realised that a fair amount of those who read this blog aren't as savvy with development terms as I am. So to bring everyone up to date:

• A sprint is a two week work cycle where you set certain goals and work hard on them for the entirety of the sprint. It's a sort of motivating workflow so you can do what you need for your project without spending more time than necessary on them.
• Base Meshes are low detail 3D models (usually of characters or anything that will be animated) that are used as starting points (so that more can be added to them later if they need more detail) without breaking the workflow.
• Polys are an easier way of saying polygons. (One-sided 2D planes in a 3D space used to create just about everything in anything 3D).
• Tris are the triangles that make up polys. (Polys are more often than not rectangular, it's a bit easier for computers to break that up into 2 triangles.)
• Unity is the game engine that is being used for the new project. 

So with all of that out of the way, let's get to the post.

A Good Guy,

The Templar character was one of the first characters that came to mind when designing; he was also a fun character to make as far as the base mesh is concerned. His equipment (a sword and shield) will likely be a job for next sprint.

Some Bad Guys,

The fun thing about demons is that you can go wild with designs. I wanted to play around with ridiculous proportions and I think it came out really well.

This little anklebiter wasn't in the sprint goals but I managed to make him up in time.

And A New Guy

Alex and I came to the decision that if we were having medieval and historical warriors as player characters, we needed to have a Viking.

Don't mind my footnotes

He will come around in future sprints.

Moving Forward

I'm keeping my sprints fairly simple due to the amount of work I'm doing outside of this project. For Sprint 2, I'm hoping to achieve:

• Hooking up all current models so they will be ready for animation
• Concepts of environments 
• Base meshes of some environment assets (rocks, trees, misc things you would see lying around in the Underworld/Hell)
• If there is time - Readying models for texturing

That wraps it up for this sprint. I'm feeling pretty confident after seeing what's come from the past fortnight and I'm looking forward to the next sprint.

See you in 2 weeks!

Jason

Late Start to the Year

Starting Up Again...

After a failed project to functionality problems and finally settling into a work routine, I'm going to start posting regular updates every fortnight to document the results of my sprints. With any luck, it'll keep the momentum up for my future projects.

The Project That Got Away

My old TAFE friend (now colleague), Alex and I had an idea for a game that was similar to FTL, but with free movement of your ship in space and more resources to micromanage. The player would need to find their own way around space while trying to make a living without dying. 

The project was scrapped after a month or so after discovering that the functionality we were aiming to put ingame was impossible to achieve in Unity.

A design for the Human Medium sized ship

The New Project

Soon after scrapping the project, we did some brainstorming for something more achievable coming straight from finishing TAFE. Our first thought was to do something simple, yet fun to play and fun to make. 

We settled on making a hack and slash game. They are simple enough to make and lots of fun to play if done well. My approach to this project is to make an art style that is stylised and exaggerated while still being readable.

Concept sketch for a playable Templar character.

Playable Samurai character.

Gorilla like demon enemy

The very basic premise is that the player takes control of a type of warrior from history (Templar knight, Samurai, etc) and somehow finds themselves in Hell. Players then have to either survive until they are overwhelmed, or find a way out to get back to the world of the living.

Moving Forward

This sprint is for developing the art style. I'm aiming to get a basic idea of the style and make the base meshes for one of the playable characters and some enemies. If I complete those, I'll work on environment assets for later down the track.

See you in 2 weeks.

Jason

We all have those days...

We all have those days when you work a little too hard when one thing becomes hilarious. Something like a rotation that should not have been done.

Heavy Armoured Character

This is one out of three armour sets for my end of year project. I'm in the process of animating now.

Mobster Model

Done a Mobster character for the VDM project.

Valentine's Day Massacre: Concept Art

Finished on some basic concepts for a tafe project. I'm aiming for a stylised film noire look for the visuals of the project.

Player Character:

Basic Enemies: