Thanks, Shinobi!

I’ve written about the replacement of placeholders in the last post, and keen readers might have noticed that I mainly posted about the new level, and animations were more of an afterthought. This might give off the impression that the new level is a bigger factor, but thats not a fair description of the situation. The level alone already did a lot to get that feeling, but the reason I didn’t praise the animation as much was simple: I added animations, but those were only placeholder-animations as well: While I replaced the placeholder-model with the finished one, that model didn’t had it’s real animations, so I tried to do them myself, and since I’m no animator, I didn’t do all that well.

Fast forward a bit, and the situation has changed. Our good friend Shinobi (or visit the german page) kindly helps us out a bit when it comes to models and animation – and he’s incredibly talented as well. The main character was modelled by him, and it’s fantastic to see the amount of polish, and how well this characterizes and shapes the main character – true, it is the inside that counts, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to play kickass looking characters in games, right?

He didn’t only create said character, he also made the animations for another keycharacter that I modelled, despite some problems with the polyflow, so it’s even more amazing to see how good these animations are. While I don’t have all animations he made yet, I’ve seen them, and can’t wait to see the new, great-looking animations in the new, great-looking level. Seeing as the whole thing slowly comes together is an experience that is difficult to describe, and on such a larger-scale project, it is something that is somewhat hard to believe for me … I’ve created small projects before, but this is a whole different beast. Seeing our combined vision slowly coming to life like this – thats one of the moments that keep you going in gamedesign.

So… thank you, Shinobi! Don’t forget to check out his games, and buy them when he releases games for sale (something that is said to happen in the near future) – you are supporting a great individual!

“Graphics don’t matter”

Aaah, this might become a controversal topic. I can already see the dozens of comments telling me that I know nothing! … Getting that kind of comments after what feels like years of casually mentioning that it is possible to comment certainly would have a nice ironic flavor to it. But, that is, surprisingly enough, not what I want to talk about.

Recently, I switched from complete placeholder-graphics to something a lot closer to the real thing, that, in most cases, only needs a bit more polishing (and, in other parts, might require more). And, surprisingly, this is something that just amazes me. The difference is incredible – what was nothing more than a bland proof-of-concept, or just a test, suddenly transformed into … something more resembling a game than ever before.

I know that this might sound shallow, and I am aware that its always about the gameplay and not about the graphics. And, yes, of course, I know what people mean by that. However, what those often don’t realize is how much graphics actually contribute to the concept of the gameplay. For example, if a game is based in the real world, then graphics that mimic that more closely actually help the game and actually improve the gameexperience.

Or do they? I don’t think that is necessarily tied to the pure technical standpoint, but that it is more about the polish of these games. If everything fits together well – like the new level and the new models do, but the old testlevel didn’t – it suddenly becomes more than the sum of the parts, and to see this happening right in front of you is quite amazing.

It’s a good idea to start work with a testlevel and placeholders, obviously, but it can be demotivating since gameplay doesn’t change so much for that one part, and the graphics simply don’t hold up. However, when you do replace everything, it all feels fresh again. It’s quite the surprise. The same goes for adding animations: The moment you add them, it feels a lot more professional.