Hey there. I thought i would share my progress on a game ive been working on called Adventures of Gaarr. I have been in development for about a year now. Its been a big undertaking since this is my first major solo project. its been a huge learning experience since its my first time using blueprints to code a full game.
here is the pre-alpha trailer i released in the summer. Alot has changed but it still give you a good representation of what the game play will be like. Any feedback would be greatly appreciate it.
hopefully ill have a build ready for early access by the end of next spring.
The game is about a young cave-man, Gaarr, living in a isolated oasis. Curious to find out more about his himself and the world he lives in. He sets off for adventure. through his journey he is trying to find out where he comes from, and if there are any more of his kind in the world.
The world was inspired by pre historic geology. I wanted a world with a huge variety of ecology, foliage, and weather. To represent different prehistoric eras and to give a home to the wide variety of characters that Gaarr might run into in his adventure.
Your artwork is awesome. You have Fantasy stylized down. The level design all looks really cool. All those creatures look awesome. You might want to try to get your ai constrained to a plane. It looks a little odd. It reminds me of dk country, but modernized. Cool if he can ride the dinosaurs, and beetles. Check out Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, and the cave platformer. those are cool 2.5d platformers.
Yeah i think constraining it in 2d is the right move since it is in a 2d plain.
For sure i am take the time to play a bit of max. just to see how they did there level design. The hardest part for me is getting the vertical platforms down. i have a climbing mechanic ive been messing with i just wanted to do something a little different that just your run and gun type platforming.
Oh yeah you are totally going to be able to ride dinos. thats a big part of the game. there are these eggs you pick up as you going through the level. Kinda like mech suit in megaman. i just wanted them in special occasion when the player needs them against a strong opponent or a crazy environment like that lava level.
Your air dash looks cool. Did you think about scaling his hand bones for like a popeye type of thing? Maybe give him a gravity delay and when he raises his arm back start to scale the hand bone to get bigger as he punches forward. I think real big foot prints would look good too especially on the sand. All in all I see your doing a lot of polishing.
I have thought about adding more squash and stretch to the character animation. Right now most of it is place holder animation. Just to get the character functionality in game. but yeah i totally see what your saying. The riggs i have would work in that way. Im using the Cat Rigg in 3ds Max for all the character. I like it, its fast and pretty good quality.
I did a quick screen grabs of a quick test i did. but yeah i think i can totally improve alot of the animation this way. (kinda random i just made his head bigger :p)
As far as interactive foot steps im a little lost on that. Ive tried doing flow maps with interactive foliage but man it was a huge pain to get working and all i did was make all my foliage move slightly to the right. Honestly for the grass wind im just using the simple grass displacement node just to add a bit of motion…lol
but yeah i would really like to get a trail. like that way if hes in dry sand he makes a foot step on the sand that dissipates over time, or if he is in mud it can be a big foot step of wet dirt being pushed up with his weight. and to make a sound affect along with the foot step. But yeah idk im a noob. all i have is just the basic movement capsule nothing crazy.
To do that sort of thing would it be done through the character controller or the terrain. Is there a way for you to communicate with the terrain to specify what he is stepping on. Im thinking maybe you can do it with some sort of decal that is projected on the ground. but honestly i wouldn’t know. Definitely need to figure out though.
Footsteps and footprints I have set up similar to this. only I’m using a bp class for anim notify, and physical materials. Decals are best with single line trace.
I just started trying to have it all rolled in with a particle system too. So I can have different puffs of dust or water splashes.
Thanks Bruno. I wanted the main character too look friendly and hug-able. I thought it would be a great contrasts between Gaar the rest of the creatures.
A Small update over the Christmas break. Hopefully ill have more game play stuff done later on in the beginning of the year. Anyways here are some creatures i made for fun.
Thanks Krayfishkarl for the kind words! There is definitely more on the way. Still need to code a lot more that i would like :p. I wish coding was as easy as making art for me.
You have good modeling skills
The ligthing color feel surrealistic, some more common lighting could look better, i don’t know.
Also the game could use some small debris and small rocks details around the player path, there is only giant rocks.
About scaled giant rocks multi texture or detail texture would bring back details.
I like your game, keep up the good work.
Thanks for the tips Galeon, Definitely. The texturing is still a work in progress. There still a lot of polish left for the environment. Overall ive only been focusing on composition and mood, to me that’s the most important aspect since its the thing that read the most. I tried using multi texture like you mention by blending in a secondary normal map but to me it felt to noise, again there still alot of polish and things that i can improve on so im working to make sure i make the scene look as good as possible. I appreciate the kind word
I understand you are blocking levels first.
For the player character perhaps you can try like Joe and Mac game, perhaps try eyes on height more cartoon and less fully rounded, and make the noze more rounded. http://70.32.82.182/img/blog/joe-and-mac-1.jpg
About textures, i agree you must avoid noisy ones, like Mario Odissey texture must stay detailed but clean.
Nice reference!!!, I’ve never heard of Joe and Mac. Definitely gonna check it out. I see what your saying about the eyes, I wanted the art style to be a mixture of clay-mation style kinda like Chicken Run, Wallace and Grump, with a bit of modern fantasy style. I could always experiment and see what works best.
As far as texturing i am just using Photoshop. Nothing special. I know how to use painter but i feel more in control with Photoshop. I like painter a lot (its awesome!!) but for this art style zbrush and Photoshop do the trick. I am not doing anything crazy with the specular map or pbr shader. i usually use flat spec maybe with a tad bit of roughness. but overall i use Photoshop for most of that.
A small update. I was really inspired by Joe and Mac. Thanks again Galeon for that reference. I was really inspired by the level design and i thought i might implement some of those game mechanics i thought where really cool into my AOG. One of the levels i really liked was the river level.where your jumping on floating logs. I just thought it looked awesome!
Another small Update. Recently i thought i would mess with some grappling hook mechanics. I think this could really add to the platforming. I really like the out come so far and it works great with the current platforming system. I still need to tweek the cable though. idk why it stretches so much. ill post a video on it once i get a little futher with it.
Also another update from the art side of things. I made a base human tribes man. This is a modular type character. I created a variety of hair, outfits and armor types. Here is just an amalgamation in one.
Wow its been a while since i updated this. The project is coming along. Revamped the Brontosaurus . its a tiny update (art wise) since im still working on the level design. Hopefully it wont be too long before i post an update :D.