Everyone knows programmers live in caves. Specially, game programmers. You seem to have reached one of those caves. Try not to wake this one up while reading through her treasures!
I have been working a lot on my game’s art! There’s still some work to be done with the textures, and some shader adjustments, but it’s coming together pretty nicely.
I decided that the walls should use the standard lightning. The toon shader was giving me a lot of problems, it is definitely a hard problem to handle, and the sharp shadows didn’t look quite as well. I do love the result with the standard, tho, so for now it is staying this way :)
A year and a month have passed since I last wrote about this game. A lot has happened since then, and I never gave up on this game. We used to be a three person team; an artist, a design/programmer and a PR/Audio. Life got in the way for all of us, which tends to happen with such big projects, and it’s been mostly me since we begun.
Because of that, I slowed down, analyzed how I wanted the game to look like, to feel like, and a lot has changed.
Now, the game art is 3D. It has traps, enemies, hidden passage ways, and a lot more! The whole first level is complete (sans art), the game can be saved and loaded... it’s like a little demo!
Story
Our protagonist is one of the wives of the pharaoh, that has recently died. As they bury the body inside a labyrinthic pyramid, she decides she is not going to die here or serve him in the Field of Reeds for eternity. And so, she decides to take a torch and a couple stones, and venture back through the treacherous halls of the labyrinthic pyramid.
This hasn’t changed one bit.
Art
The game was going to be a 2D topdown game, inspired by old school games and Spider Queen of Mars, mainly for their art simplicity, since I am the one doing the work in all departments.
Let’s just say... it’s gotten out of hands. He.
Remember this?
Now it looks like this:
Turns out a 3D approach was easier to do for me. I know how to model and texturize, and this way I can take advantage of Unity’s light engine.
I’m still not quite sure about how she is going to look like, but the pyramid is taking shape. Which leads me to...
Level Design
This has been a huge topic for me, and a huge opportunity for learning.
At first, we thought a labyrinthic shape for all levels would be an ok design. Our audio woman is a huge fan of making labyrinths, and so she did the first level layout, which is what you see up there (left).
Soon, it became clear to me aht it wasn’t enough. The game needed a more complex, thought-out layout, that would combine the mechanics and buttons and enemies in a smart way, so it would be attractive for players and felt like a natural curve as they progress through the obstacles.
Players need a challenge, need mechanics, need something to be intrigued by. They need to get lost in this pyramid, to see its layout change as they push buttons and step on plates. And we have to design this, hand-make it so the pyramid presents a challenge and a story.
So I came to the second layout (right), the first level of Pyramid.
Other pics
Future
So I intent on writing this devlog more frequently (I won’t take another year, I promise, hehe). I will probably write about the enemies AI and the SaveManager, which are the two most interesting pieces of code I have for this game, if you want? Plus, I’ll probably have to expand on the AI a lot, since a lot of new enemies are coming!
So I wrote and animated this tutorial for people working on my short film Bothered, but I figured it would be useful for all animators, particularly beginners. I borrowed some of these concepts from this awesome packet done by Jon Hooper and Michel Gagne, which is also pretty great!
Progress!! As of now, we finished POUGHOU, Croqueta’s Revenge, and we dashed to a new adventure! Pyramid Gospel, that’s it’s code name.
This is all placeholder art for now, just showing the light work :P
Pyramid Gospel is about a Pharaoh who just died, buried in his pyramid with all his six wives. One of them, however, is not about to die down there. She bravely takes her torch and a couple and stones, and heads outside.
The game is meant to be played in complete darkness. Players will only see as far as their torches show. The second gif shows the stencil shader, which enables what will be rendered.
Collision and movement is all custom, the traps are programmed using a State programming pattern, which leaves us with only design to do, and enemies, which will come next!
Also, it was meant to have a retro kind of feel, so I added a couple camera effects to distort the image.
hello i am here today to not lose track of the art cheats i have discovered over the years. what i call art cheat is actually a cool filter/coloring style/way to shade/etc. that singlehandedly makes art like 20 times better
80’s anime style
glitch effect
glow effects
adding colors to grayscale paintings
foreshortening ( coil )
foreshortening ( perspective )
clipping group (lines)
clipping group (colors)
dramatic lighting ( GOOD )
shading metal
lighting faces
that is all for today, do stay tuned as i am always hunting for cool shit like this
I love the evolution in this. I often find that the face next to the dialog window to be a bit awkward or out of place, unless the dialog box is gigantic and takes all the focus from what’s happening (which is the only way it kind of works for me, but still).
So I love this, because it’s like a close up to the character, as if you put a magnifying glass in their face.
Hey, it’s only been a couple years since I’ve made anything. Fun little exercise with the lighting - using the flames for emission yielded noisy results on account of the source size, and lamps just added a ton of render time. I ended up using a gradient material on the candles themselves so that the wax became a primary light source.
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
dededos
blakekathryn
stormborns
