Unlucky Seven News

Today Yod (our screenwriter) will talk about our inspirations which influenced the final shape of the project.

Originally posted by Yod

One of you (greetings to the Kekistani Preacher) asked what is inspiring us while creating Unlucky. So it happens that it is my turn to write an article.
I decided to divide my inspirations into the three categories and gave them very generalizing names, but the descriptions should brighten them up.

The categories are:

1. Involuntary inspirations.
2. Genre inspirations.
3. Stylistic inspirations.

Involuntary inspirations have the deepest roots - their inclusion is fully automatic. The author has to stain their work with what they are soaked with.
While writing dialogues, I often catch myself on making the characters sound similar to the ones of the Polish TV series The World According to the Kiepski Family, or on creating a scene which looks like it was based on Cow and Chicken from the old Cartoon Network. I watch a lot of football matches, so my favorite club colors will resound throughout the game. More than a half of the script is produced while listening to Ghost's music. Therefore, it is safe to say that the influence of Papa Emeritus and the Nameless Ghouls is more than just a butterfly effect ;).

Involuntary inspiration

Genre inspirations are about the artwork I'm trying to imitate in some way. Games made by TellTale (especially The Wolf Among Us), Life is Strange, Oxenfree, and Firewatch are the ones I use most often as my role-models. How to set a camera? How to make an interactive dialogue engaging? How to stress the consequences of a decision? If you do not know how to do something, there is a high probability that analyzing these games will help. I'm not talking about blindly copying from them. We would not be able to do that even if we wanted to, because we have to make our game work in virtual reality while paying a tribute to slashers, including their form. Those design decisions force us to work out some new solutions where old ones don't work anymore.

Slashers seem to have the most influence on my screenplay and gameplay choices. I immersed myself in the genre, systematically watching movies and reading works devoted to their style, form, and history. By the way, Unlucky Seven will have a reference to every slasher which was created in 1970-2000 (taking various definitions into account). References will also include additional influential productions from the 60s, films from the borderline of the genre, or really slashing ones which can't be classified as slashers. Usually references are very "delicate". They are destined just to add some flavor. Unlucky Seven will not be a pop-culture collage, but a postmodern wink to slasher lovers. Well, maybe a few winks... or allergic conjunctivitis.

Genre inspiration

Stylistic inspirations are the ones that set us apart from other story-driven games and slasher movies. They help us to make the stuff that I wrote
about in the previous paragraph look fresh and original. We're bringing the slasher genre to our own Cyberpunk oriented science-fiction style. Naturally, it is forced by the setting. Interestingly, we are drawing on Nicolas Winding Refn's productions. Just look at Paweł's concept of the motel.

Stylistic inspiration

And here's a bonus concept for the teaser trailer made by myself, just so you know that Paweł and Dawid are not the only artists in our team.

My awesome artwork

Tune in next time.

Originally posted by Reminder

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Today Blaze (our programmer) will let you know how to make your pixelart models and textures look great in Unity game engine.

Originally posted by Blaze

When you create a 3d pixelart game in Unity (or any other game engine) you will encounter first problems as soon as you place your model with pixelart texture in the scene.

Default settings - filtering and mipmaps are on. There is a nasty blur on our pixelart texture, yuck!

The first thing you want to do is to turn off the mipmaps for all of your textures. This will prevent the engine from blurring your pixelart when the camera gets far away from the object. However, this is not enough to keep your art nice and crispy. It still gets blurred because of texture filtering (bilinear/trilinear/anisotropic). The easiest solution is to simply disable this effect by switching to point / nearest neighbor filtering.

In many cases this is sufficient, but it does have a serious downside - there is a lot of visible and annoying jitter when you scale, rotate and view the textures at very shallow angles. It comes as no surprise as we just disabled everything which enhanced texture quality in such scenarios.

Simple solution - no filtering and no mipmaps. Observe the jitter that appears at distance. In most cases this is acceptable but we decided to go one step further...

So what else can we do to achieve smooth pixel edges without blurring the textures? The solution is to use custom shaders. With some patience and shader-writting skills you can either create your own from ground up or modify an existing solution. We based our shaders on the simple and efficient RetroAA package from unity asset store (you can find it here) - it's a great starting point for any pixelart shader needs.

Best solution - custom shader. Crisp pixelart and no jitter.

Okay, so you have your 3d objects in the scene and the textures display properly. As you continue building your level you might be worried about the difference of pixel scale between objects (for example: placing two instances of a rock next to each other and scaling one up to be two times bigger). You don't have to worry about such cases too much as different scales look perfectly fine next to each other as long as you stick to the rule that the bigger the object is the bigger pixel scale it can have as it places extra emphasis on it's huge size.

Bigger pixels on bigger objects are OK.

Finally, you're adding some lights to the scene expecting the smooth shading to completely ruin the pixelart effect. Surprisingly, both smooth lighting and shadows look perfectly fine. However, it still helps to lower the dynamic shadow resolution as the pixelated/jagged shadow edges work great with pixelart textures while being more efficient to draw than high-res ones.

Look at the floor and observe how low-res shadows and smooth gradients created by the lights look absolutely fine. It's ok to use them as they don't interfere with the pixelart at all.

Tune in next time for an article from our screenwriter!

Originally posted by Reminder

Add Unlucky Seven to your wishlist! It shows us your support and helps us out quite a bit!
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news!

Today Blaze (our programmer) will let you know how to make your pixelart models and textures look great in Unity game engine.

Originally posted by Blaze

When you create a 3d pixelart game in Unity (or any other game engine) you will encounter first problems as soon as you place your model with pixelart texture in the scene.

Default settings - filtering and mipmaps are on. There is a nasty blur on our pixelart texture, yuck!

The first thing you want to do is to turn off the mipmaps for all of your textures. This will prevent the engine from blurring your pixelart when the camera gets far away from the object. However, this is not enough to keep your art nice and crispy. It still gets blurred because of texture filtering (bilinear/trilinear/anisotropic). The easiest solution is to simply disable this effect by switching to point / nearest neighbor filtering.

In many cases this is sufficient, but it does have a serious downside - there is a lot of visible and annoying jitter when you scale, rotate and view the textures at very shallow angles. It comes as no surprise as we just disabled everything which enhanced texture quality in such scenarios.

Simple solution - no filtering and no mipmaps. Observe the jitter that appears at distance. In most cases this is acceptable but we decided to go one step further...

So what else can we do to achieve smooth pixel edges without blurring the textures? The solution is to use custom shaders. With some patience and shader-writting skills you can either create your own from ground up or modify an existing solution. We based our shaders on the simple and efficient RetroAA package from unity asset store (you can find it here) - it's a great starting point for any pixelart shader needs.

Best solution - custom shader. Crisp pixelart and no jitter.

Okay, so you have your 3d objects in the scene and the textures display properly. As you continue building your level you might be worried about the difference of pixel scale between objects (for example: placing two instances of a rock next to each other and scaling one up to be two times bigger). You don't have to worry about such cases too much as different scales look perfectly fine next to each other as long as you stick to the rule that the bigger the object is the bigger pixel scale it can have as it places extra emphasis on it's huge size.

Bigger pixels on bigger objects are OK.

Finally, you're adding some lights to the scene expecting the smooth shading to completely ruin the pixelart effect. Surprisingly, both smooth lighting and shadows look perfectly fine. However, it still helps to lower the dynamic shadow resolution as the pixelated/jagged shadow edges work great with pixelart textures while being more efficient to draw than high-res ones.

Look at the floor and observe how low-res shadows and smooth gradients created by the lights look absolutely fine. It's ok to use them as they don't interfere with the pixelart at all.

Tune in next time for an article from our screenwriter!

Originally posted by Reminder

Add Unlucky Seven to your wishlist! It shows us your support and helps us out quite a bit!
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news!

Today Dawid (our junior artist) will share his workflow with you!

Originally posted by Dawid

I do my work in Maya.



When I make props for Unlucky Seven the first step is to model the object keeping the proper polycount. This game style allows textures to handle many details, though I prefer to maintain a slightly higher number of triangles, which together with a pixel art texture will provide a better effect.



The second step is the proper unwrap. Pixels distribution should be straight. I work on modeling and unwrap at the same time (unlike regular approach of "model first, then unwrap"), because pixel count and distribution should be matched to the shape of a model. For example, when I have a cube I would like to see the defined, straight, even lines of pixels on each face.
Texture resolution allows me to do a big padding. This manipulation makes a model or a texture modification much easier because of larger available UV space.



The final step is to texture a model. Usually, I start this work in Maya. Then, when I am happy with the basic level of details, I finish a texture in Photoshop by creating, for example, things like shadows, highlights, all repeatable stuff and so on.

Tune in next week to see how our programmer makes the pixelart models work as they should in Unity 3D engine!

Originally posted by Reminder

Add Unlucky Seven to your wishlist! It shows us your support and helps us out quite a bit!
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news!

Today Dawid (our junior artist) will share his workflow with you!

Originally posted by Dawid

I do my work in Maya.



When I make props for Unlucky Seven the first step is to model the object keeping the proper polycount. This game style allows textures to handle many details, though I prefer to maintain a slightly higher number of triangles, which together with a pixel art texture will provide a better effect.



The second step is the proper unwrap. Pixels distribution should be straight. I work on modeling and unwrap at the same time (unlike regular approach of "model first, then unwrap"), because pixel count and distribution should be matched to the shape of a model. For example, when I have a cube I would like to see the defined, straight, even lines of pixels on each face.
Texture resolution allows me to do a big padding. This manipulation makes a model or a texture modification much easier because of larger available UV space.



The final step is to texture a model. Usually, I start this work in Maya. Then, when I am happy with the basic level of details, I finish a texture in Photoshop by creating, for example, things like shadows, highlights, all repeatable stuff and so on.

Tune in next week to see how our programmer makes the pixelart models work as they should in Unity 3D engine!

Originally posted by Reminder

Add Unlucky Seven to your wishlist! It shows us your support and helps us out quite a bit!
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news!