Ventilate DevBlog #3
Character Design
After a few weeks of hard work, we started to get our heads around character design and user playability.
Another few weeks have flown by. It feels like yesterday since we updated you guys on how the game is coming along. It was a bit slower with big projects being undertaken and a few have gone a little over time, but we can share what we’ve done so far.
We’re delighted to say we’ve made some good progress and the game’s starting to come together, the first level has been designed and is currently being constructed. This took a lot of work and this is version 4? of the design, depending on what you class as a “version”. We wanted to ensure the player wouldn’t get lost but didn’t want a map system or a compass.
Just Go Right
After a lot of thinking we considered having maps in the level showing where the player was like you would see at amusement parks with a “you are here” red dot. In the end, we wanted something more intuitive and thought some more. We reflected on how players think . Most of the time a player wants to go forward, so why not take this literally? We then designed the level with the idea that so long as the player heads “forward” they will make it to the end of the level from any point on the level. It was far more time-consuming than anticipated and had to be pushed into this week.
We have two steam constructs fully modeled and we started by thinking about why these constructs were made and how a steampunk society might have started to develop the equivalent of cars, this led to a mechanical carriage using a horse shape as an engine. We’re super excited to make more constructs with this method of thinking and are pumped to see where it will take the design. Below is a construct that would have been used to replace horse and carriages and we wanted to ensure that was clear to the player and the people in our game world. Currently, the poly count is high and faces have not been shaved off yet but for the basic model, we’re really happy.
We’ve also modeled the player character and are going through the final few tweaks but we can share what we have so far, just refining the face mostly. But it occurred to us we never showed the concept art so here it is! We wanted to make a more work-oriented set of clothing that fit into the steampunk setting and had to think a lot about how the classic steampunk/Victorian elements would blend into women’s workwear and was an interesting challenge. We knew the clothing would be snug but practical and through some concept work ended with the two designs below. Each has its own chibi version done alongside it.
So we’ve already started the modeling and over the next 2-3 days that will be fully refined and finished up, at least the polygons anyway. Currently, her head is the main source of issues as not only is it a bit too baby but it’s also very thin in a side profile.
Some code was done to spawn in enemies also and once we have the AI fully working it will allow us to easily create all sorts of unique combat encounters. This is put a little bit to the side though as we want to focus on other aspects through to completion before really diving into this and devoting a large portion of time to it.
Now as for what’s ahead, we have a fairly hectic schedule for the next 5 weeks. In 3 weeks there’s an important prototype to be displayed for the college course and we need to work at getting a lot of the aspects we don’t have implemented or hinted at alongside ensuring we have a good playable to show. 2 weeks after that we have a Vertical slice due and so we’ve spent a bit of time planning the best way to tackle the next 5 weeks. Scheduling is a necessary evil and we’ve had to grab the bulls by the horn and plan a long way ahead. But now that things are scheduled we hope that we can keep better focused and motivated in the next 5 weeks.
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