Oddworld DS

Spoon_of_death · Dec 2005

Abes Exodus and Oddysee were some of my favourite games back when I was still a happy kid with my Playstation

Im planning on modeling/skinning some of my favourite oddworld characters with Nintendo DS specs, because I have some cool gameplay ideas with the dual screen/mic. Anyway, heres the first beastie at 256 tris:

Ill have this one skinned @ 01-01-2006

C&C Welcome!!!

Ramucho · Dec 2005

cool stuff! it'd be cool to wisthle on the mic!
good luck

warby · Dec 2005

oddworld rules keep goin

/ i see alot of DS spec style stuff recently .... is there something i dontknow ??? like a thrparty emulator epxorter something wiered like that ?

Steakhouse · Dec 2005

DS is awesome is all.

Zatoichi · Dec 2005

Man, I would love to see some of those games for the PSP or DS. The original Abe's Playstation games were intense hair-pullers/controller-throwing goodness.

Badname · Jan 2006

[ QUOTE ]
oddworld rules keep goin

/ i see alot of DS spec style stuff recently .... is there something i dontknow ??? like a thrparty emulator epxorter something wiered like that ?

[/ QUOTE ]
There is a huge homebrew DS scene going on. You can find some links @ my blogroll http://www.apollostudio.nl/ds/ Drunkercoders is one of the main sites.
I think if you come with all your art to the #dsdev chan on efnet hopefully somebody would like to program it

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

@everyone: Thanks for your kind replies!
@Badname: Vette site man!(Im Dutch as well

) And thanks for the links, maybe ill make some sort of DS model pack so those homebrewers could use the models if they wanted to...

Anyway, Im done with the skinning/texturing and present you:

Scrabby!

Im going to model another character and make some scenes... C&C and requests welcome!!!

Badname · Jan 2006

Thats cool man! Though i remember oddworld a a bit darker, darker textures would be maybe better?
Cool that your dutch! Do you have msn/icq ?

cholden · Jan 2006

Looks good overall, though your material is a little blurry in spots. I'd go with a harder edge between the yellow/red transition on the chest, and add a few more hard edges here and there to enhance the texture further.

Also, keep an eye on your vert and uv count. You want to keep these numbers a close to the same (especially) for low spec, portable game art. Here's what Jon told me about this:

okay, as I understand it, every time a UV has seams it doubles the verts.

say you have two faces, connected by one edge.

_____
|__|__|

that has six verts total, and six UVs.

split one face from the other on the UV map and you get this

___ ___
|__| |__|

suddenly, you get two more UVs. but on the model, the vert count is the same. but at runtime, as I understand it, it goes by the UV count instead of the vert count, and that adds up, since game engines actually count VERTS instead of polygons.

It's possible that the verts\UVs thing is only our engine, but in any case, having clean UVs that are properly sewn and arranged is a great habit to get into. And if there's a performance bonus, too? Then great!"

JKim3 · Jan 2006

I think the verts/UV thing is with a lot of engines. From what I read about Gamebyo, it was like that. I think the engine we use is the same. But, it's not only a cpu issue, it also saves memory to have less UV/verts, if I'm not mistaken, which is a big thing for console/handheld development.

I never played the games, so I'm not familiar with this creature. Do you have a ref pic of it?

Cubik · Jan 2006

and

Some more onepixel detailing would be nice, with some sharper highlights and contrast. The texture is quite blurry right now, and lacks the definition of the original.
I would tweak the saturation a little too. Although being able to separate your enimies from the background is essential, the old texture just doesn't look like that.
There are also some diffrences in your model and the originals pevils regions which may well have been a conscious decision on your part.

hawken · Jan 2006

I'd say judging from games like animal crossing which have terrible pixel picking, opposed to nintendogs which has none, blurry textures are the way to go. You could probably get it down to 8bit 64x64 though. Set your veiwport to hardware and find out. Because the DS doesn't do filtering. Lovelly, sexy, why the hell not(!), filtering.

your actual size example, is bigger than your texture sheet, in fact I recon that texture could work at 32x32 pixels.

Cubik · Jan 2006

The pixelation (not really the word for it) in AC textures has to be due the tolower/fewer textureresolution/amount of the textures used in AC as opposed to Nintendogs. If spoon sticks with the 128x128 texture, he has, in my eyes, plenty of space in which he can do more detailing and still avoid the extreme pixelation of AC. If he goes with a 64x64 or lower textureresolution, then he's probably run into some pretty severe pixelation if he tries to do any more detailing.

hawken · Jan 2006

dude, it's called "pixel picking" when refering to 3d in motion (pixelation is all about resizing). where by the texture is detailed, or using single pixel thickness lines and so on, and the hardware is choosing which pixels to draw to the screen. IE: "Picking". It appears that the more blurry the texture, the more of an appearance to filtering it has, where pixels are not picked but averages guessed from the pixels around it and drawn to the screen (bilinear filtering).

if anything, it's worse on higher rez detailed textures slapped on models that are drawn further away than the actual footprint of the texture.

EarthQuake · Jan 2006

well thats completely true but i still have to think he could push the detail a bit more and not have too many problems, it just seems lacking in detail now, a little bit of pixeling here would go a long way imo

Steve Schulze · Jan 2006

Ah, the scrab. My favourite.
I'd love to see an Abe game hit the DS. Just being able to shout "all a' ya... work!" and have the mudokins respond in turn would be wonderful.

As for the teture stuff, Hawken definitely knows the score. Your texture looks pretty on your nicely filtered 3d packaged but once you drop it onto the DS it'll start looking really nasty for the reasons mentioned above.

I've recently shipped a Spongebob Squarepants game for the DS, all character textures were either 32^2 or 64^2, 16 colours. Anything higher res just lost all detailed and turned into a pixelated mess.

You'll probably want to keep it quite bright too seeing as the DS washes out colours quite a bit.

HumbleEgo · Jan 2006

Hawken and Jackablade are spot on. Especially with the saturation, one might be surprised on how abhorrently neon colors must be to look half decent on the DS.

That said, I think the texture could be pushed further even at 64^2 @ 16 colors. For one the lighting is a bit muddy. I think pushing the highlights a touch on the top of the head, back and knees would help a great deal. As well as putting some proper shadows on the underside of the neck, chin, thighs and pelvis.

Good start though!

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

WHOA!!! More crits than I asked for lol!

Nah just kidding, really appreciate the tips!!!

And thanks for the 'inside' info about the whole uvmap/polycount thing, the texture specs and the color issue! Heres what im going to do:

1: Make 2 UV maps: 1 64x64 for the head, 1 64x64 for the body
2: Make sure the UV's are as 'clean' as possible
3: Texture them at a 1:1 scale(I skinned the previous skin on a higher reolution and resized it later, thats why its so blurry)
4: Im not sure about this one, should I make the texture darker or brighter?

@Jackablade: what polycounts did you guys use for characters/objects/scenes?
@Badname: Yeah I have MSN! Ill PM it

Expect to see some progress on the scrab this week, and the model of a new character as well!

Steve Schulze · Jan 2006

Everything as low poly as possible. Main character was around 400 which was probably a little excessive. NPCs weighed it at between 100 and 200 polys. Scenery used a lot of alpha planes and the like to save polys.

Basically you just need to consider what you're going to need to show on the screen at any one time then split them up between the 2000 or so (I forget exactly what the number is) polygons that the DS can display at once.

Given that you'd be likely doing all the pretty backgrounds in 2d, theres rarely all that much on screen in the Abe games. With this in mind, you could probably get away with 256 polys for your scrab although keep in mind that you'll probably want a few more for the more detailed creatures like the mudokins and sliggs.

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

Thanks for the info/tips jackablade, I found some screenshot from that spongebob game and it looks pretty sweet!!!

And now for the smallest pimp ever:

I actually think it looks better/sharper than the old skin

Pixel painting rules!

It was hard getting a clean unwrap to fit on an 64x64 texture, so the inside from the mouth is still 'cut' from the outside. Expect to see the body soon!

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

I finished the new skin and tweaked the model a bit, its now at 240 polygons

Time for another mini-pimp:

Im calling this done, so I can move on to another oddworld character

Thanks for the help/tips on this one guys! I really feel like the texture improved a lot! (C&C is still welcome tho

)

notman · Jan 2006

That's very cool. I likey

sevenfingers · Jan 2006

That's all kinds of awesome. The new texture is a serious improvement. I agree with the previous comments about bumping the contrast though; something like this:

LowpolyTroll · Jan 2006

wow nice model and texture but i think the colors on the first one look better then the ones above maybey its just me?

Steakhouse · Jan 2006

LowpolyTroll: the reason the second one is so eye-bleed-neon is because that's the level of saturation you need to get things to look "normal" on the Nintendo DS.

LowpolyTroll · Jan 2006

thnx cuz i didnt know that and now i understand lol

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

Hmm those neon colors really hurt my eyes when I look at it, maybe it had something to do with my monitor settings as well :P
Nahj j/k ill just keep using 'normal' saturation levels for the textures for now, wouldnt want people to get epileptic attacks when they view this thread lol

Heres a 90 triangle cute and cuddly fleech:

^C&C welcome!!!

LowpolyTroll · Jan 2006

very nice once again :P

Spoon_of_death · Jan 2006

thanks!!! Heres a little teaser:

Looks like somebody forgot their 120poly pants for work today

Steve Schulze · Jan 2006

Hehe, I know what that is. Texture needs to be a bit darker, but you've got the form down nicely so far.

Spoon_of_death · Feb 2006

Hmmm Im going to finish the slig later on... Im still going on with this little project(at a very slow rate right now hehe). Heres another one for you guys!

Its a grubb, theyre friendly little water creatures from the oddworld game 'strangers wrath'. I never played the game, but after seeing some screenshots I really wanted to model one of these

. More info about them here ...

The texture is kinda blurry right now, but it was a very fast 1 hour skinjob because I wanted to move on to something else...

Spoon_of_death · Jun 2006

Decided to pick up on this little project...
Its might be a bit high-poly for the DS(280 tris) but here is the finished slig:

Expect to see the first in-game scenes soon

Slum · Jun 2006

Hey, that's very much improved over your previous versions. It's looking much better! The metal bits seem very fuzzy. Try sharpening things up with a 1px hard brush (don't just use the sharpen filter, it will look nasty.)

odium · Jun 2006

Awesome, i would so buy an Abe game that was like the original PSOne games for DS... Abe on xbox just never really di ti for me, i never liked the fully 3d stuff... 2d bu 3d, like New Mario Bros, would own so hard, and i can just imagine using the mic to do all cool sorts of things...

Shame it will never be a REAL game

Oddworld DS

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