obviously there is a lot going on but I would like to start by focusing on the terrain
it looks like its 3d terrain, but angle the camera points down is pretty locked and that is suspicious to me
it also looks like a perspective camera and not orthographic, but how should the camera be positioned and how should the terrain be constructed for it to look good like this?
are there any values or other tips someone could give, or is this game simply trailblazing?
looks very much like almost a voxel level design, but with rounded edges,
As far as I understand, the author has a YouTube channel where the last couple of dozen streams (each 3+ hours long) are about the development of this game. You might find more information there, give it a try. https://www.youtube.com/@RadicalFishGames/videos
I know but the dev logs are more about game mechanics and game design rather than the technicalities of how they are achieving their graphical style
for example they never specify how they are creating the terrain, they never say how to texture, they never rotate the camera to show what the scene looks like behind the scenes, or give technical details on what angle should the camera be pointing to the terrain to simulate a pixel art style
tbh id not expect to see that level of detail specifically given out. but it looks kinda tile based so, you could probably take it from there…
hmmm i dont know, is it really that simple? I wonder if it was that trivial why its rare to see a game with this style, if all it was needed was to put some pixel art on 3d terrain why isnt there any other game that looks like this
Because it takes more effort than 2 but realistically is 2d. You need sufficient 3d blocks to build it. Rather than just some flat art work.
I have a feeling the terrain itself is 3D. However I think there are lots of layered 2D props, in particular the stone columns. It kind of reminds me to stuff you’d see back in the PSX days. Just speculation, though.
Yes they do. Just by quickly jumping around the videos I was able to find plenty of examples of camera being rotated and asset creation process, which gives some hints of how things are put together, you just have to know what to look for. Although sometimes video compression makes it a bit harder to understand since you can’t clearly see how the pixels get deformed as camera angle changes.
Some things you can see:
there is 2.5D maybe 3D tiling system for level creation
most of the things including are actually rendered as 3d models in one of multiple ways (as confirmed by camera rotation in developer videos, and also way perspective changes for objects on the sides of screen) they don’t need to be complex 3d models, mostly combination of simple planes
a lot of bilboarding of 2d sprites
a lot of custom tooling to help with the asset creation process
seems like for the some of the objects the process is roughly
draw 2d sprite on top of a screenshot at the angle it would be in the game
split the sprite into multiple parts
use custom tooling for creating basic geometry and projecting the sprites on to it, different parts of a single object can have different kind of geometry and projection settings
In some of the videos you can se at least for some ground shapes/walls being drawn similar to how you would draw them for isometric game. I assume they are later projected onto simple 3d geometry just like the various props are.
In some ways it’s a bit similar to the trick that’s occasionally used for visual effects where you: record video, do camera tracking, create a simplified 3d geometry for walls/ground, project the images from videos on top of 3d geometry. That already makes it easier for shadows and reflection to correctly interact between composited 3d objects and filmed environment, but you can even slightly move the position of camera as long as it doesn’t differ from original footage too much. See some of IanHubert tutorials if you want to know more just to get a grasp of what I am talking about (although it won’t help you much with making a game)
Situation here with 2d sprites is somewhat similar, everything is setup up so that at typical angle 3d projection almost cancels out and sprites look almost like they did when originally drawn with minimal deformation. If you naively draw sprites from top or side angles and applied to 3d geometry they would look a lot more skewed when looked at from the main gameplay camera angle.
One thing that surprised me the most was how characters and their animations work. Turns out they have full 3d rigs for them. Swapping out some of the sprites like head depending on viewing angle a bit like original doom , but at individual body part level (not sure with or without bilboarding) and 3d rotating others as indicated by rotated pixels. Now that I look gameplay videos again it can be noticed as well. Would have been more obvious while playing locally.
If none of this makes sense to you, you have a very long road ahead. Making something like this is in many ways a lot harder than making a regular 3d or 2d game, since off the shelf tooling and workflows will not get you very far. Be prepared for a lot of coding, custom tool creation and having good understanding of how computer graphics work. If this is not your strong sides, consider making a game which better suits your skillset or making a team with people that have the right skills. Sure it’s always possible to expand your skillset, but learning works most best when there is certain proportion of things you know and things you don’t. If things are too easy you don’t learn anything, but if there is too much new stuff learning speed falls close to 0.
You can also find some 2.5d stuff free on youtube, heres one, its old (and the standard assets have changed as have many improvements) but, this may give you some ideas
oh and heres the team talking how they made their graphics
took like not a lot to find them on youtube
thanks friends, could you look at this part for example?
there is something here that is the skew factor, do you think the geometry is actually getting skewed or is it just a camera effect?
ATM im just focusing purely on the terrain, I just want to setup my scene with manually placed quads for terrain and setup my perspective camera correctly, thats what Im attempting here
my struggle is if I just apply rotations to the vertical walls(skew) or not
should the horizontal grounds also be rotated?
You should be looking to work some things out yourself…
i mean its not like there are tutorials for this specific method and im not some kind of code genius, thers not much I can do except ask for very surgical advice
why should there be a tutorial on how to achieve absolutely everything? programming and especially game dev is about creating, and using knowledge and imagination into something, if all thats gonna happen is you are going to effectively copy/paste everything from someone elses work, Im out, Im not going to facilitate that.
how did this suddenly take an anti tutorial turn?
i dont know how to reply, without tutorials most of the people here would never get off the ground, me included
also what an unhinged and wierd cope to drop while exiting a conversation, accusing me of plagiarism when I dont even have a project or even know what im doing
if you just dont want to help/ or you dont even know how this is done, just say that, no need to drop inflammatory takes on your way out
I did not accuse you of plagiarism in the slightest
if you expect to find a tutorial on absolutely the finest detail of everything, you are going to be incredibly disappointed. If you cant research given the pile of information in the videos especially the bunch of videos the company whos style you admire have made to talk specifically about it, I and others are not likely to want to give you that much of our time and put that work in for you.
Look at the the information you bought to this thread - you arrived saying “how do I do this” … you clearly didnt google the details on the twitter post to find their youtube videos, nor does it seem have you googled your question… So, Im looking at the fact I have done those for you already, but you’re the one who wants it, not me. Why would I keep doing this for you? I a reasonable human and I provided you pointers, but i have my own games to make, job and life to live. If you cant do the googling now, all it says to me is theres going to be a ton more questions you could have answered yourself and I will be dragged down into your game with no wish to be there.
so when you say:
“you are going to effectively copy/paste everything from someone elses work”
thats not accusing me of plagiarism??
also now Ive gone back to the thread to see your contributions. first you say that you found the youtube but samana1407 was the one who found it on the 2nd post of this thread, so I dont know why u are claiming ownership of that
you dont have to do anything for me, but you also dont need to suddenly throw wild accusations that are completely uncalled for under the guise that you were helping me
Huh. I think I know what’s going on here and it’s actually pretty clever. The trees are made up of just a bunch of individual elements that are in 3D space, but the columns look like they have something more going on. I’ll poke around in Blender and see if I can’t give you an example of how I’d accomplish a similar effect.
I don’t see any videos specifically on the topic of the columns, but most of what I have seen appears to be some combination of 2D and 3D elements in 3D space. It’s a shame I don’t have anywhere near the time to watch the videos because he’s definitely communicating back and forth with his community and answering questions.
Working on Parallax Backgrounds
Scenes and Effects