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[kraed]

Greetings developers, artists, programmers, and game fans of TIGsource! After long months of brainstorming, art practice, and music college I have apparently been able to come up with a nice little concept i wish to see develop and find it just about right in terms of scope. I'm teaming up with my brother to push this game bit by bit, here goes the dev log for it.




Currently: Working rod casting physics, conceptualizing, and heading towards official look & feel.

The Game (no official name yet)
A meditative and relaxing experience based on catch and release shore fishing. The player finds him/herself in their own little chunk of island in which to cast their rods and simply fish. The principal goal of the game lays on completing your fish journal/log. As you progress better rods & gear will be available which will enhance the experience.

Meditative and Relaxing
We intent to create a pleasant game experience in which to unwind (pun intended) and immerse themselves in. A chill and zenlike game with relaxing visuals and audio. Game elements will also present philosophical and metaphoric aspects.

Stylization and Minimalism
Another core element of the development will be the implementation of minimalism in design to maintain fluent and uninterrupted playing from the start. The artstyle will feature stylized low poly 3D models rendered to sprites, this permits a lot of fluidity for creating assets and building the main features.

  
Planned Features
Shore Fishing, cast your rod and wait for the bites, set the hook and reel them in.
Personal Island, procedurally generated small chunk of terrain in which to light a fire, rest, and relax.
Day/Night Cycle, different hours of the day, different types of fish. Watch as the days go by and the stars change, spot the high and low tides and take advantage of specific hours for better fishing.
Weather, conditions will affect the difficulty or ease of your catch.
Journal/Log, fill up your fishing log as you keep track of what you've reeled in.
The Catcher's Guild, the all seeing eye of the Catcher's Guild have settled on you. They will reward you for your catches and hard work.
Message in a Bottle, collect meditative phrases, quotes, legendary fables, and sea stories that could float by your island.
Musical instruments, strum, blow, and play sweet notes by the fire as you enjoy your musical side.


The Islands
Islands will take up most of the screen and will be unique to each game, procedurally generated from different terrain, trees, rocks, campfires and wood piers. We are currently deciding on a general look for the type of stylization we want for the 3D models. Some screenshots of the progress below.

Current in-game look

 

[kraed]

Probable in-game perspective



One of the rod assets


Super stylized Lute...why not?

[Impmaster]

I like this low poly movement that's been going around recently. Know what the actual fishing will be like? Also, I feel like you should have some killer audio. Seems like various sounds to fit the scenery would be great.

[Graham-]

cozy look. how does it control?

[kraed]

I like this low poly movement that's been going around recently. Know what the actual fishing will be like? Also, I feel like you should have some killer audio. Seems like various sounds to fit the scenery would be great.

cozy look. how does it control?

The low poly art style is very pleasant looking and not too hard to manage, i feel it's like what silhouette is for 2D games. The actual fishing mechanics still need a bit more analyzing but i'm hoping to make it as minimal as possible in terms of controls, I want to use visual cues with the fishing rods to determine what type of nibbling is going underwater. The idea is to recreate a similar experience to real shore fishing, you barely don't see what's underwater, the nibbles and pulls of actual fish are tricky, fish sometimes are too eager and hook themselves, sometimes they are too smart and you loose bait, while others you simply get stuck on kelp and rocks and loose your tackle. The fishing will go somewhere along those lines (get it?). As for the fish, the team (which has  a new potential member) have been considering to create unorthodox design for their look.

As for audio, don't you worry one bit, the sounds and music of the islands will be as pleasant and killer as can be.

Thanks for the replies, guys!
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Getting some colors with the slanted perspective! I'm superloving the greish ambient occlusion renders i'm mixing with flat shaded renders to get this look. Having a bit of issue with getting clean edges due to layering different renders and me being a musician xD Any suggestions to cleaner set up of layers would be appreciated.

[Graham-]

you know I've never actually played a fishing game - too confusing. maybe the easy appeal is what is needed in this genre.

[kraed]

Bobbers and Hooks!!



Very, very WIP. Trying to get that zen feel with the items,here are just a few bobbers and hooks out of a speedmodeling try. Find it easier to nail the look we want with items rather than terrain assets, not very satisfied with the level look just yet.  

[ARRD-ART]

Nice and minimalistic, looks great! I went real fishing last Saturday with my brother and let me tell you, it is NOT a relaxing experience when it's freezing outside and you have wet gloves.

[kraed]

Nice and minimalistic, looks great! I went real fishing last Saturday with my brother and let me tell you, it is NOT a relaxing experience when it's freezing outside and you have wet gloves.

Thanks! Yikes, can't imagine that...but did you guys catch anything?

Hopefully in the game the weather will ALMOST always be good for fishing.

--------------------
Currently i'm getting very OCDish with the inconsistency between items and terrain, it has me very bummed out recently :/ Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.



Just dug up this early mockup from Blender's autosave, i feel it has a bit more of that zen factor than my later tries.

[ARRD-ART]

We did, yeah. Two big rainbow trout actually.
Both of us were freezing though, so we settled on two and skidaddled. But good luck on the game dude, looks rad!

[kraed]

The start of tackle and rod physics!

[ARRD-ART]

Looks brilliant!

[migrafael]

I'm really curious about this. It's looking really nice. I loved fishing in the n64 zelda games so maybe I'l enjoy this? You tell me

[Buddy_DoQ]

Looking amazing! Such great progress in such a small amount of time. 

If you don't mind, I might be able to shed a small bit of light on the battle between your objects vs your environment.

The objects are rounder, and have what looks to be very nicely made smoothing groups, or are shaded to appear so (the major elements are unified shapes with neat divisions), whereas the environment is sharp and has almost no smoothing groups. So basically, there is a conflict in art style from one to the other; smoothed lowpoly vs unsmoothed lowpoly. You have a TON of fun inviting character in your smoothed objects, so I would be inclined to use that style for everything.

I would start with the dirt, smooth it in strips, and experiment from there. Maybe bevel a few edges and round things off a tad.

Anyway, sorry for that wall of text! That tackle motion look really awesome!

[SoulSharer]

Looks pretty , curious as to what comes next

[kraed]

I'm really curious about this. It's looking really nice. I loved fishing in the n64 zelda games so maybe I'l enjoy this? You tell me

Perfect! Stay around, nice things will be posted soon enough. My influences as dev hobbyist (and especially for this concept) have been Nintendo games such as Zelda and Animal Crossing which have that "explore at your own pace" kind of thing as well as games such as Harvest Moon.

Looking amazing! Such great progress in such a small amount of time.  

If you don't mind, I might be able to shed a small bit of light on the battle between your objects vs your environment.

The objects are rounder, and have what looks to be very nicely made smoothing groups, or are shaded to appear so (the major elements are unified shapes with neat divisions), whereas the environment is sharp and has almost no smoothing groups. So basically, there is a conflict in art style from one to the other; smoothed lowpoly vs unsmoothed lowpoly. You have a TON of fun inviting character in your smoothed objects, so I would be inclined to use that style for everything.

I would start with the dirt, smooth it in strips, and experiment from there. Maybe bevel a few edges and round things off a tad.

Anyway, sorry for that wall of text! That tackle motion look really awesome!

Hey, Buddy, hope things are all good over there, gotta get on skype soon. Thanks for the reply, quite useful the info, specially coming from you who knows low poly quite well! I haven't tried smoothing out terrain areas since i'm a bit unfamiliar with vertex groups, but i'm pretty sure you are correct and should get that going on. The thing with the terrain is that it is a bit chunky and square at the moment, i would love to get somewhat a blockish form in general shapes for the islands but not for the soil/dirt itself. Will try it out as soon as I can. Thanks, man!

Looks brilliant!

Looks pretty , curious as to what comes next

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. Highly appreciated, I have never gotten down to do an official game project so i'm a bit nervous for things working out all right. We want to keep just the right amount of features and design radical fishing mechanics, already have a bit of movement going on with the bobber and hook but still haven't implemented the cast since that depends a lot on the animations which I really don't have that much resources to get them done even as placeholders to get the mechanic working. Currently the cast is based on rotating the fishing pole sprite but i guess i should start getting SOME sort of animation due to the cast being perhaps one of the most important things which will be present, testing on a rotating rod is a tad counterproductive.

That is only one of the several problems I have analyzed and being a hobbyist with limited EVENT programming skills I start to get worried and doubtful and for that reason I will be adding the "Worry List" to the first post, which will contain the things I know I will struggle with and know they have to be given the right attention. I will also be adding a Progress List as well as the goals to keep track of things.

Next stop will be working an actual cast which will send your tackle into action.
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UPDATE

Already have a basic and more decent casting mechanic, still in a very early stage but fluent.

[kraed]

Very raw casting and nibble mechanics, not very pleased but it is a nice start. Don't go crazy with the nibbles, they are keyboard triggers, no AI....yet!

[kraed]

For New Year's resolution...how about finishing a darn game for once?!

It's been a while and a lot of things has happened since I posted this up, almost none game dev related though. Mingled with a few ideas here and there, took a break from this idea and then got demotivated, "Meditative Fishing" seemed like on of those ideas I wasn't going to keep at...BUT I've managed to learn nice new things since then, bought Spriter, and have talked with my brother about projects. Feel ready to go about it again. My old pc crashed so i'll have to remake most of what I had (which wasn't much though).

A few minutes in at this project again and


took one of the first post's screenshots and planted a character (from another dropped game), definitely not the last version of the character since I have some nice concepts my brother sketched. Will go about posting those up soon and merging the current character's look with those. The gif doesn't do it justice either, looks and feels almost as clean as we envision.

We also set up a personal google site in which we brainstorm, organize, post ideas/references, and structure our everlasting game dev craze! Do recommend checking google sites, handy tool to bring all your ideas and plans in order.

[kraed]

(I apologize for the choppiness of the gifs)

Managed to find all my files in my external harddrive so I plugged the character in the first prototype. Now I find myself very indecisive between the two perspectives.

The slanted feels spacey and allows to toy with 8 directional movements plus a few more stuff. It does add a bit more difficulty for procedural features but might be worth it.

The more flat view feels...idk, crafty? I can't quite put my finger on it but It has a nice appeal with its simplicity, feel it could create a totally different immersion than the slanted look. Could make procedural a bit easier.

What do you recommend, TIG? Any comments and suggestions are highly appreciated!

[meowanme]

I'm sort of voting for something as close to the flat sideview 2D perspective as possible just because it creates less information for the player to process which is in line with your originally stated goal of keeping it simple.  The extra 3D doesn't sound like it immediately adds anything to the gameplay so why put it in right?  Also, it's easier to create assets in 2D as you won't have to worry about filling up all the extra space, so that might help your new year's resolution of "finishing a darn game for once!"

Maybe a reason to go the 3D perspective is because you might like the look of it more.  In that case, how about only slanting it very slightly just to give the viewer a taste of the perspective without suggesting that it's extra gameplay information.  So in your example GIF, maybe a quarter of the slant that you have there.

Okay, hope that's helpful!

[edit: typos, clarification]