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[nimbusstev]

Wow, this looks amazing Lucas! You really like to think outside the box, don't you? 

I think this one-bit rendering style will be absolutely perfect for the setting of the story. It really captures that eerie atmosphere you get from reading an old 19th century book. Super excited to see how this game plays... but most of all, I can't wait to see how you handle characters (assuming there are some) with such a limited color palette.

[Daniel Pellicer]

Looks amazing! looking forward to see more of it

[Greipur]

I plan to push it grittier and less cartoon-like than those old games; the hard part will be keeping everything legible without it becoming an unreadable mess of dithered pixels.

Yes, I see that problem as well. Perhaps having many types of rasters with flipped directions would help make different layers stand out more?

Looking forward to see the game in motion.

[saibot216]

I like the sound of this! Can't wait to see more screenshots! :D

[dukope]

@nimbusstev
There will definitely be characters. I have a few ideas about how to do make them recognizable with such few colors.

@Greipur
I have a semi-decent system worked out. The end result is that it looks more like a CAD display than a dithered true-color image.


More Modeling

I've been modeling the aft deck and experimenting with the rendering. I wanted to get the side walls up but since they're part of the hull, I decided to go all in and model the entire hull. This was something I was dreading and for good reason. It took all day to get to this point. It's not completely done yet but thankfully it's now good enough to carry on with the aft deck.

At this point I'm using a lot of reference from different ships of the period. This particular hull plan is from the HMS Leopard. It's a different year and size of ship but it's close enough for government work. The deck plans will be more of a customized amalgamation of different existing ships and custom features.

[Armageddon]

You mentioned moving from Max to Maya, I'm curious why the switch? I'm very comfortable with Max but Maya seems to have really good animation features for Unity but I'm scared to move over.

[funwithbill]

Well, so much for my project, The Undiscovered.  http://theundiscoveredgame.tumblr.com

I guess great minds think alike. And sadly, Obra Dinn looks better already.

[dukope]

You mentioned moving from Max to Maya, I'm curious why the switch? I'm very comfortable with Max but Maya seems to have really good animation features for Unity but I'm scared to move over.

I develop on a Mac now, so unless I want to run Max in a VM (don't want) then I'm stuck with Blender or Maya. I've used Blender before and was pretty happy with versions 2.6+ so I could've used that. But Maya has the LT versions now which are finally a reasonable price. The modeling requirements are relatively light for this game so I thought it'd be a good place to relearn Maya.

Well, so much for my project, The Undiscovered.  http://theundiscoveredgame.tumblr.com
I guess great minds think alike. And sadly, Obra Dinn looks better already.

I wouldn't sweat it. Obra Dinn will look pretty different from what you've got there. And even if it didn't, there's plenty of room for more 1-bit rendered games.

[pnch]

Following!

And about 3D packages, you should absolutely check Houdini!
www.sidefx.com
It´s a high end procedural vfx solution (kind of a more technically biased Maya with procedural generation always in mind), and since you´re working in Unity you could use their new experimental Houdini Engine stuff!

Sure, it´s a software complex enough to learn in a whole lifetime, but if you get to it, PM me and I´ll lend you a hand with getting started.

[rpgwhitelock]

Enjoying the look of this. Interested to see what atmosphere you can get out of it.

I am using Blender as my primary 3D package on all of my projects (inc Frozen Endzone).  It's so capable now. The main barrier is the non-standard interface but that's easy to get over, and very fast once you are used to it.

[Pishtaco]

It's good to see a seriously-done period game. And you've got some interesting possibilities for the art style, between early mac stuff and the black and white engravings that would have appeared in print at the time.

[dukope]

And about 3D packages, you should absolutely check Houdini!

I'd really like to get into apps like Houdini, Modo, or C4D some day. For this project though I want something with a really solid, mature game pipeline. One of the big reasons I chose Unity is because the pipeline is so well tested and lots of things that I would've worried about in previous custom (or less mature) engines "just works". Asset import is a huge part of that so I'm inclined to stick with the most commonly used tools for now.

Also this is a low res 1-bit game so I'm not going to be using most of the high-end visual fx features that a lot of those apps specialize in.

I am using Blender as my primary 3D package on all of my projects (inc Frozen Endzone).  It's so capable now. The main barrier is the non-standard interface but that's easy to get over, and very fast once you are used to it.

Blender is much better now after they fixed the UI. It's still a little wonky but it was 100 times worse before version 2.5. These days I think it's great. I was >this< close to just using Blender again because I quite like their modeling tools. But I'm a little gun-shy on free software in the critical path. And Maya LT is affordable enough to be worth experimenting.

[Bakuda]

This looks like it's going to be awesome!  Can't wait to see how it turns out.

[dukope]

Early Screenshots

The stern deck:

The rendering here combines edges, lighting, and texture to make the final frame. The idea is to have it be stylish but also easy to interpret. It still needs some work but it's enough for me to continue modeling the rest of the ship. There are missing detail elements in the model (rigging, sails, distress, odds & ends, rest of the ship) so it'll be useful to see how things hold up when the geometry is even busier.

If anyone's interested, I can post a more detailed breakdown of the current rendering technique.

[Ben H]

I, for one am super-duper interested in learning about the rendering :D

[stigmawall]

Two here. 

[JigxorAndy]

Wow. That looks incredible. I'd love to know how it works!

[metlslime]

Following this for the 1-bit rendering.  Very cool looking.

[{VeTeR}]

This looks very promising, i like this 1bit/dithering effect. Keep up the good work:)

[noumenus]

Oh cool! It's like I'm in an old newspaper cartoon