Screenshot Saturday - Dec 7 (Patreon)

Lo all. December already! Time flies when you have your nose to the grindstone. >< As you might have seen from some twitter posts or from discord, I've been getting through some work crunch for the past couple of months, with not much to show in terms of game dev screenshots and what have you. This wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, so while recovering I've started getting back into developing innkeep. Even better, I've set aside a few weeks to focus on it full time, which I usually do around this time of year.

Now that I have a bunch of work in progress screenshots and such to share again, I thought I'd experiment with posting them here each Saturday. I can't say how long I'll keep this up, or if I'll do it every Saturday (probably not), but it would be good if I could do some semi-regular picture dumps so that you can see things in one place rather than trawling through twitter, or discord chat history. The other thing that is nice about this is that you can see a bit more of the process when images are in a sequence.

But before the screenshots for this week, a little context. What am I working on? My current near term goal is to get a demo done for Innkeep that functions as the introduction sequence to the game, and that also serves as mini tutorial. I've written up a detailed design document already that lays out exactly what will happen, and what assets I need. One of the big things I need to tackle for this demo is the exterior of the inn. This is so we can have the player character (a penniless wanderer, refugee, or perhaps outcast?) walk up to it and enter. Once this job is done I can start to focus more on the characters that will be needed, along with actually getting a rudimentary dialogue system up and running, with writing etc. 

This is more from the end of November, but after crunch wrapped up I jumped into getting the updated menu working. I still have a little left to do here, but its close to demo-ready (no save / load or serious option functionality really needed.)

Moving into December and exterior work, I started out by grabbing some textures from the interior that I could work with, and playing around with perspective lines. The goal was to make a close to 1:1 model in terms of scale between interior and exterior, the shape of the building etc. 

I also made a shingle texture for use on the rooftop, as I didn't have anything pre-made that would work there.

A bit of tinkering and I could see the perspective was too weird and needed rethinking. 

Here's the current status. It might look a little overly detailed when zoomed out like this, but its a very large image. The aim is to be able to zoom in up fairly close to the player when they are walking around the inn, gathering water, or chopping firewood. At the same time I do want to be able to do a few panoramic shots during the introduction sequence.

Here's the kind of detail we are looking at in native resolution, 100% zoom (kitchen chimney).

I also knocked up a texture for the road that you walk along during the intro.

The mountain layers in the background will have a parallax effect applied, so they shift at slightly different speeds to give some depth. The steppe area is below the road. Not so easy to tell now, but with some more texture work (trees, rocks on the edge) and parallax, it will be more obvious. 

Here's how it looks as a single image. The perspective with the house and the horizon might look quite off right now. In game though the parallax should help to show how the main bit of ground there is actually raised up higher. The lighter steppe area is "below", so the horizon will actually make sense in the end. If necessary though I'll make a few adjustments.

With this really large bit of space to work with, I can do some neat stuff with camera work during the intro sequence. You'll have to imagine it with heaps of rain particle effects, cloudy sky, a twisted trees etc. The camera will start fairly zoomed in, then pull way back like you might see in Far: Lone Sail, letting the whole of the inn building come into the frame. Then, as you approach the door, we can zoom in closer again. 

I also worked on some variations for the innkeep model. At the beginning he doesn't have the signature apron, but instead just his vest and a cloak. Once he enters the inn he'll be meeting a few bandits who will force him to act as the new innkeeper and serve them (the old one being quite dead). Taking up the apron then will be a nice symbolic transition to the new role.

I also started work on one of four core characters who the player will team up with at the beginning of the game.

And that's your lot for the week. See you next Saturday. ;-)