development thread

[Madance]

Well, the Amazons don't consider themselves to be human, so you don't really need to change it, unless you think it would be necessary.

[jack1974]

Well from narrative point of view "soldier" works just fine, so I've changed it that was the only point of the story in which she calls the human empire that way, so...

[jack1974]

After the intro you're brought to Grimoire, where our old friend Apolimesho will do a simple test... to verify if you're android or human!
I'm joking obviously but the whole thing reminded me of Blade Runner somehow

[jack1974]

I'm also pleased to say that I got all the final sketches for the portraits: for the main character there will be 40 unique portraits x 3 hair colors x 3 eye colors x 3 skin colors = 1080 unique faces! I'm including male/female obviously, so "only" 640 unique combinations each

[Franka]

Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping.

Leon's upper lip is quivering.

Leon: Whatya means, I'm not helping?

Holden: I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Leon?

[jack1974]

Haha, exactly!

[jack1974]

/nods to myself
This is going to be a great game. Doing the portrait thing was a great idea I think, I just have the female elf and I already am having fun!

[jack1974]

more tests
I'll stop here otherwise I'll spam the forums with various character portraits! The combos possible are many, sadly for the skin color I won't be able to go darker than the one above (I should redraw all the noses/mouth/etc to match it... insane work for all the combos!). Hopefully people will appreciate the efforts nonetheless!

[Katicflis]

Why can't the skin color go darker than that? I'd barely call that tan ... and that's a shame when you can't even make the customizeable avatar anything darker than 'pretty damn white' in a game that doesn't really have much skin diversity in the main character pool.

I like my pirotess'esque elf characters.

[jack1974]

Because all the shadings done on the mouth/nose and even the shadow on the skin cast by the hair uses same palette as the skin and it's a separate photoshop layer
So I should separate all the shadows into a new layer, basically the same amount of work x3-4 times. Also this way the VRAM used by the texture would be insane (portrait is 720x720px), and probably it would slow down everything on mobile (or perhaps not even run in low-end devices).
There are many technical issues, but of course I understand. Doing customizable stuff in 2d it's a super pain in the ass.
I'll see what I can do, probably it's easier to just ask artist to recolor it doing a separate version...!