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[Kren]

I have been following your project for a while ;3 you have improved this game alot since the start , my only concern is that texture, you can see how it repeats, and clearly see the tile mostly because of those diagonal lines:

[Scut Fabulous]

Hmm, yeah that's noticeable.  I haven't made variant tiles for that texture yet, like I've done for the original stone texture.  I think a couple variations placed randomly will help keep it looking non-tiled.

[Durruti]

I'd like to come out of the lurking shadows real quick to say that I came across this project way back when it was first posted, and have been remembering to check in on it ever since. The graphics look amazing, I love the concept, and the audio work so far is very nice. Keep it up.

[Scut Fabulous]

Thanks for the kind words!

I've been off on vacation, seeing friends I've missed for a long time and making an ass of myself in front of women, been a lot of fun.  Going to start digging back into The Salvage again.



^^ Currently trying to work some sort of gas / smoke effect. ^^

[saibot216]

Given the sound diaries and the pics I'm seeing, this game will be so amazing.

[Raku]

gah, I love the way this game is looking so far.
You've got great taste in graphics! Do you ever plan on putting any more detail into those background elements, though?

[Scut Fabulous]

Do you ever plan on putting any more detail into those background elements, though?

Yes, it's definitely something I will be taking a few cracks at.  I'm not sure yet if I should do giant matte paintings or try something more procedural.

Anyone reading this devlog have good experience doing matte backgrounds?  Should I 'lift up' the relative camera aspect to show much more background landscape?

[BomberTREE]

Those texture line's dont really feel much like repeating texture's, more like the shape of the rock.

[Chris Platzer]

I'm a big fan of this. I really hope this will turn into a playable game at some point.

The artwork and the music work really well in conveying the feeling that you are on your own, on a barren rock in space, far away from home.

[Scut Fabulous]

So here's my current idea on how to execute smoke and gases.  The image above shows both the texture I liked the most and a mockup of how it could look in context.



http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-gas-process-01.png
In order to keep these sorts of clouds from draining too many system resources, I have an idea to model them from relatively loose point clouds.


http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-gas-process-02.png
Each point can get a sort of membrane or bubble surrounding it.  The size of the bubble can be affected by time, and distance from neighbors.


http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-gas-process-03.png
The bubbles work to create a big boundary to designate the cloud, without needing to be filled with thousands of crowded points.


http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-gas-process-04.png
The boundary can then be filled with whatever colour or texture is desired.


http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-gas-process-05.png
An alpha channel is applied to the cloud.

[Frank]

Beautiful.

[Lizardheim]

That's some awesome smoke you got there.
Keep on rockin'

[Scut Fabulous]

http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-loot-review.png



http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-loot-review-bleached.png

Click the links to embiggen!

I was thinking about what the player’s ‘home base’ might look like, and how it could be used in-game.  One thing I thought would be cool is a room where you can browse a catalogue of the artifacts you’ve successfully pulled from the planet.  The player would step onto a control platform which activates a holo display.  Artifacts can be viewed in a manner similar to watching a revolver’s drum rotate from the side.  The item being viewed currently sits in the centre of the display, with preview versions of the next artifacts in queue alongside.

This interface would double as both a trophy room and a marketplace.  The player could choose to sell off certain artifacts before an expedition ends in order to maintain a cashflow or to quickly barter for services from passing merchants.

The original sketch was done in a small moleskine and was mostly to get my main idea of the composition down on paper.  The underlying architecture of the viewing platform will need to get a proper design once I start building the pixel art base map.

[Scut Fabulous]

http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-cabin-ideation-001.jpg



http://scutanddestroy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/salvage-cabin-ideation-002.jpg

A couple plan view concept sketches of the player’s towed cabin which will serve as a home base in The Salvage.  I wanted to further flesh out the aesthetics of the vessel before going into the interior design, and before I started working in pixels.  I find doing hand sketchwork gives me something to crunch in the back of my mind for a few days before I get into execution.

Next I’ll start roughing out an interior cutaway view at in-game scale.

[FranticPandaKev]

Looks really great man, gonna have to record some 'hummmmzzzzz' :D

[duo]

I like the second sketch better; the first looks like a bug. The second sketch doesn't look like anything from this world.

[Scut Fabulous]

...The second sketch doesn't look like anything from this world.

Perfect!   

[duo]

Yeah, I know. The best part about this game is everything looks foreign to this world. Most of the time people do alien stuff, they take an animal or plant (on purpose or not) and modify it in some way. Your stuff looks unearthly, but still functional. Cool!

[Lizardheim]

Yeah, the style you got going here isn't like anything we got here on earth, that's for sure.

[Scut Fabulous]

This weekend pretty much imploded on me.
At least I managed to vent some frustration into the beginnings of some graphics.