First Peek: Himeko Sutori

[Nathaniel3W]

Bump, and new website up. I'm still adding to it, but I think it looks OK for now: http://himekosutori.com/. Check out the dev blog. And I might have a couple of new screenshots up there, including better pixel art:

I'm not at my usual computer right now. Screenshot here is too big to show and I can't edit it very well right now.

Please take a look around and let me know what you think. The Kickstarter fell far short, and I'll be relaunching in a couple months, probably after I've already made the game, or at least a 100% working demo, and I'll just use the money for paying off what I've already spent. Funny how that works.

[majic12]

Glad to se this thing moving.Site is nice,simple and it works.As its a jrpg maybe you can go look at old final fantasy game covers and look at the simple style they use.(for example some realy elegant font,white background simple yet elegant hand drawn lines).One thing that may or may not be too good.Take a look at this kismet script :
http://r3dstar.co.uk/?p=12
If used it will make all 3d look flat 2d(talking about the buildings)Im sure you are using a more sofisticated system but just for a quick test it may provide a new idea.(i woudnt reccomend using it as it is as it has a hacky loop at the end but for a prototype maybe)

[Nathaniel3W]

Thanks for the advice majic12. I tried going for the pseudo-isometric camera that's really far away with a very narrow field of view, but unfortunately that confused the depth buffer, and things like rugs on the floor ended up getting messed up. So while I still have a pretty narrow field of view, it's not quite isometric. And I would love to have some of those hand-painted Final Fantasy covers, but I think it'll be faster and cheaper for me to just take a screenshot and put my logo over it...

Speaking of screenshots...
[shot]http://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HS_SnowyScene.jpg[/shot]

Here is a snow material practice/work-in-progress that I’ve been working on, which will be the basis for some of the areas featured in Himeko Sutori. Here you see the following: sparkles on the snow, falling snow particles, materials that automatically change to be snow-covered on the top, one building that needs its lightmaps fixed, and a landscape that needs smaller tesselation. I think it’s off to a pretty good start.

[Nathaniel3W]

New pixel art, water material, and a little sunburst cylinder that I made. I find that environments look a lot more interesting when I make a primary light coming from one direction and add a dimmer contrasting light from the opposite direction. Here there's a primary light yellow light and a dimmer blue-purple light opposite it.
[shot]http://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HS_MeetingAtTheDocks.jpg[/shot]

Also, those buildings came as pre-built meshes. They are a HUGE pain to try to lightmap properly. So I've taken just giving them each massive lightmaps and not worrying how efficient it is. But doesn't that take a long time to build the lighting, you ask? Not really. I've pretty much stopped doing lighting builds on my home PC. My new workflow is this: I make a level on my home PC, save it to Dropbox, RDP onto my AWS graphics instance where 32 Xeon processors churn out in a minute or two what I would normally leave my computer on overnight to build, save the level back into dropbox, shut off the AWS instance to save money, and then keep going. It's working really well for me and I recommend it.

And here are some samples of new character portraits.
[shot]http://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HS_FemalePortraits.jpg[/shot]

I'm still working on menus, inventory, ranged combat, and some other systems. But unfortunately, I'm spending nearly all of my time right now integrating new content, making screenshots, and doing the social media thing. I wish I could just focus on development, but alas, such is the life of a lone indie developer.

[majic12]

Looks realy nice.I like that dropbox approach-May try it in the future(if using a laptop for dev)(but will maintain alive that dream of having a 12 core xeon in the future xd).

About the buldings.Are the lightmaps generated by hand or is it done automatic in udk?



Ganbare!!

[Nathaniel3W]

Thanks majic12. One of these days I too will own that Xeon monster development workstation.

For the lightmaps, I used Blender's lightmap pack, which makes big rectangles too small and small rectangles too big, and doesn't put adjacent triangles next to each other, and overall I just don't like it, but I don't think I have many other options. So while I would like to carefully unwrap every mesh to make a perfect lightmesh, I just don't have the time or patience and instead I give everything a 1024x1024 lightmap and let the Amazon instance blast away at it.

[Nathaniel3W]

Here's my updated combat engine at work:



...And the forum is still acting strangely. Will my text stay this time? Will I be able to see an animated gif here? I guess it's my first time trying to upload one, so maybe the forum never showed animated gifs? Well, you can see the full animated version over at http://himekosutori.com/?p=335

[Nathaniel3W]

With some help from coldscooter, I was able to get actual darkness in my levels, so now I have some beautiful contrast instead of the washed-out pale blue from the default nighttime settings. I'm working on a new combat demo level to show off some of what I've been working on:





That's built with preview lighting and I can see a few mistakes in there (the lightning particle mesh gets drawn relative to camera angle, instead of coming straight down from the sky, for example). I'll fix a few things and keep working.

[Nathaniel3W]

New video! I've started using Fraps, and things are running much more smoothly now. Check out ranged attacks, new character classes, and some bugs.

[Nathaniel3W]

New logo

I needed to pick a new logo for Steam Greenlight and elsewhere. I had been using a really old screenshot with a legion of clones in the army. But as I've been adding more screenshots showing off more content and better lighting techniques, I decided it was also time to change the logo:



I know what it looks like... I want this game logo to evoke a certain classic game. I just hope I'm not overdoing it. But just in case, I've been playing around with some other options.

[majic12]

Not sure about the girl.It does give the look and people from asia do like this stuff i supose but than again i saw many similar designs on steam when browsing the games and im not sure if it will help you or it will get mixed up with the others.
Lets try to use this one
http://himekosutori.com/wp-content/u...and_image2.jpg
replace the background color with white(leaving the flowers intact and lets see how it looks?

If you want to experiment more with post process and stuff,see if you can find something interesting here:
http://unreal.rgr.jp/Mydownloads/WL-Shader/

[Nathaniel3W]

Thanks so much for the pointers majic12. I took a look at those shaders. I might use some, but I think I'm going in the direction of more old school:




I think I'm settling in on the look of the game. I like how things are going with the highly saturated pixelated backgrounds.

The game engine is now taking height into account and I've laid the foundation for height bonuses and flying units.

It's almost 2:00 AM here and I need some sleep.

[Nathaniel3W]

Added slimes and goblins. Also trying to make the game a little more varied with terrain height and lighting (the screenshot on the bottom has roughly the underground light settings I'll be moving forward with). I think I've got the look of the game set, and I have the bare minimum of assets ready... It's time for me to get down to actually building the demo I'll use to promote the Kickstarter relaunch.

[Nathaniel3W]

Squad menu almost done. Made some animated .gifs to show off progress. Details at http://himekosutori.com/?p=472.

[majic12]

Looking very good!I supose when done this is going to be on pc only right?Looking at the game somehow i feel this woud be a win on the playsation store.If you receve good numbers on pc i strongly suggest you write to epic and ask if they coud ,,lend you,, the playstation exporter for the game as in the end they woud benefit from this too.If im luky with my game i know i will do it.
Merry christmas and i wish you all the otaku girls you can handle