GDC Week

We've been preparing for this dreaded week for a while now. The Game Developer's Conference in California stole away a bunch of the senior game devs. When we went into the labs to work this Sunday it was completely empty besides us, which was incredibly creepy considering the lab is usually full on the weekends. 

From our team, we're missing Sibyl, Kyle and Erin. Which means I'm the only official artist this week, and Alex is the only programmer.

I scheduled Sibyl to finish the character by this past weekend so I could use this week to just create a bunch of skins. There were some problems with the bake at first, apparently, so Chris had to fix it while Sibyl was gone. In the meantime, I decided to just finish up the new GUI and menus to have that out of the way and prepare for mass texturing for when my artists returned.

New menu screens! Alex made it so these fade out and switch every 60 seconds.

So it finally came to my attention after about seven months that health GUI is usually on the left side of a player's screen. I nearly headdesked I felt so stupid. I don't know how I didn't notice that before.

I switched the health/mana potion bottles to the left side of the screen. Alex, Chris and I stared at the GUI and debated for a while what the "background" of the potion bottle GUI should be. You know how it had that mage at the corner of the screen before? We decided to ditch that. There was really no reason to have it, and it was just taking up space. 

Again, I wanted to keep the GUI looking more simple than shiny, busy, or complex. I feel like this is not even something that's an opinion, because I've looked at tons of FPS screenshots for examples or inspiration, and all games have really basic UI. I mean it's usually white and another colour, and simple icons and numbers. This isn't something that needs to be complicated. It just needs to get the point across.

Although I realize the concern with just going with simple, I guess. We don't want the UI to look boring or nondescript. I don't want it to seem like I just went into Illustrator and made circles as a last-minute throw-away task either. The fact of the matter is, GUI is just usually not that complicated. And it doesn't need to be. 

Anyway, after Chris finished the character I got a few skins done. It went a lot quicker than I thought. Thankfully, I was actually smart about this and did it in such a way that the colours are layered. This way I can export from 3D Coat as a .PSD file with the layers in tact and just play with the colours as I please in Photoshop. It makes it a lot easier to make an ice uniform a fire uniform, and just change colour palettes in general. It also makes it possible to just layer the different patterns over a base design, so I don't have to paint everything all over again. Yay!

Our mage is lookin' cute. :)

Also, thank god for Chris Sydell. He's been such a savior. Since we had a new character, we needed new animations. Doing all of the animations all over again was going to be a huge task. I asked if it was possible for the animations to just transfer to the new character, but I got a No. But then Chris managed it and then suddenly we had all of our animations back in one night. PHEW!

I am totally ready for this week to be over. I don't think you understand how stressful it is to be missing all of my 3D artists this week when we only have two weeks to fully complete the game... Wish us luck PLEASE!

Whitedagger Pass

This week was definitely a busy one for us. Especially us artists. We worked our butts off to get Whitedagger Pass art complete so we could get ready to work on the Drago Mines.

As Sibyl and Kyle were churning out models, I was churning out textures, and the level designers were putting everything together very nicely. It was kind of a messy process, simply because the assets were getting in late. We were all kind of scrambling and pulling late nights just to get it done. As Chris was getting his models and terrain done, he was asking for impromptu textures for different kinds of snow. I also had to jump in and do a few models because everyone else was so busy with everything!

Sibyl did an amazing job with the buildings for Whitedagger. Oooh are they beautiful! These were much better than I even expected. She really went above and beyond to not only make them look good, but they also fit together in different modular ways, and there's also a great variety (so it's not just one building model scaled up or down). 

I knew the textures had to be spot on for the buildings. The colour palette was crucial, because Whitedagger Pass -- being primarily ice and snow -- is a mostly blue/white level. It was vital that the colours of the structural elements around the level -- like wood beams, stairs, and buildings -- were perfect accents to the overwhelming blue and whiteness.

I made a bunch of different colour palettes and applied them to the buildings and presented them to the group. After some voting, it became pretty clear that the buildings had to be brown to contrast the snow and ice. I kept some elements blue for decorative-detail-accent purposes. Making the buildings all brown would just be too monotonous. 

Here are all the building pieces together!

Also here was my brick texture that you see everywhere:

This started as cubes in Maya, which I brought into ZBrush to sculpt. I then exported the high poly models back into Maya and arranged them in a brick pattern. I projected those high poly models onto a plane to create a normal map.

After Whitedagger got its extreme makeover, a group of us headed to the labs to take screenshots and enjoy our pretty level. We ended up taking like 200 screenshots all together, because we needed a really good one to put in our Senior Book.

This year, Champlain is sending out a Senior Book for recruiters interested in our graduates. We did personal ones which pretty much acted as resumes, and then we had to do one for our games. 

I know this is going to benefit me later on, and the faculty is just trying to make it easier/better for recruiters to hire us, but sometimes it feels like this stuff is getting in the way. I know Alex (primarily) is working on this document, and he barely has enough time to do the other work he's supposed to be doing. Stress doubles every time you have something new to work on. 

Anyway, we also released an art spotlight video on YouTube for the new Whitedagger Pass. Here it is: 

Furthermore, I did some work on fire level assets that Kyle started work on. We've still got a TON of stuff to do. It's a good thing we dropped that third map...

Spring "Break"

If there's one thing I've learned in college, it's that breaks are always too short. Even when they're three months long.

Over break, I planned on getting all of our menu assets done so that when I came back, I could fully focus on our texture art. Another thing I've learned about break: there's always a lot of stuff to do that isn't schoolwork. I didn't get ALL of it done, but I was happy with what I did get done.

Start Game Screen

Before, we had little banners that just had the name of the spells and then you would pick your team. It was uuuglyyy. We needed something that was 1.) prettier, and 2.) had more information.

We had to let the players know what the spells' mana costs were. We also thought it would be good if players could see what other players have joined the game, which team they were on, and the spells they have chosen. 

The two spells chosen will have the glow effect pictured here. The team picked will glow (as the fire team is here), and then the "Ready" button will be active so the player can join the game. Not pictured is a little mana pot with the mana cost right next to the spells. 

QA testers apparently enjoyed the new menu art, and were pleasantly surprised when this popped up instead of our old, bad banner buttons.

The other artists were working hard over break trying to get all of the assets for the ice level complete by Sunday so I could get to texturing as soon as I came back from break.

Sibyl's stag statue came out AMAZING!

I hand-painted the stag in 3D Coat.

The stag in-engine with Chris's master shader that allows for translucency.

Looking majestic huh?

Kyle's done a lot of assets, and here's what I've textured so far:

Wall banners to put around the level and show team pride!

Torch for the ice level.

A brazier cleverly themed for the ice mage's stag.