A Bala Break

It's the end of the first week of the quarter and I've had to direct my full attention on another project called Prisma.  In other words, no Bala progress this week!  On Prisma, we had to hit a very quick deadline, so I've been helping them with their environment art.  Here are a couple screenshots:

Some of the textures need work, and we still need to hone in on a more defined color palette, but we've made incredible progress!  I'll probably make another post about this project in the near future.  We haven't given up on Bala, but Bala progress has been really slow because of the focus on Prisma.  Bala will get more love soon, I promise!  

hooplah

New models.

Finally got around to doing a model for the door that is raised by the wind.  Hopefully the relationship is clear enough.

Bridge you shoot down, ya dig?

The final door to exit the area with the boss.  The circle on the ground is going to be a magic circle that the boss comes out of.

Additionally, the final door will be inaccessible until the boss is defeated.  Magic circles floating in front of the door do not allow the player to leave.  These magic circles will be in the same vein as the magic circle on the ground that the boss comes out of.

The end.

Abuela trees

The other day, I couldn't remember the things I did this week.  But, I think I did these things.

I've been wanting more trees in our game since forever, so I took the above geometry and mutilated it.  Original model belongs to Hank.

Above is the result of hacking off a couple limbs.  I didn't even mess with the UVs because why.  After this quick session of plastic surgery, I dove right into altering the texture that Hank had originally (the only thing I could salvage was the tree trunk, otherwise everything else was done from scratch).

My first tree baby.  

It turns out I had twins.  Isn't Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation... wonderful?

After dealing with the twins, I went back and updated Hank's texture.  The leaves were originally flat colors and didn't match the new tree textures, so had to be changed.  I think they look pretty good!

Here are all three together.  A big tree family.  

Additionally, I quickly revisited the door texture seen above.

I got rid of the borderline rainbow palette and made it into blues and grays.  I also made it look more like a door.  There are a couple things I would still like to fix, but for playtesting purposes, really wanted to replace the old door quickly.  The old door simply didn't look like a door, so players didn't know to interact with it.

The new door in Unity.  I also realized the other day that the door was accidentally put in backwards.  Oops... 

Another quick update I did was give the Fish Guardians textures.  They were originally a flat color because they were meant to be placeholder assets.  Unfortunately, we'll be using them for an unforeseen period of time because our character artist is busy with other things, which means no new shiny character models for us.  Since they're going to stay awhile, they might as well get a make-over, right?  They are also sad.  Very sad.

More to come...................................................   

doodle dump in the toilet

Unedited, unfiltered, Bala related pen drawings from the other day week provided without commentary.

we just need falling leaves

I am prepared to unveil to you the mysteries of the tutorial.  It's all plants.  Check out these plants.

That's a lot of plants.  This is a shot of the tutorial in its entirety.  You begin in the bottom left of the screen and progress until you reach the top right of the screen.  It's all plants because those were the models that were ready to go in at the time of building the level out for playtesting.  More interesting things to be added.

Here's an overview of a segment from the tutorial.  The real challenge with placing assets is that all the models I had to work with are organic.  Our rooms are square in nature, so the player collides with things in a very non-organic manner.  What the plants do well is hide that!  However, for a section like the one above, we will need to put in an actual straight wall, or be a little more clever.  

This is actually what you see in game.  It's important to put structurally sound objects where the water is spraying, otherwise that wouldn't make much sense.  Probably.    

More assets.  The trees look pretty good!  We need more trees.

This is mostly what we had to work with at the time.  The X'd out assets were not used.  All I can really say is the build looks much better than it did last quarter!  And it can only get better from here.  Til then!  Bye

Spirit family that you will one day murder and steal their powers

This week, let's take a look at the natural evolution of the fish.

This flying magical fish is what we are currently using in our tutorial.  It is a special kind of creature that once killed, grants the player a special power that they will be able to use throughout the rest of the game.  It is a forest spirit of sorts, and thus supposed to be a sacred creature.  After doing a couple fish concepts, I found myself stuck.  I could not get the fish-like creature to emulate the feeling that I wanted it to.  So, the fish evolved into a spirit girl...lady, which I think is a little more elegant.    

In order to use the same play structure, I kept in mind how the fish work, and how their movements would translate over to a more human form.  Each of these concepts bares that in mind in some form.  Additionally, each of these spirits will have the same base model to reduce the work load on our character artist, and to strengthen their sense of unity.  This way, we can give each of the spirits their own unique attributes while keeping them pretty structurally similar.    

For funsies, I made them into a circular mural to be put on the door that leads into the main forest.  This is to symbolize that the forest is their domain and that you are entering into it by going through the doors.  It should then come as no surprise if you happen upon them!

Texture used is purely for concept, so it needs a bit of work.  Doesn't look like a door quite yet!  But that is the general idea. 

After these rough concepts, I did even more rough concepts that our character modeler could work from to  translate them into 3D.

This winged lady is responsible for bestowing the player with the wind ability.  Her wings flap to create a burst of wind much like the original fish's would.

Next is the spirit who gives the player the water ability.  Her tendril-like hair is inspired by the frills of a jellyfish, and flow behind her as if suspended in water.

Finally, we have the spirit that gives the player the shield ability.  She was a little harder to pin down, as she is very much unlike the other two.  I'm still a little uncertain as to whether she will work or not but we will see.  The cloth/scarf thing encircling her body is meant to be used almost exactly as the original shield fish, and is even shaped similarly.

The way that the shield fish is shielding itself is the same way that the shield spirit will be using her cloth.  Is it practical?  Will it work?  I don't know.  Let's see if my concept gets shot down.  Stay tuned.

Wind Family

Piggy backing off of the concepts of the pedestals from last time, I'd like to show off a couple of our objects that are interactable with the wind ability.  Here's a precious family photo:

   
Pictured here, from left to right, is the Wind Elevator, a "Windmill," and the Wind Pedestal.  In order to distinguish that the player must use the same ability on all of these different objects, a wing motif was created.  These wings, although a little different in appearance on each object, all react to the wind ability the same way.  When the wind ability is used, the wings spin on the Y axis to let the player know what they are doing is working.  In the end, these objects will also have similar color palettes.  For example!

Here are some placeholder textures that are going to be used for playtesting.  They will become beautiful one day.