General blogging about gamedev and maybe some tutorials. Blog by Bishop Myers: programmer, writer, and cat-herder of Project BC. Currently slaving away on Vacant Sky Awakening.
Hey, Iâm not dead! Iâm currently working on a cool visual novel about wizards with guns called The Devilâs Broker, and I wanted to show the process for this background I made for it.
Speaking of artistic centaurs and tools, hereâs a generative tool you can use right now. Tilemancer is a node-based tile-generator for limited palette 2D tiling textures.
The UI has some counterintuitive bits (click and drag up and down to change numbers) but itâs a nifty little tool. This tutorial may help.
Iâm sure you can think of some creative ways to use the tiles you make.
A little while ago, @santiontanon suggested trying to use neural-doodle to upscale pixel art. Alex J. Champandard added some tweaks to improve the support for the process, and now weâre off to the races.
Iâve been running my own experiments, as you can see above. It doesnât work for every texture, and thereâs still a few occasional issues, but the combinations that do work are pretty astonishing.
NeuralDoodle generally takes a content image, and a style image, and translates the content into the style. You can also give it just the style image and seed data and have it synthesize a new image based on what it sees in the original style image.
Hereâs a blue rock texture I made with Tilemancer getting interpreted as vines:
And hereâs some more textures that used that same blue rock image as a seed. These were done with just a style image (the photographs, in this case) and a seed image (the pixel art blue rock), but no content image.Â
Also using a content image results in a final output that more strongly resembles the content image, though with more discontinuities if thereâs too great a mismatch between the content and style. You can see how this one doesnât quite work:
These, on the other hand, came out much better:
As you can see, if thereâs a huge mismatch between the content and the style, you may have trouble seeing the content in the result (though playing with the settings can sometimes find a better blend). But they still make for some pretty good images anyway.
Now, thereâs a virtuoso pointillism to the practice of pixel art, so this isnât going to replace all pixel art. Pixel art has already found its evolutionary art niche; new technology replaced all of the pixel art that had technologic reasons a long time ago. (Though weâre likely to get some Minecraft texture packs out of this.)Â
But as part of a larger workflowâsketch out a rough idea of the texture you want, let the neural network dream up the detailsâthis is going to be an interesting tool in the toolbox.
We present a novel technique to simplify sketch drawings based on learning a series of convolution operators. In contrast to existing approaches that require vector images as input, we allow the more general and challenging input of rough raster sketches such as those obtained from scanning pencil sketches. We convert the rough sketch into a simplified version which is then amendable for vectorization. This is all done in a fully automatic way without user intervention.
The latest set of Final Fantasy XV blog posts have gone live, following community manager Tajiâs adventures with a new staff member: Kaoru Kawaguchi. Forum member Rin has translated many of the important bits from the exchange â focusing on ⊠Continue reading â
Pretty interesting highlights from an interview with one of the lead concept artists for Final Fantasy XV. In particular it touches on some of the challenges of designing the unnamed NPCs in the game.
Hey guys, this is Kate. You might know me as the voice of Kanaya in Letâs Read Homestuck, or as the creator of a webcomic a while back called Fan Dan Go, or maybe as the host of the Youtube channel katethemongoose which features the âChilled Artâ tutorials and a Letâs Play of Mass Effect about a lesbian space wizard called Shepard Shepard, or maybe youâve watched my Friday Night Dungeon Crawl streams, or maybe youâve played The Vestibule, Ars Harmonia, Vacant Sky Contention or Encarmine (lol kidding, nobody bought Encarmine), all of which I worked on. You might know me as felicitousArtisan, or if youâve been on the internet a while, Darth Mongoose.
Cutting to the chase, due to a shitty situation involving my rented house turning out to have a basement without proper damp proofing leading to dangerous mould growth that nearly killed my girlfriendâs asthmatic sister, and the landlady being⊠I am going to refrain from typing everything I want to say about her just insert a Karkat Vantas esque string of rage here⊠Iâm having to move to new accommodation very suddenly. I could really use an extra grand to do this with, and could do with it within the month. Thatâs a grand in British Pounds, by the way, which is equivalent to $1420 (blaze itttâŠI have never smoked weed in my life who am I kidding).
I donât like just asking for money because Iâm fully capable of doing stuff and Iâd rather work for it, and I donât think you lot want to just throw money at me for nothing⊠so Iâm instead taking suggestions.
(but if you DO want to throw money at me for nothing Iâm not gonna complain:Â paypal.me/KateHolden )
Commissions are open as always, just email [email protected] My rates are reasonable but they are professional rates, so they go from ÂŁ25 up usually (assume ÂŁ25 is a full colour line art and cel shaded head and shoulders portrait of you or anyone you like, painting costs extra, full body costs extra, detailed background costs extra, Iâm negotiable within reason). I have an online portfolio at: www.kateholdenart.com and Iâm generally fast and reliable; I have a reputation to uphold after all! Iâm happy to do album art or book covers, posters, portraits, game art assets, even whole comics (warning, comics arenât cheap, especially if you want full colour and stuff, theyâre a lot of work)⊠anything really except stuff thatâs excessively smutty or involves topics that are awful like inappropriate images of under-age characters or anything degrading to⊠basically anyone.
Buuuut not everybody might want a bespoke commission, so Iâd like to gauge interest about things people would be willing to donate/pay for. Ideas include:
-Art Streams or online workshops. Iâve been running art workshops all over the country professionally for about eight years for schools, events, even the BBC, so Iâm confident I can deliver and help level up peopleâs drawing.
-Something related to Dungeons & Dragons. Iâm a seasoned Dungeon Master and I love to DM! Ideas could be: 1. Hiring me as DM for sessions over Roll20, 2. I do a special fundraising Dungeon Crawl, 3. People donate to participate in Dungeon Crawl themselves along with the regulars.
-Crap, I dunno, t-shirts? Merch? Obviously the answer is a âFucking Ice Cream Vanâ shirt. This would solve all my problems⊠_ÂŹ;;;;;
-Voice Acting. My current place makes this frustratingly difficult because itâs next to a main road, but I have a nice mic and I can do voice acting and voice over if you need it and donât mind giving me a week or two leeway to make sure I can get quiet time to do it.
Naora voice: Look at me Iâm Naora Iâm the best character in this whole damned series and nobody knows anything about me
@faisdm tfw itâs four in the morning and you donât own a single article of Naoraâs outfit but youâre gonna closet cosplay her because #yougotta
Iâve been promising a post about this for ages and now I finally have the opportunity to procrastinate on something, so Iâm going to do it.
This is a plea to other writers and game designers to start seriously considering the power you wield so that you can use it ethically and responsibly.
A note on nomenclature: Iâm going to be preferring the term ânarrativeâ here over âstoryâ because many people tend to have a limited perspective on what constitutes a story. All works of media, even those without an explicit plot, have a narrative: even Pong has a start (when you begin playing), conflict (you want to win), and ending (when you finish playing).
The power of narratives
Narratives, more than anything else in the world, have a powerful ability to shape peopleâs perceptions of the world around them. It should follow naturally then that people who construct narratives (whether you write prose or design games) should be held responsible for maintaining stewardship over their narratives and ensuring that theyâre transforming the perspectives of their readers in an appropriate and ethical way.
To illustrate my point, here's an exercise. Do you believe that stealing is wrong? Probably. Can you pinpoint the moment in your life when you decided that? Maybe, maybe not. It's a belief that was ingrained in you through exposure to many narratives that all, implicitly or explicitly, asserted the same message. Perhaps you stole something as a kid and your parents put you in time out, or maybe they hit you, or maybe they lectured you that stealing would get you thrown in jail. These narratives all follow the same basic template: You want something -> You steal it -> Something bad happens and what you stole is taken away again -> You learn your lesson.
It seems like one of the most basic and self-evident truths, but it's not something that children come equipped understanding automatically. Instead, it's a lesson that gets taught. Maybe it's taught many times. When we hear the same message from lots of different people, we start to subconsciously understand it as the way of the world. The more we hear it and in the more different contexts we're exposed to it, the more universal a truth it seems to be.
Children don't really have a sense of right and wrong aside from the one they develop by digesting the narratives they're exposed to growing up. What are property rights? What does it mean that that toy is "mine" and that toy is "yours?" All of this is learned through narratives. We tend to roll our eyes and tune out when people lecture us, but when we're personally invested in a sequence of events (whether it be through reading a book or experiencing them in reality), we're wired in, receptive and sympathetic to the outcome. Humans are extremely good at recognizing, integrating, and applying patterns. It's the fundamental allure of games. Therefore, when we (consciously or not) recognize a pattern in narratives, we start to integrate it into our understanding of the world.
Narratives in fiction
Fiction is an incredibly powerful way of conveying a narrative because we can imagine ourselves in a situation that we might never encounter in reality, allowing us to learn from an experience from the safety of our homes.
The most important part of a story is its ending. Generally, the ending is when the protagonist applies the lesson they've learned from the story and either succeeds or fails at achieving their goal. The protagonist is the vessel through which the narrative of the plot is conveyed. What they ultimately end up doing, and what ends up happening to them, becomes the message that readers take away from the work. Captain Ahab and his crew are destroyed by the whale, showing that revenge is a self-destructive voyage. Romeo and Juliet die meaninglessly, showing that surrendering yourself to emotion is harmful to yourself and those around you. Aladdin and Jasmine live happily ever after, showing that all you need to do is become rich and lie to someone in order to find true love.
People laugh when I bring up examples of Disney movies and usually say that I'm overthinking kids' movies, because Disney is a brand so firmly associated with being kid-friendly that questioning the value of their works is funny. But Disney's messages are so over-the-top toxic that it's kind of low-hanging fruit. How about Harry Potter? Voldemort is murdered, showing that killing someone who wronged you is not only okay but necessary, and it fixes all the world's problems.
Maybe you think it's acceptable to murder people who do bad things, and if so, I can hardly fault you; it's such a pervasive message in all of our media that it's hardly a surprise that so many people accept it. Try to think: why is it that you believe that? Can you remember when you started to think that way? Narratives are powerful. They shape our worldview in ways so subtle that we don't realize they're doing it. We incorporate their messages into our identity and defend them, even without knowing where the belief came from.
Happy endings
Whether we intend them to be or not, all narratives are inherently argumentative. Most sports movies argue that the path to victory is through lots of tough practice and teamwork. But is that really self-evident? Can't you normally overcome someone who's better than you by cheating? And so these movies often have a subplot where someone gets caught cheating and they suffer for it, arguing that cheaters never prosper. Sometimes, the good guys win even though the opponent is cheating to show just how strong their teamwork is.
But in the real world, cheaters prosper all the time.
As writers, we're all familiar with the fact that most stories follow the three-act structure. The protagonist starts off with a lesson to learn, fails to achieve their goal because of their ignorance of the lesson, then finally learns the lesson and uses it to solve their problem. The lesson is usually a pretty unadventurous cliche: teamwork is good, caring for others is important, you need to take responsibility for yourself, etc. Picking a good lesson is easy.
But a lot of writers stop there. Just as important as the explicit lesson of the story are its implicit lessons. What methods does your protagonist employ to achieve their goal? What moral choices, large and small, does your protagonist make along the way?
Does the antagonist die in the end?
Does the protagonist kill any of the antagonist's minions?
Do wrongdoers learn their lesson or are they irredeemably evil?
Does the protagonist lie and cheat?
All of these are commonly glossed-over and accepted tropes but each one is making a statement about the way the world works. This finally brings me to: what's wrong with happy endings?
Narratives follow the same basic argumentative form: if you do X and Y, then Z will happen, where Z is the ending. If Z is an undesirable outcome, then the narrative warns you against the dangers of X and Y. But if Z is desirable, then the narrative not only condones doing X and Y in order to achieve Z, but suggests that it's the "proper" way of achieving Z.
The problem with happy endings is that they're inherently prescriptive. A narrative with a happy ending is a guidebook, teaching readers the correct way to live their lives. When you write a narrative with a happy ending, you have a very tall order ahead of you: you need to be aware that you're condoning the protagonist's methods and everything they learn.
In a narrative with a happy ending, killing an antagonist condones capital punishment, violence, and war. Just making them dissolve or fade away or otherwise sugarcoating it doesn't escape this message; you're still metaphorically killing them.
In a narrative with a happy ending, having wrongdoers be irredeemable is to claim that rehabilitation is impossible, that once someone has done something wrong that they're evil for life. This often goes hand in hand with killing them.
In a narrative with a happy ending, if the protagonist uses deception or trickery, then the narrative asserts that the ends justify the means and that lying and deceit are okay.
And maybe you agree with those messages. If so, then maybe you don't have a problem encouraging them. But if you don't, then you need to think strongly about why it is you're incorporating them into your story. Do you want other people to think that way? Do you want to be responsible for other people thinking that way?
Even if your narrative is completely scrubbed of undesirable messages (which is no small feat), the  notion of a happy ending is itself a political statement. In the words of media researcher Ed S. Tan, "a happy ending corresponds to prototypical representations of justice." If you do the right thing, then you'll get what you want. If you do the wrong thing, then you'll be punished.
If you're unfamiliar with the just-world fallacy, then maybe that doesn't sound like such a bad thing to you. Consider instead turning those statements around: if you don't get what you want, you didn't do the right thing. If you were punished, then you did something wrong. Happy endings reinforce a conservative worldview and implicitly condone victim blaming.
A personal note
I had a pretty rough upbringing and I often turned to books and games as a form of escapism. They offered some solace from the problems I struggled with by reassuring me that if you did your best that everything would turn out okay, and that the people who wronged me would eventually get their comeuppance. But no matter what I did to try to shut out my problems, they didn't go away. Many of them grew worse as time went on.
As I became more mature and accepting of my situation, it became both difficult and painful to continue reading. There wasn't a happy ending in sight for me, and the people at whose hands I suffered were never any worse for it. They most certainly didn't learn a lesson. I struggled with relating to the books that everyone else loved because I couldn't figure out how to reconcile what they said about the way the world worked with my personal experience with it.
Sometimes, I wondered if I deserved it, if I had done something wrong, or if there was something just "wrong" about me that made me deserving of everything that happened to me. It might sound silly if you've never been through it, but I'm sure others who grew up with tough childhoods can relate. It's easy to accept difficult and painful situations as a part of life as a coping mechanism, and when you do, you're faced with the need to explain it to yourself to make your view of the world consistent. Because our narratives teach us that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people, often the only way to resolve this paradox is by wondering if you're one of the bad people. I felt ashamed, guilty, and worthless.
One of my most powerful childhood memories was when we read Bridge to Terabithia in school. It was a really shocking and upsetting book, and it was one of the first works that really challenged the way I had been taught to look at the world. It was the first time a story spoke to me. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, for no reason at all. Everyone cried when we read it, but I was overjoyed. Maybe there wasn't something wrong with me after all, and maybe I didn't deserve everything that happened to me.
I credit works like that with starting to bring me out of the deep depression of my childhood. As books with moving endings tended to be way above my reading level or too serious/literary for my tastes, this was when I started getting really into games, particularly RPGs, where I could find the drama and tragedy that resonated with the events of my life. I developed a more nuanced way of looking at the world and I began questioning fundamental assumptions about the nature of good and evil (like if they even existed!).
Responsibility
I struggle a lot with writing happy stories (if you've played any of my games, this should come as no surprise). When I was young, I just couldn't relate with happy characters in any way except intense jealousy, and even now I struggle to see happy characters as anything but shallow and unrealistic. But now, remembering the struggles of my childhood and having spoken with others who shared my experiences, I've started to wonder if happy stories are not merely unrealistic but actually harmful.
We live in a world where innocent people suffer constantly at the hands of others who not only are not punished, but reap tremendous rewards from it. As a society, we tend to overlook this painful truth because it runs contrary to everything we've been taught since childhood. Research has shown that people who believe in a just world tend to blame victims of crimes or to deny they ever happened, because that's the only way to reconcile what happened with their view of the world. It encourages complacency, to accept that people who are wealthy and powerful must have done something to earn it, and that the poor must simply be lazy.
Given how virtually all narratives aimed at children implicitly condone the popular notion of justice, it should really come as no surprise that beliefs about good vs evil and good things happening to good people are so thoroughly ingrained in our public consciousness. Because of that, when I start to conceive of a happy, none-too-serious, heroic story about good triumphing over evil, I feel guilty. Can I in good conscience contribute to a worldview that's actively hurting countless people all the time?
It's easy to invent excuses ("it's just a story!" "it's just a game!") to escape responsibility so that we can happily write whatever kinds of stories we want, but as writers, we wield a tremendous power to transform the world. We need to analyze the stories we're writing and make sure they're nudging people in the right direction. When you're planning out your stories, ask yourself what messages and behavior you're condoning. Who could your story hurt? Who could your story help?
If you only take one thing away from this, I want it to be that there's no such thing as "just a story." No matter how cute, or brainless, or light-hearted a story is, it is making a statement about the way the world is. Your responsibility is to take ownership of that statement and to ensure it's something that in some way betters the world.
Hi Kate! A while back you made Ars Harmonia and I wanted to ask what programs you used to make it. It was super fun and it looked awesome // Have a nice whatever time of day it is :)
Oh thanks! Iâm glad you enjoyed the game!
Ars Harmonia was kind of a mishmash project, put together in a very short space of time by largely three people; Me, Bishop and Julia. Â Because of this, a bunch of different programs were used to make it!
The game was built in the Unity Engine, which is a pretty good and affordable general game making engine. The last few months, my feelings have been leaning toward Unreal Engine 4. Both have pros and cons. Itâs a good idea to check out what engines there are if you want to make a game; pick one that suits you.
The art in the game is⊠interesting hahaha. The 2D character art is obviously drawn by me, and I did the inks in Manga Studio (the new version of which is called Clip Studio) and the colours in Photoshop, so the same techniques I tend to use for comics. The backgrounds are interesting. Theyâre largely made by Bishop, putting together 3D assets and textures into scenes, rendered in 3DS Max (I think the rendering was in VRay? Iâm sure Bishop will correct me if thatâs wrong) the various high resolution layers (light, shadows etc) from the render passes were given to me and I composited them and tweaked the levels and colours in Photoshop, touched up rough bits etc. There are a handful of 3D models that we didnât already have made from past projects  and weâre able to find online that were needed for the plot, and those were made by me. I think the ones of note are the violin case, the calendar, the newspaper and I retextured a couple of book models we had. I did the modelling in Blender and texturing in Photoshop, sometimes using Quixel Suite. Towards the end of the project, we were running low on time and energy, so a number of the backgrounds for scenes are just straight-up stock photos, sometimes edited.
Voices were provided by CoLab friends, who all did a wonderful job. They were edited in Audacity by me. The music was all found online.
Please note that itâs perfectly possible to make a game with fewer programs than this! AH was kind of a strange creation process, trying to get the best looking game with our short timeframe and ragtag skill assortment!
Yup, thatâs right! To expand on the backgrounds a bit, the general process was this:
-Find free models online that suited our needs where possible.
-Failing that, reuse existing models weâve made before (the hotel room, some of the props in the Laveau residence)
-Failing that, model from scratch.
-Compose the scenes in 3ds Max and configure the lighting and materials (the most time-consuming part, as each test render took 6+ hours!).
-Render out final image with Vray, export out different render passes (diffuse, reflectivity, ambient occlusion, shadows were the main ones). Send off to Kate to composite.
If it sounds convoluted, as Kate said, you can easily make a game without nearly this much work. In the case of Ars Harmonia, I wanted to experiment with implementing some techniques I had been playing with but hadnât had the opportunity to use in practice. The workflow definitely could have been improved and streamlined, and probably will be if and when the game is continued.
Though I never intended for Auro to be a âretro-styleâ game, what I intended doesnât matter at all, and itâs 100% my fault for failing to communicate in a language people understand. As a game developer, time is the most valuable resource a human can give you. Nobody owes us their time or attention. As such, when someone gives us their time, an implicit agreement is made and we are now in debt to that person. We owe it to them to deliver value for their time, and to deliver it efficiently.
An insightful article by a professional pixel artist on the relevance of pixel art for games made in the modern day.
Iâve been playing Dragon Age Inquisition, and a thing occurred to me: I donât really like character approval ratings.
Or at least not how theyâre generally put into practice. I like the idea of befriending your partymembers and of building that friendship and being rewarded for doing so, and of making it into a gameplay mechanic, but I feel like how most games implement this is weird, frustrating and even a little unhealthy.
There are a few major issues with character approval ratings:
1. Not attempting to get everybodyâs approval maxed  (or your love interestâs in  a Renâai) is sub-optimal in gameplay terms. It may lead to missing out on useful abilities, equipment and XP from special quests, put you on course for a bad ending or cause you to lose partymembers.
2. Most characters react well to being agreed with and told what they want to hear.
3. Most of these decisions take place in a case-by-case vacuum ignoring previous scenarios usually with only rare exceptional events where telling a person one thing then doing something else or saying a different thing to somebody else leads to a greater loss of approval than saying something they disagree with then doing so.
The idea that the Marvel films are an appeal to peopleâs hard-wired desire for stories about people better, stronger and faster than they are isnât necessarily a bad thing. At the same time, they donât serve as a model for inspiring people to do more in the face of crisis than watch, worship and wait to be saved. It isnât just boring dramatically; itâs perilously close to social conditioning.
(...)
The point of Marvelâs cloak-and-dagger skullduggery with S.H.I.E.L.D. is a familiar line of argument and entertainment weâve become perilously used to: the plot where an unscrupulous, power-hungry arm of the intelligence apparatus is thwarted in their plansâŠby a scrupulous, public-service-minded arm of the intelligence apparatus. Again, the status quo remains intact. Even Ultronâs put-down in Avengers 2ââYou Avengers want to save the world, but you donât want to change itââgets neutered by the follow-through: Ultronâs idea of change is killing humanity, and so the status quo of mere survival is ringingly endorsed above annihilationâwhich is really not that much of a choice.
A post thatâs not about games for once! This is an essay that examines the unsettling impact of archetypal heroic fantasy stories, drawing specific examples from Marvelâs recent works.
As the classical hero story becomes more popular than ever, itâs important, as creators, that we take a step back and recognize the subconscious social conditioning we reinforce by telling these stories. What values do stories about heroes promote? Are these the values we want to propagate?
Whatever kind of stories you write, itâs important that you think about what it is youâre saying through your story. Even if you donât write heroic fantasy, this is a worthwhile read to help you identify the subtle, pervasive ways unwanted messages work their way into our stories.
Vacant Sky Awakening menu portraits. Naora (top right) is the latest one, since she joins the party last, so the three Orkans were obviously the priority since theyâre in the game from the very start. Since Naora was done last, of course sheâs my favourite one, because like most artists I consider my latest work better than my old work!
So, the menu portraits here are laden with Symbolism, and no, that wasnât inspired by Dragon Age Inquisitionâs Tarot cards, I started making these before that game was out and was surprised by their similar approach! I wanted to use painting for these rather than cel-shading like the dialogue portraits for two reasons: 1. We already had battle portraits for enemies painted by Anna from back when the planned battle system was 2D that we decided could be used for turn order and journals and stuff, and I wanted to at least have a look thatâd feel cohesive (Anna actually taught me to paint, so we have similar styles which helps), and 2. I feel like itâs hard to get a really impressive look for a single illustration with cel shading compared to painting.
Each character in the game, we came up with a list of symbols and ideas and words weâd associate with them. In gameplay terms, each character has a ânatureâ word that describes what trait gives them power. I think my favourite one is Sarianâs nature of âSubversionâ, which I depicted by inverting the portrait so that sheâs head-down, which of course also works because Sarianâs weak legs give her trouble walking and sheâs associated with heraldric snakes as her family symbol, so a lying down pose worked really well. With an English Lit degree, Iâm trained in analysing things to look for symbolism and dissecting texts and images for meaning, so being the one putting that stuff in there for other people is fun! Everything from the poses to the expressions to the things surrounding the characters here is meaningful in some way.
I really hope somebody completes the game and goes back to look at these portraits later in the series and goes âOhhhhh you sneaky sneaks, I get it!â
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