Character design in Kalaban

Hello there, fellow readers!

I've talked about monster design before, but I've never gone into the detail of creating a NPC. These are the non-playable characters that roam the game world, and who you interact with.

Colored illustrations of Pena and Cultist henchmen.

The process begins with either me or Tuukka writing a simple description of the character. Who they are, what's their purpose and what they do in the story. Then, our character designer Vesa-Pekka takes the description and draws a sketch art based on the description. If the sketch art is fitting, and matches the soul of the character, we move on to the illustration.

All the colored illustrations in the game are done by me. I take the drawing to Photoshop, and create a new picture based on its design. I don't do a direct line drawings, but I do want the art to closely represent the sketch art.

Sketch art by Vesa-Pekka on the left, and my illustration on the right.

 Actual textures used on the prerendered model.

After the 2D illustration is finished, I take the picture and create the in-game model based on its look. I use the excellent MakeHuman software in the creation of human characters, as modeling them all by hand would take way too much time and effort. After all, our core team consists of four developers, and all the other guys in the team have other day jobs aside from the game development. I'm the only one working on the game full-time, so that brings an extra challenge to the mix.

Prerendered sprites of the model, with correct lighting and shadows.

Close-up of the prerendered model.

All the textures on the models are original paintings, so that they follow the hand-drawn art style. When viewed separately, they are quite simplistic. I've figured, that you don't need a huge amount of detail, when the finished model is going to be a 128 pixel wide sprite on the screen.

When the 3D model has been finished and animated, I render the animations to separate images. Then I take the images to Photoshop, add shadows, shading and color correction to them. After that I export the sequence to the game-ready sprites. Those sprites then become active objects inside the game, which you can interact with. 

Paula's sprite in real-time.

Kaarina encounter and dialogue in-game.

The length of the process varies a lot. The illustrations and textures take about a day to finish, and sometimes I can get a whole character done during one workday. With all the animations, tweaks, etc. it might take two days. If there are some necessary corrections, the process might take up to 2-4 days total. And that's just the visual side. 

Then adding the gameplay element takes a lot more time. That really varies, and is usually a process of weeks or months, and is done in tandem with other development. The writing process behind the NPCs also varies a lot. Some characters were written in a day, others were a result of several months of planning. When you finally see it in the game and interacting with other elements, you can get into the fine tweaking. 

Cultist henchmen sprites. One of the few hand-crafted human models in the game.

NPC encounter at the purification plant.

The more you have elements interacting with each others, the more complex it gets. When you only have a couple of enemies running around with one NPC, things are fairly simple. But when you have a wide cast of characters with their own quests, side objectives and behaviors, it's much harder to keep track of. 

But that's the whole beauty of developing an open-ended game. The fact that you get to change the character's fate is an exciting feature. And once you've tasted that player-driven narrative, you can't go back to simple arcade games. 

Friday diaries #3: Motivation

And: "Where to find it and how to stay on track?" 

All the people working with creative crafts have a problem with motivation. Some sit around and wait for that magical flow state to come around, and then create loads of great stuff in one instant. Others, like screenwriters, go to work everyday, motivated or not, and just start typing away and solving problems.

The corrupted water purification plant from Kalaban.

You're focused, you have a clear vision in your head. But no matter what, sooner or later it will happen. The dreaded block. You're too burned out and exhausted to work on your game. And you will want to change projects, or take a break from your great magnum opus.

You know, just a small break, it wouldn't hurt anybody. You'll think: "Maybe I'll work on something smaller. I'll build something simpler, but also something completely different. I'll be able to finish it in no time, and then come back to the main project."


This is, of course, a huge mistake. What always ends up happening (at least to me it has) is that you will not be motivated to return to your big game after your sidestep. You will not feel rested, at all, and probably you've worked equally hard on your other side project, or even harder. Which kind of defies the purpose of the whole affair in the first place. And if you're already working on a small 2D indie game, it doesn't make that much sense either.

In gamedev, the beginning is easy. It's so great to see new stuff coming together on the screen, and you can always say: "Oh hey, this is just an early test / early pre-pre-alpha demo / it's just not finished yet!" It will fool you into thinking that you've made progress, but in reality you now have two unfinished and unpolished projects instead of one. And neither one of them will ever get polished, if you keep sidetracking and fiddling around with different concepts.

A battlefield, filled with dead monsters, and what you life will feel like while you're doing gamedev.

So, what should you do when you get that block? Relax, take a step back, and try to see your project from an outside perspective. Which part of the game needs more polish, what could be improved? Maybe you ought to re-write some of the code, maybe re-create some of the assets to make 'em better and shinier. Just make sure that you don't derail from the project you're making. Take out your notebook and dream about the finished game, and what you want it to look and feel like.

It's hard to see these things when you're fighting in the trenches, knee-deep in code or generating assets. So, you should take advantage of these blocks, and not just shift projects as you please. One great method, which I've discovered working for me, is to write stories about the minute-to-minute gameplay. What goes on the screen during one 10 minute segment?

We've added Mikko the bartender NPC into the game.

Or you can just write tiny snippets, little paragraphs from the game, to describe the atmosphere of the game. Indie development is so freaking hard, that it's important to remind yourself why you're doing it. And later on, when you've reached the next important milestone in development, you can look back on these little snippets. Maybe they're still useful? Or maybe you'll use them in the next project? Who knows, but at least they're about the game you're working on now.

Have a great friday and a great weekend everybody!

Friday diaries #2

Hello!

I did have a plan to keep these Friday diaries weekly, but then stuff happened, and I didn't have time to do one last week. Soooo... Here we are!

Today we'll have a look into the creation of non-playable characters. In addition to the ravenous mutants, you will come accross some normal human beings too. They're survivors, who have fought against the outbreak, or by some random accident been spared by the monsters.

 

The npc in question today is Mikko the bartender in scene 7. He's a guy who's been through a rough patch, but despite that, or because of it he has survived this long. The character creation in the game always begins with a rough sketch, and then a painted version to give it depth and color. After you have the shape and look figured out, you get into the modeling, and finally of course animation. In the creation of human characters I've decided to use the help of the excellent MakeHuman freeware program.

I'll try to keep you updated frequently from now on. We've currently set an insane milestone to have all the scenes done by the end of summer 2016. We have scenes 1-5 and 7 under construction, and I just began putting the sixth scene together in Photoshop. So, we still have six whole scenes to create from scratch before that...

Anyways, thanks for tuning in and see you soon!

Hello and welcome!

Here's a couple of sketch pieces that I want to present to you. We began our current work on Kalaban in late January 2015. These were painted in early February.

Some of the scenes in the game will be prerendered, and then painted on in Photoshop. This garage at player's home is one of them. Most of the scenery in the final game will be hand-painted however. 

The game's protagonist, Bob. He's an American hermit living in some backwater Finnish forest. He has a small cabin and has pretty much disconnected himself from the world. 

One of the later enemies in the game. It's a pile of logs, twigs and moss which has come alive.

Hound-like enemy, with huge, bloated parts. The reason for their dog-type of appearance is still unknown.