7th of February
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A lot have happened since the previous post – Mostly due to the fact that we wanted the camera to be tilted 45 degrees rather than have the game be truly top down (which would mean that the camera is tilted 90 degrees). Our justification for this is that the gameplay will heavily rely on exploration in the form of finding interesting sites and structures. Creating art assets that fuels this drive for exploration by virtue of being interesting to look at is needlessly challenging to do in a true top down game, since you can only see the top of the object (unless it has fallen over or is tilting). In addition, our target audience is humans and not birds. We are not used to viewing things from above, especially not large structures. It is natural for us to see things more from the side, which makes the 45 degree tilt of the camera really helpful. In addition, human made structures are for the very same reasons generally much more interesting in a side view rather than a top view. Anyhow, the tilted camera angle caused some problems for us. First of all, we had to trash the Wu-wei art style. The style heavily relied on silhouettes, which proved to be problematic when you need to illustrate the top and back side of objects. We couldn’t figure out how to create the illusion of volume when the art style inherently told the eye that it was looking at two dimensional objects. When we decided that we had to create a new art style, our programmer and designer argued that we should create a true top down game instead, as it was simpler. Knowing that I had already explained to the group the benefits of having a tilted camera when I first pitched the idea, I went with their intuition and agreed that we should go for the true top down camera angle instead, if they though that’d be better for the game. However, the camera angle was changed back the very next day. I presented to them a new and fairly cool art style in true top down, and it was as if they now completely understood my initial reasoning for having the 45 degree tilt on the camera. Three days ago, Monday the 5th, I presented the art style that would be our final. It works well in the 45 degree camera angle. It is easy to create assets in, and I think it will enable us to create very interesting art assets.
5SD064  |
