Bone hunters Devlog 2

Welcome to the second devlog of Bone hunters. This week we mainly focused on finishing up the artbible and tech document. Besides that, we also worked out our very first character, which allowed us to test out our shaders more in detail, as well as get us some better assets for the artbible.

Art

Character 

First we blocked out our model in ZBrush and continued working on it until polished.

Afterwards we retopologized the model in 3DSMAX, to later unwrap it with the lazy unwrapping technique. Throw a simple gradient texture on there and the first character is finished. Later on we implemented our character in unity and applied a toon shader on it.

Vegetation

For the vegetation we tried different stylizations of foliage, using the lazy unwrapping restricts us so we can’t use any opacity maps, so while modeling we tried going for a different technique.

UI: Main menu

We wanted to have a visual representation of our main menu already so our artists made a quick sketch to get a general idea of how this would look.

Prototype

This week we have a more robust and playable prototype! You can now play with multiple players and interact with each other to try and bring the bone back to a dog house. 

The camera now also moves according to the players who are closer or further away from each other and follows the position of the bone. This should help lay the focus for the players on where the action is taking place.

We've also added some visuals to show which dogs are barking and in which direction so you as a player can have a more clear representation of what you are doing.

One thing that we found very annoying in playtesting was that when you had stunned the dog who possessed the bone at that time, he would get stunned. This meant he would be stuck in place and block a pathway to get to the bone. We have fixed this by making it so that a dog who is stunned can effectively be pushed around.

We look forward to seeing you back next week where we will begin the production phase!

Questions for the team: 

How do you tackle gradient shapes, that gradually get more noticeable?

• In the unwrapping phase, only stitch the parts where you need a soft edge, cut the rest loose and scale it. 

How will the playing field be laid out?

• The playing field will contain a middle area where players can dig for bones, as well as obstacles around the outside creating different pathways and options for the players to reach their dog house. The dog house will be placed on the corners of the playing field.

How will we implement skill inside the game?

• As well as adding mud patches, the skill lies in finding the quickest path to your destination, as well as in knowledge of the map and predicting other players’ decisions.

How will the chasing players catch up?

• We are going to introduce mud patches which will force players to move at a slower speed so depending on the path you take it will be quicker.