Inspiring An Imagined World

In today’s blog I will be conducting an investigation into how artistic movements, specific artists or books have been or could be used to inform an imagined world. Specifically I will be discussing Lorin Wood’s journey in making the beautiful post apocalyptic landscape of the Borderlands franchise. Lorin Wood was the lead concept artist for the Borderlands games and is confirmed to have done some work on the upcoming Borderlands 3.

This image shows the thought process of Wood and how he wanted it to look in game. To help the modelers and texture artists, he would create the concept and provide some points of reference for specific materials for each model. As the buildings were modular, he would use similar reference so that there was some consistency.

Also, going along the art style of Wood, it was quite clear what he wanted from the texture team in order to make the art style match his other sketches. The art style is very consistent from the buildings to the vehicles. Wood wanted to make things very rusty, ran down and battle scarred since the game was in post apocalypse mode.

Following the style of a post apocalyptic environment he wanted to make the environment speak for itself with concept art fitting the game without putting a base texture onto it, as seen in the image below:

While referring to this piece of concept art Wood stated “The intent with this asset (along with the rest) was to create set dressing as well as help to define the visual aesthetic of the game as a whole.”

When talking about the Borderlands franchise we can’t just stop at the post apocalyptic style of the game, we have to talk about the cell-shading that was put into the game that shaped Borderlands into the game that we all love to this day. Not a lot of people know this but the art for the original Borderlands was changed very early on in the first public showings in 2008. The change has been talked about a lot in the industry and it’s widely considered a ‘last minute’ change that helped the co-op FPS series take off. The game is so well known for the cell-shaded art style that most people can’t say what the art style of the game is with some people saying the following suggestions: Space Western, retro-futuristic,  cyber punk, comic book and a lot more. In the end I think the borderlands community decided to just call it “Borderlands Style” since the franchise is so well known for it.

Before the Borderlands days not many people knew about the art style of cell shading since nobody was brave enough to delve into the genre of art. Cell shading or ,another name it goes by, toon shading is a type of rendering designed to make 3-D computer graphics appear to be flat by using less shading color instead of a shade gradient or tints and shades. Cell-shading is often used to mimic the style of a comic book to give whatever it is on a paper-like texture. It is somewhat recent, appearing from around the beginning of the twenty-first century mainly due to the Borderlands games.

I you have seen Borderlands in its brown days you will one hundred percent understand where I am coming from when I say that the brave decision to change art style ‘last minute’ revolutionized the Borderlands franchise and (back then) caused a lot of people in the gaming industry to step their games up massively.

That’s all for ‘Inspiring An Imagined World’,

Matty OUT!

 

 

Synoptic MVP Feedback!

This week we received feedback for our Synoptic Project. Overall this past couple weeks between checks have been quite confusing due to being advised to treat the project as two separate things but then in the most recent feedback one of the main forms of criticism was: ” Try to anchor the games in the same world as the robot, as they feel like very separate experiences at the moment.” This piece of criticism confused us because of the original feedback that we should be separate. Below is the feedback that we received:

The feedback helps us understand where the project stands in the eyes of the lecturers but as a group we have decided that we are going to do as we were told at the start of the project and treat it as two separate projects. Due to us doing this it allows us to allocate more time to us doing more coding/animations instead of constantly worrying about how we are going to mash all the games, models and animations all into one for the final project. However, even though we have decided to do this now we may change our mind near the end if we have time since we all want to have a finalized product in the end instead of two separate ones.

We are now in the last stage of the project. With around 6 weeks of college time left until the deadline we are going to have one final push to get more games and animations done to not only satisfy the project but to satisfy our portfolios at the end of the college year. Both me and Jacob are looking to create 5 games each for the project by either coming up with new ideas or by recycling ideas from the previous year.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Modular Floor Tiles!

Today I finished the floor tiles for my 2D platformer game for the Synoptic Project. After I created the player and the player animations I had to think about what overall theme I would want to go for and I had to ask myself weather or not the player would match with the environment. After thinking for a while an looking at reference images I decided to match the theme that I used for the character and made the floor tiles slime themed.

As you can see below here are the three final pieces of my platformer. I was struggling to decide whether to make the underneath of the platforms concrete coloured or dirt coloured but when I made it dirt coloured I was instantly put off because of the similarities to the Minecraft dirt block so I decided to go for my initial idea of concrete.

Overall I really like the way that the platforms turned out and I look forward to putting them into a full environment in my unity scene.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

 

Platformer 2D Animations!

Today I completed the three 2D character animations for my 2D platformer that I am creating for the Synoptic Project. I decided before starting that I wanted a set of three smooth animations to give my character a bit more life. The three animations that I created are an Idle, a Walk/Run and Jump.

These animations are all basic animations but they give so much life to the character and look miles upon miles better than just a static image moving up and sideways. Below are two of the animations in GIF form (I do not have the idle animation because I only have it in the form of a sprite sheet).

Jump

Walk

On the left is the Jump Animation and on the left is the Walk Animation. The reason they look very similar is because they are, Bence gave me the idea to make the jump the same as the walk but instead of just straight copying it to make it the same I decided to change them a bit. To change them I lessened the height on walk and increased the height on the jump, the  reason for this is quite self explanatory. The jump needs to be higher because the character needs more height to get t certain places and the walk doesn’t need to be as high because the character is only walking forwards/backwards.

I will most likely have to do more 2D animation with the enemies etc which I will put on my blog when completed in the next few weeks.

With these the next step is to put them in Unity but first I want to finish the basic art for the game for reasons that I have explained in a past blog.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

2D Platformer Planning – Synoptic!

Today I spent an hour or so researching different playing styles of 2D platformer and eventually I decided on what a main mechanic of my game will be. The mechanic that I decided that I wanted was click and drag blocks to complete the level. Basically the player will have full control over everything just like in a conventional 2D Platformer but as well as using WASD and SPACE to move and jump the player will be using the mouse to click and drag blocks into place in order to complete a level or a puzzle to complete a level. After coming up with this idea I headed straight over to draw.io to design how I want the game to be laid out like and to explain in the visual format to people who still didn’t quite understand fully.

Throughout the level building process I was thinking about the art style of my game and what theme it should be based around. At first I wanted to go for a kind of winter style with very dark colours with a mix of dark and light blues but I decided to keep the simplistic style of a typical arcade 2D Platformer like Mario etc. Here is the draw.io level design that I did today.

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As you can see the base design is very simple which was done deliberately since this will be the same or similar to the first level of the game which is mostly for explaining controls and game mechanics. As the game progresses I plan to make it a lot harder and more complicated to make the player have to be cautious when playing instead of rushing straight through the level. Things that will slow the player down that I am planning to add include: hidden blocks that appear when clicked, enemies and, in a few parts of the game, situations where the player has to move the block then move the player continuously until they arrive at their destination.

So far that is the furthest I am though the planning process for my 2nd game, after this the next thing that I need to research is the art style of my game because I plan to get the art done and out of the way as soon as possible so I can concentrate more on the code aspect without having to worry about getting the art done.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum 6 – Synoptic

Overall

Overall, progress is going quite well for both sides of the project with the main arcade scene and the animations coming along at a steady pace and both of the first games coming to a close. After this step of the project we can start animating in the Arcade Room and we can start on the next section of games.

Issues

At the current moment in time there are no major issues arising apart from there being a lack of class/activity diagrams which will be worked on in the upcoming week.

Currently Working On

Josh – Finalizing the models for the main arcade room ready for texturing.

 

Jacob – Finishing first game and doing class diagrams

 

Matty – Planning second game and doing class diagrams for previous game

 

Bence – Rendering out the initial storage room animation

 

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

1st Game Base Completed – Synoptic!

It is the end of the week and I, as I expected, have completed the main and additional making and scripting of Astrol Defence. The overall game was quite fun to make because it has been a while since I have actually sat down and created a 2D game since my last few projects that I have been involved in were all 3D ones. Even though the last projects were 3D I still learned a lot that I used to help me during this project and it made me realize how far I have come since my first couple 2D games. I say that the game is completed but by that I mean all of the coding, assets, sounds and other art are in but I need to add a basic old school main menu (I will use the same one for every game which is why I haven’t done it yet) and a few lines of script to tell the game when the UI point counter reaches a certain amount to load the next scene which will most likely be a scene of animation from Bence or Josh.

There were a few things that I created but didn’t make the cut because I didn’t see anywhere that they could have fit in. These things are the two pieces of 2D animation that I did: the explosion and the background with the flickering stars. These did not make it into this stage of the game because I didn’t like the way that they effected the player experience due to being too distracting, so to make up for removing these things I added an alternate image of each alien to make it look as if it is slightly moving, the sprite changes back and forth every 0.5 seconds.

Here is a GIF of the game at it’s current stage:

Due to me finally finishing Astrol Defence I can now start the planning process of my 2D platformer properly by picking out the following: a genre, a style, what mechanics I will want, the final goal to the game and maybe a little bit of story/dialogue.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum 5 – Synoptic

Overall

We have got a lot further into the swing of steadily progressing through the project. As noted last week we were taken off course due to the week off but now we can definitely say that we are 100% back on course. Over this week we have made good progress and we are now back to the work ethic that we were at before the week off.

Issues

One of the deadlines has yet to be met, this is a big issue because it’s one of the most important tasks in the project. The deadline was set for this week and he asked us to change it, which we declined because its a deadline that could have been easy to meet if the person tried but a few issues were in is way in which he needs to fix. This issue will definitely be fixed by the project check next week.

Currently Working On

Bence – Rendering out the scene

Jacob – Finishing off the additional programming for his first game and planning his second.

Josh – Modeling miscellaneous assets that will go in the arcade room and laying out the base of the arcade room.

Matty – Adding a few things into the first game and planning the second game.

Next Week Planning! (2nd Game Planning)

At the end of this week I plan to have Astrol Defence up and ready to go since I still need to tweak a few things here and there with certain scripts and components to make the game as smooth as possible.

Since by the end of this week I will have the game finished I will be moving on to another type of game for the project. This game will be a more modern style of game since this arcade machine will be played in the main arcade room and not in the storage room. The genre of game I will be going for will be a fairly simple 2D platformer game and I may be adding a sub genre like adventure for example. Below are a few reference images that I may use to help me with things like level design and style of my upcoming game:

I have picked these images due to them all having different things which I may like to add to my platformer game, for instance: the first reference has a coin counter in the top middle of the screen which I would like to include in my game, the second reference has quite a simplistic style of flooring tiles but the thing that I really liked in this was the impact that a dark set background has on the rest of the level. This made me choose this as reference because it made me think what other style of background could I have that impacts the players feelings (e.g different seasons). Finally, I chose the third reference because I really like how the multiple layered background looks when in an environment. I hope to combine what I took from the second and third reference and put it into my game by maybe having it based in winter (to give the player a cold feeling) and having multi layered snowy mountains in the background.

Anyway, to get back onto what I plan to do next week, I hope to get a decent way into the core mechanics of the platformer by maybe having the basic movement (walking and jumping), enemies that kill on collision with the player and an end goal that transitions to the next level. In total I plan to have around five levels in the game overall. If I get all of that done by the end of the week I can start on the basic and pixelated (most likely) art

In terms of art I don’t want to have a character that I will need to put much effort into animating because I want to put the majority of my focus and attention into the programming side of things so my character will most likely have one or no legs and no arms to limit the animation process as much as I possibly can.

Potential idea reference images:

I could potentially go for something like this but ideas can always change and I could get something in the end that looks nothing like these, that is the wonder of planning and the final product.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Finished Game Art!

This blog post is dedicated to showing off the assets that I have made for both Astrol Defence (My Game) and the Asteroids Style game (Jacob’s Game).

First up are the enemies that I made for my game. As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I took ideas from several different reference images and combined them to make a product. After I had finished I didn’t want to just put the images on my blog for two main reasons, one of them being the fact that the resolution of the individual aliens was 30 x 30 pixels so when exported as a PNG the images are not up to the quality to be on a blog and the other is the fact that just dragging them into my blog seemed lazy so I wanted to present them more professionally. I had to experiment with different ways to extenuate the letters and I found the outer glow option in Photoshop. At first the title(s) looked blurry and barely understandable but I realized my mistake and knew that I had to import the title that I drew in differently as well as alter the settings in the outer glow tab to make the glow a soft glow instead of a hard one. Also after sorting all the background and title I wanted to make the enemies look a little bit more appealing instead of just being there so I got an idea from a picture I saw previously to duplicate the enemies and make shadow-like objects below them. Below is the finished piece:

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Next up is all of the asteroids art. I put on the task of doing the art for the asteroids game because I wanted Jacob to focus on coding the game instead of having to do art and getting bored because I could tell that he really didn’t want to do it. I originally created a coloured version of the asteroid enemy but later, after I had finished all of the coloured asteroids, Jacob brought up a valid point that the asteroids should be white to go with the simplistic style of his game so I changed the asteroids into the plain white style that Jacob requested (which is why there are two sets of asteroids). The original base version of the game (with no art) was quite confusing to play because the player was an equilateral triangle so the player had no idea which corner of the triangle the bullet was firing from so when drawing the player I kept the simple colour style of white black and grey but I added a red tip where the bullet will fire from.

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The final piece of game artwork is the player for Astrol Defence. The ‘before’ version of the player was the first piece of artwork that I did for the synoptic project and after revisiting it last week I realized how bad it was and it was definitely not high enough quality for my game so I re-drew it. As you can see here, and from the previous blog post, I went for a jet style of player instead of the simplistic block with a turret on it from the original Space Invaders. As for the bullet I have not put it into the image because it is just going to be a simple, white bullet like object which isn’t worth putting into this piece because it wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the images since it isn’t really high enough quality art.

That is all with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!