How do we do the “dog” Noir Paper Bum. Part 2

We continue to talk about how we collect our first game – a gloomy pencil adventure about a homeless dog. The last time there was a story about the emergence of an idea and a long drawing process, today we will tell about the prototype and soundtrack.

The first prototype or “crayfish on a lame dog”

At the time of assembly of the first prototype, we had several sprites of the dog and forest landscapes-it was already possible to do something with this. The first attempt with the walking simulator on one screen was, of course, terrible. The background is static, not a single blade of grass moves, the dog looks like a chrome giraffe (it is so strangely pushing his legs because of one extra frame).

For some reason, a video with grief prototype is only in the form of shooting a screen with a phone. But, in principle, the quality of the video corresponds to its content 🙂

But then we saw the potential – “revived” pencil drawings looked quite cool, I wanted to play it ourselves (and for what else to do my game. ). And, of course, they rejoiced in household magic – it walks on a click of a mouse, is it not a miracle.

The initial idea (you can already start laughing) was like this – to collect the game quickly and simpler, we draw not individual elements of the scenes, but a whole backdrop at once – that is, the finished scene is visible on a sheet of paper. We animated the grass on the same sheet.

The principle was like this – the sky and the trees are left static, the grass “revive” the grass. Then we cut off the trees with the sky, make a separate layer on the engine and tie the grass a little bit-so that there are no white gaps (magnificent plan, Walter, reliable, like Swiss watches).

They were going to work with this.

For some reason, nothing confused us, and such scenes with fully shared animated grass were found eight pieces (and for the animation of grass within one sheet went for two to three hours).

Further – even more interesting. We planned to draw every next scene taking into account the previous one – continuing the pattern of grass and taking into account the branches that did not fit into the previous screen.

The legacy of this approach is no need for no one with sticking pieces of trees and herbs drops.

The shortcomings of this approach surfaced at the first attempt to combine two scenes – the transition was very clearly visible, as if two pieces of cheap wallpaper stained in glue and tried to connect the namesake. Also the bar was different.

The decision turned out to be the simplest. Grass should be made in small pieces with repetition of the picture – so that the second piece perfectly continues the first, and so in a circle. The analogy with the wallpaper works again, only now we glue it. We animate each piece – taking into account the repetitions.

It turns out such a universal piece of grass. Repeat it in lighter colors – and now we can combine it as we want.

It worked! It is noaccount-casinos.co.uk a pity of the lost hours of work, but we got an invaluable lesson: if you can make it easier, do not complicate (the wisdom of the meme “to kill – shoot so as not to kill – do not shoot”).

Life -giving parallax

At some point, we finally admitted to ourselves that a static picture is horror and dead, and we need dynamics, namely parallax.

We manually “pulled out” trees from landscapes – we redrawed them again on a white background, removed the background, transferred the whole thing to Unity and placed trees on different layers, which move at different speeds depending on the movement of the chamber. On the code the script turned out to be small, it turned out to be quite simple to realize everything.

Hung a script for each layer and set different speeds everywhere. The movement turned out in the sky – the moon slowly moves there and the clouds swim.

Moreover, the clouds have a separate script of movement – they have their own speed, and they are generated outside the screen.

We return to our beloved grass – it was placed in three layers, then they added parallax and there to increase volume.

There is a version without clouds, but the principle is clear.

While there are enough problems-it turned out crookedly, in places the speed of objects is far from realism, but it is twisted, the main thing is that a general principle has been found, which (finally!) works.

Magic Lunar Light

Where the volume is the light, we decided, and began to experiment. Initially, apparently, it was assumed that we would draw light almost manually, somehow pressing less on a pencil (which. ). But after they finally decided on the engine (they chose for a long time between Godot and Unity), they realized – the light should be done, the capabilities of Unity allow.

Thanks to the illumination of the stage, they finally began to look almost like in a real, “adult” game, the innovation greatly smoothed out the shortcomings of the animation and revived the picture.

We will show changes on the example of the scene where the dog eats from the garbage. Here is a version without light.

We throw global lighting with reduced intensity.

Add zones with lighting from the windows, change the color there to the yellow.

We fasten the glow from the windows and the shadow from the dog.

It looks like the truth 🙂 We will continue to play with lighting, I like the potential.

DIY soundtrack

In general, we ourselves and a kind of musicians (and we can embroider on a typewriter, yeah). A rich collection of tools accumulates at home, among other things, it includes a double bass and an accordion. We really like Dark Kabar (for example, The Tiger Lillies)-just with them we spied on a combination of double bass and accordion. On their basis, they decided to saw the soundtrack-something blues, long, with howls.

But the problem arose – you need studio quality of the recording, an even rhythm and, in general, at least a musical idea.

Therefore, with Dark-Kabar and Blues, they decided to slow down and cost half a half-they collected the first track for the trailer in Garageband.

The first “layer” is a long smuggling embossed on one note. The next path – on top of the embosses – a move on another smugus of several notes. They selected approximately to sound harmoniously, sometimes helping itself on an acoustic guitar (as familiar).

Then we apply the cello pizzicato (well, when they “pinch” behind the string) and the melody – also on the cello.

The main principle is to add tools for increasing, and then gradually extinguish everything to the original emboss. The peak of the melody was ironically called “We will give a zimmer”, but in general we were more or less satisfied-we decided that it would go for the first time.

To collect the soundtrack, by the way, at first it was scary – we used to play covers, and not compose our. But they quickly got involved, and I liked the process as a whole.

And for today everything! The next part will devote the next one to a very instructive story about how in no case should you drink the game, and a little ponom about the syndrome of the impostor.

We remind you that we are on social networks! VKontakte, Facebook*, Twitter and YouTube. We plan to post short news, announcements and jokes there.

Thanks in advance for the support of Zen Games! After all, the farther – the darker.

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