Inner Circle Update for January 23 2017! (Patreon)

Hey guys!  

We have a few concepts for V0.06 maps to show off this week!  Keep in mind these are still in the concept stage, so all images shown are simply screens from the Maya viewport or basic renders in Daz.  Also, some of the signage from the 3D assets is pretty goofy when translated to English, so anything out of place will be edited before final processing (we could use help with this, so see below for details).

Images and Content for this Update on Google Drive 

V0.06 Map Concepts

The main goal of this past week was to dive into Maya with TK and start making use of the giant 3D "tileset" he's been putting together for at least the past month.  In contrast to what we've done previously, I wanted to experiment with as many ideas as possible as opposed to focus on a single map to completion.  The plan is basically to make more than we will need, then once we have a pool of legit concepts we can start cherry picking from them as we need and polish them up to completion.  I've uploaded the most complete ideas we came up with above, which include a potential shop area, a sideview map that could be used as a transition or event location, and a concept that could be used as part of a hostile/exploration area.

The sideview map was an experiment in its own right since I wanted to see if we could make such a map using perspective instead of a flat side view as we've done previously.  Since everything is done using 2D layers, the layers have to animate at the proper speeds in relation to the player to give the right illusion of depth/perspective.  After some testing I found out that we can do this, and I've included a little video animation in the uploads above to show the results.

This whole process was a great crash course for me in working with Maya, and TK's been really patient with teaching me the ins and outs.  The image above shows a lighting experiment I did, in part as a mood test as well as an effort to figure out lighting in Maya.  V0.06 will all take place at night, so expect similar lighting in the other environments.

Everything didn't go swimmingly however, as we ran into issues early on where we realized TK had in some cases been a little too methodical in breaking down assets, meaning it would have taken a whole lot of work to build up full structures from scratch.  That said, since we could make use of the textures he had already converted, it wasn't too hard for him to pull over bigger pieces to make the tileset more convenient for rough drafts and concepts.  

We Need Translating Help!

Maps have been a full team effort this week, as even APL took a break from coding to help us by painstakingly translating text on various signs and assets using OCR technology on the textures.  In keeping with the cyberpunk aesthetic, we've put some effort into acquiring multilingual signage assets.  Most of this is from licensed assets that have been photosourced from real signs, and I'm guessing this was done purely for aesthetics, as a lot of the text makes reference to real-world places or is just out of theme for us (thus, will need to be replaced).  So, if any of you are fluent in Chinese or Japanese and want to help with this  we'd really appreciate it and would be glad to pay you for your time!  

Either message me or let us know below!