Well hello there!
Last week we finished the prototyping phase and got the green light to continue on with the project as is. So in other words: we have now started from a fresh (uncorrupted) file for the definitive version! Isn't that exciting? Because we think it is. 

This also means we have started on the cosmetic side of things. Furniture assets and characters are now in the making and the level is being re-blocked out into its more advanced version. Let's dive into what we managed to finish this week!

Characters and Enemies

As is common knowledge, games have enemies and characters. But ours, although named throughout the prototype, haven't gotten any designs yet. Until now of course.

The Hacker

As the hacker player is an "invisible" figure that aids the Spy on their quest, they naturally were not in need of a design. We'll probably try to bring some narrative/personality across when we make the Hacker HUD, but for now, they are wonderfully bodiless.

The Spy

The Spy is our main character controlled by player 2. As our environment is incredibly colorful and bright, we wanted a desaturated and dark MC. We went through a handful of different horizontals before we started combining them in a second pass.

We decided that 2, 3, and 5 were a bit too futuristic for our taste, so we threw them through the window. 4 and 1 we liked best for their traditional silhouette. But 6 also resonated with a lot of us. So 2 verticle passes later, we landed on this gentleman.

 

Colour-wise we are currently mostly arguing about if we want a grey monotone skin tone or a human skin tone. But for clothing, we will be going for 5. The colors aren't too dark, but not too bright either,  which is ideal. We

Robots

For the robots, we wanted them to be kind of like old-school '70s robot toys. We took lots of inspiration from some old tv shows and cartoons to come up with our first iterations.

We liked the body of 1 and the head of 4. 2 was an immediate throw-away, as they looked more like an unemployed robot than a hard-working individual. 3, on the other hand, looked like an industrial worker which was not the vibe.
So, with a bit of dismemberment and reattachment, we got our new little robot friend. 

How we managed to put a residing hairline and mullet on a robot, I still do not know. But we did! He is made to appear as an average office worker by mimicking "wearing" a vest and a tie. The colors are made to both stand out from the environment as well as harmonize with it. 

Shaders and models

Shaders

For shaders we added the toon-shader and outline-shader to the project and tweaked these to achieve our desired look. It took some bugfixing to make it work but it works now. We also added a third color to the outline options to make hackable objects stand out more.

Models

We started modelling assets aswell. This loveseat we modelled is the first asset for the game and fits in our 70's scifi style with a futuristic but grounded look.

Gameplay

Our programmers are currently hard at work updating and implementing the basic gameplay mechanics once again. This also includes cleaning up a couple of things as well. For now, there is not yet a lot to show, as it has been mostly setting up the bases for them to continue forwards on, so we will update you when the first fruits of their labor have been harvested!

Build

Build this week only has some proxy models and shader tests because we are busy reimplementing all work done previously to the final clean project.

Gotta skitty, see you next week!