aQX - An homage to Mecha JRPGs, WIP

Community Showcase Game Development
1

UE4 community!
It’s been a long time but I’m excited to share some work I’m doing!

You all know I’m a sucker for golden age JRPGs with twisted narratives and meticulous design. Going through some of the ones I played on PSX I landed on Xenogears one of my faves. It’s an enigma that deserves a modern update. I’m not satisfied with the direction the Monolith and Square have taken the IP and the other Xeno series games.

aQX or AethyrQuest (working title) is my foray into the genre using modern game design, production and development techniques. There have been quite a bit of design, story and concept iterations. The concepts and design are more solid now, but this may change due to other collaborators joining.
I’m not relying on anything specifically from the original game now besides some mechanics and general feel. The goal is to pay homage with a ‘spiritual successor’.

**Background and initial concept **
I wanted to make a complete Xenogear remake with HD 2d sprites rendered inside 3d isometric world at the start of 2016. I had no idea how to do this but this led me to acquiring lots of Xeno sprite rips and getting acquainted to the into the RPG maker art community.

Imagine this, but optimized in high-definition:
http://i.imgur.com/w6AiCpzl.png

While looking for an artist I relied heavily on the latest RPG maker package’s concept art to provide some art direction:

http://i.imgur.com/m7OVzUPm.png

The talented vibrato provided countless “side battler” pixel art renderings of these characters to the community.

http://i.imgur.com/o19uRA8l.png

http://i.imgur.com/br7Zvepl.png

The plan was to use some of these as placeholders until I could find the right person for the REAL art.

Another challenge was developing a character sheet for 8 direction sprites and emulating the retro shaders of the PSX with UE4. This is where things slowed down to a crawl due to other life obligations.

I left off with the burning question on how to really modernize the look and feel. I found the art of Jakub Rozalski which was helpful as his work is modern and dramatic:

http://i.imgur.com/r7p0hnSl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/P2zaRz5l.jpg

**Current design **

The style of a game can have a large influence on the feel of it, I’m starting with an updated ‘anime/toon’ style look as seen in GGxrd and quite a few other games as a baseline.

http://i.imgur.com/mDoqMn9l.png

For environments, the low poly hand painted style seems to fit best with a front cell shaded look:
http://i.imgur.com/WlMOK2Hl.png

This scene is part of a learning example but I believe the assets can be reused without issue. Also there are quite a bit of resources with this style.

Notice the environment
http://i.imgur.com/hhUZVyhl.jpg

**Prototype assets **
As a one man team things move pretty slow, but I hope to stabilize the art style and begin experimentation in the engine. I have quite a bit of mannequins and animations to work with just to get a decent build going. I’m getting my hands dirty in UE4 after a long stint in Unity.

I’ll need quite a bit of art help to fine tune them and make new assets:

apologies for the quality on some of these screen shots… not sure what happened here

Basic warrior mech
http://i.imgur.com/XSFwgA3l.png

Gun
http://i.imgur.com/W0BNj0el.png

Worker mech
http://i.imgur.com/riAP1qPl.png

Community provided Z-Mech:
http://i.imgur.com/1gxZ7lBl.png

Hoping to leverage some of Kubolds great animations!
http://i.imgur.com/dOENKbRl.png

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

There’s no way I’m getting that pony tail to render like it would in a sprite. :slight_smile:
http://i.imgur.com/vMTJ0Pol.png

Potential character … I’m interested in exploring the journey of an Emerelda like character:
http://i.imgur.com/CbCfoiVm.png

http://i.imgur.com/N5qMLfal.png

Plan

More details on this for those who are interested.

There’s quite a bit of work to do (learning Maya, retargeting animations etc) but the plan is to get at least a main character shaded and under some kind of third person controller with environment interactions.

I’d like to get this crowdsourced if the community wants it. I’m happy to work on it full time while picking up contract work.

Feedback is appreciated!

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This project is very ambitious, and I love it :wink:
Actually I’m trying to prototype an oldschool JRPG. Have you gone any further? Defining an style for the graphics is gonna be pretty difficult, I feel UE4 targets a more realism style, and you gotta have a pretty deep knowledge on materials if you wanna replicate oldschool or cell-shading/cartoonish stuff.

Don’t give up and keep us posted!

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Thanks! Well it’s been quite a while. I’m working on another project but I still want to do this.

Yes getting the ‘look’ of a jrpg is kinda hard in UE4. I have a few plugins that have helped like OldSkooler and Jiffycrews Cel Shader. TBH I got so inspired I that I wanted to do a straight remake of XG but you know… legalities and all. I do have some concept art made for the main characters for some original IP though! Just need the time to get stuff done!