So I had planned to get all this done by February, but making this model took way longer than I thought it would and I'm still learning. Plus balancing this project with a graveyard shift at the Blue Chip Casino and sleeping and trying to get fit leads to some hurtles, especially when you're a one man team working on an indie dev project by yourself while teaching yourself to make games and assets for it. I'm a workaholic I swear.
So first things first, I've done an overhaul on the soundtrack for my game. I took a listen to some of the tracks, some of them kinda sucked. So the unsalvageable tracks I had to delete outright. Other tracks I boosted in MAXIMUS and other plugins on FL Studio, some I recomposed from the ground up, (in fact I feel like I should compose a brand new theme song from scratch as the current one is a bit too pitchy) and I also composed some totally new tracks just to flesh out the world. As I like to make music first to set the tone, and make graphics later just to create an emotion or vibe for the zone or area you're walking in. Honestly with this whole project I'm just throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. But here are some of the best tracks I've composed!
So first things first, I've done an overhaul on the soundtrack for my game. I took a listen to some of the tracks, some of them kinda sucked. So the unsalvageable tracks I had to delete outright. Other tracks I boosted in MAXIMUS and other plugins on FL Studio, some I recomposed from the ground up, (in fact I feel like I should compose a brand new theme song from scratch as the current one is a bit too pitchy) and I also composed some totally new tracks just to flesh out the world. As I like to make music first to set the tone, and make graphics later just to create an emotion or vibe for the zone or area you're walking in. Honestly with this whole project I'm just throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. But here are some of the best tracks I've composed!
That one was inspired by Prince's "Greatest Romance Ever Sold" which is one of my favorite Prince songs of all time. I thought it would be cool to incorporate some straight up FUNK into a JRPG, ans so I did. This is the sexiest thing I have ever composed by miles.
Now here's something really friggin' busy. You were warned
Now here's something really friggin' busy. You were warned
I was just ripping the soundfont from WCW/nWo Revenge for the N64, and thought I'd put the chunky guitar sample to good use in a drum & bass track. I added some jungle samples from Donkey Kong 64, and that was that. I don't even remember what other games the rest of the instruments come from. Despite how noisy this is, it only had about 8? Maybe 9 instruments?
Now for something more chill in comparison
Now for something more chill in comparison
Keep in mind, this game is supposed to be an N64/PS1/Saturn era throwback, so this game will have dynamic music changes in every area and stage just like those old Rare games like Banjo Kazooie. So when I was composing the Archangel Citadel theme, I experimented around and made extra tracks like this one. Which is one of the best ones. I just decided to use all my best bass and clavinets in one extra funky dirty south style G funk track. Because the world needs more funk. More G funk especially.
Speaking of the Archangel Citadel, you may have noticed I made it in two of those thumbnails. So here it is in full! And MAN did it take forever to craft.
Speaking of the Archangel Citadel, you may have noticed I made it in two of those thumbnails. So here it is in full! And MAN did it take forever to craft.
Since Raziya is half south african and as such half her family are south african, I decided to give her xhosa roots. So the Archangel Citadel is based on the xhosa god Qamata. This depiction was heavily inspired by a painting by the legendary Charles Bibbs named African Adorned which is often used as the depiction of Qamata everywhere. Reimagined in a mid-90's anime and tokusatsu style.
Dude's excellent you gotta check out his stuff it's incredible.
So I had planned to get all this done and upload and blog about it by mid february, but there was a smorgasbord of snafus that got in my way.
The first snafu was modeling the head and neck. I had use not only that Bibbs painting but also an image of a drop dead gorgeous south african woman and a headshot of Gridman as references, but the tutorial about how to use the line tool in 3DSMax that I was watching was old. With an older version of 3DSMax. So I had to figure out where they moved the extrude button. And it kept extruding wrong so I had to redraw the line from scratch twice.
Once I finally got the line right and extruded the right way, I started working on the face and neck. Things were looking good! But for some reason, every time I hit extrude, there were extra triangles overlapping other triangles. So I deleted those bad triangles, reconnected the points, and it kept getting corrupted and 3DSMax kept crashing. So I just remodeled it entirely from scratch.
Second model around, the face was looking much closer to what I was going for. But the model still kept getting corrupted, and corrupted worse. I had no idea what was wrong, until I checked the neck and saw there were a bunch of vertices and triangles I did not add. So I just deleted all the triangles in the throat and got to work on everything else about the front. Things were looking good! And 3DSMax started crashing for n good reason again.
Every time I did upwards of 10 things or hit redo 8 or more times, the program would crash spectacularly and fuck up my model. Bringing it to a garble. And even trying to open the autosaves made 3DSmax crash! There were mornings and nights before and after my day job fulled with frustration and annoyance and anger because it would not stop crashing and screwing up this model. The autosaves were for the most part okay, so I would have to rebuild the citadel's throat and chest So many times.
So I had planned to get all this done and upload and blog about it by mid february, but there was a smorgasbord of snafus that got in my way.
The first snafu was modeling the head and neck. I had use not only that Bibbs painting but also an image of a drop dead gorgeous south african woman and a headshot of Gridman as references, but the tutorial about how to use the line tool in 3DSMax that I was watching was old. With an older version of 3DSMax. So I had to figure out where they moved the extrude button. And it kept extruding wrong so I had to redraw the line from scratch twice.
Once I finally got the line right and extruded the right way, I started working on the face and neck. Things were looking good! But for some reason, every time I hit extrude, there were extra triangles overlapping other triangles. So I deleted those bad triangles, reconnected the points, and it kept getting corrupted and 3DSMax kept crashing. So I just remodeled it entirely from scratch.
Second model around, the face was looking much closer to what I was going for. But the model still kept getting corrupted, and corrupted worse. I had no idea what was wrong, until I checked the neck and saw there were a bunch of vertices and triangles I did not add. So I just deleted all the triangles in the throat and got to work on everything else about the front. Things were looking good! And 3DSMax started crashing for n good reason again.
Every time I did upwards of 10 things or hit redo 8 or more times, the program would crash spectacularly and fuck up my model. Bringing it to a garble. And even trying to open the autosaves made 3DSmax crash! There were mornings and nights before and after my day job fulled with frustration and annoyance and anger because it would not stop crashing and screwing up this model. The autosaves were for the most part okay, so I would have to rebuild the citadel's throat and chest So many times.
On about 17 different occasions, I had to just delete half it's body and clone it AGAIN, and reattach AGAIN and delete so many hidden quads and triangles in its face again and again and AGAIN for the whole month of February heading into early march before it finally stopped getting fucked.
It then started crashing every time I attached the orb in its head to the cranium line for line. But eventually, 3DSmax started behaving better. And I got the body done!
I attached the orb and the boat in the back, and then it was onto texturing. The next snafu.
So I applied the Unwrap UVW. The green lines were totally wrong, and every attempt I had only reduced the default lines but didn't get rid of all of them. So I spent weeks in between daily sleep cycles and workouts and work googling solutions until I finally got it right! I recut the lines, then spent the rest of March hard at work making all the textures for the citadel. And even rehabbing older textures I plan to reuse in other objects in this game.
I would have uploaded this by Wrestlemania, but then I had issues with the water. I had maped the textures perfectly, but for some reason it was rendering all black. All i had to do though was just delete the clear water mesh and re-copy it. And it's done!
Then I started my Sketchfab account, aaand for some reason the model just would not upload right. Neither as an .OBJ file, nor an .FBX, nor uploaded from the Sketchfab uploader plugin for 3DSmax. Sometimes the textures would be missing. Sometimes the model would be warped. Or the chest emblem would be aaall the way to the left floating in air. Or the wings would have a black background when that's supposed to be translucent. Even though it had the black and white bump map on the opacity layer. It was infuriating!
Then I realized all I had to do is hit "Embed Media," save with the FBX 2019 renderer thingy, make a zip file of the model and it's textures and just manually upload some of the textures to sketchfab, and bada bing bada boom it's finally somewhat like I modeled it! I say somewhat because Sketchfab may not be able to handle some of the materials still in how I set them to repeat. But fuck it! It looks great in the viewer!
This is how it's supposed to look and how it will look in game.
So I applied the Unwrap UVW. The green lines were totally wrong, and every attempt I had only reduced the default lines but didn't get rid of all of them. So I spent weeks in between daily sleep cycles and workouts and work googling solutions until I finally got it right! I recut the lines, then spent the rest of March hard at work making all the textures for the citadel. And even rehabbing older textures I plan to reuse in other objects in this game.
I would have uploaded this by Wrestlemania, but then I had issues with the water. I had maped the textures perfectly, but for some reason it was rendering all black. All i had to do though was just delete the clear water mesh and re-copy it. And it's done!
Then I started my Sketchfab account, aaand for some reason the model just would not upload right. Neither as an .OBJ file, nor an .FBX, nor uploaded from the Sketchfab uploader plugin for 3DSmax. Sometimes the textures would be missing. Sometimes the model would be warped. Or the chest emblem would be aaall the way to the left floating in air. Or the wings would have a black background when that's supposed to be translucent. Even though it had the black and white bump map on the opacity layer. It was infuriating!
Then I realized all I had to do is hit "Embed Media," save with the FBX 2019 renderer thingy, make a zip file of the model and it's textures and just manually upload some of the textures to sketchfab, and bada bing bada boom it's finally somewhat like I modeled it! I say somewhat because Sketchfab may not be able to handle some of the materials still in how I set them to repeat. But fuck it! It looks great in the viewer!
This is how it's supposed to look and how it will look in game.
I almost forgot! I did do some other graphics besides that model and some textures. I made some mouths and eyes for Raziya for the cut scenes
There's more frames of course, as everybody's lips will flap along with the text on the text boxes scrolling by just like some old 90's games like Misadventures Of Tron Bonne and Langrisser V. While their eyes blink a random even when you aren't advancing in the dialogue.
Speaking of text boxes, I made one!
Speaking of text boxes, I made one!
Can't get more classic RPG than opaque blue with a slight gradient.
In fact I've made some graphics for the whole HUD. I haven't coded anything since I coded Raziya's 8 way walk cycle, but I've made a test xcf file in GiMP to give you a gist of what it'l look like. Just imagine there's a world with people and stuff.
In fact I've made some graphics for the whole HUD. I haven't coded anything since I coded Raziya's 8 way walk cycle, but I've made a test xcf file in GiMP to give you a gist of what it'l look like. Just imagine there's a world with people and stuff.
The buttons on the bottom right of course serve the same purpose as the button prompts in Legend Of Zelda Ocarina Of Time or Majora's Mask. Except even more customizable, and for general prompts rather than mapping items to buttons.
As for characters, I've had dozens of characters and worlds etc in mind, but because I focused on modeling the Archangel Citadel, I didn't have the time to draw anybody new. So to close, here's some gratuitous fan service
As for characters, I've had dozens of characters and worlds etc in mind, but because I focused on modeling the Archangel Citadel, I didn't have the time to draw anybody new. So to close, here's some gratuitous fan service
Until next time!