My WIPs and whatnot

Saigo

Hey everyone, I'm gonna be posting my works in progress and other stuff here. Comments and critique are much appreciated.
This one is for an Android/IOS game currently in early stages of production I'm helping develop. The game itself is a hexagonal turn-based strategy.
It's supposed to be a scout unit. We're still in the testing stage, figuring out the engine and it's capabilities. I think that this model isn't gonna be used for the game in the end, it's probably too high-poly. We also want to test a couple other options, so I made a normal mapped test model, screenshots from blender and Unity below.

Saigo

There are a couple of technical questions that bother me at this stage.
First one, how do you implement colour-coded armies in strategy games, particularly for mobile platforms. For example, we want there to be a red army and a blue army, both using the same types of units. How do we make them change colours? I had a couple of ideas. First one is to use masks to mask out the coloured parts and adjust it with the shader. But I'm afraid that this may cause performance issues, adding a new render path. The second way I came up with seems to have been used in some PC strategy games like C&C generals (and probably the more recent installments in the series), as well as AoE 3. They had some geometry on their models be vertex coloured accordingly. I also thought of making separate texture sets for each color-coded army, but that seems like too much unnecessary work and a waste of memory space.
There's other stuff I'm currently trying to figure out graphics-wise, but this post is already too long, so that's all, folks, thanks.

Saigo

Alright, so, we decided to go for the low-poly, probably with just one diffuse map, making separate textures for each color-coded army. I'v got a question though. One of my coleagues didn't like my texturing (which is admittedly pretty crappy), so he went on to create his own version of the texture for the above unit. He proposes to use this kind of texturing for the final game. Which do you guys think would be better, given the concept art below? (please respond )


Concept art:

http://i.imgur.com/zbtrs.png

GKWill

Saigo wrote: »

There are a couple of technical questions that bother me at this stage.
First one, how do you implement colour-coded armies in strategy games, particularly for mobile platforms. For example, we want there to be a red army and a blue army, both using the same types of units. How do we make them change colours? I had a couple of ideas. First one is to use masks to mask out the coloured parts and adjust it with the shader. But I'm afraid that this may cause performance issues, adding a new render path. The second way I came up with seems to have been used in some PC strategy games like C&C generals (and probably the more recent installments in the series), as well as AoE 3. They had some geometry on their models be vertex coloured accordingly. I also thought of making separate texture sets for each color-coded army, but that seems like too much unnecessary work and a waste of memory space.
There's other stuff I'm currently trying to figure out graphics-wise, but this post is already too long, so that's all, folks, thanks.

I was reading up on vertex coloring today. You might want to check it out! I imagine that it would be just what you need

Saigo

Yeah, thanks, I will google it, although our team lead seems to have decided to just make separate textures for each color. Anyway, another model I've been working on for this game. The units will have 4 "power levels", each with it's own model reflecting the unit's strength. This one's a heavy tank.
The triangle count ranges from ~430 to ~860

Saigo

Here's another model, this is an artillery unit (four models for four power grades)

Saigo

Sorry for wireframe artifacts

Darkleopard

I prefer the bottom ship. It looks much more detailed and it fits better with the concept. The darker colours also create a nice contrast with the blue glass.

I think the bottom one should have the same blue glowy dot at the front as the top one though

I like the turrets from what i can see. Could you post them without wires?

Saigo

Here, started texturing the artillery units.

ivanzu

Bake some ao on it.

Saigo

Ivanzu, I did, actually. Used it for guideline mostly, though. I'm aiming for a more cartoony look though< so there won't be much AO in the final texture.
Wow, this took me a better half of the day, and it's not even finished. Gotta speed it up.

Saigo

Pretty much finished with texturing this bad boy. Probably will touch up the textures later though.

Saigo

Started texturing the tank

J0NNYquid

The scratches on that tank look too uniform, keep it to areas where you would realistically see that type of wear/scratching.

Saigo

J0NNYquid, yeah thanks for the tip, kinda figured it out. The final texture size will be just 256x256, so it wouldn't be so noticeable anyway, but I reduced some wear&tear throughout the texture, 'cause it was too much. Doing some experiments with color schemes now.

Saigo

Pretty much finished with the units, making animations for them now. units, making animations for them now.

J0NNYquid

Looks much better, good stuff!