12 December 2011
After playing a rather early build of the game for a while and getting a feel for how the mechanics worked we (me and Rudy) decided it was a good time to add more RTS elements to the game. There are a number of reasons we decided to do this…
* Firstly the way the game is played is more like an RTS than a TD game. There is a minimap, The player can only see a certain part of the map at once.
*Because of this we have to keep the players attention all over the map (so they keep re-positioning where their view is).
*The player would move around the map for important reasons and up to more than one point on the map can be contested at once.
So we considered what I called the Spawn Point System, which we later called the node system… I will not explain too much about it. I will leave that to another post, but I believe it will add some much needed player attention to the game.
So I got to work on the enemy bases and nodes. They still look a bit plastic, but I am rather happy with the overall shape and colour of each. These buildings represent each of the four elemental realms…
28 November 2011
Apologies for not updating often but both me and Rudy have been very busy on the game, which is now called Uproot! you can donate and help us make it something special on 8 bit funding! here. There is also a website at www.uprootworld.com. The collection of art and mechanics is functioning much more like a game and it is much easier to see the end in sight, though we are far from it.
Why Uproot ?
Uprooted from their home! to escape, are they unwanted, on the run or fighting for the strength of a nation. The island stronghold that the player is controlling has been literally uprooted from the ground. This fortress can aid or hinder the four great elemental nations in the game. All of this is the players choice and your actions determine the fate of the entire world.
There are five resources in the game, these are the four core elements and wood. Though it seems like this a lot compared to other similar games there may be one or two core elements that the player can chose to focus on (for certain tower partnerships) then later in the level the player can reach to the other elements for the more powerful transformations.
07 October 2011
Today was mainly a discussion about what visual style we are going for with the game. So back to ‘The Big Picture’ or what some people refer to as a design document, who needs them though :P. Rudy and I were unsure of what we could achieve with the time and it was difficult to try to visualize what we wanted for the game (for both of us). The reality is that I think we both had a different picture in our heads of how the game would look. Rudy wanted wacky and exaggerated and gave me a link to a shot of a game called ‘Samurai 2 Vengeance’ . The style was like that of a Japanese woodcut and quite similar to the Okami games. The appeal for me was that it was a style that set the game apart from others which is what Rudy wanted RTTD to have. I understood this completely but I was unsure if we had the time to develop a style of our own for the game or if we could re-imagine the visuals from other games that me and Rudy thought had appeal.
So the Japanese woodcut style was definitely a good place to start. I latched on to what I knew about this style, the delicate line quality and the dark shadows. In games like ‘Okami’ the form of an object would be defined by the black shadows that are the same colour as the outlines. Using this method on the towers would make them stand out from the many other objects that might be on the screen at the same time. For the player the towers are the most important buildings in the game, so they should certainly look the part.
Above you can see the earth tower in this style. The colours are chosen to look like the simple coloured inks used on Japanese woodcut prints, so that pretty much covers the element colours then. We considered other assets that could be adapted to further reinforce the woodcut style and looked into texture that could be applied to the towers. What if this texture was to continue onto the tiles and other background elements, its a quick way to add depth to an otherwise flat colour and to hint at details (as well as reinforcing the woodcut style).
Lets end on a Pee Wee!
06 October 2011
Let me explain a little about the project before I get ahead of myself. Rudy the Dev made a post on the TIG source forums with a screenshot of a game he was designing which at the moment is called RTTD (real time tower defence). On this post he gave a link to his development blog which he has kept since the start of the project. You can see Rudy’s blog here .
This still was originally a test to see how big the enemies could appear on screen. It was important to understand the relationship between the sizes of enemies and the towers and other assets in the game. I started to refer to this image not only to test sizes but to edit the general look of the tiles or to place a 3D rendered tower on. It also helped me set up the orthographic camera that we have set up to render our assets with the right perspective in 3D.
The towers above are an example of this render. To the left is the the first Air tower and to the right a default towers size with a flame head. Initially I wanted to just create the towers heads in 3D but because of the need for animation on the body of the towers I thought it would be wise to block out the towers first in 3D then paint them later (or possibly UV if it is not too time consuming). An example of the animation on the towers would be a spin of the fan at the bottom of the tower or perhaps a little shake from the air intake shaft and the tower does its business.
To the left is the Flame tower head rotation animation. At the moment there are 8 different directions the head can face. This seems fine (although a bit jerky in game). Because of the wonder of 3D however (and the help of Rudy) there is a camera set up that rotates around the head with the correct perspective. So once the model is rendered it requires just one simple batch render to create the 8 directions. Hopefully this will speed up the process of creating the other rotating tower heads and other assets that may require some 3D blocking out.
03 October 2011
When talking to Rudy last night we decided on a number of things that were vital for our progress. Once settled we then attempted to plan the week ahead.
The priority list included…
Towers – Design, Colour etc..
Mobs – Small/Large..
Icons – For the elements and placing of towers.
So below is the basic one element tower designs and a possible tower stack that would make the towers look majorly fugly, but is an obvious logical system. Rudy liked each tower to have its own identity and a wacky design. The player would be able to tell from the design what the tower was capable of so I tried to keep it as obvious as possible. Rather than making it about mysterious magic that creates the element the towers are machines built for the purpose. I chose a design ethos for each of the elements so they follow the shape and the colour in the elements icon.
This is the one element ‘Fire’ tower.. lets call it tower F. So air/fire will be AF or FA…. yea.
The area below the tower is scorched earth. We talked about the towers affecting the tiles below it so if the fire tower is destroyed then the scorched earth is left behind (there is a cool down period). Once the cool down has finished a tower of another element can be placed there. Of course, Fire towers can be instantly placed on scorched earth. Perhaps under water towers there are bog/swamp tiles or rocky debris tiles under an earth tower and air.. well.
I originally wanted to create the towers in 3D then touch them up later. This would be very time consuming so instead the top ‘head’ of the tower will be created in 3d and pre-rendered in 8 different directions. The idea is the head will spin independently of the tower base.
Above is the start of the top of the flame tower…
The Valley of a Thousand Thousands 