Not Gonna Do It

I'm just going to make you tube vids. Not going to post here and there b/c its redundant. If you like'a dah posts, subscribe to my youtube channel. I'm getting ready to make some more tutorials for Maya LT and Unreal along with my dev diaries.

Low Poly Water Material

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Water material for a low poly style.

WIP Ice Wall

For my game, I finally get to work on the FX. One of the powers is a sort of Mei ice wall. Not as much utility, just a blocker, at least for now.

It has to pop up fast, so very little anticipation. I'm happier with the spawning than the de-spawning. For that, I'm thinking of making a ground crack decal fade out over the footprint... something.

The ice debris is also supposed to have some collision with the ground (most does fall through) but for whatever reason when spawned from the BP it doesn't... not an issue I going to track down yet, just a note.

Animation wise, I think its not as crisp as it needs to be. Its a little mushy, vs snap and poppy. This is probably 60% "there", and the last 10% is always the hardest.

Character Process

I've been working, or should I say re-working the main character as a bipebial animal. Also the goal now is more of a tech demo show piece, with a full game in mind. 

I've never been super happy with my stylized human faces, and a while ago I decided to change them all to animals. I've always been had a fascination with bipedal animal characters. My first game attempt was Pollock in 2011 which was fox against wolves, Crashimals was the same, altho stylistically different. I actually took Pollock heads added eye sockets, and brows, stuck it on top. There's something about creating an animal world that I love and want to explore. 

Proportions I tried to get more legs but not too much. I tried to have short or even no legs, and that works for top down but I'm not 100% on that camera choice, and they need legs, I also felt they needed tails, even though thats more animation.
I'm drawn to Chibi style, and always want to push my proportions but it never works for me, so the head keeps shrinking as I go. Actually all proportions get more conservative as I go. 

Felt like the proportions were close, and melded it all together, and get a first pass at good topology for animation. Figured I need to make the main chr, and this head was the best of the bunch (did a bunch of different 3D "Sketches" of animal heads). The arms are long and head is bigger, but getting there.

A lot changed with color and clothes. I've been making the character look like a squire in previous iterations but I've been thinking "Take me on an adventure" as a theme. I wanted it to feel like a DnD game where you go out adventuring. I started making a scarf top when it looked like how people put bandannas on dogs, and that was fun. I'm not sure if you will be able to change outfits/armor, so there maybe lots but this was a fun start. 

Backpack also more animation but I've always felt like why do I have an inventory when I have no place to put all that stuff? Backpacks also say to me "We're on an adventure".

This actually took the longest to get here as the pictures go. Added the mouth, b/c in Crashimals there were lots of places where I regretted not being able to move/open the mouth, esp for marketing images. Lots of overall fine tuning, lots of try and fail. We had the idea wouldn't it be fun if he had a campanion who lived in the back pack? Yes it would! So I made it.

Then removed the hedgehog for scope.
I was happy with the wolfs fur color but nothing else. I thought what character has blue skin that looks cool? Phantom Lancer (DOTA2) is and I used him as a color reference. Which really helped figure out a palette I could be happy with. I made many iterations on color, and those aren't shown. It takes a while to get colors down, and you'll see I tweaked on them until the end.

More tweaking and I think its ready. I'm finally happy enough to move on. Added a fur pass which can be seen in the ears and back of his cheeks. Finally got the saturation levels on the backpack working with the clothes. More details all over, reworked the feet, shoulder pad, backpack, sword, belt, wristband... pretty much everything to get the detail level where I wanted it. Now onto rigging.

Character Design, Where we at?

I've been playing around with proportion and simplicity. Trying to find something interesting and unique. I know for I want simple colors, and by that I mean use colors from a color palette and no gradients in texture, or no "texture" at all. Objects can have 1 color per part, and value changes with in that as needed. Meaning lighten the top of the belt with a highlight of the same color.

I started off with the simplest of simple. I loved having no feet, and detached hands. It makes a lot of things easier, and I like the simplification. This is whats currently in the game:



The simple 4 blocks turned into the main character, who I derived from that to make the zombie enemies and the skeleton on the end. I knew they wouldn't remain that way so I played with color and just kept it loose to move forward with designing the game.

But I felt like it was too simple and too cartoony. I asked myself what kind of style would represent me? Is this it? I don't think so. Its just a little too simple. I'm not sure the big head cartoony was me. I always liked a cartoon, anime, comic book style. (I know all those are very different) but meaning I liked simplifications of characters.

Well the question of what style lead me to ask some more questions. Like if the body was bigger so we can see the outfits a little more how would that look? I actually kept the arms detached but then when I made the small legs, it started to make less and less sense that the arms were floating detached. So I simply added the remaining arm piece to attach them and with a lot of testing got to this point.







The game is is a "top town" but with a good amount of angle on it so the in game would look more like this:



Now the blocky heads are not as strong a motif as they were before. Now the arms seems kinda crazy big, but I still liked it enough to keep exploring, but its not "there". I sent it to my friend who said, "I like it. Everyone seems just a bit wide in the body though. Maybe bring it in by 10-20%? Maybe its not the width but the depth? It's close, but I think it needs just a little tweaking. I know its the style you are going for, but it just seems a bit too exaggerated. They seem a bit stiff, but that is probably just their pose. I'd like to see some animations." I agreed. I had an idea for animation but I thought I'll push the design first.

I took the main character, and game him legs. Full on, but small legs. Refined the hands and re did the face to be more of a rounded cube. I kept the "Mini Gore" mouths but I'm not convinced that it works. I don't plan on having mouth animations in game. And its not very visible from the camera angle. Anyway that got me here:



I took that and brought it into Mixamo to just test it with animation. And maybe its the motion capture data but I felt like am I going in the right direction? I'm not so sure. Time to make this blog post and send it to another friend who's a concept artist. See what he thinks. :D (I actually made this post instead of putting it all into an email and sending it to him)


UPDATE 02/24/18: I continued to work on the proportions, studying a lot of Disney, not that it matters, but trying a lot of new directions that didn't work. Went back to what I had and tried to find what it is I was feeling. Eventually I got here:

...and I'm happy with it. You can see a lot of influences from previous designs, and I think it merges them well.

Game Dev vlog #4 Art Process

My partner Andrew is converting the game to C++ and setting up the weapons in a better way. So a bit of a pause on the direct development as I look to update the style of the characters from the placeholder Mini Gore characters. I'm been sketching and modeling trying to find a place that feels right for what I'm trying to make. Still working on finding the right level of detail and proportions for the characters. I think its getting there, but hard to say just yet. More work to do.

Current Game's Inspiration

There are 3 games I'm drawing from when designing this game. Cat Quest, Bastion, and Mini Gore 2.

I love Cat Quest's simplicity. Its not feature rich but it works and I don't feel its missing anything. It feels tight and well made. I've played it through twice and leveled my character up over 100 both times which means I kept playing well after the story line was over. I like how the enemies tell you how and where they will attack with UI, and you learn to dive roll away. I also loved how you find weapons again and it levels them up. Made for a limited number of treasures but you were happy to find any one. I played Cat Quest on the Switch.

Bastion is an inspiration to many developers, so it may come as no surprise it is to me as well. Its the only game I bought twice. I've replayed Bastion a few times on PC and also on iOS. Theres a lot to love about it. Every feature they added they made sure you learned and got the most out of. I loved the 2 equipped weapons. I'm currently straight up copying their control scheme with the xbox controller. Currently copying the healing mechanic where health potions abound in the world, and you really just need to manage them, and ideally get more currency when you're full. I love their variety of enemy types. Love the variance of weapons, and how well they each work. I'm doing things a little differently so far as I'm locking the player to 1 melee and 1 projectile weapon.

Lastly Mini Gore 2, which is a rather old game, but I love everything Mountain Sheep does. I think Timo Vihola is the artist who designed the characters.  Anyway its always inspired me for art direction. I love the simple beveled cube shape language, I felt they they didn't stick to it as much for their enemies, but still it really worked well for their game. It really just a base in the back of my mind that I just always loved the mix of cartoony style and simplistic design.

Game Dev vlog #3 Melee Weapons & Dungeon 1.0

This week I wanted to get the melee weapons implementation dialed in. Be able to swap weapons and have the attributes change. I still want to get more animations for different weapons but for now this will do.
I also wanted to get the start of the dungeons going. Get a feel for what that will look like. Its tricky to figure out the walls since I don't want the character occluded to easily, yet I also don't want to only have cliffs as boarders. I think I found a nice mix that will give me a few options for making interesting dungeon loops. In Cat Quest they use one kit to make all dungeons and it works. I wanted to go for something similar, with addition of more filler assets. I also have other colors for crystals and mushrooms to make some simple variations.

Game Dev vlog #2 Art Directing

I said I wasn't going to get into the slipper slope, for me anyway, of making assets and art directing along with re-doing over and over, but I can't stop myself. I need the game to look at least fairly well for me to enjoy playing it. Its a weakness. I will probably art up a little more, but not the whole level. next is getting the enemies to swing their melee weapons and cause damage on "connecting".

Game Dev vlog #1 I'm back

I'm back! Ok while not that exciting I am going to make a concentrated effort on doing this regularly, along with tutorials. This is a first look at what I've been messing around with. Andrew is making his game and I'm making mine, and we're going to help each other as needed/swap games at some point to fill in whats needed. His is a space game, mine a fantasy, what looks like a sort of hack 'n slash adventure.

Just forget it already

Remember back when I said I was going to post something soon, yeah that's generally the last post on a blog. I kept wanting to do this awesome explain it all post where I talk about my VR game I've been working on. But then it got to the point where there was too much to talk about. And crapper, how do I recap it all?
Fine. Quit my job to work fulltime on my own VR game, just like the Gamasutra articles tell you not to do. Well I'll show them! Ha! Ha... hah... heh, *sigh*.
Month 1: make my Racing game. Oh might be the mario kart of VR! Unless as it turns out racing with this mechanic doesn't quit work. Hmm. What does?
Month 2: trying things that also might work, how about a puzzle game? Bomb structures like angry birds? Ok lets test. The environment I made for racing doesn't work anymore. New Environment! Wait new Plane and pilot!! Better stylization. Good. This is taking a while.
Month 3, 4, 5 Making everything better but mostly working the game from a bashed together test into an actual game. Finally get it together and post it for early access, which I wanted to do in month 3.
That was 2 weeks ago-ish. Honestly its early early access. It has the gameplay and its fun, but it lacks the charm I want and envision it having. So I have done no marketing or push until I can get it to that point, which is at least add the animals, since its called "Don't Feed the Animals". Oh and I just found out today there was a Nintendo DS game in 2010 with the same name, greeaat.
Well I do think I need to be better about talking on whats going on, so... I'll do better.

Something new

Where've I been? "Who cares!?!" Awe, you hurt my feelings internet! I'm sensitive and vulnerable. Ok now that I got that out of the way... I put Misadventure on hold. "The HELL you say!" I do say, or don't. I don't know how to answer that. I put in my notice and in a little more than 2 weeks I'll be a full-time indie game developer! Hurray for no paycheck! Wait, what? Oh, better get on that. Right! So, here's where I'm at. I have a fun idea for a VR game, and have been in the process of play testing and blocking out features. That's right, its already playable. "You mean you did this one the right way?" Well I'd like to think I started more righter than other times, yes. I'll post something to see soon. Its a short dev cycle so the whole process should be rather snappy. "Oh tell us more!" Really you want to know more? "No I haven't even read this far!" Ok. Well then, more to come soon.

Helmets, Armor, Weapons, Shields Skeleton Enemy Type

Material work not done but I got Armor working via socket snapping... well all this is socket snapping, yay! Lot of texturing work to do, but I wanted to knock these out to get them in game for development purposes. I think integrating this system will be a lot of work. Not to mention the color system that needs to work in the materials to show enemy Str.
I've been steadily improving the Skeleton b/c it will be one of the main enemies. Here is version 09


I also made a "dumb" Blueprint heart=health system that is probably a just for now system before we implement a nicer one.

Some New Animations

Working on a lot of things at the moment and being somewhat lazy in posting about them on my dev blog. Tisk tisk. Well here's a few things, this is new simpler Todd who looks better in VR with some single arm +shield animations. Also threw the sword swing fx in there. It shows some smoothing is needed for the animation.

New House Kit

Getting all materials/textures for the house on 1 texture atlas, getting each part in decent shape... its coming along. Starting to build houses, each one will be faster as each one makes more parts. This is different from the previous house kit in that the textures are not baked per asset part, and its simpler, less details, trying to get it more readable for VR. 

Roofs

Update is roofs and how I make them. You can see the old house and how the new roofs are simpler, less detailed more cartoony. This was a needed fix for VR, has to be easier to read in shape and silhouette.

First Look VR re-design

This took a month to get "right" as in getting it to this level of blocking. I can't say how performant this is ATM, but I just found out I'm getting my Vive Pre Friday! Its going to be a bit tricky to manage Andrew and myself sharing one when we don't live within hand off range. But we'll have a DK2 to play back up.  

Ground is not textured, especially in "town". I don't mind the simple colors but the town needs a better ground texture. I experimented with actual modeled floor but thats probably not worth the 20k polys it took to look fair. So finally back to a good place. The gear switching from normal game to VR was not insignificant.

Definitely still learning what size is too small and how much detail feels good. This is just where I'm at right now. Hope to make a video of this area with walking character tonight

The Big Change: VR

Took a step back over the holidays to re-evaluate. Andrew and I agree that we'd be idiots not to make a game in/for VR. I work in VR everyday using Unreal with the Vive. Why would I NOT use that skill set to make something fun? We're scaling back the features that were going to be to give us more iteration time for menus and controls in VR. Dropping the complex inventory system, in favor of simplified one... as just a small example. The game is developing as we go. Andrew still needs a headset, and I only have the DK2 at home, so we're working on getting him one. We also need a Vive or Crescent bay to be able to test quality to performance ASAP. Its hard to know what level of detail is needed or can be obtained until we get one of those headsets.
Here a look into the blocking I'm working on this AM.

Weekend Update 12_7

Working on the soldier and skeleton with their armor combinations. Just designing and modeling them out right now. Soldier is pretty fleshed out, skeleton is still a WIP. Nothing is UV'ed or anything, also trying to keep their poly count low, as I'd like to have a lot of them on screen at once.

Todd Lo

Thinking about cutting "it" down to the bare essentials, going back a little to say what is this game really about. What is fun about it? I reduced Todd down to 1250 tri's and I think with the camera height we're thinking of using this will be more than enough.

Not saying we need to use this todd or even that I UV'ed and rigged him. Just that I'm thinking about things... yeah things, you know?