[WIP] I Can Explain Everything

'Sometimes, the studio cancels your favourite science fiction show - and there's nothing you can do about it but move on. Other times, you just happen to be a genius, and a tad on the bored side. So, you make a fancy alternate reality machine, pop over to the universe where your show wasn't cancelled, buy or steal the box set and, well, uh... Look - I can explain everything.'

Hello, I am mumblerumble, and I have been fiddling about with Unity and Blender for long enough that I am now confident enough to make my first commercial game. That game is I Can Explain Everything - an upbeat, comic Megametroidvania-style 2.5D platformer for the PC, Android and iOS platforms. The game will be touch- and keyboard-friendly, but will really shine with a gamepad.

About the game:

The game, I Can Explain Everything, stars an as-yet-unnamed inventor who, desperate to see the second season of her prematurely cancelled sci-fi show builds a device that enables her to travel to a parallel universe in which the show was never cancelled, and bring a copy of the DVD box set back to her universe. Of course, things go wrong, and her little adventure causes the universe to shatter into multiple realities - also, the DVD's go missing.

Thus, the inventor - accompanied by her pet\flatmate, a hairy land octopus - has to travel through the alternate realities that have invaded her own, defeat her own parallel incarnations, and find the missing DVD's in order to both stop the universe from tearing apart at the seams and watch her show. She cannot stress how important the latter part of that is.

Given that the game is Megametroidvania game, there will be a decent amount of backtracking through worlds as the player gains new abilities and equipment. In addition to the usual suspects of running and jumping, the character's main piece of equipment is her multi-tool. A simple melee weapon at first, upgrades allow the tool to shatter rocks, blast lasers, melt ice, freeze water, fly. As a scientific type, our inventor is fuelled by caffeine - iced coffee cartons (popular in South Australia, Google if you don't know what iced coffee is) are found scattered throughout the level, and occasionally dropped by enemies. Never mind that there isn't any refrigeration - it's a game! Physics can mind their own business until I need them.

I intend for the game to be simple to play, straightforward, and fun. It mightn't win too many points for originality, but neither am I interested in gimmicks for the sake of gimmicks.

About myself:

I am 25 years old, a medical sciences student by day, game developer by night. I intend to launch my game on at least the Google Play store by the end of March; don't mind the short development window - I'm an insomniac polymath savant with a government scholarship, on holiday. Actual working hours on the game are in excess of what you may expect - so, don't hold back with any suggestions, thinking they may be too much for my time limit.

What I need (for now):

I will be updating this thread semi-regularly as I continue to progress, until launch day. For now, let's start off with a few WIP characters.



This is our main character, or the high-poly version of her at least. I made her in Blender.

Now, I'm not too confident about two things:

One, anatomy - yes, I know, I'm a medical student and anatomy is supposed to be my thing, but still... any suggestions, comments or critiquing - especially by anybody with experience using anime-style character models in Unity would be welcome. Any tips for ideal lighting or texture styles for anime characters in Unity, or any adjustments to the mesh that are needed that I'm not seeing (something look ugly or out of place to you) let me know! It's my first time modelling such a character, after all. I didn't bother modelling a mouth as each time I tried I didn't like the look - didn't fit. I think I'll just paint the mouth on with the textures. There's no spoken dialogue, just speech bubbles. Anybody try this? Did it work out for you?

Two, clothing. The universe is split around late evening in summertime Australia, as she's settling in to watch a DVD. I'm thinking that she's wearing a singlet and pyjama bottoms. I'm still weighing the pros and cons of having her clothing be a part of her mesh, or separate meshes bound to her. The former reduces polycount and eliminates clipping, but the latter has options for clothing variety late game, if I choose to do so. I may just have her save the universe in her PJ's - y'know, channel Arthur Dent and all that.

Anybody with experience using cloth physics or modelling clothing chime in, please! Development will be a little slow until after Christmas, so I've got time enough to make up my mind.

Next up are these two guys:



Not really looking for too much in the way of critiquing with these two, though - they are most definitely WIP, as can be seen. They are largely conceptual models; the final versions of two enemies will be based on these guys, but not necessarily them. One of the universes is a forest world - the first universe, somewhat lampshaded in game as the first level is always a forest level. What do you think? Can you see yourselves smashing, slashing and burning these little guys in a parallel fungal\forest world? Or are mushroom badguys overplayed, even when lampshaded?

As I said, they're concepts - be understanding of their appearance, but necessarily cruel of their function.


Okay, that's about it for a first post. I'll be checking in on this thread for any helpful suggestions or expertise anybody might offer, but I don't expect that I'll post a progress update until at least after Christmas.

Cheers, and thanks for reading this (admittedly long winded) introduction to my game!

 

I love your idea and your characters are better than I could do! The concept sounds fun and humorous without being overdone. I would play this game and that says a lot since I don't play a lot of games these days.

 

From the pictures of your two enemies, I feel like the punchline at the end will be that she was on shrooms the whole game. Interesting concept, unfortunately anatomy isn't my thing either, so I really don't have anything for you there, other than it looks fine to me.

 

Anatomy info can be gathered from a number of available resources so I wont comment on that.

What is just as important with regards to organic models is topology - especially edge loops in the areas that bend & flex.
Show a couple images in shaded wireframe on your character in quad mode (not tries) - and we can see how your model is put together.

 

Whew, holiday break was a tad longer than I'd thought. Forgot that everyone I know decided to have their birthdays in January... ah, well.

Any case, this is pretty much what I've settled on for the character. I've set her up so I can fairly easily tweak her hair, clothes, etc. later if I choose. Textures for pants and skin are stand-ins for the time being.

Gotta keep moving forward, and shouldn't spend any more time on her I don't need to, but I have to admit I'm less than pleased with the result. Granted, this is the first time I've ever made a human character, but still. Am I being too critical, picking at flaws that aren't there, or does she look off to you, too?






I still need to reduce her by some, of course, but for now here's the topology (sorry, it's in tris).



I should be able to show off her animations and some in-game shots fairly soon.

Cheers, and thanks again!

 

Hey @mumblerumble - I'm going to be honest and hope you don't take it personally. It looks like you've dedicated some time on your character so I'm not overlooking that, but based on the mesh images you provided I don't see how any - even marginal quality animations could be created with that character without a lot of errors in the mesh rework and fixes needed.

The poly flow of the character is not good at all. Edge loops are supposed to resemble actual anatomy and muscle structures that real people have. See links below.
When edge loops do not properly follow the human anatomy or are non-existent it causes difficulty when the character is later rigged/skin weighted and animated.

I really think you should start your character over from scratch or re-topologize this character which would probably be just as difficult as starting over. I don't think you can accomplish any quality animations with this character with the mesh not being constructed properly.

There are oodles of reference material and free information online regarding proper character modeling for animation use. Google - polycount - cgtalk - etc etc.

If that character was going to be used as a static mesh I would say it's OK though the mesh is entirely too dense for that as well.

Please check the information below and read up on proper mesh creation for animation purposes.

http://www.cgmascot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/posts/model_loops&flows.png

http://www.cgmascot.com/design/modeling-for-animation-body/

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y9/TruthWalker/DMU_Wire.jpg
http://dodyanimation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/new_head2.jpg

http://www.slideshare.net/Veetildigital/create-awesome-3d-characters-or-animations
slide 8-9.

 

Thank you for the feedback! I've taken your advice, and have started re-topologising already. I'll upload images of the new topology soon enough.

Cheers!