Posts Tagged ‘ games ’
I like games about managing disaster. This mockup is about dealing with a carnivorous expanding blob. You can directly take control of each squad member individually and then leave them with a simple task which they will maintain until you take control of them again. So it would be a mix of puzzle-solving and action.
Click for big.
I’m building up the background fluff for Temporus. This is a rough series of snapshots of a pair of nebulae that can either be shown together or separately. Trying to paint something in a small number of opaque colours that still appears to be fluid and permeable is challenging. I’m happy with how these two turned out.
I have run through all sorts of iterations of the player’s representation and decided to try a new angle over the holidays. I have always attempted to distinguish the player’s sprite/token from enemies through visual language. The player’s sprite receives a broader colour palette, while the enemies use very few colours. Enemy tokens are depicted standing on square bases, and I had tried placing the player token on a large, round base. Again to offer a subtle cue to the player’s eye that helps filter the hierarchy.
An issue I ran into was how to illustrate various equipment mixes that the player would utilize. If the player sprite was a complete standing figure, I was left with less room to illustrate said equipment. I was also left with perhaps a too-literal visual story of the player’s token being largely depicted on too-equal terms with the threats encountered, and that felt as though it would be harder for the player to establish a thematic connection to the character they controlled.
The idea I’m running with now is to depict the player as a token of the character’s bust. Armour would be overlaid like a paper doll, and handheld equipment would simply be shown without regard for realistic limb posing, saving space and allowing for any sprite I like to be placed in front provided it remains within space limitations.
Because the sprite now has a large percentage of its pixels devoted to a face, it immediately takes on a higher importance in the player’s eye. It is obvious at a glance that this token represents a player and cannot be misplaced in a horde of monsters.
I’m going to move away from this iron-age aesthetic for equipment. It made a convenient shorthand for the purposes of this test and mockup.
Erik (@firebellys) asked me to come up with some robust looking robot designs for Temporus. The references were very blocky, utilitarian in appearance, and the sprites will be large so I aimed for slab sides and the look of large metal castings like a tank.
I needed to work on a big pixel piece again and decided revisited Sub-Luminal. My thinking behind this machine is that it could operate in transitional gravity environments, or even walk in corridors lacking gravity or up/down vertical shafts with it’s redundant legs. It would be a good unit for blocking escape avenues.
A quick, very loose sketch that was part of an afternoon conversation with Erik Umenhofer from Firebelly. We were working out an idea for a tutorial level that carries the player through the platforming controls and basic combat. The player will have to enter a relay tower that has been torn from a planet, and climb to the top in order to access the communications system. Along the way an asteroid will collide, spilling out basic enemies for the player to deal with.
A slightly less ominous setting in this tileset. Wood and stone floors, brass rails, colourful carpets. I kept the top sides of walls and platforms simple in this design because I wanted to add visual candy through several wallpapers as well as the book cases. I’m proud of how the lights worked on the walls.
I’m still pushing pixels when I get a chance. @folmerkelly and I have thought that we would like to represent units in a board game miniature style. One thing I’m pushing for is a clear visual hierarchy between enemy classes, as well as a clear distinction between the player’s token and enemy tokens. I’m drawing the enemies almost like silhouettes with a low number of colours, and assigning a different sized base platform to each general class of enemy. For the player character I feel like higher colour depth makes them pop out against the enemies, and also making the size a bit larger than a ‘medium’ monster helps indicate the player token’s importance. I’m still unsure if I’ve hit upon a template I’m satisfied with but maybe it’s because I don’t have facial expressions and equipment added yet.