From the Desk of .blob_




June 19, 2023



Today I decided I'm going to make a game.

Not really for anyone in particular, but because I liked making my dad's father's day gift this year.

I have a lot of ideas, and I figure I'll start a devlog here. It'll mostly be a random listing of thoughts and I probably will keep the page unlisted

I suppose this will be an unofficial design document for the game (tentatively called "Postcards from Erie Falls") ((writing that out, it's subject to change.))



KEY CONCEPTS:

Figures 1 & 2



RANDOM IDEAS:

CONSIDERATIONS TO BE MADE:

so, essentially, for the next *while* it'll be a lot of playing around with ideas. I think one of the first things I can do is nail down an artstyle, which means building a workflow. given that 95% of my time working on the father's day gift was spent writing POV-Ray code to build the environmnent, I should probably get good at using blender. I futzed around with a color ramp shader in blender, then put the render through the same dithering process I used for the FD23 project in Photoshop (using B&W instead) and the result is...fine.





I'm not sure how viable the shader is; it's very simple and as a result leaves a lot to be desired. of course, the hard part is building and modeling the environments. lots to learn, lots to do.


June 22, 2023

I've spent my spare time the last few days (limited) trying to become more familiar with blender. I feel like every time I touch it, I vow never to do so again, but I cannot return to working in POV-Ray, it's just far too much time wasted.

a couple things to go over:

DITHERING


I've been trying to find a good workflow for a nice and easy way to emulate the monochrome 68k Macintosh look without hand-drawing everything (like the old mac games often were).

Another big influence is Lucas Pope's "Return of the Obra Dinn", in which he also tried emulating the 1-bit monocrhome Mac look. The main difference being his goals were a lot loftier given he wanted to implement it real time in a moving 3D environment. I'm just going for pre-rendered backgrounds and assets.

However, I did scour his devlog (which also inspired me to keep track of my own work) and while there was some really inspiring innovation, his problems and mine don't have too much crossover. He did his modeling and some scripting in Maya and wrote his shaders by hand for Unity. I'm trying my hand at using the shader nodes in Blender and then rendering the result (see the last devlog).

There really isn't too much out there that's helpful for *exactly* what I'm going for. I'm having to piece together a lot. I've tried out a few different options so far:
rendering out a test scene without any individual materials doesn't really produce a great result; very little separation (unless you blow out the image either via the lighting or adjusting the levels in Photoshop).

Lucas' method in Obra Dinn involved a shader that colors each face of the geometry based on its position and normal; he did it specifically so he could have a post-processing shader draw lines separating the geometry. I decided to try to throw together a shader to do the same, but to use the color separation for the dithering process.

Then it was just a matter of playing with some of the dithering options in Photoshop.

June 23, 2023

I didn't really get to do as much as I wanted yesterday, but today was very productive, despite me being away from my computer.

I spent the day up in the mountains gathering some research materials (I ended up buying a few books on the history of the area). I've decided that at the top of this page I'm going to add some links to different sections:

now that the housekeeping is out of the way:

NARRATIVE & GAMEPLAY LOOP


While on my drive, I imagined two potential plot hooks:

After getting some feedback, the second seems the most compelling (and fleshed out). I am picturing a gameplay loop that involves bouncing from location to location in this little town and its surrounding areas searching for documents that will prove your case. Once you get some new evidence, you can return to the "thinking" screen and connect the dots and potentially unlock another lead. Half point and click adventure, half document searching.

the idea of going through doucments came later but hit me like a ton of bricks. I got lost down the rabbithole that is the ADK museum's online archive. As I was reading 100 year old letters, and travel brochures from the 50s, train schedules from the late 1800s, I realized hours had passed and I was still glued. I imagined coming across some vast conspiracy through all these people's lives, I was picturing what these people did, what remained of their home? Is it still standing? if so, how much of it is original? Things like that.

That's what made me want to shift to making a game like this; problem is, I'm not sure its something very many people are interested in. Then again, maybe if its a well crafted story with a fleshed out world then who knows. At any rate, I'm undertaking all of this for myself, really. A. I just want to see if I can do it, B. I don't want to be a game developer, but I often find myself thinking of games I'd like only to find out they don't exist.

essentially, i've got these broad goals in mind for this project:

that's just on the narrative side of things, too. as for the art style side of things:


DITHERING PART II


I have a hunch I want to follow up on to continue solidifying an art style. Although I am a bit torn; with a lot of these documents I've found through this museum, many are quite colorful; that doesn't really translate terribly well in a monochrome game. This may be something I account for (maybe shift to a limited color palette) or I sacrifice for the sake of the art style.

At any rate, I'm going to try something different: in MacPaint, there are patterns you can use for the bucket tool, which is what you'll see a lot of MacPaint or MacPaint esque things use for dithering purposes or for flat shading. If I can either make a paint tool, or re-create the patterns as photoshop patterns and then drop in a color-ramped render, then I can just paint-bucket in a good shade.

Hidden Agende (left), Deja Vu (right) are examples of some blockier shading styles


June 26, 2023

I had a couple days off but at the same time I didn't.

I went up north again and also played around with the dithering more (which I'll geti into shortly). I also started reading some of the books I bought to get a feel for how the area I'm taking inpsiration from came to be which has been really interesting so far. A non-spoilery thing (since I won't include anything too too similar to the case) to look up is that of "Charles Frederick Herreshoff" and the continued tragedies that occurred at his "manor" (it was a cabin).



At any rate, I also started compiling a loose timeline of major events in my "story". I actually struggled a bit to encompass everything that had been going through my head for the past couple of days, so it's subject to change, but I think its going to act as a loose guide.



DITHERING PART III


I've actually got a pretty decent workflow going. I ditched all the color ramping and normal-based shaders for something way more simple. Assign the darker parts dark materials, assign the lighter parts lighter materials. Simple as that. Also, introducing edge detecting (through Blender's janky 'freestyle') goes a long long way. I'm finding that adjusting the levels in photoshop and varying the degree of diffusion dithering can produce the best results. In some cases, some hand-editing prior to the dithering process is necessary (for the things that Freestyle can't trace; particularly normal maps).



(just to clarify, I probably can't put the Gundam RX-78 in the game).

July 17, 2023

Oh jeez it's been a bit.

The past few weeks has seen me running back up to the mountains as often as possible just to explore things; I've also done a lot of reading about the area to get a feel for how life worked in the region starting from the early settlement days. I've got a loose plot in my head, and I've got things I want to do but I'm having a hard time coming up with a meaningful and engaging gameplay loop to support it.
So, until I figure that out, I've mostly just been practicing with Blender along with modeling. I purchased a couple books; one of which consists of USDA Plans for Log Cabins and other woodsy homes that I can use for practice and for inspiration. I've also taken lots of pictures of various buildings and towns that I'd like to try to recreate (one of them is included in the above post).
Here are some examples:


I've also been mocking up an idea in Unity, which *did* work-- but again, I'm having trouble finding a way to capitalize on it so I'm going to have to workshop it a bit.


October, 2023


This project is more or less on indefinite hiatus.

I wanted to work on this project because I wanted a game where you unravel the interesting history of a small town...

Then I actually got to do that in real life.

In August, I started working for a local museum and specifically on a couple exhibits that proved to be exactly the kind of thing I wanted out of this game, which effectively eliminated any reason to learn a ton about game dev just to experience that feeling.

Now, that's not to say I can't put some of those things to use later down the line, but it's very much not at the top of my to-do list at the moment. I'll likely remove the link to this devlog from the desktop and move it to the workshop instead.

cheers,
blob