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Skeletoids! (now with magical normal mapping!)
McGibs
TorontoRegistered User regular
TorontoRegistered User regular
Hi everyone, it's been a long time, my ancient homeland!
I spent the last four years making this dumb thing: But now it's pretty much done and just waiting on PS4 certification junk! Now we're starting up the next project, and I'm suddenly realizing that I've been drawing nothing but naked Greek dudes and repeating swirly patterns for almost half a decade. My art and brain have really atrophied and more importantly, as I work from home I don't really have any artist peers to bounce new ideas off of. And as this new game isn't just ripped off of 2500 year old pottery, I need to actually generate some new ideas.
As we're jumping right into prototyping, and getting people to playtest as soon as right now, I'll also just start dumping the very first preliminary concepts I've had. They're terrible and generic, but that's why you guys are going to help me out here. Spice up my idea-hole with some fresh new thought-farts.
First up, a basic skeleton of what the (currently unnamed) game is:
-2D action shooter set in (probably) space, where the player is space-pirate in a weaponized mech-suit fighting in zeroG.
-Goal of the player/pirate is to attack and board spaceships guarded by robots, disable them (by blowing up a computer core or something), and then make a profit by hocking the spoils.
-Buy shiny new bling with the profit to attack bigger and badder ships.
-Die, and you lose your bling investment and the (randomly generated) ship gets away.
At this point, the themes, aesthetics, and setting are pretty much entirely non-existent, so just figuring out that basic stuff is my primary goal right now. Anything that you guys think would be cool to explore, please shout it out and let me hear some ideas!
Here's the results of a week or so of ambulatory doodling while watching Wilfred and Battlestar. My mind feels like unthawed molasses.
Whew, I probably should've broken that up, but whatever. Mostly robot drone sort of things, and some weird deep-sea diving type suits. I played around with a sort of sea-horse shaped... mount/hoverbike...thing. I liked the animal-like head, as I thought it would make for a good focal point on the player's character. Then I just stuck the animal-head on the deep-sea suit and liked that better.
There's some tribal type facepaint in there. Maybe the player is a techo-tribal, and they are literally 'hunting' the spaceships like giant beasts?
Some digi-doodles just to explore some shapes for the player-suit. I think I like the little stubby limbs and sort of derpy floating-pose for some reason.
And finally, some more exploration of the animal-head concept with quick photo paintovers of diving hardsuits. I'm liking this design because I think it would provide good readability of the player's character at a small scale and fast action. Big head with an angry face that shoots bullets and lasers. Again with some tribalesque markings.
That's all I've got for now, but I'll hopefully be cranking out new stuff pretty quick. Maybe some more alien designs for the player (big space-ork pirate?). Some ideas for ship environments, drones, iunno. Stay tuned.
And again, please please PLEASE shout out any ideas that you think I could explore, no matter how crazy. I need some serious jump-starting here.
I spent the last four years making this dumb thing: But now it's pretty much done and just waiting on PS4 certification junk! Now we're starting up the next project, and I'm suddenly realizing that I've been drawing nothing but naked Greek dudes and repeating swirly patterns for almost half a decade. My art and brain have really atrophied and more importantly, as I work from home I don't really have any artist peers to bounce new ideas off of. And as this new game isn't just ripped off of 2500 year old pottery, I need to actually generate some new ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOvwpj0pw9AAs we're jumping right into prototyping, and getting people to playtest as soon as right now, I'll also just start dumping the very first preliminary concepts I've had. They're terrible and generic, but that's why you guys are going to help me out here. Spice up my idea-hole with some fresh new thought-farts.
First up, a basic skeleton of what the (currently unnamed) game is:
-2D action shooter set in (probably) space, where the player is space-pirate in a weaponized mech-suit fighting in zeroG.
-Goal of the player/pirate is to attack and board spaceships guarded by robots, disable them (by blowing up a computer core or something), and then make a profit by hocking the spoils.
-Buy shiny new bling with the profit to attack bigger and badder ships.
-Die, and you lose your bling investment and the (randomly generated) ship gets away.
At this point, the themes, aesthetics, and setting are pretty much entirely non-existent, so just figuring out that basic stuff is my primary goal right now. Anything that you guys think would be cool to explore, please shout it out and let me hear some ideas!
Here's the results of a week or so of ambulatory doodling while watching Wilfred and Battlestar. My mind feels like unthawed molasses.
Whew, I probably should've broken that up, but whatever. Mostly robot drone sort of things, and some weird deep-sea diving type suits. I played around with a sort of sea-horse shaped... mount/hoverbike...thing. I liked the animal-like head, as I thought it would make for a good focal point on the player's character. Then I just stuck the animal-head on the deep-sea suit and liked that better.
There's some tribal type facepaint in there. Maybe the player is a techo-tribal, and they are literally 'hunting' the spaceships like giant beasts?
Some digi-doodles just to explore some shapes for the player-suit. I think I like the little stubby limbs and sort of derpy floating-pose for some reason.
And finally, some more exploration of the animal-head concept with quick photo paintovers of diving hardsuits. I'm liking this design because I think it would provide good readability of the player's character at a small scale and fast action. Big head with an angry face that shoots bullets and lasers. Again with some tribalesque markings.
That's all I've got for now, but I'll hopefully be cranking out new stuff pretty quick. Maybe some more alien designs for the player (big space-ork pirate?). Some ideas for ship environments, drones, iunno. Stay tuned.
And again, please please PLEASE shout out any ideas that you think I could explore, no matter how crazy. I need some serious jump-starting here.
McGibs on
+14
Posts
I notice some very Native Northwest Coast art influence in your sketches here. What's that from?
I actually really enjoy the sea horse robot. You can do a lot with different animal-ish mounts, rather than just variations on a main character. I like the painted faces, I would dig deeper and find different places/cultures to draw from to see what patterning comes out. It strikes me as Mayan or Kwakiutl right now, You can probably push those ideas and mix in other designs.
I'll definitely play around with more paintjobs. They'll really help bring some colour and charcter to the suits. I bought a big book of 'Primative Art' that has a lot of excellent references in it. The faces up there are vaguely pacific-northewest, which I really like the look of.
As for the theme, the more I think about it, the more that cut and dry "SPACE PIRATE" is grabbing me. It's easily communicated to the player what the game is about, and playing some sort of 'bad guy' is always something I like to see more of in games. Like playing a star-wars bounty hunter. Maybe I'm thinking to hard about finding a unique and new theme, like techno-tribals or whatever. People know what space-pirates are, should I just run with that?
From your description, it sounds almost like a sci-fi Binding of Isaac (with less religious imagery and assorted other depressing stuff), though I'm sure there's been other games that have used similar mechanics though, but the subject "conceive a baby game"... Well, BoI's what came to mind. And honestly, a sci-fi BoI like game sounds fun, just preferably one not about a neglected infant dying in a filthy space-basement.
Or maybe it's just the second to last image making me draw that comparison, where you've got stubby little limbs and big heads on the suits.
I can visualize what you are saying with the mounts, the limitations of it make sense. Its too bad because the range of shapes would be fun
I think you can make being space pirates into something interesting. Playing the theif isnt crazy uncommon but it can be fun. I feel like getting a unique angle on it would be good, though.
The whole randomly generated 'dungeon' and roguelike death elements definitely draw some inspirations from those games.
The idea I had today was trying out Skeleton-Cyborgs, for the enemies and ships. Basically, a bunch of heavily augmented beings (humans) died off, but their cybernetics are still active and puppeting their bones around. I really love undead skeletons as a classic fantasy enemy type, and also 'cyber-horror', like Doom or Quake style gribblies.
A fleet of ghost-ships, with their occupants long dead, but still haunted by masterless AI and robots.
One step farther, what if the player is of an alien race, encountering these tomb-ships for the first time. A tomb-raider, paid by scientists to recover artefacts and resources. And these skeletons are ancient human colony ships that never found a home.
Like the space jockey from alien, but reversed.
I like the blue guy.
im really liking that cyber horror idea, maybe zombies in space? maybe maybe
I really like the concept of machines being tribal with face paint like that. Like, would they have primitive AI to the point of being a hunter gatherer society, but still be robots? I hope you post more now that you're back here. Your stuff inspires me.
Anyways, here's some new stuff.
Some more suit/robot sketches, and some alien/monstous style skeletoids which I'm pretty happy with.
And some sketchy level assets to get the ball rolling for ingame stuff.
Next up, some level walls and floor tiles!
Why don't you go and work for them and make me a floating skeleton suit with guns model? Or go buy yourself a decent 3D printer and make them!
http://www.snakehillgames.com/spritelamp/
I've always struggled with painterly game-art and lighting in a game setting where objects need to be rotated/flipped in ways that make the lighting inconsistent. But jesus christ this thing looks amazing for dynamic lighting. We'll get a copy and I'll do some experimenting with it.
It's using a cel-shader so its all pixely. It helps hide some of the plastic-ness inherent in normal mapping, and I quite like it, at least until we can experiment with some other shaders.
Also, here's some prototype enemies developed from some sketches. Soon to be animated by my lovely lady partner using Spine (a skeletal sprite animation system)
Here's some gifs showing off some of the normal mapping, and animations done by our new animator!
The player-character
Juggernaut big baddy
And the central cortex, the thing that you have to destroy in every mission. (this one's got some artifacting around the edges I'll have to take care of)
We also went to GDC to show off the game a bit, and did this interview with GameSpot, so you can get some idea of the actual gameplay right now.
The animation is good, works well in game, I like the complex ones with the little arms moving in the video.
Loving the work, has a great style to it.