Game Dev Blog #11: Textures!!!

So, the game underwent a couple of stylistic changes (more in the style of borderlands) and as such, I've redone the textures! Have a look:

 

So there is much more of a comic book line art style now. I went over all the textures in photoshop and followed the details of the existing painterly textures with linework to achieve this affect.

Game Dev Blog #10: Double digits and no pictures? WTF!?

Optimization

     So, this post I'll be discussing optimization of 3d models. Woo. Fun. But, there's a reason I want to talk about this! I hear this phrase thrown around a lot by game reviewers, optimization. They keep saying things like "they could have optimized this game for the PS3 more" or the 360 or insert platform here. That's... A wrong way to look at things. On some level it's true, but the way these reviewers are using the term, it's really misleading and sometimes just wrong. Every time I hear someone say "these textures look so bad, they really needed to optimize them!" I die a little inside. 

     Okay so, what is  the right way to use the term? To answer that, let's go over what exactly "optimization" is. The short for answer is basically just cutting corners to reduce the file size of a given game asset. That's about as generic and simple as it gets.

     For more specific terms, optimizing a 3D models (such as a character or weapon) means removing polygons while trying to maintain the profile shape of the model in question (ie. making sure a chair still looks like a chair when you are done removing polygons. Even if it looks like the boxiest chair on earth.) 

     For textures, it would simply mean scaling the image down. So if you have a 1024x1024 texture, and the game is running to slowly as a result, you would optimize it be scaling it down. Yes, that means losing detail. So the next time you hear someone mention that "the textures look so bad, the devs really needed to optimize them" punch that fothermucker in the face.

So to bring things to a close, optimization is trying to get as much quality as you can from assets that you are forced to reduce in resources. 

Game Dev Blog #9: Icons part III

Mooooooaaaaaarrrrrrrr iconzzzzz

     It had been intended from the start for the characters in napkin western to have multiple weapons that could be switched. The idea being that when a weapon is switched out so are two of the three skills, leaving a base, or "Core" skill. That means lots of new icons! Two new ones for each weapons (with one new weapon per class, and two new ones for the as yet unreleased tech witch). In addition, several skill icons were giving players trouble (with were unreadable, or the image did not convey the idea it was intended to).

So! ere they are, new icons galore!

So, hopefully a dramatic increase in quality can be seen. The icons are not ordered by character necessarily (there are not even colours per character) they are ordered by colour.

So to review, yellow are special abilities, they always hurt the enemy. Green is debuff, the negatively effect the enemy, though not always through damage (rattlesnake venom is the only one I can think of that deals damage to an enemy). These are always cast on the bad guys as well. Blue is buff, and helps you and your squad always. heals, armour, accuracy boosts, all found here.

Hopefully, most of these icons are going to by and large convey what skill the represent/do without me having to label them!!

'Till next time, stay frosty :3

Game dev blog #8: Customization UI: Part 1

Dat UI: Mmm-mmm-mm, eat it up with a spoon

So the next project thrown my way was the customization UI . This would allow players to select a squad of three from multiple characters and then choose which weapons those characters would use. The weapons would swap out two of the character's abilities for new ones. These weapons (or abilities, however you choose to think of it) would not be overtly more or less powerful then any other ones available to that character, but simply provide a different way to play with that character. But I digress, back to the UI!

So for this project, I had a few more constraints than usual. Firstly and most importantly  I did not get to choose the layout. I was given a rough sketch on how the layout was to be set up and was only given freedom on how to make it look (relatively) pretty.

So, as you can see the layout has changed only a little bit, mostly just to make it neater than the sketch. The screen was made wider so that it can fit the 16:9 aspect ratio that many android tablets use, and can be scaled down for apple products that do not use the 16:9 aspect ratio.  

I went with a paper document look for this menu, as if the user were looking at some papers in the table seen in the main menu.

After testing, it became clear that the UI design was a bit confusing to players. This necessitates a redesign, which is currently in progress, hence this being part one of the customization blog post. When the redesign is complete, I'll make a new post detailing the problems with the current iteration of the interface, and the solutions we have worked out!

Game Dev Blog #7: Tech-Witch: Part 1

Tech-Witch: Part 1

     This week I'll be going over the Tech witch in the concept stages, and going over the process of how I concept out characters in general.

     The first thing to consider is the most obvious: what is the concept, the idea of this character. For the Tech-Witch we started with a gameplay concept; a character who's abilities are not so much for dealing damage as they are for disrupting the enemy. She would deal her damage primarily from close range (but not melee), high DPS (Damage Per Second) standard attacks.

     After deciding on this we moved on to narrative themes: What kind of characters might fit into this style of play? The team wanted a female character, so that helped narrow things down a little, but there was still a world of possibilities. Our initial name for the character was the Battle Mage, which sort of seemed to fit the bill but was much too generic. Ideas for this version of the class matched the name: kind of boring, and expected.

     Fortunately while still in the brainstorm portion of the concepting phase, I came up with the idea of a Tech-Witch. To explain how I came to this, I'll explain some of the background for the narrative setting of the game. basically, it's a sci-fi western wrapped in superstition and magic. The characters derive their powers from these pieces of technology, the Canisters, which store pure magic essence. This can be collected in one of two ways. Either by a magician (typically working in a factory) who draws the magic from the aether and channels it into mechanical receptors, or by trapping a soul in a canister using black magic or voodoo and drawing power from that. The latter method is easier, and therefor cheaper, but it is not as safe. It is not unheard of for users of these to become haunted or even possessed by the spirits they sought to store.

     So the idea of a combination of technology and witchcraft was an appealing one, and one I don't think is excessively used. it fits the theme of the game, and meets the criteria of the character (uses spells but still deals damage with physical weapon, female).

The Art

     So now we come to the actual art. To begin, I start by drawing out some basic silhouettes. This is to come up with a character that will read well at glance and won't be mistakable for other characters.

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     The idea was to have ten or more unique silhouettes (this is also sort of the industry standard) but due to time constraints I was only able to produce five. Based off of these, the team the picked the parts from the designs the liked, and I created a value study based off the feedback:

This was okayed, and I the proceeded to do a colour study,

     Here was my initial pass which is essentially what we went with. I changed the colour of the trim on the corset to a more orange-brown colour, which helps both tie it in more with the design and take focus away from it, so the viewer can pay more attention to what's important: her gear and face.

For part two of this, I'll go over the process of turning this character into a fully realized 3d player model. This will more than likely NOT be the next post, however.

Game Dev Blog #6: UI Revisited

UI reviseted

For this post I am going to go over icons for Napkin Western (working title) which is a mobile game I am working on, and will discuss the original icons which I posted in Blog #3 as well as the new revamped icons that you will see later on in this post.

     1: Original Icons: Why they don't work and what they get right.

     It's easy to look at these icons and say "those aren't very good". But, rendering aside, why  aren't they good? When one looks at these images it becomes apparent: they are all very static. Even the Rapid Fire ability (pictured bottom-left), which is a picture of bullets flying in the air, is very still and boring.

     It may be harder to say what is right in these, so  I'll go over that in more detail.
Firstly, these are abilities for a game, specifically a Mobile Game (a game designed for smartphones and tablets). So these icons will be seen on a fairly small scale. With this in mind, the icons are all easily distinguishable by a readily apparent motif: colour. By colour coding the icons, it becomes easier for the player to know what ability they are going to use without having to read test or even identify and icon: Yellow does damage, Green hinders, Blue helps. Simple as that.


     2: New Icons: Better Art is Better.

     So here we have the new icons. Obviously the art is of a higher quality now, but all of these new icons are much more active. There's movement in pretty much all of them and they convey action much more than their predecessors. Cropping on most of these helps to reinforce a sense of motion, as well as active lines on diagonals and in circular patterns. The icons reinforce the colour coding aspect and are readable at a distance/small size.
     Rendering does not need to be top notch, because you aren't going to see it at the intended viewing size. Only the bigger details are given attention, as anything to small will not be seen when the icon is scaled down. 
    I tried to keep a consistent style from icon to icon and for the most part I do feel like I've succeeded.


     Hopefully these ramblings were helpful to someone, more content in posts to follow! 

Game Dev Blog #5: Textures Part II

Time for part two of the texture series, we see me making my textures look rather more stylised and painterly than my previous post, to better match the style of the game:

I was working in crunch time and only had a couple of days to make all of my textures, so obviously I did not have the time to hand paint them all. My solution: run the texture through the Oil Paint filter and then the Paint Daubs filter (no tips for what settings in each filter to use, I played around with it for each separate texture type, eg. different for metal than wood). In this way I was able to achieve a relatively decent "painterly" look in a short amount of time and being that it was for mobile devices, you really can't tell that much of a difference.