Gamedev Blog #1: Playstation 1 aesthetics and the unreal engine. + Game tease
Unreal engine 5 has been pushing the limits of real-time rendering. But some of us, myself included, have gone WAY back to rendering chunky, blocky PS1(PSX) styled graphics.
The tip of this spear is the Gorgeous Goth Goddess @b0tster with their twofold Bloodborne PSX and Bloodborne Kart projects respectively.
The reasons we choose the style are simple. Firstly those of us who are leaning hard on this aesthetic were in our formative years during the fifth console generation, so we have fond memories of playing games that look CHUNKY. And secondly, perhaps most importantly, it is the easiest (kinda) 3D content pipeline to do as a solo developer.
No need to bake meshes, no polygon budget, no texture streaming budget, Installs that won't even approach 100 gigs(let alone 10g), and guaranteed 60fps is a minimum. Low poly art style has a lot going for it.
The Unreal engine 5 does have to be modified a little bit. Since it has features that were not even dreamed of in 1998 set as default, We actually have to use a shader to emulate the lower fidelity colors, resolution, and lighting effects. Starting the project means turning off things like: anti aliasing, motion blur, HDR lighting, ETC.
My current post processing effect.
Since most people aren't playing on old Sony CRT tv's and have modern 16:9 monitors, we have to just divide the HELL out of the resolution and color space. This shader (shown above) is very adjustable, and is just the first step on the PSX-esque look.
The next step is modeling and texturing. I'm used to 3d modeling in high resolution, so I had to learn to think like a 90's developer and get as much detail as I can squeeze out of as little polygons as possible.
A WIP of a character in my upcoming project
High polycounts give artists the freedom to make their characters as realistic as possible, BUT making them look exactly right, and more importantly animate in a way that looks real is hard to pull off. Low poly models require much more precise and EXACT modeling and texturing, but allows for a more artistic interpretation of how characters look and move. The human eye is more forgiving of caricatures of people.
Another popular effect for most PSX throwback games is the model "jitter" where models would not place vertices in their EXACT location on the screen(check out the video above!). So it looked like the character was shaky until the camera got right next to the character, to save on memory. I am currently debating using this effect in my game.
So the game I'm working on is: Codename Cardboard Box. (the title is pending some stuff)
As you can probably surmise from the codename it is a metal gear solid homage. I will be taking the Tactical Espionage Action gameplay, and long stylized cutscenes of the serries and putting my own spin on it.
I have been playing through the whole serries recently(again lol), and have noticed so many Queer pieces of subtext than I did as a teen. But it seems like there was a heavy censoring hand on the story creators to push that aside, for example in MGS 2 there was cut dialogue in the script where Otacon would have mistakenly called Snake "David". Implying a much more familiar relationship. MGS4 showcased a lot more "for the male gaze" designs, and camera angles. (I swear to god Naomi's boobs have more screentime than Meryl in total) and the whole serries seemed to have every woman who talked reinforce gender stereotypes, or was just a non stop flirting machine for snake to banter with. The only one who sort of escaped this fate was Emma Emmerich, but even then there were a few lines that made my eyes roll.
Originally I thought of a mod that would change the genders of all the main characters of the MGS serries, to make it way gayer. But then I thought, firstly, Konami is quite litigious, and that I don't think that changing the voices and character models would do much to the overall queer representation and messages of the story.
So Codename Cardboard box (CCB) is going to be an original new story to represent what it is to be queer in the world right now.
The style I am going for is pretty specific, not quite 1:1 PSX or N64 in graphical fidelity. More like a step between Metal gear solid 1 and 2 as a port to the PC in 1999.
Hopefully I can capture the exact aesthetic, I'm still experimenting between MGS 1 style and MGS 2. I don't fully want to commit to one or the other. So I'm toying around between super low textures (64x64-128x128 max) of MGS1, and the medium detail models of MGS2 (with eyes and a single mesh). This is what I have landed on so far, but things may change in the near future.
I also will be using more modern real time lighting solutions, as I think there can be some gameplay choices that can be effected by this (darkness being a great asset).
As far as gameplay goes I'm going for a patchwork of mechanics from across the serries. So here is a small list to represent how it will feel to move and attack with the character:
The over the shoulder / top down view toggling options from MGS3.
The 3 stance options (stand, crouch, prone) of movement from MGS4.
The auto aiming from MGS2, with the over the shoulder toggle aim from MGS4. (no first person view, for now)
The ledge climbing from MGS 2.
No Stamina bar like in MGS1.
And surprisingly enough a hybrid of the MGS 1 item selection (where you just have all of your weapons available to select at any time, rather than using a backpack)
And of course some other cheeky mechanics that I can't spoil just yet.
But of course all of these screenshots, mechanics, and ideas are works in progress. While they fit the game now, they may be changed to fit the vision of the game better in the future.
So that is it for blog post #1! I will tease the next update just below, but after that I am going to continue my personal gamedev history below that!
Blog 2- animation, scripts, and themes.
So Personal gamedev journey. The most vivid memory I have of making a choice to be a game developer was in the year 2002. I was playing Diablo 2, after completing a multiplayer halo 1 campaign . My friends and I were just in awe of games as a storytelling medium. We had been playing on a LAN connection and were thinking about making our own diablo 2 mod or even whole separate homage game. We all chose roles of what we could do to make the game. And none of them really did anything beyond a conversation. I was enthralled thought.
I dabbled in halo moding (I never released anything, so don't bother looking it up.) and thought about making games through the rest of high school.
After graduation I kind of dropped it while I just kind of goofed off for like 3 years. So in 2007 I took some 3d modeling classes and learned how to use 3ds max at my local community college.
I made a few cool looking mechs, but I remember just not being able to do much with the software. If you don't know 3ds max is not a very good 3d software.
So from 2008 to about 2014 I was a bit of a mess. I didn't really do much with my life as I was a disassociated mess ( see blog post 0 for more info) I just was kind of drifting from one job and activity to the next. Those friends I mentioned earlier started a video production company, we made a few short videos for youtube, never got over 40 views. And we just kind of fizzled out. I was the 3d artist of the team. But nothing really clicked.
I felt trapped, cuz I lived in a super expensive area and with my parents. So of all things I moved to Utah to strike out on my own, where I tried to kickstart a 3d printed miniatures company. (I beat hero forge by a little bit, but they had the more solid everything)
After that the unreal engine 4 came out. I poured more and more time into it. I had 0 programming knowledge and had seen games like braid, and fez become popular. So I started just making stuff. When I found a dead-end due to a lack of knowledge I would then try to educate myself on that blind spot. Slowly I learned, UV unwrapping, animation, sprite art, rigging, and more!
That took all of 6 years off and on. Then one day I decided that I had not gotten my shit together. So I looked inward (once again read post 0) and found that I had ADHD and other hang ups that were causing me to not commit to any one project. So I got medicated, and therapated, and learned how to properly learn. So After about 50 false starts. I'm throwing my hat into the ring again. This time doing it for myself. I'm not going to use this blog as a method of checking in, I'm using it to document my journey. No matter where it takes me.
The goal is to release a game on itch.io and steam. I don't care how many units it sells. I want to release something to have fun, and to see where I can take myself.
I will do some attempts at the social media game, if it finds an audience, awesome. If not. K. My only hope is that a queer person somewhere plays my gay ass game and has a gay ass time.
-thanks for reading this loooong poooooost!.