Production has officially started. All the prototyping is done and we have started into sprint 1, with making a solid plan and setting up the project. In the devlog after the first sprint we will revise how accurate the planning was and how much we actually got done.

For the art we started already with concepting the assets and making layouts for the level. We want to quickly move on to making the 3D models and building the base of the level so we can test everything out in engine.

The level design has a very big influence on how the game will play. Objects are going to block projectiles that Chonky shoots, and height differences are another challenge. Aiming up and downwards from a isometric perspective will be quite hard to see for the player. So the best solution would be to have the arrow fly straight and hit without regards to the level. Another problem is that when chonky explores towards the bottom of the map and has a lower height level there, Chonky probably shouldnt be able to shoot there.

This very rough first sketch is mainly to explore what we actually need in the scene. There must be space for furnace, elevator mechanism and monster, but also hiding places for the elevator pieces so Squishy can go exploring.

- Arachnophobia trigger warning - 

This week, have a quick look into the creation pipeline. The following images reveal the completion of the 3D model for the Spiders. While we may fine-tune proportions for their final appearance, the current state marks a promising initial step in production. Starting from a set of reference involving both Art inspirations and real life pictures, the challenge was to create a spider that would look threatening to the player while keeping a stylized - slightly goofy - appearance.  In the earlier development phase, we decided that ennemies would have a dark unsaturated palette to make them blend with the darkness element and make them feel dangerous, while also having bright red eyes to still distinct them on the screen. While designing the spider, the having the eyes facing upwards and make them big enough was something to keep in mind  in regards to those gameplay elements. We still want our audience to see what's happening on the screen, this ain't Game of thrones!

After a moment sketching in Photoshop we have a rough idea of what the ennemy will look like ( big mandibles to crunch dwarf legs, 8 eyes and legs, the usual ). This step facilitates what comes next, which is the asset creation itself. We first make a detailed modeled in Zbrush, which we then retopologise to pass the information onto a less heavy mesh. A lot of words to say that we're optimizing the impact of our asset.

Now we rebuild the parts and get the final look at the 3D model, ready to be textured! Useless polyloops your say? That may be a good point for our rigging artist has no clue how much deformation he needs on the legs - better safe than sorry ">:D . ( We can always fix it in post ). 

With the model done, we can import it in a Program such a Subtsance to actually start painting. We stored some vertex color information earlier on in Zbrush, but now we're looking for crispier textures. Thanks to the few extra steps we took ( baking) , we unlocked incredibly powerful tools that facilitate the textures and alow us to get the results above in a few clicks and without having to manually paint anything. This procedural approach to texturing makes up for the slight time loss. Even if we not end up using normal maps,for  such small scaled and low-detail meshes, that extra step is barely noticeable.

And here is tha baby. See you next time for the BIG MONSTER.

As for the programming side of things, we were busy basically setting up a new project from scratch, this time following maintainable industry practices such as decent folder and file structure, coding components for some features shared by many different entities, and using version control and collaborative editing appropriately.

I'm afraid nothing moves in the current scene, since we're still getting the groundwork done for a more robust system when we actually implement things like the enemy and the player. By next devlog some things will definitely be moving, so stay tuned!

That's all for this week. We have two weeks of break now, so the game might look very different next time you see it.