Full Speed Ahead

This week was a rough one. With our final prototype deadline closing in, we pushed ourselves to get everything ready for approval from our supervisors. Our final prototype as well as our full art bible had to be completed. We had to make sure every visual element of our game was polished and consistent, applying feedback already given of the supervisors.
On top of that, our Game Design Model (GDM) needed to be finalized, documenting all the game’s mechanics, systems, and overall vision. Balancing all these tasks was no easy task, but we pushed through. Now, with everything we planned done, we wait eagerly for the approval of our supervisors and prepare for the next steps!

It’s been a challenging but rewarding week, and we’re happy to continue our efforts into this project

Art bible 

Our artists worked hard on the created of our final form of the art bible. For the layout of the overall pages, we tried to stick with an ancient Greekish theme. Choosing for brown and blue as the main colors and painted vase inspired art for the intro page.

Our Art Bible is made up of several pages, covering essential visual aspects of the game:

1. Core Themes & Inspirations

• Reference images from ancient Greek pottery, statues, and architecture.
• Color palette is mainly inspired by Mediterranean seas, beautiful scenery and typical clothing
  

• Art style inspired by floppy, easy on the eye couch games
  

2. Character Design

Player

• Silhouettes and overall proportions that translate into a friendly and squishy character
• Clothing design that easily conveys ancient Greek setting

Enemies

• Silhouettes and overall proportions that translate into a dangerous appearing enemy or NPC
• a chunky style, still following the original intended art style

3. Boat design & environment

• A proper environment design and shape language, combining enemy and player shape elements 

• Lineup page for size measurement
  

• In-game props designed with Greek motifs, such as amphorae, shields, and coins with adjusted shapes and sizes to differentiate in game interact ables
  

4. UI and visual elements

• A cute UI that still follows the ancient Greek theme and art style accordingly
  

• RFX portraying the god's wrath as well as some player sprint clouds and water splashes for a nice polish game!
  

5. Other

• These are just a couple of things from our complete art bible, showcasing the effort and thought we put into this project! These are more technical and practical information regarding unwrap and texturing strategies, shaders and more. Keep up with the project to find out the results!

Prototypes

To make the water in the game somewhat realistic (following a toonish art style), in the sense that waves should move especially during stormy events. I created a water shader ripple effect. Mimicking sea waves. It is in the early stages, hence being a prototype, but I would like to add randomization in the waves itself later on and some other nice features.

Shader overview:

• A sea foam white outline helping to guide the shapes 
• A translucent like material that fades to show depth in the water 
• Slight reflections on the surface

Fully realized active ragdoll

To make the game fun and goofy we wanted to make an active ragdoll. This way when running around the ship and getting knocked into stuff it is funny and satisfying. Also when picking up items or boxes the physics will make this challenging by having the player try and balance themselves. The biggest issue we faced when making this is to have the animations work for the ragdoll, this means targeting a specific rotation for each joint to the rotation of the bone from the animation. 

First try getting the character physicalised

Active ragdoll (left) mimicking the animation of  the kinematic character (right)

Idle and Walking animations implemented with the Active Ragdoll

Basic game loop prototype

Now lets put everything together,  just a new random interactable spawner and we have ourselves a small game loop. The players need to interact with the interactions spawning or else the boat loses health. If the players can hold out for long enough then they win or else they lose. 

Start of the Game prototype

What's next

Next week we will be beginning production of the game itself. We are very excited to begin!