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[Juliano]

Hey guys!

I've been working on NW on my spare time for the past five months or so.
https://www.nebulawander.com

On Nebula Wander you are a planet with a turbine navigating through the universe. While you explore, collect resources mining asteroids, build your planet and discover different areas! But be aware, you will have to protect yourself from others who will try to steal your resources.

It will be multiplafrom. Starting with IOS. You can play it through with only one finger but you may want to use more to maneuver the planet while defending against enemies.

I work with Tech Art, so I try to take the most out of opportunities to test new shaders and fx ideas.
Here are some:

Faking normal maps on mobile for the asteroids:

Building:

Working on color transitions for different areas of the universe (sorry about the cursor haha):

When enemies spawn everything changes color:

Screenshots:

Thanks for checking Nebula Wander  ! I'm constantly trying to improve it, so any input info is golden.  

[Sustrato]

Oh I'm not too into mobile games but this looks really pretty! Check out Orbitor if you want some inspiration, it's dead now but it was a nice looking game. Might give you some ideas. Best of luck with development!

[Juliano]

Oh I'm not too into mobile games but this looks really pretty! Check out Orbitor if you want some inspiration, it's dead now but it was a nice looking game. Might give you some ideas. Best of luck with development!

Thanks! Orbitor looks like a great reference! Elegant and visually stunning! :D

I've started to work on replacing the current weapons for organic-like defenses. So the planet will probably be all organic.

[Shipright]

How do you deal with the pentagon tiles on the shere? Are they unavailable, or are there alternate graphics for those tiles?

[Juliano]

How do you deal with the pentagon tiles on the shere? Are they unavailable, or are there alternate graphics for those tiles?

They double my production time on the assets on top of the planet. Hahah yeah
I try to separate the top part so I can make things like weapons be mostly the same asset on both shapes, but since I'm doing everything organic it kinda doesn't work that well.

The funny thing is that I was working on a soccer game (Superstar Soccer Goal) and I did like a ton of different model of balls for the game. So when I started on NW the planet was pretty much another soccer ball.

@Shipright, Have you been struggling with a similar problem?

[Juliano]

Hey everyone! Just finished the website: www.nebulawander.com You can subscribe to be reminded about the announcement

Some stuff I've been working on:
Made a friend who will help you through your journey



I played in the meantime with post processing, so here's a zoomed in version of the screenshot to show some features, like chromatic aberration:



Image based distortion on the corners to give a painterly look:



Made an inverted normal mapped transparent shader for the clouds above the planet, optimized for mobile. So I placed a point light on the planet to give the impression of blue bounced light on the clouds. (I increased the light contrast to show it here)

 

Also, I think would be cool to show a breakdown of the universe, here's a screenshot of the scene:



The clouds around the camera are round meshes only shown near the viewpoint, so we don't have to worry much about fillrate. There's also a screenspace texture affecting the alpha of these so they are never opaque on the center of the screen, never hiding the planet.

Here I pointed out the main elements:



The universe is a simple sphere with a texture, it rotates on the opposing way of the planet's direction to give the impression of movement. There are some small stars mapped into this sphere as well like a detail map, so they look sharp and fill the whole mesh. The stars near the planet are particle systems attached to the camera.

[foofter]

I really like the idea of playing as a planet itself, and the graphics looks surprisingly touching considering there are no characters. I guess a living planet is in some ways much more endearing than a spaceship.

[I_smell]

I think your interpretation of space is lovely. The artwork is so nice.

Making a customization sphere like this, and then one of the segments is actually a jet, is a brilliant idea. It's so fun and cute to see a childish concept like this realized.

I'd like to see more footage though!

[Grhyll]

Wow it's amazingly beautiful '_' I love the technical details about visuals, very inspiring (although I couldn't reapply them)!

[sidbarnhoorn]

This looks beautiful! Looking forward to playing this.

[ashtonmorris]

I agree with everyone above. Looks amazing, and has a good ethereal feel to it. ^__^

[Juliano]

I really like the idea of playing as a planet itself, and the graphics looks surprisingly touching considering there are no characters. I guess a living planet is in some ways much more endearing than a spaceship. Smiley

Thank you!  I'm glad you find it touching, I work really hard on this direction trying to get people to empathize with the planet and the game.

I think your interpretation of space is lovely. The artwork is so nice.

Making a customization sphere like this, and then one of the segments is actually a jet, is a brilliant idea. It's so fun and cute to see a childish concept like this realized.

I'd like to see more footage though!

Thanks!! That child fantasy concept is definitely some of the main guides for the artwork, also it's why I feel confortable making an approach different from a realistic universe. For example, someone may think it's nonsense to have a horizon on the universe, but it works with the game concept.
I'll try to record some footage for the next post! :D

Wow it's amazingly beautiful '_' I love the technical details about visuals, very inspiring (although I couldn't reapply them)!

Thank you! Let me know if you want some help, I love finding technical art solutions! :D

This looks beautiful! Looking forward to playing this. Smiley

Thanks! I'm thinking about making builds targeted for player testing. If you are interested just let me know!

I agree with everyone above. Looks amazing, and has a good ethereal feel to it. ^__^

Thank you! :D



Let's look at some early concepts?




I think would be cool to show some of the process that helped me on the visual part of the project. It's been a year, but it feels like I was struggling with some of the game pillars just now.

Some of the game early sketches! Going traditional helped me a lot visualizing and iterating fast. Tried a bunch of different mediums until could find something that made me think "Thats it!"



Then I tried some digital, these are all rough because I felt that there was no point on polishing it, I would have to model it myself, so the sketches were mainly to get the ideas out of my head and exercise the creative work.



Some island ideas!



This one really helped me through the development. I was reeealy stuck with the visuals before making this drawing.

Hope you like it! Thanks again everyone for contributing with the devlog! Next post will be about gameplay and maybe some footage! 

[skanaar]

Hey, this looks cool! Are there any progress with the game? It says Release in 2018 on the web page