If you want neat glowing screens and electronics, you could take a (slightly) more original and fitting approach in cathoderayoscilloscopes (which are technically CRT but definitely convey a different vintage to 80s plstic type monitors)
Note the very analog appearance which imo is more typical of dieselpunk's epoch. I'm not saying "NO NO NO YOU CANT HAVE COMPUTER SCREENS," but it's an example of what i mentioned before where i reccommended research into period-correct alternatives and developing your concepts FROM those rather than stay safe in what you already know.
Ultimately, the final, fundamental source of inspiration for all art is reality. Interpreting styles and aesthetics from what we already know "looks cool" or is staple to a genre is deriving from something which is already derived of reality. (or other art of course)
Allow me to apply the concepts of genetics to this, in that "breeding" with something which is already a "stem" of your "family tree" will lead to reduced variation and originality, and of course, an inbred hick of an aesthetic. So I suggest, the general "realm" of dieselpunk might have been lifted from existing art, but in your interpretation, go to the source material THEY used and see if you can take it in your own original direction rather than build on what previous artists have already established. Again, it's all about research.
As for the typewriter aesthetic, i'd say this has gone in the opposite direction (at least the one you posted) looks typical of the very dawn of the 20th century. For complex instrument panels and stuff I would recommend you look towards tabulationmachines and otheranalogcomputers
A really overly simplified way to think of it would be
-turn of the century/ww1 period, with lots of flimsy things made from wood and brass, internal combustion engines more or less in their infancy
-ww2 and postwar period, where things like radar and aircraft were getting advanced to the point of jets and infrared vision and so on - things started to become streamlined and sleek as the world approached the 50s
-now, interwar period, or dieselpunk's period, was something between these, where people got very excited about metal tanks and planes and started to make very clumsy oversized things out of cast steel. Engines increased a dickload in performance which allowed them to make heavier and heavier vehicles, so you'll see a lot of big clunky machinery. The importance of combustion vehicles had been proven to the world so everyone went wild with them, both in ordering surplus from the first world war and creating their own new things.
Apologies for a focus on military hardware, but it's one of the most unique aspects of the period, lots of the design elements can be borrowed for all kinds of contraptions, and plus, almost every game is about some kind of conflict, and these things plain look cool.
Hopefully some of these images will carry the meaning of my description of how things in the period got kind of awkwardly experimental and goofy looking, while still looking really beefy and badass. Flying things on the other hand tended to be quite rounded but much less slender than their wartime counterparts, which makes them particularly fun to pack detail into.
It might seem weird to link to those for something which is essentially an environment, but idk. Dieselpunk isnt particularly dominated by an architectural style and it seems to be mostly about the heavy machinery, which you can definitely borrow elements of planes and tanks for.
You have to understand that in the period, in general, people were very very excited about planes and cars and things, because they were new, and even larger countries didn't have the facilities to produce them in great quantities until this era. The idea of owning a car was exciting, and civil aviation became a thing people actually did (holy shit!) -the americans among us, i'm sure, will know about the nomadic barnstormers who would tinker away on their biplanes, fly them to a farm and exchange plane rides for food and a place to stay. There were enough fords around for people to salvage spark plugs from them and build their own radio sets at home (radio is a big focus here too)
Again I don't mean to sound pushy or like a know it all, but i feel like this advice is something i can offer on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. And I hope it doesnt seem like I'm saying how to do things or how not to do things, what i'm attempting to do here is start the "imaginers" of this "world" on a more creative track and get brains into a different method of thought than what's familiar.
There's a thousand distinctive places to make up, the question is where you want to go with the project: game, novel, movie, one render, did-we-determine-what-we-want-to-make-at-all?
Arabic desert-cities, aerial airship-docks, zeppelin mountain-harbors, a jungle stronghold, a warmachine factory, the royal greenhouse of the committee of biomechanical sciences and evolution, an underground city driven by a huge generator, a giant ice wall serving as guardpost for the cursed north... wait, I'm borrowing inspiration again.
Is the style going to be comical anime? Serious realistic? Emotionally nostalgic?
Deciding that it's going to be steampunk or dieselpunk doesn't really mean anything. You can combine it with almost anything else. I guess what I want to say is that this project isn't going very far (it looks already stranded judging the post dates) if nobody comes with a realistic plan and says: "This is what we are going to accomplish!".
Star wars or battle star galactica meets steampunk ? Spacepunk ? retro space punk even ? hmm Aquatic punk with submarines and under water cities...
no not bioshock.
(Note: Arabian and desert is overdone these days, so is the reguler steam punk and personaly I find it a tad boring and not very inspiring, something new and fresh please)
Oh yeah! A new coat, the Airship flies back, Return of the raygun, The phantom electomagnetic containment capturing device, The Martian Wars and not to forget Revenge of the Committee of Underground movement and Dark Sciences performed solely in name of evil and/or personal Benefits.
A Cog's life, The devil wears Steampunk, Aliens vs Gentlemen, Monocles of Narnia, Steamonauts, Harry Ripper... Steamformers?
Would it be possible at all to cross cyber punk and diesel punk?
Cyber punk more in terms of functionality and what we can do in terms of present day technology, but diesel punk in terms of style, architecture, aesthetics, and how some machines even operate?
It'd make it cyber punk in how it contrasted with the diesel punk atmosphere.
There are likely even other ways to cross them as well.
Could have devices with vacuum tubes for instance.
If there's anybody out there who is still interested in making a collab, how about this:
1. We make the game in Unity3D, so we can play it in browser and use multiplayer. I would rather use UDK, but it lacks the sort of instant gratification we're looking for. People want to feel that their hard work is going to be appreciated.
2. The game is hub-centric, but only marginally so. This means there's a basic starting area, and a bunch of maps that you would play on. The reason for this is to appease the DM crowd and the anti-DM crowd.
3. The game starts with a small city. For the sake of argument, I recommend throwing together a small London-esque Victorian-Era town. Less Sleepy Hollow, more Sherlock Holmes. There is a small city area, a royal palace, shops, homes, and surrounding the area are orchards and farms. Mountains enclose one side- the other is blocked off by the ocean.
4. Most of the buildings are going to be "Interiors," in that once you enter them, you are going into an instanced environment. Some of these buildings will just be homes or shops, but inevitably, you will be entering in a DeathMatch.
5. Here's the thing about the DMs, though. These DeathMatch areas won't simply be the inside of some rotting Victorian Mansion. You see, a mad scientist has tampered with the cosmos, and now, portals to different times are appearing. The bonus here is the the portals will have more than one entrance. So say you enter into the back door of the old-timey barbershop, and you find youself in a steampunk flying fortress. If you walk down a few doors and through another hatch, you'll find yourself back in your London-y town, but exiting out of the Miller's chicken coop on the other side of town.
6. The point of this "game" would be multi-purposed.
a. The dungeon/death maps would give environmental artists something concise to work on, while those wishing to work exclusively on the building of the London-y "overworld" can do so as well. The sprawlier the better.
b. Character artists will/may? distribute their charas throughout the game as NPCs which could then perhaps become unlockable and playable, with different attributes of their own.
c. Although the DMs will be fast paced, <pvp and story mode pls!>if you win the match, you get to explore the level and take whatever spoils there are. There might even be some mini games in these DMs.
d. Of course we'd have a leaderboard: Kills, Deaths, Assists, Flowers, Small Aminals, Stars, and um, maybe some badges.
e. If we reeeeeeeeeaaaaaallly wanted to, we could monetize... Make additional skins for your charas like in League of Legends, perhaps? Just a thought. Maybe sell houses? Who knows.
The point is, nobody wants to make an MMO, but nobody wants to make a straight up shooter. This way, you get a little of everything. If all you want to do is locate some magical armor that will let you enter into an Instance just so you can run past the enemies to collect a rare species of flower to sell in your flower shop, you should be able to do that. If you want to gank kids with a bow you found in some creepy instance that your level 90 buddies crawled you through, you should be able to do that too.
But first, we need the outlet. This seems like the best way to really do it- parcelled out into usable segments that don't require all the pieces in order to play them.
For example, the first iteration of this game is going to be a simple multi-player utility of the london town- probably a whole ten or twelve buildings- and maybe two maps to kill people on. A group of four people working through a weekend should be able to do at least that much!
Replies
Note the very analog appearance which imo is more typical of dieselpunk's epoch. I'm not saying "NO NO NO YOU CANT HAVE COMPUTER SCREENS," but it's an example of what i mentioned before where i reccommended research into period-correct alternatives and developing your concepts FROM those rather than stay safe in what you already know.
Ultimately, the final, fundamental source of inspiration for all art is reality. Interpreting styles and aesthetics from what we already know "looks cool" or is staple to a genre is deriving from something which is already derived of reality. (or other art of course)
Allow me to apply the concepts of genetics to this, in that "breeding" with something which is already a "stem" of your "family tree" will lead to reduced variation and originality, and of course, an inbred hick of an aesthetic. So I suggest, the general "realm" of dieselpunk might have been lifted from existing art, but in your interpretation, go to the source material THEY used and see if you can take it in your own original direction rather than build on what previous artists have already established. Again, it's all about research.
As for the typewriter aesthetic, i'd say this has gone in the opposite direction (at least the one you posted) looks typical of the very dawn of the 20th century. For complex instrument panels and stuff I would recommend you look towards tabulation machines and other analog computers
A really overly simplified way to think of it would be
-turn of the century/ww1 period, with lots of flimsy things made from wood and brass, internal combustion engines more or less in their infancy
-ww2 and postwar period, where things like radar and aircraft were getting advanced to the point of jets and infrared vision and so on - things started to become streamlined and sleek as the world approached the 50s
-now, interwar period, or dieselpunk's period, was something between these, where people got very excited about metal tanks and planes and started to make very clumsy oversized things out of cast steel. Engines increased a dickload in performance which allowed them to make heavier and heavier vehicles, so you'll see a lot of big clunky machinery. The importance of combustion vehicles had been proven to the world so everyone went wild with them, both in ordering surplus from the first world war and creating their own new things.
Apologies for a focus on military hardware, but it's one of the most unique aspects of the period, lots of the design elements can be borrowed for all kinds of contraptions, and plus, almost every game is about some kind of conflict, and these things plain look cool.
Hopefully some of these images will carry the meaning of my description of how things in the period got kind of awkwardly experimental and goofy looking, while still looking really beefy and badass. Flying things on the other hand tended to be quite rounded but much less slender than their wartime counterparts, which makes them particularly fun to pack detail into.
tanks
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Vickers_Light_Tank_Mark_VI.jpg
http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/t35.jpg
http://lemairesoft.sytes.net:1945/webfr/photo/charcd/102017986.jpg
http://lemairesoft.sytes.net:1945/webfr/photo/charcd/102018314.jpg
http://warandgame.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/tank2.jpg
planes
http://www.umt.fme.vutbr.cz/~ruja/modely/podklady/Kalinin/K-12/k-12c.jpg
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpaper/Aircraft/Fighters/Russian/PolikarpovI16WheelsDown.jpg
It might seem weird to link to those for something which is essentially an environment, but idk. Dieselpunk isnt particularly dominated by an architectural style and it seems to be mostly about the heavy machinery, which you can definitely borrow elements of planes and tanks for.
You have to understand that in the period, in general, people were very very excited about planes and cars and things, because they were new, and even larger countries didn't have the facilities to produce them in great quantities until this era. The idea of owning a car was exciting, and civil aviation became a thing people actually did (holy shit!) -the americans among us, i'm sure, will know about the nomadic barnstormers who would tinker away on their biplanes, fly them to a farm and exchange plane rides for food and a place to stay. There were enough fords around for people to salvage spark plugs from them and build their own radio sets at home (radio is a big focus here too)
Again I don't mean to sound pushy or like a know it all, but i feel like this advice is something i can offer on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. And I hope it doesnt seem like I'm saying how to do things or how not to do things, what i'm attempting to do here is start the "imaginers" of this "world" on a more creative track and get brains into a different method of thought than what's familiar.
Arabic desert-cities, aerial airship-docks, zeppelin mountain-harbors, a jungle stronghold, a warmachine factory, the royal greenhouse of the committee of biomechanical sciences and evolution, an underground city driven by a huge generator, a giant ice wall serving as guardpost for the cursed north... wait, I'm borrowing inspiration again.
Is the style going to be comical anime? Serious realistic? Emotionally nostalgic?
Deciding that it's going to be steampunk or dieselpunk doesn't really mean anything. You can combine it with almost anything else. I guess what I want to say is that this project isn't going very far (it looks already stranded judging the post dates) if nobody comes with a realistic plan and says: "This is what we are going to accomplish!".
no not bioshock.
(Note: Arabian and desert is overdone these days, so is the reguler steam punk and personaly I find it a tad boring and not very inspiring, something new and fresh please)
A Cog's life, The devil wears Steampunk, Aliens vs Gentlemen, Monocles of Narnia, Steamonauts, Harry Ripper... Steamformers?
Cyber punk more in terms of functionality and what we can do in terms of present day technology, but diesel punk in terms of style, architecture, aesthetics, and how some machines even operate?
It'd make it cyber punk in how it contrasted with the diesel punk atmosphere.
There are likely even other ways to cross them as well.
Could have devices with vacuum tubes for instance.
1. We make the game in Unity3D, so we can play it in browser and use multiplayer. I would rather use UDK, but it lacks the sort of instant gratification we're looking for. People want to feel that their hard work is going to be appreciated.
2. The game is hub-centric, but only marginally so. This means there's a basic starting area, and a bunch of maps that you would play on. The reason for this is to appease the DM crowd and the anti-DM crowd.
3. The game starts with a small city. For the sake of argument, I recommend throwing together a small London-esque Victorian-Era town. Less Sleepy Hollow, more Sherlock Holmes. There is a small city area, a royal palace, shops, homes, and surrounding the area are orchards and farms. Mountains enclose one side- the other is blocked off by the ocean.
4. Most of the buildings are going to be "Interiors," in that once you enter them, you are going into an instanced environment. Some of these buildings will just be homes or shops, but inevitably, you will be entering in a DeathMatch.
5. Here's the thing about the DMs, though. These DeathMatch areas won't simply be the inside of some rotting Victorian Mansion. You see, a mad scientist has tampered with the cosmos, and now, portals to different times are appearing. The bonus here is the the portals will have more than one entrance. So say you enter into the back door of the old-timey barbershop, and you find youself in a steampunk flying fortress. If you walk down a few doors and through another hatch, you'll find yourself back in your London-y town, but exiting out of the Miller's chicken coop on the other side of town.
6. The point of this "game" would be multi-purposed.
a. The dungeon/death maps would give environmental artists something concise to work on, while those wishing to work exclusively on the building of the London-y "overworld" can do so as well. The sprawlier the better.
b. Character artists will/may? distribute their charas throughout the game as NPCs which could then perhaps become unlockable and playable, with different attributes of their own.
c. Although the DMs will be fast paced, <pvp and story mode pls!>if you win the match, you get to explore the level and take whatever spoils there are. There might even be some mini games in these DMs.
d. Of course we'd have a leaderboard: Kills, Deaths, Assists, Flowers, Small Aminals, Stars, and um, maybe some badges.
e. If we reeeeeeeeeaaaaaallly wanted to, we could monetize... Make additional skins for your charas like in League of Legends, perhaps? Just a thought. Maybe sell houses? Who knows.
The point is, nobody wants to make an MMO, but nobody wants to make a straight up shooter. This way, you get a little of everything. If all you want to do is locate some magical armor that will let you enter into an Instance just so you can run past the enemies to collect a rare species of flower to sell in your flower shop, you should be able to do that. If you want to gank kids with a bow you found in some creepy instance that your level 90 buddies crawled you through, you should be able to do that too.
But first, we need the outlet. This seems like the best way to really do it- parcelled out into usable segments that don't require all the pieces in order to play them.
For example, the first iteration of this game is going to be a simple multi-player utility of the london town- probably a whole ten or twelve buildings- and maybe two maps to kill people on. A group of four people working through a weekend should be able to do at least that much!
Who's with me!