M3CH Dev Diary
*UPDATED* Hi all. Just wanted to say thank you for the support during the indiegogo campaign and we have spent the past 8 months taking all the feedback you guys have given us and applying it to a new version of our game, We went ahead and have taken proper care of the mechs which are now all uniquely modelled and textured and closer to our concept art, also the environment art is now on the correct path that we originally envisioned but as you can imagine can take it out of you financially and now are hitting kickstarter for some funding and spread awareness to help us on the final push to give M3CH the polish and testing the title requires.
WATCH THIS SPACE AS WE WILL BE REVIVING THIS THREAD WITH MORE DEVELOPER ART DUMPS AND BREAKDOWN IMAGES.
Any further feedback you guys can give us would be greatly appreciated as it was integral before in getting our new visuals up to scratch!
Check out these links for more art, footage and info on the game:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3ch/m3ch?ref=home_location
FACEBOOK
New In-game screenshots and some real time model shots:
*original post*
Hi all. We are going to be using this thread as a development diary for our game "M3CH".
To help you catch up here is a sample of some of the art we have been producing so far:
WATCH THIS SPACE AS WE WILL BE REVIVING THIS THREAD WITH MORE DEVELOPER ART DUMPS AND BREAKDOWN IMAGES.
Any further feedback you guys can give us would be greatly appreciated as it was integral before in getting our new visuals up to scratch!
Check out these links for more art, footage and info on the game:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3ch/m3ch?ref=home_location
New In-game screenshots and some real time model shots:
*original post*
Hi all. We are going to be using this thread as a development diary for our game "M3CH".
To help you catch up here is a sample of some of the art we have been producing so far:
Replies
What would be cool is if the player could custom paint their mechs on certain large panels; I think that would separate this from the competition. A system similar to Forza 3. That would be incredible and insta-buy for me.
Not sure if it was intended, but the video you've put on your Indiegogo page mentions Kickstarter twice, rather than Indiegogo.
Can't wait to see more.
02: Photobash thumbs:
03: Pick Thumbs
04: Blockout lines:
05: Tone Brushes
06: Buildup
07: Colourpick Photobash
08: Final Details
i think they would look even better if they werent so desaturated.
edit: ninja'd.
that answered my question about workflow.
Don't go all generic like every other game, calling your mechs/vehicles things like "Falcon" and "Hurricane" or whatever. There's many other languages you could pick, then just look for names of things like melee weapons, hand tools or wild animals. Something like German is a pretty good candidate for aggressive sounding words.
Oh and try to come up with believable type-identification. The germans do these cool semi abbreviations for their tanks like "StPz III Ausf. E" or "PzKpfW 38(t)" for SturmPanzer 3, Ausfuhrung (Version) E and PanzerKampfWagen 1938 meaning things like assault tank and armored car.
Or the japanese have an interesting system for their tanks as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_the_Japanese_Army#Naming_system_for_tanks
Anyway I'm a bit of a nerd with these sort of things lol.
Xoliul yessss! thats what we were kind of thinking, even though we love a bit of Battletech/Mechwarror the names are a little bland. Those Japanese prefixes are spot on, also the idea of borrowed/reselling/re banding of military mechs could generate some cool infix/postfix.
We've manage to get a hold of some good osprey books(such eye candy) http://www.ospreypublishing.com
maybe we can get some ideas from the post nam planes
Havoc89 tacit math roosterMAP Quack Thanks! hopefully we can keep entertaining
We've uploaded some of the current screenshots from the iphone 4s, heavy beta, also developing for iOS devices have been a massive headache. We've limited each level to around 10 draw calls. to achieve this we've used a single texture sheet for multiple levels through bash kitting, at the moment we are currently using vertex colours on the models to create some variation and using the red vertex channel to plug in a tiling detail texture.
There is also only 3 of us in the team, making doing high to low polys too time consuming at the moment.
we're doing a chunk of engine work this week, we'll make sure to upload the various things we're breaking/playing with.
Oh and also some more concepts!
so dope
Also surprised that it's a mobile game! Wouldn't have guessed from the awesome preproduction...
http://i1265.photobucket.com/albums/jj509/james_rowbotham/fullsizeMedium_10.jpg and it's really throwing the scale read for me. obviously i know that it's a big mech because of the person in the scene but the machine gun is drawn more or less as it appears normally. which is big, i grant, but not that big. i doubted bringing it up at all since you're going through and designing all the weapons anyway so i doubt that machine gun will appear as it is seen in that concept anyway but just saying, that's the only thing that threw my eye off.
well on the same discussion of scale, if it's a game about mechs and presumably played as a mech, or played as someone commanding mechs, the suit details on that last commando concept are just a little too fine if we're only ever going to see him underfoot. a thought on readability.
Glad to help you guys get closer to your goal. We're all a community, if we don't help each other out nobody will.
Incredible job guys!
the concepts have a lovely solid feel to them, fairly monotone picked out with one or two colours and plenty of contrast...but they are overexposed while most of the realtime art is under-exposed and makes stuff look alot muddier and harder to read.
also composition wise in the realtime shots are a little busy would be nice to see some emptyness...areas for the eyes to rest on between the busy mechanicalness
did a quick level etc on a couple of your shots that matches your concepts a bit more, over exposing it and picking out a few colours while desaturating all the others.
although ive not used unity in a while it should be perfectly possible if thats what you want to go for
excited to see where this goes
almighty_gir "METAL GEAR?!" sadly no, but if rex was a women I would marry it.
SentryTheGod "LRG product placement"Hopefully! checking out marketing budget there appears to be £1.20 in my jeans
Rurouni Strife "Love the art direction" Thanks! I call the art direction gamma screen eye burn
Xoliul "mech model wireframes and the pipeline " On it! a wireframe as pretty as that time I crashed into an army fence.
daphz"like the mech concepts" yay! but we want to try and get a better result so I think we're returning to the base concepts if we get time,
gauss"throwing the scale read" yeah well spotted, we've had a few issues of "handles" etc getting in without any of us noticing. we've got similar problems in the environment with things like door sizing, I think in future we need to have a mech scale and human scale in any scenes. The commando is pretty useless for this game, we did a load of concept work just for the world setting and hopefully a comic novel/artbook, I could upload some of the story here if any one wants to have a pre polycount peek?
dustinbrown"people up close" hopefully, we quickly messed with populating the abandoned city with unfortunate squatters who make a squishy sound.
dogzer"worked for that hawken game" ooooo that would had been good, we had already started when when Hawken announced, hopefully its a new wave of mech shooters instead of man shooters.
wretchedgoat "concepts are great!" Thanks!
Junco "insights into your process" thanks, we're uploadingin our progress almost in real-time hope it helps!
VictorSantos " Polycount Dev Diary" forum" great idea, just a shame most companies make you sign 10 Ndas before you cant talk about what your making
Del"Donated!" I love you Del, like a man loves another man.
8FtSpider"Great designs" thanks! we're definitely triers
praetor187"love the flying aircraft carriers" thanks! they were flying really high, but then we saw Hawken's one and had to bring them down a little bit.
asfalton"I feel like tiny ant" I feel tiny ants too.......... oh I mean feel like
SHEPEIRO"muddier and harder to read" Thanks for the paint over! completely agree, we've had all sorts of gamma problems on making stuff for iOS, we were hoping when we get to do the lighting really trying to blow things out, still proving difficult we're on it! I'll see if we can get some videos up of the levels.
Phew, that took a bit.
Ive added the way we created the mechs, by making a mid toned, textured, low poly bash kit then multiplying the vertex colours over in engine.
most of these are still at the vertex painting stage.
should get some mech animating up soon as well....
thanks for the Donations it really means a lot to try and be free of publishers and afford to eat.
another big dump, also what do you guys think of pilot fighter profiles in game? like the last 2 Kara and Sam
Now I don't know if it's due to the technical limitation of the engine on ipad/iphone, but to me at the moment it doesn't translate well to the 3D =/.
Maybe due to the atmospheric ambience that you got on your concept but not in your 3D environment.
Can't wait to see more ingame shots and more workflow breakdowns!
Great kitbash method by the way