Graphic Style

I'm developing a game (mainly messing around with the story, at the moment) and I don't know what style the game assets will be. I'm big on performance as I'm creating it for my fiancee and I to play together and her laptop isn't all that great. The two things I'm eyeing are low poly models with hand painted textures or a cube/voxel style. I know she likes both but has a preference towards the hand painted style. Hand-Painted are usually considered "ugly" and "mobile-like" and it also takes a lot longer for me to do by myself. A voxel style is often considered a Minecraft rip-off and uncreative, but I could create a lot more by myself. So I'd like to know your opinions both regarding general preference and performance.

 

Personally, I'd suggest going with low-poly, and leveraging Asset Store assets like PolyWorld Woodland Toolkit and Low Poly Strategy Prototyper. Done right, this style of low-poly art can be really beautiful, and should perform quite well. Your fiancee will love it, and that's most the important thing. And hopefully the asset store assets will save you enough time to finish the game!

 

Kids these days. When I was engaged there were far more interesting thing do do with a fiancée then play games. *

But since this is a love quest, why not ask your target audience. Do up a few mock scenes in both art styles, and ask her to choose.

*Thats actually a lie. My wife and I clocked Halo together while we were dating.

 

1) I converted her from a non-gamer to it being the thing she wants to do as soon as she has free time. We still... y'know very often though ;P
2) I've already done so and she said she likes both. My biggest concern (other than performance) is my capabilities. I know I can do it all but doing a hand painted model right (where it doesn't look funky or is poorly optimized) requires a lot more time whereas I can do a decent voxel model within a minute if I know what I'm trying to make. Voxels will be quicker and might improve performance and even help others create maps for the game if they'd like, hand-painted is more attractive and she agrees on that as well.
3) Pretty sure I didn't say this, but I'm also wanting to sell the game if she thinks it's worth doing so (then again, she thinks my singing is good when I sound like I swallowed a frog XD)

 

What can you build the fastest? Games take infinitely LONGER than you think. If you haven't decided between Voxel and hand-painted, you have little more than an idea, and since execution is all that matters, please don't waste time trying to monetize.

PS - Your fiance doesn't really care about the style of art, the kind of game, or whether you sell the final product. Her goals are more sophisticated. To understand them, put your arm around her. Then look in the mirror.

 

I can do voxel models within minutes, whereas it might take me a few minutes to plan out the basic layout of a regular poly model. I also have ideas on how to improve performance when using voxels. I'm not worrying about monetizing at the moment as it isn't really all that important until I give it out to all my friends to try and as I said, it's mainly for my fiance. She likes the hand-painted look (she's an artist herself, much better one then I'll ever be) but all she cares is that I actually make the game. She absolutely loves when I do anything geeky.

Just wanted to say that I love your post about how to narrow your scope (I can't recall the name, but that's basically the gist of it). I haven't had an account until recently, but I've been reading the forums for a long time and I enjoy many of your post.

 

This one? And thank you for the kind words. My wife gets the credit for pushing me to FINISH my first product. The rest is history .

Good luck,
Gigi

 

Yeah! I stayed up late (3am?) reading it while working.

 

Get rid of her now - she's indecisive, that's a flaw that will eventually cause problems later in life.

Aesthetics really don't matter until you have most of the game play mechanics in place - or at the very least prototyped. I think you may be wasting time on style choice when the game will give you the answer when it's playable. If it doesn't give you the answer - press your gf to make a decision.

Whoa - let her do the art and you can do all the other yucky code stuff! You could be a duo like the temple run devs.
She'll be able to decide a style choice much easier if she's doing the art.
And I take back the - get rid of her comment.

 

Husband/Wife coder/artist combo is pretty fun. My wife is an artist, and we've done the same thing on a few projects. Of course it does make setting hard deadlines difficult. Especially once you throw kids and the associated commitments into the mix.

 

"OK - I'll bathe the kids tonight but you have to promise you get those models textured so I can code up the shaders and path finding tomorrow while your running errands" That's taking indie to the extreme.

 

Been there done that.

 

"Woman! Where's my art?" (in a joking voice) was fun for a while. After getting tired of that, my wife eventually said, "Go hire an artist". Fast forward until yesterday, when I asked, "Woman! What do you think of this new icon?" And she replied, "I love it!"



Gigi

 

I have tried a few different approaches for graphics from doing everything myself to using free or paid assets to hiring artists. Now I am back to just knocking out programmer art. Truthfully I still spend way too much time on it.

The best way to do it I have found is just don't think about art at all beyond the technical side Meaning make a solid rectangle representive of the size of the object and for animation stamp numbers on it. So if this object needs 6 frames of animaton I have 6 rectangles. 1, 2, 3... 6. This approach allows me to focus on the actual game and not get bogged down with art nonsense. If I complete it instead of ditch it then I can focus exclusively on the art either doing it all myself, using assets or hiring artists.

So basically I'd say just make your game with as simplistic objects as possible for now. Whatever you can throw in the fastest. Then focus on the actual game. When it is complete to your liking and you actually need to focus on the graphics go ahead and do it. Because art will be all you have left to do at that time you may find yourself using the more time consuming approach to make better art. Kind of a win-win because you don't need to take it all on as a vast project all at once.

 

Quality takes time - and so does iteration.

Agreed - I need to carry over your development philosophy beyond initial prototyping - even more. It seems like a very efficient workflow.

 

That is very true!

It is the most efficient way I have found. I don't follow it perfectly though. I used to a lot more but since joining this community I seem to spend more time on graphics. Not so much now but last year I spent a lot of time just iterating on graphics. I am getting back into my "old ways" though as time passes.To me, it just seems like such a foolish waste of time. Spending so much time up front working on graphics. Just use the absolute bare minimum possible and get the game made. Then there is something that can actually use the art! I mean the art is not of any use if there is no game to make use of it, right?! The real art can be swapped in easily at the end whether I focus on it, use assets or hire out the work.

 

100% in agreement. But it is kind of like torment for me being an artist type.
In a way though for me - it's like eating the delicious dessert at the end of a 7-70 course meal.
Just imagine for you if - as a programmer - you had to wait through 75-85% of a games development cycle to do the part you really love!

It's not FAIR!!

But thanks to this forum and all ya'll main stays in the design forum - I'm slowly progressing towards getting to that animation stage. Thanks in advance.

Well I guess now @Gigiwoo will shut us down for getting off original topic.

 

I've always had success with building interactive tributes for other people. It's incredibly motivating to do something for someone else in a way that is not nearly as easy as doing it for yourself. It's also a good excuse to create a finished product. You're in for a treat.

I would pick the easiest aesthetic and the smallest scope you can think of—my first was a fireworks flythrough that spelled the name of my crush in smoke. I'd also pick a good deadline like a birthday or anniversary that you absolutely must hit. Plan to get it done weeks in advance "in order to polish it up," and you'll be grateful to have the buffer when it turns out you have to sacrifice the polish. Your partner will be delighted and amazed with whatever you create, so don't try to perfect it. That delight and amazement is the best feeling in the world—it's so addictive that I've done the whole thing three times now, each with a bigger scope, and become so much better because of it.