Clone is an earlier project, from last year, where you can copy and paste certain objects to "Trombagun your way to solutions" (as it says above, where you can try it yourself).
Introductions aside, Its 4weekjam time again in class. We decided to give clone another go. or perhaps a "Continuation" rather, since 4 weeks isn't that long. Also a couple of adjustments: I wanted to switch up the artstyle. Following recent "success", substance painter seems like a solid pick. It tends to take less time to get something you want, which is also a plus. We also wanted more humor in the game. I mean what did you expect, whose devlog are you reading? currently it has about two 'Jokes' which were mostly afterthoughts. Might as well rethink the environment while we're at it. had a gander at a couple of games for this: Black mesa (more specifically the new xen section), Morrowind, and the shivering isles expansion to oblivion. So clearly we want something weird and alien. But you can't have that kind of environment and slap on your bulk standard button. naw, that's gotta be weird too. best way to do that is sit down and see where a pencil takes you: Buttons and cube delivery services
Understanding my vague scribbles probably isn't working out for you, so I'll do a bit of explaining. When trying to come up with more interesting button ideas, I went straight back to cube one. What exactly is the function of a rubber duck button?
At the end of the day, All a button is doing is asking: 'Is any cube in a specified area?'. This expands the concept of a button massively, since now we're not restricted to something that is pushed when weight is applied. I could probably come up with a few more concepts, but were pretty happy with these two "button" ideas: The first is a beam that reaches from floor to ceiling (or wall to wall). Any cube placed into it will hover there, and the button will be 'active'. lets call this the beam button for now, so we all know what were talking about. The second, is a cube dude. This little guy is suuuper happy to hold cubes for you, and gets sad when you take them away. we've thought of situations where they would run away with the cube you give them, or throw it out of bounds. Cube dudes are just tryna play catch and your ruining it for them D: If you (or a cube dude) throws a cube out of bounds, you're gonna need another cube eventually. Portal handles this by just dropping another cube in through tubes, so we can't just steal that. we couldn't settle on any of these ideas so decided to use multiple (or however many time allows for). This will keep an old gag from getting stale by... not using the old gag again. Cubes could arrive via tentacle, which throws them into bounds. or similarly, a 'slap platform'. Here various objects could slap the cube into area for you. Or perhaps its delivered by your friendly mouth alien... thing. That just spits it out, along with some comedic sound effects. Maybe you have to knock on a snecret hatch and ask that guy in there for another cube. He gets more annoyed each time you ask. you don't see him though. its dark in there and he just chucks it out. Bit of a text heavy post huh? Sorry about that, don't have alot of visuals at this stage. We've got some WIP puzzle designs drawn out, but ill leave that for another post since this is already a giant wall of text.
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It's been a couple weeks of leveling up. I decided to have a crack at a detailed model. Already had something in mind, as I took these reference pictures Late January.
Why a pole?
Why not a pole. Lots of little interesting details you don't notice until you've stared at the pictures for a while. But what really are those 10 pixels? Luckily my phone can take 4k pictures. Although more pixels would have been nicer, because I still don't know what the odd thing is meant to be.
Doritocount
For a standard in-game asset, the number of Doritos this model has is a bit high. But that's okay, since I'm not making it for a specific game. Just trying to upskill. Although I like to imagine this could be used for a larger-scale game. Literately large scale. where the player is smaller. Maybe you play as a pilot in a dogfight above bolt number #3304. Or you're ant-sized, looking up at this giant pole. Someone turns the tap on.
IRL that tap had stupidly high pressure and would immediately fill your water bottle, then your face.
NURBS
Ran into what may have been a bug. When making a curve into geo, Maya didn't add enough loooops Into a certain part that really needed those loops. The solution?
Add 5000 loops across the entire thing, instead of the 1-200 I was going for. Then automatically 'Reducing' the mesh by 98% gave me the desired amount of looooops.
All questions provided by tutor. post may contain stupid reference
Question 1
What was the aspect you enjoyed working on the most? What was it about doing that thing that you enjoyed?
I enjoyed modeling environment assets, and seeing them placed in the final scene was very rewarding. Laying out objects in the scene was kinda fun, but i haven't done enough of it to really know if its something I'll enjoy doing alot of.
Hydraulic Press by thedudxo on Sketchfab
I like making tiny details that practically nobody is going to notice. Like those wires. In the final scene, they make up about 5 pixels. It does make a difference, Its just that you don't really notice them. I'd make more details like this on every asset, but there realistically isn't enough time.
Question 2
What might you do to continue getting better at what you enjoyed doing?
I could focus on doing some detailed modeling (while still trying to keep it somewhat optimized) like i have been doing this week. I'm looking into NURBS curves in order to make wires/chains/ropes and whatnot. I'll write a bit more about this model next post.
I should also look into adding detail with less polygons by using textures. Maybe try pick up substance designer so that i'm not limited to the presets in substance painter. for making overall environments Houdini could be interesting. Also gonna need to work on some more/larger environments to see if laying them out is something I want to do.
Question 5
What did and didn't pan out how you thought it would. What might you do to address this in future projects?
Its a reference
What definitely didn't pan out how i expected was the visual quality. It was higher than I thought it would be. I don't think that needs "addressing". maybe "advancing"?
I had hoped for another level or mechanic, but not having that came down to the programmer being sick for half the project, which isn't really "addressable". I had wanted to get across more of the idea that this was in fact, a buddy factory. A place where body parts would be stuck together to 'build-a-buddy'. we never thought it would be realistically achievable, but i liked the idea of a McDonnalds self order screen combined with one of those dress up flash games for kids. it would look bright, happy, and professional, while right behind the screen you see whats really happening. perhaps in future i could think more about how each asset helps to tell a story about the place. 4 Weeks Is Up
The Environment is done, and looks better than any of us had initially hoped for :D
I can't say as much for the gameplay. It's fairly simplistic as our programmer was sick for 2 weeks. I wasn't feeling 100% for a couple of days there either. Regardless, I'm happy with the result. The gameplay was never going to be groundbreaking. CHEESE SEGMENT
We all know about cheesing gameplay mechanics. Turns out, you can cheese the hell out of game dev too.
In game, You can walk up against the wall. But then you'd be able to see past it. Well clearly this GIF shows you don't.
That's all thanks to a bunch of pitch black cubes that don't react to lights, forming an empty room around that area. Actually makes a really nice "effect". Works even better on the other side of the room, where it looks more seamless.
If that's not enough cheese for you, I've got some more. When you finish the level, you'd walk through a little flap door and fall down. I had a couple of hours till the end of Friday, so wasn't going to do anything fancy for the "you win" screen.
At first, it was going to be another pitch black room with some "jhuuu deed eeeeiiit!" text. Then I realised... As you fall, things you fall past Appear to move upwards across the screen. And if you've glanced at the image below, you know where this is going. Yes, the credits are actually placed in the scene, as giant text far away. How far? Just far enough that the camera can still see it. So you fall down, and the credits "roll".
Here's a little Snippet of them. I wrote them myself, so you know its gonna be stupid (like this devlog). You can finish the game yourself to read the rest of them.
Crunchy Bake
So that's it for the 4 week jam. we Apparently still have to do something with this game next week, about some analytics or whatnot. might make a few tweaks too, as we're aware of a few issues. but for now, Here's the Itch.io Page. It'll be up for download there soon. (just gotta update it, upload, ect)
Its surprising how much of a difference textures on the walls and floor make. Not that i worked on those. But I did texture the Buttons on the floor, that one door over there, and the stuff on the ceiling. (along with the pillars, conveyor, and hydraulic press from last week). Had to properly model and UV unwrap them first though, as they all started off as unfinished placeholder objects. This was part of a process known as Greyboxing. Officially, Greyboxing is required by the National Association of Silly Blogs. We're not allowed to go over the megapixel limit early in development, so to conserve gigawhaps we leave the texturing for later on, when we have more energy credits to spend on upgrades such as megapixel silos. NASB sends official resource inspectors every 32.3 minutes to check we are storing our gigawhaps legally (in the silo). On a more serious note, Greyboxing is like sketching out a painting before you commit to it with a brush. Much easier to erase pencil. Hey look, A GIF!This one actually loops properly, unlike the last one :D
I really like the hooks in the scene (I didn't model them, just positioned them). Gives a sense of Depth, especially when the camera scrolls across. The camera got moved manually here, but its similar to how it will move in the gameplay. Today's Episode was Sponsored by TriangleSpace. Sign up today with promocode: ThisIsn'tAnActualSponsor to get 30% off your first month. Damn hydraulic is hard to spell. No help from google spellcheck there. had to actually Google it. one week to go 0.o 4 Dudes, 4 Weeks.4 dudes, with 4 weeks to make a game. We've just entered week 3. 3 out of 4 dudes want nothing to do with code and just want to make cool art. that would statistically include me. And it does :D Unfortunately Coder Dude has been out of commission for a week and will be still for a few days yet. So the game play is pretty simple. I won't spoil that here just yet. (although maybe another dude will on their devlog) What you see above is 'level 1'. we Miiiiiiiiggght Make level 2 later. A few of the assets there are still greybox models, and untextured. That should be amended by the end of the week. Walls, floor, and ceiling needs a texture too. Lighting Going for that Classic Dark-Factory-But-It's-Day-Outside Lighting. To achieve this, I've used a 100% genuine SUN supplied by Official Retailers. Get yours today with Promo Code "bs" That's all for now. Don't forget to like that smash button, and This is Dev Dude #3, Signing off.
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AuthorCurrently in a Game Development course, Writing Devlogs most Fridays. Links
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