Week 2: Getting a Clue
After now spending some time on my research project topic for this game I'm starting to form a more solid vision for what the overall project will be. The research question at this point it
Can teaching game mechanics through discovery and environmental cues lower cognitive load on players when compared to instructional tutorials in 3D Platformers?
With that I have a genre as well as some ideas for how the game play should feel and what mechanics I want to build on. This will be something that will start to evolve through my Software Engineering CA's which are going to involve building an interactive environment. This will serve as the core for the game. At this stage I don't want to set too much of the gameplay in stone as I believe outside of some of the basics it will require iteration to find the fun before I settle on the exact flow of the game, This rough outline will give me some direction for now though.
So I'm also at a point of needing to come up with a direction for the visuals. This is something that I need to start building up my 3D animation research project focusing on textures and techniques for texturing models.
I narrowed it down to specifically more low poly retro style models both as a stylistic choice and as a means of maintaining some reasonable scope for the project as a whole.
I've swayed a bit from purely retro style graphics to a more stylized toon effect while sticking to the low poly models. With that I've been exploring different methods for creating texture maps and doing a few tests in Blender myself with them. I've been making some UV maps of a simple character model and painting it in different ways and have dabbled with the texture paint options within Blender. It feels like the best way might be to get the broad strokes done in Blender and then clean and refine in Photoshop to add the right style and detail I want.
I really like how Valley Peaks looks but I'm leaning away from some of the more abstract elements
I've also been looking at different shader options that I plan to explore within Unreal which will definitely help to polish and elevate the models. I've found examples of painterly, toon and cel shading among others and will start to test these out once I've gotten a bit further with the base texture.
I also want to look into some stylized Normal maps too which I've seen used in interesting ways.
Making 3D animation look painterly
