ThereIsNoJustice's Sketchbook

[ThereIsNoJustice]

Bookend: Thanks for the kind words. And yeah, the AI situation is complex right now. I just know that other people will use it, so I figure I will use it where I feel it's not harmful to other people. So to me it's fine to use for learning or placeholder art that will be replaced w/ real human art later, or something like that. But it's going to be interesting to see how things play out.

I've still been sketching some, mostly for fun, and working more and more on the game project lately. I've got the turrets and general factory mechanics working. I really want to jump into the enemy and player art and modeling, but each decision from here on out will have a lasting impact. Any mistakes or changing my mind will take a lot of time if I need to change course later.



Anyway, I realized that using texture brushes will be good for both the concept art and actual textures on the game models, especially the enemies. I have been thinking a bit about what makes a good horror, mutant, otherworldly looking creature. But before I sit down to even draw the enemies out I need to make sure I know exactly how I want them to work in the game. The further I get into the project w/ incorrect enemy designs then the longer it will take to fix that mistake.



The two most important choices I have to make for the enemies are:

1. If they can fly -- Right now this is my solution to players trying to camp in unreachable places, like if they build a platform in the sky. I think it will work really well as a solution, but I'm worried that players might feel that the enemies have an unfair advantage. I think the best thing to do is to only make the enemies fly if it's the only option available to them, otherwise they behave more like zombies. I hope players will tolerate that.
   
2. Having long reach -- Give them arms which are 1.5x - 2x the normal reach an ordinary human would have. Fighting swarms of melee enemies can feel really easy, especially when you have multiple ranged weapons. Even though the game increases in difficulty over time, I think maybe this would be a way to increase the difficulty a bit right from the start. Maybe there will be ranged enemies later on, but just having the melee enemies feel like a threat that the player doesn't want to get anywhere near might be good. If I do make this kind of enemy and it doesn't feel quite right, then I can always make a more traditional zombie-like enemy and turn this one into a rarer enemy, so there is that.
   

So my next direction is doing a few more buildings models, and doing a handful of studies w/ texture brushes as prep for the enemy designs. I started using them on the Tracer and plaster cast sketches below but I still feel rusty w/ these brushes. I think working on temp layers is the way to go, though.



Also, I did a number of youtube vids, some animations and gamedev logs, but I'll just link the first/main gamedev log vid. I do feel like I now know everything I need for making animations for the game. It feels great to have that workflow figured out.