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Ethereal Darkness Interactive's The Lost City of Malathedra screenshots + discussion

Started by EDI Nov 28, 2005 at 10:16 AM 142 replies 42.6k views
Original Post
EDI
EDI
Greetings all, Much like the stickied 'isometric interaction' thread in this forum (which concentraited on the isometric concepts and visuals in our first game Morning's Wrath; I am starting another thread where I will post screen shots and discuss aspects of isometric games (in an effort to improve their form and function) for "Project2" which is the current working title of our next game. So feel free to post questions, suggestions, etc. Keep in mind we are in the engine development stages and have been for about a month & 1/2 now. And to start things off our most recent screen shot: What you are seeing is a terrain made up of textured quads, and some 'entities' (the trees); their shadows are simply runtime blackened, alpha blended and skewed 'blits' of the actual image, I think it makes for a good look. Also keep in mind, the art style for this game is to be more 'cartoonish' than Morning's Wrath, which is why you might notice exagerated geometry, solid colors, and 'ink' outlines. [Edited by - EDI on June 1, 2006 8:37:03 AM]
smr
smr
That's very nice! I really like the trees.
H_o_p_s
H_o_p_s
I wish I had cool screenshots to show off.... :
Looks great!
BRING BACK THE BLACK (or at least something darker)
Stani R
Stani R
Honestly, "cartoonish" was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the screenshot, so I think it's fairly safe to say that you're on the right track. ^_^

What are the lighter areas under some of the trees? You'd think it should be darker instead.
EDI
EDI
Quote:
Original post by lightbringer
What are the lighter areas under some of the trees? You'd think it should be darker instead.


For test purposes I just have some of the trees lit.

dave
dave
I think the slight glow under the trees is nice because it evens out the plain colour of the ground. I think that you should decouple the light from the tree, by having a lantern or something. I understand it is for testing though, hehe.

Dave
dave
dave
BTW is that cell-shaded or do you have a good artist?
EDI
EDI
Any 'entity' in the game can be lit (weither it has a graphical representation or not), so everything from a tree down to a lamp on a table can have it's own light source =D

The trees are sprites, i modeled them and rendered them and performed some post processing. So while i am the programmer I guess I am also the 'good artist' [grin]

P.S.
I also did most of the in-game art for Morning's Wrath too.
dave
dave
Wicked.

See im not such a good artist, or at least i could be if i had the time. What apps do you use for art and how long did that tree take you.

ace
EDI
EDI
I primarily use Rhino3D (NURBS solid object modeling / Rendering) and Photoshop (Texture creation / Post Processing).

Hmm. let's see I am gonna wager that tree took me between 30min. to an hour

the leaves were the hardest part to do, =)
Eldron
Eldron
IMO the stylized cellshades look can very easily go wrong, it's one of the harder styles to do right, it's actually quite easier to get away with a more realistic look.


it's too early for me to comment on the art, but the engine seems quite interesting :P
Artist - Mistlands
EDI
EDI
Hey all,

Sorry I've been away, lots of work these days, lots of decisions (my developer journal can shed a lot of light on recent events)

to summarize, I had contemplated about using true 3D instead of 2D isometric, but finally decided to come back to 2D, even though Isometric has it's problems, we have conquered most of them with Morning's Wrath, and when all is said and done it is very easy format to work in.

So, here is a comped(composited) together view, of some things I've been working on, trying to further get how the game will look.



this example shows how a ground might look if we used a 2D sort of 'texture splatting' which seemingly will work better than traditionally making tile-sets with blending fring edges.

the final view size might be a bit more zoomed in, we want to make sure you can see your character's face clearly in this game 'unlike in MW which was by far more 'zoomed out'.
EDI
EDI
As far as my preliminary work with shadows can say, i am probably not going to worry about it.

I've found, over all, our target audience doesnt care a whole lot about graphical perfection, as long as it 'looks good' that is of course very subjective, but for the most part little details like that (as long as they arnt glaring) are likely okay.
Eldron
Eldron
As an artist I'm extremely picky about graphics and mostly dislike most indiegames (VERY bad habit)..

However, when I look past all that I still find very nice style in the graphics and enjoyment in gameplay.

I'm sure you aren't, but have you ever thought of using 3d characters on the 2d tile world, I know it would save a ton of work in maniging sprites with all animations, plus you'll get free paperdolling.
Artist - Mistlands
EDI
EDI
we've thought about it, but so far it seems the issue that we arn't going 3D is because it is very hard to get a real-time 3D character to look as good as a pre-rendered 2D one
Eldron
Eldron
We're living in the age of hyperpolygonal realtime 3d characters, it could even look better, with smooth animations rather than choppy predefined directions of fewframed animations.

Since you show the character from a distance, you could even get away with a small number such as 800 triangles, and get an equal amount of detail that mornings wrath had.

The only issue would be getting artists to do that work, since realtime polygonal stuff with texturework is quite different from the highpoly stuff.



I'd guess..
Artist - Mistlands
theshadowfan
theshadowfan
The fact that the team is only 2 people (excluding me) we don't have time to waste on modeling, texturing, and animating 3D objects. We're not going to just go out and add 10 people to the team so that we can achieve something so small.

We all want AAA graphics in the end but that is where many indie developers fail. As an indie developer we have to make things easy on ourselves and the 2D route is easiest for us.
Packom Interactive - Low Cost Indie-Game Marketing/Publishing Service
Eldron
Eldron
True, but artisticly they're just both as hard.. even though it might seem that 2d is easier to do, they'll end up just as bad or as good. Both of them.

Graphics(and music) is that important third pillar in a game, next to the programming and the design, and should not be neglected, and a good artist should be able to make all the art for the game. But I will agree that finding a good one that'll work for just a small sum is quite hard.
Artist - Mistlands
IronGryphon
IronGryphon
Looking good guys. Can't wait to see how this project progresses.

Just out of curiosity, do you already have a story line in mind or is that coming after the engine? If so, do you mind enticing us?
SDBradley
CGP
"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read." ~Mark Twain
EDI
EDI
yup, we do have a story line in mind, and some of it has been written already, once I decided on the basic story it was going to have I decided to jump into the engine. Once the engine is complete we will again jump back to story development and perform a concise write-up.

For now the story is under-wraps, but when the time comes the premise will be released =D

Also, some screen shots of progress.



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