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Sub Goals, Shaders n' Sweet Stylization!
We recently surpassed our $500 goal! I could never have imagined we’d reach this milestone so quickly. Once again, I can’t thank you enough for all your support! I'll do my utmost to keep this project rolling~
I’d like to showcase what I’ve been cooking up this last month and get your thoughts and feedback. Project Arkavite - New Character Creator
After much experimentation, this is where we are with character creation development. Our new player base is modeled and shaded in all her glory, and we have a mock up of the new UI to boot. With this new UI I’m aiming to resolve the visual clutter issue which pervaded the original character creator.
In the top left, we’ll have a series of options which allow you to navigate between sections of the character creator. The sections themselves will be displayed in the left pane. From left to right you have race, hair, eyes, clothing, general sliders, boons and banes. Boon and bane details will be displayed in the right pane on hover.
In the top right, we’ll have the name edit button, which I imagine could also double as a button to display the character description. At the bottom we’ll have our lighting options, and our fate counter. A lot of this is subject to change, but the general gist stands.
The Style
So as you can see, I’ve leaned quite heavily into 3D. This is definitely a more anime/manga-inspired style... and quite the leap in detail if you compare it to what we had before. Just added a few more pixels... nothing major...
This stylistic look is largely thanks to the shader I’ve developed, which implements cel shading, rim lighting, and specular highlights. Tummy
I did do some experimenting with pixel shaders to see if we could recreate the old aesthetic, but it didn’t look that great compared to cel shading. In a similar vein, I also tested whether a pixel fantasy style UI would mesh with our current style of model, and that didn’t work out so well either. Surprisingly, the issue had more to do with pixel fonts being too big to work with rather than the styles themselves clashing. I did try forcing a regular style font upon a pixel style UI, but that does create a huge clash as it completely breaks the internal consistency of the UI. Which brings us to where we are now.
I've taken some of the old, and brought in some new. It needs more work, but it's a decent framework.
Model Madness
Here’s the current base model, I lovingly forged in blender. I need to touch up the arms, finish the crotch and feet, but it’s in a good enough state to start working with in game. Project Arkavite - Female base model
My modelling background is actually engineering/architecture based. This is my first time modelling a humanoid entity and I can’t really be mad with the result. Topology around the pelvic region was the hardest to figure out and hair is also surprisingly difficult to master. I’m sure I’ll have plenty opportunity to practice when modelling all the various hairstyles I want to implement.
A Look Back
Many hours have gone into modelling this thing. Here’s a quick look at some of the goofy/cursed/mildly-interesting snapshots I took along the way.
This early sculpt I landed on had a really familiar feeling to it, and I’m not sure why. Have you seen this person in your dreams? Who is she?
For a brief time, I did play around with this flat shading look where the faces of the model are made visible. I thought it made for an interesting look.Pixel DollI then went onto testing cel shading in the game engine. Early Cel Shader test
I eventually grew tired of having flat hair and started experimenting with various hair modelling workflows. I still need some practice in this department, but I have the general process down.
Around this time I also experimented with outlines, and adding that rim lighting to the player. I am on the fence when it comes to outlines. It looks fine in some stills, but there are some issues with dynamically modulating thickness based on distance. I’ll need to take a second look once our player character is clothed. For now, I'm satisfied with how it looks even without the linework.
The rim lighting is a fairly subtle effect which most will probably overlook, but I feel it does add a lot to the end result. I’m glad I was able to implement it. It did require a little sneaky trickery, but that's a story for another time.
After retoplogizing the body, I brought everything into the main project and made a mock up of the character creator. There were some pretty glaring issues with the characters face which bothered me, so I went ahead and fixed that. Lowered the eyes, fixed the textures, added some new brows and lashes, tweaked the hair, added ears, and the metamorphosis is complete.
The Metamorphosis
A Look Forward
All she really needs now are some clothes, which I'll be working on next, along with all that UI functionality. So, what do you think? Do you like the direction we’re going in? Do you hate it? Let me know your thoughts! Project Arkavite - Decency Restored
I'm personally more into the pixel art style, and the shift makes me a bit worried, but this looks pretty great, so not too worried. The shader for the character actually makes them look pretty anime, which is significantly nicer to look at than a lot of 3D hentai games on F95Zone which is great to see.
about 1 year ago
Bumpkin
Me, I can get jiggy with the new 3d art style I just hope the kitsukana's stay in the game
Don't worry. Kitsukana and all their floof aren't going anywhere 👍
about 1 year ago
Vex
The Art style change leaves me with one question and concern. Question: Will the new art style change the gameplay at all? And if so, How? Concern: I'd like to know how this will effect performance. I don't have the best computer and am a bit worried it'll negatively effect my ability to play. Otherwise the models and style look great and might lead to a better game than the pixel art would've.
The new art style won't prevent me from implementing any aspects of gameplay I was aiming to implement before. I don’t have any plans to change the core gameplay loop. As I no longer need to contend with the heavy restrictions the former style imposes, the door has opened to some additional features which would otherwise have been impossible. I’m not sure if this would be considered gameplay, but the main features I have in mind are jiggle physics, body sliders, dynamic cameras, and more dynamic player movement and animation. The way you move through the world may change since we could theoretically implement jumping, and flight (be it via brooms or spells). There’s a lot more freedom on the table. As for your concerns with performance, optimization very is important to me. While 3D rendering does require some extra horsepower, I don’t foresee the game being that visually complex. It is hard to say how performant the game will be for you personally without having the sandbox prototype in a ready state, and not knowing you specs, but I will certainly be doing my best to make the game as optimized as possible. Regardless of which style I go with, I foresee the game eventually being more CPU-bound than GPU-bound overall. World generation and world simulation are probably the most intensive features I plan on implementing, - both of which are heavily CPU dependent. If I do end up falling short and you run into any issues I’d love to hear your feedback so that I can make the game better for everyone.
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I'm personally more into the pixel art style, and the shift makes me a bit worried, but this looks pretty great, so not too worried. The shader for the character actually makes them look pretty anime, which is significantly nicer to look at than a lot of 3D hentai games on F95Zone which is great to see.
Me, I can get jiggy with the new 3d art style I just hope the kitsukana's stay in the game
Don't worry. Kitsukana and all their floof aren't going anywhere 👍
The Art style change leaves me with one question and concern.
Question: Will the new art style change the gameplay at all? And if so, How?
Concern: I'd like to know how this will effect performance. I don't have the best computer and am a bit worried it'll negatively effect my ability to play.
Otherwise the models and style look great and might lead to a better game than the pixel art would've.
The new art style won't prevent me from implementing any aspects of gameplay I was aiming to implement before. I don’t have any plans to change the core gameplay loop. As I no longer need to contend with the heavy restrictions the former style imposes, the door has opened to some additional features which would otherwise have been impossible. I’m not sure if this would be considered gameplay, but the main features I have in mind are jiggle physics, body sliders, dynamic cameras, and more dynamic player movement and animation. The way you move through the world may change since we could theoretically implement jumping, and flight (be it via brooms or spells). There’s a lot more freedom on the table.
As for your concerns with performance, optimization very is important to me. While 3D rendering does require some extra horsepower, I don’t foresee the game being that visually complex. It is hard to say how performant the game will be for you personally without having the sandbox prototype in a ready state, and not knowing you specs, but I will certainly be doing my best to make the game as optimized as possible. Regardless of which style I go with, I foresee the game eventually being more CPU-bound than GPU-bound overall. World generation and world simulation are probably the most intensive features I plan on implementing, - both of which are heavily CPU dependent. If I do end up falling short and you run into any issues I’d love to hear your feedback so that I can make the game better for everyone.