Month: November 2012

I’ve given the different brick types their own textures. This adds a bit more variation to the wall, in addition to making the brick stand out a bit more in contrast to each other. Also, this will hopefully help color-blind people differentiate between certain brick types immediately. The way things are currently set up, bricks will be sharing the same five textures drawn from a 2048×2048 image. I may bump the size of this image up to 4096×4096 and have twenty-one different textures to choose from, but much of this could be wasted space as there are only about twelve brick types planned. There are actually two textures per type, one for the front face and another longer one for the sides. This helps reduce some of the stretching on narrower bricks.

I had implemented multiple brick textures in the past, but the results were not satisfying to me, appearance-wise. I think that it finally looks presentable enough. Part of the problem is the distortion and stretching that happens on the brick side faces. It is really noticeable when a texture has been smashed into a narrow space like that, especially if the texture has many little details. The texture for the regular white bricks is passable in this case, being mostly noise without distinct features. One solution would be to up the size-up the source image and include texture variations for each brick size. Right now, things are passable, so it is not really an issue for me. I should not be spending too much time on such finicky details, rather concerning myself with more level design.

Right now, I am preparing for an event at NYU called Practice; I’m attending it as a student of the NYU Game Center. So far, this semester at NYU has been an interesting experience. I can summarize it as a series of game jams laid back-to-back and overlapping. Physical games, digital games, board games, etc. just cranking out new things all the time. It’s been giving me a ton of new ideas for Against the Wall, in terms of goals, set pieces, and art.

Art in particular has been by current focus for the game. This past Summer, I spent too long on optimizations and basic functionality. This was a task that could have potentially gone on forever, there is always something that can be improved. It is much better to get things to a working state, then moving on to other tasks.. As a result, I have not been touching code outside of bug-fixes and tweaking the game’s feel. I’ve been experimenting with and churning out art assets, then testing them as level elements on the Wall.

My current strain of thought is to continue embracing minimalism and using my limited talents in the area of modeling and texturing as a constraint, rather than as an obstacle. The art style of the game will be guided by what I am capable of using the tools and skills I have, rather than stress out over not looking like an Unreal engine game. I’m making the art according to a set minimalism theme, then moving on before I become obsessed with details.

I’ll post some screenshots later. Right now, the event has already started and I should go out there and mingle a bit.