Project Element Devlog #2

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Tag: Himig »

Summary

Texturing the test area and working on base game systems.

Content

Note: This is an old development post that was previously only available on Patreon (back when I had one) and Ko-fi. Himig was still called “Project Element” at the time.

Note: Replaced old GIFs with JPGs to save space.

Hello! This week, I finished texturing the test area and started working on base game systems.

An untextured street 3D model with houses and electric wires.
Whiteboxing of the test area.

My workflow for creating big areas is still a bit all over the place, but the end result was better than expected! I’m happy. The general flow I had was:

  • Get location references
  • Whiteboxing (for placement and proportions)
  • Model all
  • Unwrap all
  • Texture all
  • Export things separately to Godot
  • Position them (+ foliage and small things to make it more lively) in-engine based on the whitebox model
  • Adjust colors and lighting per object and overall
  • Tears of joy
  • Remember you still have to add colliders to it

For future areas, I’ll try doing less details on the whiteboxing-like part of the process to get into actual modeling (and texturing, which took A WHILE) faster. I also might have to model some details instead of just doing them on textures, especially those that could be viewed close in the game.

A school girl near a house with a watermelon-like color scheme and a sari-sari store.
Character walking away from this house, which I just realized looks like a watermelon.

Speaking of textures, I also tried working with Godot’s skyboxes. I’ll probably use panoramic skies instead of the procedural ones since I won’t be having dynamic day/night cycles and so I could draw it myself… not that I can draw, but it’ll be fun! I just whipped up a quick one for now, but next time I could make a better, stylized one. Hopefully.

School girl walking down a road that splits into two.
Movement…? Changing views…?! This is… video game…

Texturing the test area and setting it up in-engine took most of my week, but I got to work on movement and camera-switching for a bit. Coming from Unity, I’m still wrapping my head around Godot’s GDScript and nodes, but learning it has been enjoyable so far!

I decided on fixed camera angles instead of a camera you can control, since the angles might help in having the areas’ visuals be imprinted into the players’ subconscious more easily. (and so I could cheat on some of the visuals—)

The movement direction still doesn’t change depending on the camera angle, and I would like the camera to move and rotate depending on the character’s position… I’ll probably write more about those on the next devlog. Just gotta think about it more for a bit…

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading! See you next time!

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