PS1 Style Game #02

Work In Progress / 22 March 2020

Hey everyone!

It was a bit longer than expected from last update but you know how things have been lately haha 

So progress! I have made a LOT of it as you might be able to see. I have filled a test room with lots of props and I am definitely happy with how it's shaping up. I also made a corridor out reused assets so that I had somewhere to go to when you used the door haha

I also added a shadow under the player and made working door, complete with classic Resident Evil style door animations, which I am very proud of. I have been making all the blueprints like the cameras and the doors as easy to get working as possible, as my brother will be doing a lot of the blockouts.

Anywho the best way to appreciate it is to view it in motion so here is a video and some screenshots:



As how I made the props, I have been using Substance Painter still mainly, with some photosourcing mixed in in places. Since everything is so basic though and without lighting (not to mention very low resolution) there is a lot I can get away with.


As you can see I work at a much much higher resolution to the end result, which I then scale down to around 256x to retain as much detail as possible. Since the scale of the end result is so small it hides a very large amount of things so I try to keep that in mind as I am going along so that I don't waste time adding detail where you won't be able to see it. This means I can fly through them much faster which Is very nice haha 

For the texture I work in just base colour since it is the only map I use at the end. I also overlay the AO curvature and a bit of fake top down lighting onto the texture to add a bit of detail to the end result.

Well with that I am finished for this week. Next plan of action is to make a third room at the end of the corridor, mainly out of existing assets, before getting back into the blueprints for inventory systems, interaction with props, test puzzles and more.

Let me know what you think and I will be back next time with more to show!

PS1 Style Game #01

Work In Progress / 07 March 2020

Hey everyone!

It's already time for my next project. No time to rest haha

After seeing the amazing projects in the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc, I couldn't help but be inspired to make something too!

So with that I am teaming up with my brother who is a designer to create a nice ~1 hour game in a PS1 style in Unreal and some good progress has been made already so lets get into it shall we :P


So to start with I wanted to make sure I could get the correct visual effects:

Step one was to create a post processing material that could create a pixelation effect as well as a limited colour range to emulate the old school grathics.

The left side up is the pixelation effect that can be changed by a global value, so it could be changed anytime including ingame so I decided to make it a collection parameter setting. On the right is the limited colour scale effect that is also changed with a parameter to fit to purpose.


I created a master material that would be used across the game, I will likely make additions as I go along. I neatened it up using material function which I will now go into


First off I will show the three effect that I put into the PS1 Material Effects Function:

This one is the affine texture effect

This is a distortion effect that the PS1 had that distorts textures depending on the angle of the camera


This one is a vertex jitter effect

This one causes vertices to snap to a grid as the camera moves around creating a slight jittering effect that emulates the old fixed point positioning of the PS1 before float positioning.


This is a vertex offset effect

This one pushes out the vertices creating seams in the mesh. This one I actually have disabled at the moment as I figure out a best way to do this as this wasn't exactly how it used to work, it only had seams between mesh.


This is the material function for the lighting system of the game which is vertex based.

Since everything in the game will technically be unlit, I wanted to make an overall ambient brightness level added to every material that I could set in one value dynamically. To get the best visuals I made a weird if statement so that if the number was below 0.5 then it would multiply to make it darker and above blend overlay to make it brighter. Also here is where I overlay a colour for the light the main character emits (from a torch or whatever reason) that I will go into now:

This part adds a radial vertex light that appears at a position that I have made a parameter that I can change in blueprints so I can make it follow the player

I also have the radius of the light set up to the parameter collection so I can adjust that as nessisary.


Phew that was a lot of fancy material shader stuff haha I hope that helps anyone else out who wants to try and emulate this style. Apart from that I have created some art to start testing workflow and made a simple camera/tank control set up. I am too tired to write up about them just yet so I will save that for next week :P

For now I will just leave you with this short video showing what the prototype looks like so far:


As always let me know what you think and I will see you all again next week :P


Gas Station WIP #11

Work In Progress / 24 February 2020

Hey everyone!

Lots of good changes this week, for one I got that car done. Used a combination of parts I have already modelled in the past, kitbashing some others and modelling some new parts. It would have been easier to just make the whole thing from scratch but I am not a fan of modelling vehicles so whatever it takes to avoid it myself xD 
One of the other main things I added was a pile of leaves which I used quite a lot around the road edges as well as the gas station building itself. apart from this I added some grime to the windows, some grime to the yellow bollards, some grime on a lot of things really xD
  
  
  



  


With this I have honestly run out of things I wanted to add to this scene so let me know any suggestions or improvements. If I don't get much then I may just put it up by the weekend haha

I will see you all next time, hopefully this time with the finished thing! At that point I can get started on my next project :D

Gas Station WIP #10

Work In Progress / 17 February 2020

Hello again!

I am getting (a bit) better at posting more regularly again now that I am doing most of my work on the train commute to work. I would have posted this in time for the weekend but I wanted to get it baked so it pushed it back by a day.

Pretty happy with the stuff in this update, I feel it's really bringing more life into the scene, especially in a dynamic way. One of the main additions have been griming up the walls and floor of the gas station building so now it is a lot more on the level of everything else. It has made me realise that the yellow poles at the front are not grimey enough now so I will make sure to add that for next time for sure. One of the other things Is I added posters onto the windows to break them up a bit which I am very happy with how they look/fit in the scene.

Now one of the biggest additions is both a banner over one of the windows and wind effects ontop of that. I hope you like GIF's because I got three for you :P the banner waves, the canopy flaps and the grass sways in the breeze.



Now for the new pictures:


Right so that is it for this week, for next week as I said I will grime up the yellow posts more and most of all, I will finally do the thing I have been avoiding for months: making a car xD Boy is there few things I dislike more in this world then modelling vehicles for some reason, it might come from my general lack of interest in cars whatsoever haha Once I have done that I will have to have some serious thoughts about what else this scene will need at this point as I may actually be closing in on the end.

as always let me know any opinions you might have and I will see you next time!

Gas Station WIP #09

Work In Progress / 09 February 2020
Hey everyone! 

Finally time for another update haha did a couple of things since last time. The main one was I did some Marvelous Designer learning and utilised that knoledge to make some bin bags (garbage bags for you yanks I guess) as well as a canopy that goes over the front door.

Note that in the pictures that the grass is actually baked this time but the canopy is not so it might look different next time. (It takes a while to bake okay haha)

  





  


Here is some pictures of the props in a small showcase scene:


Next up will be an advertisment banner I want to add to the left window and a tarp covering an engine. This should finalise the stuff I need marvelous designer for this scene I imagine. Then it's on to grunging up the flooring outside the gas station building and a bunch more props.


Let me know if there is any feedback and I look forward to showing you more next time!

Gas Station WIP #08

Work In Progress / 19 January 2020

Hey everyone!


Almost wasn't going to post an update but I realised I shouldn't be too precious with my updates so I decided to go ahead anyway.

Most of the feedback had been about how new the concrete was around the gas station compared with everywhere else. As much as I knew that and was mainly focusing on other areas first, I realised I should prioritise it more because it was becoming too distracting as well as the fact it would make the biggest visual difference at the moment.

So the main changes I made with the concrete part was I made a vertex blend material with currently 4 layers (Base/Red/Green/Blue) It is currently set up as the base concrete, red as a grimey version of the concrete, green as a heavily cracked version of the concrete and finally blue as a wetness layer. it's all layered using a height blend with a mask texture. The wetness blue layer doesn't actually use any textures and simply darkens the base colour and darkens the roughness where ever it is painted but it works perfectly. Apart from that I added some grass to where the concrete is cracked to make it seem more overgrown. I actually used the grass I made for the shogun scene as there was no need redoing it. The grass isn't actually baked and I mainly threw it in at the moment so it isn't exactly perfect at the moment.


Sorry the picture is so small but I didn't exactly do anything that fancy (or neat haha) with it so I didn't think there was that much need to get into it. Let me know if you want a more indepth view of what I exactly did.


So onto the most important part, the pictures!


  


  


  


  


 I think there is definitely still some work to do with it, I think the grime should be a bit more obvious I think and with a better coverage as well as baking/finalising the grass.

Let me know what you guys think and I hope to see you back again next time!

Gas Station WIP #07

Work In Progress / 12 January 2020

Phew has it really been 6 months? Christ I have been busy haha Started my new job at Firesprite and it really filled my time even though I have enjoyed almost every minuite of it.

Every now and then when I had time I would do little bits towards finishing parts but now with the new year I am to try and dedicate myself to actually finishing it off so I will make sure it is not 6 months again till the next update haha


Anywho, here are some of the updates I have done so far:




  

The main additions were more probs to fill the scene some more, I have added a picture of a bunch of the new propping additions:

The next main step is to add even more propping especially to the gas station building area in particular, add some actual 3D grass to the sides, [ut in a car and most importantly add cracks, wear and tear to the gas station flooring.

Hopefully will see you again soon this time for the next update and as always let me know any feedback you might have!

Gas Station WIP #06

Work In Progress / 07 July 2019

Hi everyone!

Actually managed to get an update after just a week this time finally. Been hard at work on the actual building of the gas station.


  

As you can see I have created most of the shell for the building itself. It's a little too clean as it is now but I plan to go in with some decals to grunge it up a bit more. Decided to extend the windows down to the ground to make the trim make more sense but I am definitely glad I did because it meant I could add adverts on the bottom, which I feel add a lot of nice detail. Definitely happy with the broken glass helping to sell that this place has been abandoned though the refraction sometimes gets a little crazy so I will have to look into that. I am glad to have added the blinds so that they could block the most of the windows without it looking weird, If anything I think they only increase the creepy factor. Oh also you may have notice that I got rid of the big backboard to the sign, I felt it would prob look better if it was just a free standing sign now.


  

  

Main plan on what to work on next is create the main door, going to add some caution/warning tape over some of the building I think. Will be interested to see how that looks. Will be adding some ventalation stuff on the roof as well as adding the actual struts to the sign holding it up. Prob work on adding some of the grunge through decals then finally getting those last signs done. After that and from there it's mainly details like props and polishing so actually starting to get there.

Right well thats all for this week! Let me know what you think and anything you think can be improved

Gas Station WIP #05

Work In Progress / 30 June 2019

Hey Everyone!

I am just getting worse and worse at getting this out every week haha though to be fair I have been a very busy boy lately because I finally got a job in the game industry! Will be starting at Firesprite in just a couple of weeks so I am very excited :D

Any who onto the changes in the Gas Station:

as you can see I have tweaked the lighting again making it brighter. I keep struggling between feeling the scene is better darker or lighter. Lighter is less creepy but more clear and darker is the opposite. I think in reality visually recognising scenery matters more overall but it's something I think I will continue to struggle with further haha Please if anyone has some thoughts about this then please let me know.

Apart from this the main things you should be able to notice that is different is that there are finally proper chain fences around the area. For this I just created the body out of the trim textures and made two tiling textures. One is the typical loop style metal fencing and a barb wire strip for the top

 The other main thing as you can see is that I finally replaced those hideous placeholder greyblock trees with some actual trees. To be honest this was my first time with speedtree as I always made life harder on myself by manually modelling them but now I can see the appeal of speedtree and it's... well speed. I am definitely not 100% happy with it at the moment but it's a good start and a first pass to see the scene properly.

Well that is my progress so, I think the next thing I will tackle is the actual gas station building itself finally. This will prob take a bit but it's definitely the last major area still unfinished. After that I will prob finish the gas sign and price sign. From there it's adding details such as props with traffic cones, spare tires and touches like grass, cracks, grime, posters. Still got a bit to go but in reality not as much as I would expect.

See you guys next time and don't forget to tell me any comments or feedback!

Gas Station WIP #04

Work In Progress / 14 June 2019

Hey everyone!

Another late one haha been so busy lately that it's basically turned into a blog every milestone but that's not too bad as long as they don't get too far apart.

Big differences this time are the fact that I played around a lot more with the post processing and lighting to create a better scary atmosphere. I am much happier with how the mood is coming along now. Apart from that I finished a gas pump to put in the scene. Took a bit longer then I planned but I wanted to use this as a chance to do a real detailed prop.


  


Here are some of the gas pumps in the scene:

For the gas pumps I decided to go all in on substance painter, even though I could have easily made it with a trim and/or tiling textures but I wanted to take a chance to make a full detailed "hero" prop. It has definitely been fun and I have learnt a bunch of new painter techniques so worth it all around I think. It's very grimy and grungy but I did also want to stress through the prop that this is an abandoned gas station as well as it being rural, though hopefully I didn't go too far haha I have to say I have seen some ATM's and the like still in use, while not looking far off. It may look more grimey then its surroundings but worry not, I do plan to go in with decals and the like to grunge up the rest of it too more.




That's it for this update. Look forward to my next update including getting those darn tree's in the background fleshed out!

Let me know any comments or feedback. Look forward to seeing you all next time!