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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsThe Webmaster - A horror adventure game / visual novel
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Author Topic: The Webmaster - A horror adventure game / visual novel  (Read 21600 times)
a-k-
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« Reply #60 on: August 07, 2020, 01:34:08 AM »

Is this still in development? How is the pivoting coming along?
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Beastboy
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Happy birth day mom!


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« Reply #61 on: August 07, 2020, 03:40:57 AM »

Beautiful art design. I have no words
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propapanda
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« Reply #62 on: August 22, 2020, 01:50:57 PM »

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

Is this still in development? How is the pivoting coming along?
Yep, still very much in development! Just trying to avoid the temptations (and distractions) of social media. Pivoting away from a traditional point-and-click towards something more visual-novel-like was probably for the best. Lets me focus on the story. And reduces the need for elaborate animation (which I'm completely rubbish at!) while still letting me have nicely rendered backgrounds.

Here are some screenshots that have accumulated over the past few months:







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propapanda
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« Reply #63 on: September 03, 2020, 08:31:27 AM »

So I had this idea of using a shader to give my 2D backgrounds an illusion of depth... and it turns out it works way better than I expected! Was expecting all kinds of artifacts, but it holds up surprisingly well as long as I don't take it too far. The effect really makes the 2D backgrounds pop!

It's kinda neat how the hotspots seem to move towards the mouse cursor as if to assist the player in their pixel hunt:



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JobLeonard
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« Reply #64 on: September 03, 2020, 10:15:14 AM »

Nice!
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Eyon
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« Reply #65 on: September 03, 2020, 11:44:38 AM »

Good use of a shader, it looks great !
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propapanda
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« Reply #66 on: September 13, 2020, 04:45:42 AM »

Found some time this weekend to work on another scene:

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neko.works
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« Reply #67 on: September 13, 2020, 05:19:36 AM »

Wow, your backgrounds looks so real Shocked Good job Wink
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propapanda
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« Reply #68 on: September 26, 2020, 11:49:12 AM »

Some lighting studies for one of the few scenes taking place down town. Kinda playing around with the idea of telling different stories by simply turning lights on and off.








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propapanda
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« Reply #69 on: November 21, 2020, 10:04:42 AM »

Pretty busy writing the story but managed to squeeze in some more renders this week.



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JobLeonard
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« Reply #70 on: November 21, 2020, 11:13:21 AM »

I am digging the atmosphere in these screenshots so much
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propapanda
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« Reply #71 on: December 21, 2020, 12:22:50 PM »

I recently managed to get myself a hold of one of those newfangled Ryzen chips and my render times have since plummeted to comically low levels.

In this house we obey Blinn's law, so I'm now toying around with the idea of going HD with the backgrounds. To be honest, the low resolution artwork was always a stylistic choice just as much as it was a crutch to make up for the fact that my previous machine just wasn't up for rendering in high-res.

Not sure if this is a route I want to pursue as the high resolution certainly requires some extra effort when it comes to assets and set dressing, but so far I like what I'm seeing.



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JobLeonard
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« Reply #72 on: December 21, 2020, 01:22:29 PM »

Nice! I gotta admit though, something seems to have been lost in the resolution upgrade, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet. It's a very subtle mood shift, and I'm pretty sure it's not inherent to the resolution itself.

My best guess now is that the lower-res images implied some kind of film-grain that is a bit missing now. Maybe, paradoxically, the high-res needs some more film fuzziness to it?
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vdapps
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« Reply #73 on: December 21, 2020, 01:35:30 PM »

I stumbled upon this thread for the first time. I have to say, this game looks amazing! Every screenshot has very nice touch and it looks intriguing. Gentleman
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Alain
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« Reply #74 on: December 22, 2020, 12:10:30 AM »

Very interesting! I agree with JobLeonard that the low res had its very own charm, but I also like the details on the higher res renders. But I am sure you will make good decisions, because your style as been great all the way.
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propapanda
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« Reply #75 on: December 22, 2020, 02:12:05 AM »

I agree about the high resolution artwork losing... well, something. It is indeed hard to put a finger on. I suspect the low res art leaves more to the imagination and the mind sort of fills in details wherever there is perhaps only an interesting combination of pixels.

The higher resolution however is clear enough for the mind to just see it for what it is, and then, because it's not absolutely photorealistic, something seems off... perhaps there's a bit of an uncanny valley thing going on.

Tough decision: On the one hand the low res artwork gives me a lot more leeway and it's quicker and easier to produce. But then again it's not exactly an aesthetic style that most people will be able to appreciate. Tricky.
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #76 on: December 22, 2020, 04:08:27 AM »

On the one hand, glad to hear that it's not just me. On the other, it would have been much easier for if it was, so I'm sorry that I'm not entirely wrong! Cheesy

So here's what we can say for sure at this point: it only makes sense if the-thing-that-is-different is something inherently linked to resolution, right? So it's probably not the "basic" aesthetics, like composition or lighting. They're good in all shots so far, they don't really change in higher res.

Fine detail does though. It might be an uncanny valley thing, like you said, but I'm not sure. That's usually some kind of immersion-breaking and I don't feel that way about these shots.

However, the lower res shots managed to cpature a nostalgic "dreaminess" of old slide film. The higher res doesn't quite seem to have that quality yet. Emphasis "yet" because I've seen plenty of high-res scans of slide film that does capture that feeling, so why wouldn't your are be able to have that too, right?

Here's a guess: the "film grain" look hasn't scaled up with the resolution. If I were to scan a slide film in higher resolution, the grain should be "bigger" in the high-resolution scan. I think the grain has the same size in the high-res image as it has in the low-res image, which implies that it has "finer" grain. What if you tried to somehow make whatever gave you a grain effect a bit "coarse" than before?
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propapanda
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« Reply #77 on: December 22, 2020, 05:18:54 AM »

Great pointers, thank you!

Some of the graininess in the low res images might be inherent to the way they're rendered: I need to use a tiny filter size to ensure that things are as crisp as possible with the few pixels available. A regular sized filter things would look terribly blurry, and a sharpening filter in post would not have the same effect. However, the small filter also tends to boost noise which at the low resolution might look similar to film grain.

Here I'm playing around with the grain settings to make it prominent and the noise frequency smaller:









Of course another thing the high-res images lack is the ordered dithering... an effect common on low-res, 256-color images and certainly not something you'd normally want to employ on images of this size, but it does have an interesting effect here:



Any thoughts?

Funny though, isn't it? In rendering, the one thing we strive for is to produce noise-free images. And yet here we are... Smiley
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #78 on: December 22, 2020, 06:07:54 AM »

Well, it took the ancient Greeks just a century to perfect naturalistic sculpting, making sculptures that looked extremely realistic in their anatomy:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/early-classical/v/kritios-boy

What was the first thing they did after that? Exaggerate the features they liked into anatomically impossible proportions, indirectly ruining many a body-builders life because of the impossible beauty standards that were passed down by them Wink

"Realism" is a tool, not an end Smiley

Anyway, I think a bit of added noise really fits this scene! It's dark, which leads to naturally noisier images, and it is raining. So the "grain" might as well be haze from long-exposure rain drops.

The ordered dithering is a bit too subtle to really notice for me, but it brings up an interesting point regarding the noise in the other shots. You see, if you were to blur the images until the grain disappears, the histogram of the blurred results would look the same - meaning that the overall contrast of the entire image is the same. However, in the first image the grain has a higher contrast than the in later ones. That has the interesting effect of being more present and "crunchier" grain while probably still having the same overall image fidelity, and also making the image "high contrast" (grain) and "low-contrast" (actual scene lighting) at the same time. To me the first image feels a bit colder and harsher, whereas the later ones feel warmer and softer.

So that's another effect you can play with!
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vdapps
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« Reply #79 on: December 22, 2020, 06:16:39 AM »

Just my 5 cents to low-res / high-res discussion.

IMO, low-res is also "easier to swallow" for a brain, simply because there's less information on screen. I found myself that with new games, with lot of detailed stuff in the scene, I'm not able to focus on game such as I was able in older games with less details. Simply because detailed scene was crying with lot of stuff at once on me.

However, I see that your renders are beautiful, so it can be pity to loose very much with going low-res.

And what grain filter is doing? It's removing information! Grainy scene is making picture easier to swallow for brain (less information and more uniform look as grain is everywhere). And you can scale how much you'll remove (with strength of filter).

In your case I prefer subtle grain more than stronger one. Probably second from the bottom. Your renders are clear and not over-detailed so no need to remove very much information from scenes. Dither (last image) is also very appealing.
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