Development Update - Upcycling Tool!
Welcome fellow Goblins to another exciting update! This time we thought it'd be really cool to look at something that is a pretty hot topic in our game dev workshop - Upcycling! As we showed a little bit about the gameplay in a rough form last time, it makes sense to show you something much more in-depth and finalised - the Tool you use for Upcycling itself! Much like with Chipping and Cleaning this tool needs to be obtained and then used for the job in hand, so you'll be spending a lot of time using it, and maybe even upgrading it!
Let's take a walk through the process of making something like this, from the first design to the final in-game asset.
[h3]THE UPCYCLING TOOL[/h3]
Unfortunately for everyone involved, most of these gameplay-specific elements have to start with a Designer specifying the function. To do so, we use whatever methods communicate our goals most clearly to the team. Visuals, as ever, are king... so we end up with an eyesore like this that we make everyone look at for far too long:
What we're trying to show here is that during Upcycling play the player is holding a unique and specific tool for the job, it allows them to attach, remove and perhaps rotate (spoilers?!) elements of a Trinket, and it should be visualised as something that obviously reads as 'grabby'. Now I think this image works for the most part - the tool used is a "sugar cube plier" for anyone interested - but one thing it does wrong is it suggests that the tool might be ornate in some sense. We're all clear on what Goblin tools should look like within the team, but it's a wrinkle in this process that is worth pointing out, and something we do have to be careful about when making assumptions. to be clear, our Upcycling Tool is not intended to be ornate!
Anyway, once that step has done its job we can hand the work over to the real artists on the team! In this case, it goes to Donnie first, for exploration and refinement of the tool:
We pick the best ones:
Donnie expands upon them:
And once that's all been fed back on - led by the brilliant Kat - the final concept is delivered to a higher finish with colour and construction detailing, ready to be handed to Tahlia for 3D modelling and texturing!
Tahlia has a very thorough and multi-stepped process to bring the concept to life and into the game:
1 - Modelling it in high poly, to capture all the details, shapes and nuances ready for the various materials:
2 - Then a low-poly version is created, which is the mesh used in the game:
3 - We then generate UVs. Think about this a bit like turning the 3D model into a papercraft layout, which can then be painted onto and wrapped back around the model later on:
The UV wrap displayed on the low poly - we use a chequerboard pattern to try to find any distortions and fix them:
4 - Then the LOD variant is created. This is used so that there is a version of the model with even fewer polygons that taxes the game's performance less in situations where it is far enough away from the player camera that you won't tell the difference:
5 - The model is then baked and here you can see the tool with the hand-painted textures applied to it! So nice!
And then finally, this is the Upcycling Tool in-game, with all the glorious lighting and materials showing it off!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And that's it!
If that's getting your Goblin brain all a-tingly, please do consider coming and talking to the dev team and all the other lovely Goblins in the community on our discord, and if you're sad you missed our very successful Kickstarter and want a special edition of the game, or maybe even to become a character in it, head on over to our Patreon!
Let's take a walk through the process of making something like this, from the first design to the final in-game asset.
[h3]THE UPCYCLING TOOL[/h3]
Unfortunately for everyone involved, most of these gameplay-specific elements have to start with a Designer specifying the function. To do so, we use whatever methods communicate our goals most clearly to the team. Visuals, as ever, are king... so we end up with an eyesore like this that we make everyone look at for far too long:
What we're trying to show here is that during Upcycling play the player is holding a unique and specific tool for the job, it allows them to attach, remove and perhaps rotate (spoilers?!) elements of a Trinket, and it should be visualised as something that obviously reads as 'grabby'. Now I think this image works for the most part - the tool used is a "sugar cube plier" for anyone interested - but one thing it does wrong is it suggests that the tool might be ornate in some sense. We're all clear on what Goblin tools should look like within the team, but it's a wrinkle in this process that is worth pointing out, and something we do have to be careful about when making assumptions. to be clear, our Upcycling Tool is not intended to be ornate!
Anyway, once that step has done its job we can hand the work over to the real artists on the team! In this case, it goes to Donnie first, for exploration and refinement of the tool:
We pick the best ones:
Donnie expands upon them:
And once that's all been fed back on - led by the brilliant Kat - the final concept is delivered to a higher finish with colour and construction detailing, ready to be handed to Tahlia for 3D modelling and texturing!
Tahlia has a very thorough and multi-stepped process to bring the concept to life and into the game:
1 - Modelling it in high poly, to capture all the details, shapes and nuances ready for the various materials:
2 - Then a low-poly version is created, which is the mesh used in the game:
3 - We then generate UVs. Think about this a bit like turning the 3D model into a papercraft layout, which can then be painted onto and wrapped back around the model later on:
The UV wrap displayed on the low poly - we use a chequerboard pattern to try to find any distortions and fix them:
4 - Then the LOD variant is created. This is used so that there is a version of the model with even fewer polygons that taxes the game's performance less in situations where it is far enough away from the player camera that you won't tell the difference:
5 - The model is then baked and here you can see the tool with the hand-painted textures applied to it! So nice!
And then finally, this is the Upcycling Tool in-game, with all the glorious lighting and materials showing it off!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And that's it!
If that's getting your Goblin brain all a-tingly, please do consider coming and talking to the dev team and all the other lovely Goblins in the community on our discord, and if you're sad you missed our very successful Kickstarter and want a special edition of the game, or maybe even to become a character in it, head on over to our Patreon!