A walk in the park (Patreon)

Hey, guys. This week I prepared most of the external objects to be textured. There's still a lot of work to do in applying different textures, but the city park already looks decent enough to show off. I'll still make changes by varying textures, repositioning trees, and adding polygons, but you can already get a feel for the art direction.

I started with extremely low poly models and the idea is to give definition to the areas that appear closest to the camera, thus avoiding unnecessary polygons in the scenery competing performance with the   characters, which is always the focus.

The textures will have a handcrafted look and the shader gives the lighting a semi-cartoonish style without going into full cel-shading. Shader is the programming that tells the motherboard what to do with textures, lights, and shadows, among other things. There was a serious problem with my previous shader, although I was very proud of it because I programmed it from scratch. I had to meticulously position the lighting in each scene so that the characters had adequate volume, and the objects in the background were very compromised. Having a wide, well-lit outdoor scene is something I could never have achieved with the old shader. The new shader is a win that removes limitations on the storytelling.

These arches came in the asset package, I decided to texturize and keep  them because there are similar arches in a square in the city where I  live and I always feel a good sensation when passing by them. I think  the camera following one of the girls through these archways will have  an interesting effect.

The small park looks so inviting to sit down and make out with someone, I want the whole town to feel that way. Another thing that has improved a lot is the blur effect, which was already part of the game's aesthetics giving it a more cinematic feel. Before it was just a gaussian effect, now we can even get a painted-like backdrop with thicker pencil strokes in the background, and I love it.

In the middle of the park, is a statue of Petra Sackrider, an ancestor of the red-haired sisters.  In a universe where this game becomes a hit after the changes and it allows me to extend the project to the next games I have planned, there will be a game about the origin of the Sackrider family and their connections with the city. So I want to spread some references to these characters from the past around the city, to create a mystique about them.

So this is the look I want to spread to other scenarios, with the exceptions I mentioned in the first paragraph. Critiques and sincerity are always welcome but keep in mind this is a work in progress.

Many thanks to you! See you later.