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[DamienDe]

The dying noises

This game will be about a floating whale, which has to fly to its final resting place. Description The thing is, that the character you will play, was living on this whale and did not know there was a whale to begin with. Before the whale rose from the ground, it was just a piece of landscape ... now there is a BIG hole in the ground. As the whale crosses the land it will be attacked by the likes of demons and the people of village, the hero lives in, start to panic, so something has to be done about the situation. The hero is an old warrior/hunter/soldier/monster slayer, who just wanted to live the last years of his life in the arms of his family, but now everything could end with this flying whale. Will the hero kill the whale or does it need to survive for a greater good...well I don´t even know myself yet.               Inspired by               Download http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9855438/demo.zip How to play Left click moves the player and interacts with other characters. Right click and moving the mouse rotates the camera. There is not much to do and the camera collision was just thrown in the last second.

[DamienDe]

As soon as I saw the post for the new competition I knew I finally had to be a part of tigsource. I always wanted to enter into a competition here, but life is hard, time is sparse and my job sucks most of my motivation away.
But enough about that...at work I looked through the NES cart images and the one with the whale really got me. In the last month I was often experimenting with the marching cube algorithm and the whale struck me as something I could model with my implementation of the MC.
So the game will have 3d graphics and I think it will play in a 3rd person behind the character view. As I am a programer and not an artist, the characters will all be billboarded sprites. I did not think about any kind of battle system yet, but it will more likely be along the lines of Vagrant Story, than God of war ... and well, it will be piss poor in comparison to these games 

I hope I can put some sort of mock up together tomorrow.

[Inanimate]

Will the hero kill the whale or does it need to survive for a greater good...well I don´t even know myself yet.

I suggest you make it a choice.

[DamienDe]

I suggest you make it a choice.

Well I think that should be the twist of the game...be selfish and safe your house, family etc. or sacrifice everything for a greater good. The greater good here would be something along the lines, that the whale really is some kind of god and only if he rests in peace in a special place, a new god will be born.
Hmm...when I think about it...is it even okay to spoiler twists and turns of the game here in the forum?

Before I go to bed...here are two views at an interesting structure, which can easily be made with the marching cubes algorithm. The textures are stolen from somewhere and I don´t want to show too much yet, so bear with me.

[Inanimate]

This is going to be 3D! That's fantastic! Always glad to see a 3D game.

[DamienDe]

In my spare time I was playing around with creating cave like dungeons, which is a perfect match for the marching cubes algorithm. Here are three screenshots of a very buggy version with a very ugly first try at dynamic lighting.
I was testing the look of normal MC without smoothing the generated polygons, but I don´t think I will continue with this, so next time there will be more rounded edges.
Textures are still not mine and I think, I will start drawing them pretty late into development.

There are already NPC characters, who do absolutely nothing.

Here you can see the camera getting closer to the character, when it is near a wall. I may look ugly, but I can´t do 3d models.

[Fabienne]

Wow. This thing is starting to look pretty awesome.

HOWEVER! Having a level where you spend the whole thing walking across the back of the whale is a must.

[DamienDe]

HOWEVER! Having a level where you spend the whole thing walking across the back of the whale is a must.

Absolutely, I envision the main part of the game taking place on the "back" of the whale. Something like a floating island, which is high above the ground, which I will have to render somehow, too ... oh what have I gotten into here

But I want to have one or two caves to freshen things up a bit.

My biggest fear is, that I can not give you a good feeling of moving through the sky an a freakishly huge "island".

[Inanimate]

Just start on one of the edges, so you can see the ground moving past below you. And make it so every once in a while, you have to go to a high place / near an edge. That way you can really just appreciate how weird of a situation you are in.

[loken]

Very interesting take on this one. I almost did it as well. Was thinking more along the lines of an Armored Flying Whale taking revenge upon humans and their cities Sh'mup. But to each their own. Yours is more original.

[DamienDe]

Yours sounds like it would actually be more fun

[Nugsy]

I have to say, that looks awesome.
I love the combination of 3d with low res textures and sprites.

[dontkickpenguins]

I have to say, that looks awesome.
I love the combination of 3d with low res textures and sprites.

I agree, it's a really good look.

[J. R. Hill]

It's pretty cool, but I think it will look better with lower res textures...

[DamienDe]

Regarding the textures ...
Well I don´t know yet, what style I will use. In the first pictures you see filtered textures, which blend nicely together, which does not work so well on the unfiltered textures. The resolution is the same in all used textures.
Anyway its really only a design choice, as there are no speed gains in my engine. Unfiltered textures are super if you can use a texture atlas, but I need tiling of the textures over big polygons, so texture atlas is a no go and I don´t want to use too much time fixing that in a shader or something like that.

But I really like the high resolution of the game itself and the low res assets ... it makes the game look like a Playstation game running in an Emulator. And I am quite fond of some old PS1 RPGs (Xenogears or Breath of Fire 4 still look amazing in my eyes).

[DamienDe]

Oh, another thing ... I was thinking about the art style and I am not sure if the smallish detailed textures are a fit anyway. Maybe it would suit the game, if I used textures with less detail and make it look more like a "painting".

I am not talking about Cellshading, more along the lines of the backgrounds in Studio Ghibli movies (or animes in general). I will have to look around the net a bit to find examples, from which I could learn...

[Kevin]

Maybe it would suit the game, if I used textures with less detail and make it look more like a "painting".

This is pretty much what I pictured when I read the initial post. The way I picture the game, it'd be a fitting style.

[Inanimate]

I imagine it like these. This would be a beautiful style, especially for this idea.

[DamienDe]

Ha, such a look would be absolutely amazing, but hardly feasible for me, as I am neither an artist or have the time and I am not that good of a shader programer (yet).
But I will look into it and do my best, but I think it will be a low res pixel look, with textures which won´t look pixelated, because the will feature only low detail...maybe in the end it will look a bit like cell shading.

To talk a bit about ongoing development, well it is extremely hot in Germany right now, so development slowed down a bit. Today our national Football team has a game in the world cup. I don´t like football (or sport as a whole) but it is a nice way to get together with some friends.
Since the last post I worked a bit on the ground rendering for the land the whale is floating over. It will be low poly and I will heavily fake things like woods and ´
villages and as the whale will cross quite a distance I have to use some sort of random generation for the ground.
So maybe I will have some pictures of an ugly random landscape next time

[DamienDe]

Ah, for the heck of it ... three more screenshots from the editor. Filtering and blending of textures are back in and as you may notice, there are some trees, which are generated procedurally. The trees are something I did maybe a year ago, so it was easy and quick to add them. And maybe this time I find the motivation to add some leaves etc.

Edit: The structure makes no sense at all, right now I am testing the editor and doodeling away. Next week I will finally start and "design" the whale.