Mid-Week Madness [28/06/2023]

Good evening all!

I've been on vacation the past few days, but that hasn't stopped me from chipping away at the game. That's why this update is a couple days late. Since I've been away from the computer, most of my work has been illustrative. Enjoy some visual arts!

First off, the icon/portrait sprite style has backtracked, in a good way. This is the original look I wanted and went for in concept sketches. Last week (or atleast in the last update) I was working on more "final" sprite designs in higher res (500px instead of 200 something px), rougher crayon-like brushes, softer 3-toned shading, and a static 3-quarter angle. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. It was too traditional, too "moe" and too bland. It didnt have character or "fun" to it. That's why I went back to this original concept artwork, which I had actually come to appreciate more after that high-definition exploration, and just straight adapted it. Now, this sprite has interchangeable eyes and mouths, which can be mixed and matched to my content (hopefully) through Unity animations. They're also faster and easier to draw and change, meaning I can make more eyes/mouths more efficiently. And I look at this and I have no doubt left that, yep, that's Cliff! This will serve as a reference/model for the rest of the charcaters icons/profiles in-game.

Next up has been character design ideations for Lang (final name still pending) and his outfitting! This has been alot of fun. Having honed my pipeline with my Cliff design (my approach was backwards then, which cost me time and effort), Lang's design is moving forward much faster and more confidently. I started with a nude base to figure out Langs body proportions, especially in comparison to Cliff. I wanted him to be muscular, but not naturally; more visibly gained and sustained, perhaps out of compensation or insecurity. They're a vain show or power and confidence, but also show he doesn't fuck around and can seriously throw down. But Lang isn't a hyper-masculine character, so his outer-layer of expression is in his clothing. Here, I've gone leagues more feminine. Right now, designs #1, #5, and #7 are the most interesting and promising to me. They show skin and msucles, but are highly vogue and stylish, through also intimidatingly sharp, almost combat-ready. He's like "Yeah, this is how I normally dress. What're you gonna do about it?". Now, it's just honing down and refining, and nailing colour and materials. Definitely black, black, black mesh and leather.

I also did these 3D model draw-overs for Cliff. The face has just not been doing it for me, so I thought I needed a better guide on how to translate his look into the next medium. I've seen this done on films like The Bad Guys and Spider-verse, so it seemed like a good approach to take. This will really help clean up the vertices when I get back to the model.

The next big development has been in the environment designs! The Hospital set is still in its infancy, but planning things out on paper, like the progression of the level, has been central in translating it right. I started with a written description, then a drawn map, and then built it out in Maya. This is where I could actually see the problems presented in the design, like the right side of the long hallway that basically leads to nothing, and doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond getting to the Lab. Its visually uninteresting. I need to make the hallway as interesting as possible. How do I do this? A combination of forced-perspective, camera placement, mise-en-scene, and a more dynamic level layout. I tried to work this out by painting over screenshots of the 3D set, as seen below. What this instead showed me was more-so the potential in colour and lighting design, as well as how to lead the players eye with these. Interesting!

In the next week, this biggest thingsd to work on are still Cliff and the Hospital. That comprises fixing Cliffs face, giving him hair, and perhaps finally getting ahead on clothes modelling. This should take about a day. For the Hospital, it's back to the sketching and ideating phase to fix that hallway before I model and decorate further. I mourn not really being in Unity alot these past few weeks, but it's hard to think about that without the visual vision to know what I need and where. Thats a concern for post-art-direction-development.

Yours,

- Monkeydog

Clifford The Big Bad Wolf [19/06/2023]

 This will be a short update because I haven't done much this week (it's the holidays!). However, I've been working on and off on Cliffs icons/portraits and character model.

After a lot of trial and error, I've finally figured out my proper modeling pipeline (up to this point, at least). He's still a little funny looking, but with clothes, hair, and some lovingly painted details, I think he'll be very presentable. He wont be able to open his mouth or blink, which is a shame but saves time on animations and puts more focus on the icon/portraits for expressions, letting the model just be blank-faced. Hopefully, I can reuse this base model on other characters like Lang and Naomi.

Finally, expressions! You may notice theres two almost identical sets of eyes here, and thats because I still can't decide which looks better. The innocent, wider top eyes or the narrower, sharper bottom eyes. Perhaps they can both be of use to mark a subtle difference in feeling. The final portraits are comprised of a backing image, which is just an expressionless Cliff, then a rectangle-shaped Mouth sprite and Eye sprite, so that these can be switched out and replaced at will. That way, Cliffs mouth can chatter away while reading dilaogue without the whole image having to be alternated. It also means sets of eyes and mouths can be mixed and matched, meaning less original drawings have to be made for there to be lots of expression possibilities. The shading style, I admit, is over-complicated and tedious to replicate over and over, but I think it needs to be that way to render the characters "aliveness". (The red lines behind him are just the sketch layer showing through, but I kindof like it... it gives him a cool glow...) Ingame, the background behind him will be transparent, and the sprite may peek a bit over the top edge of the dialogue box to make the UI a little more dynamic than just straight boxes.

Thats all for today! My goals for the next coming week are to finish Cliffs model (with or without texturing) and map out the environment for the Hospital scene, perhaps even starting to properly assemble the set. Auf Wiedersehen!~

- Monkeydog

Systems, Mechanics, and Introspection [12/06/2023]

 The prototype and game design document hand-in has passed, and immediately I want to rehaul the whole thing! And so my insecurity manifests. For now, though, basic mechanics in Unity are implemented!

In this prototype, which takes place in Cliffs Apartment (a now-cut location), you can talk to Lang, interact with the fridge, pick up a monkey statue, and go into the bathroom. Dialogue is working near-perfectly, it only needs to be able to invoke Events in each line (animations, item pick-ups, etc) and I need to figure out a quick and easy way to color-pick text colors (perhaps from a palette). Dialogue choices contribute to and are influenced by LH and PM stats, though I'm still unsure where I'm going with PH.

Splash screens are like so; this is a placeholder image, but it will eventually show nicely detailed and rendered illustrations of close-ups, impact frames, and the like. It may fill the whole screen instead of just a window, I haven't decided.

This is the kind of place where a Splash Screen would be best implemented, so the player can see what Cliff is seeing in the fridge. If you look in the bottom right corner, you can also see that Smell is implemented. Not very effectively, but its a feature?

Going through the door into the bathroom triggers a fade-to-black transition while a Coroutine teleports the player into the next room. It actually works fantastically and will be perfect with a little loading animation in the corner.

Only problem right now is this: the inventory system is broke to shit! That's a WIP, but then we're smooth sailing into puzzle design and assets like characters, levels, and dialogues!

Otherwise, there's an internal crisis of "What is this game, really?" Like all weeks, I'm wrought with doubt and inability to commit. What's bothering me most from a concept perspective is being strung by the limbs between four aspects; Grunge urbanity, Rural wilderness, queerness/family, and violence/anarchy. That is the tough thing about juggling and contrasting themes, for me. I think my problem has been attempting too hard to shoe in autoethnography, a field which actually can only apply here as it relates to furries and therians, and not really queer or trans people at all (that equation would be a grave mistake). On the other hand, I feel myself drifting from what was originally interesting to me in the first place; the myths, the history, the biology, the lore. These things were always the backbone of my research and my inspiration, and I've thus far abandoned them. This game is supposed to be a reinterpretation of that mythos in a modern context, it's not second fiddle here.

So in the next weeks, our semester break, I am hitting the books again and really annotating them. They are my primary source of knowledge from the past and of my subject, and they are the true definition, the source, of man's relationship with the wolf; that is what is under the microscope. Secondly, I need to really, actually understand the wolf as an animal, so documentaries, videos, books, and artworks are all in. The characters in Homolupus must be wolves first, and humans second, as if they are actually undergoing a kind of reverse transformation, though still maintaining a queer subtextual, only semi-conscious allegory. Basically, everything must come from a historical or biological reality. It's not really about what I think is cool or rad, as least not on the starting level. It's about reinterpretation.

My homework for the next weeks, besides reading and studying, is to begin work on the first level of the game. That includes environment/location modeling, character modeling, puzzle design, and finally getting down and dirty in the art department. This also includes fixing up still-rough systems like Inventory. By the end of this semester break, a whole level will be complete-complete-complete!

Good luck to me and god-speed to you!

- Monkeydog

Hydraulic Pressure Press [05/06/2023]

 It's the start of Week 12, the week that marks our summative assessment. I'm not prepared! Here's development.

Finally, Cliff is designed and finalized! His face is a little scary in this rendering, so that will have to be woobified. Otherwise, he's ready to be finally, actually, sincerely modelled out! 

Here's some more planning work from the GDD. Colour palettes picked from my moodboards, a floorplan for the Romuli Den-bus ready to be modelled and assembled, and a flowchart of the total game loop.

And here is the current state of the prototype. Broken but fixable! That is my primary and sole goal for the next week. Unity, unity, unity! Code, code, code! Let's make this presentable and pitchable! And most of all, let's get every major mechanic in and functioning, and therefore testable!

There's a lot going on in my head right now around the total game structure. Currently, my main focus is just ending up with something solid and total for the tutorial Hospital level and Den by the end of the first half of the next semester. The rest of the game -- the first mission and multiple endings -- are stretch goals now. It seems like a cop-out, but if I work hard -- and I beg of myself to work hard -- it will come together. 

What I want, more than anything, is to let my inhibitions loose and make something that I am proud of -- that is me. It isn't that right now. There's a major breakthrough yet to be made, and I can feel it. The hearts still missing. I need to find the heart and put it at the center of the game's universe. The One Theme Above All; is it kinship, identity, freedom, warmth, escapism, loss of humanity, or destruction of the body? Hm. Wolfhood is perhaps all of these things. Perhaps Wolfhood is the one word, the one theme. I'll think about it more.

As a treat for making it this far, here's some additional Cliff art, including the first-ever Homolupus fanart courtesy of an anonymous classmate!

Thank you for reading! Awoo to youu~!

- Monkeydog