Should you build your game when you don't have the artwork?

Hey guys,

So here's the dilemma. I have an idea and can start building my game today.

But I have not yet found a freelancer to create the artwork and assets for me.

I was thinking on starting the game using simple shapes (cubes, planes, squares) and then later on apply the materials and/or replace for the proper prefabs.

Do you think this is a good way of approaching the problem?

What should I have in mind while devoloping using simple elements so that later on I can have a smooth(er) transition?

Thanks!

 

Good thread.

I am also new to unity and are only using free assets and simple shapes. I have found that as soon as I start using a proper model I get distracted by texture, lighting, materials, etc, etc. At some point I need to tackle those things but at the moment I have found that I am a much more effective coder when I keep the graphics at a minimum.

But good advice for a smooth transition later on would be usefull.

 

I'd advice using just the regular 3D gameobjects (cubes, cylinders, spheres etc.) that Unity allows you to create as placeholders, and when the time is right, replace the meshes and possibly the colliders with the final art.

 

We were just discussing this somewhere else. I wouldn't mind a dedicated thread to make a good discussion of it. @ShadowK and @Tomnnn both had some good opinions.

I for one don't throw in any art till near the end. I use primitives and place holder models. Anything else tends to distract from getting the core gameplay elements right.

 

This is a good idea.

You can supplement the built-in 3D primitives with free ones from the asset store.

I like Primitives Plus.

 

Ok so here is what i think. I am not an artist but a programmer. When i start creating a game, i like to program only and not to take care for 3d stuff. Every time I did this, in the end my game failed because I couldn't do the modelling and 3d stuff. I was so tired and my game cut off. Now i know, and i always get my art ready from anywhere, (Websites, Asset store, Blender etc), then I start doing my favourite part, coding. Maybe its different with you but i found this very helpful, and now my games are finished without getting me tired a lot

 

Fantastic link. Thanks

 

You could make the most amazing mechanics in the world, but without decent art, you will not pull and hold attention. Art is how you create immersion in your player base.

What you need is fully functional programmer art, or temporary assets that illustrate how things work. Get the animation timings and everything down so that you have a template for finalized art. This will create a more polished demo to hopefully garner attention.

 

You can definitely worry about the final artwork later along the way.

Check out in Poku's creative process, how they blocked out the bird:

http://www.pokugame.com/devlog/releasing-the-teaser-trailer/

 

Prototype with crap, typically boxes and capsules. Art is only a factor when you can confirm if the prototype gameplay is fun or not.

If it isn't fun before you commit to making art assets, then you should drop the prototype and do something else.

 

I just get bogged down when I try to do the art myself. I don't enjoy the process and I have a lot of trouble getting the look "right". Programming is, by far, my favourite part as well.

 

Thomas Was Alone uses only colored rectangles. It's a pretty successful game.

 

@BoredMormon I can actually give an answer for this

I was reading about negative reviews about japanese developed games that were locked at 30 frames per second. Why? Because if you forced them to 60, everything broke. Game speed was 2x, character voices were high pitched, some physics didn't work correctly, etc. So... If you're going to go the awful route of tying everything to frame rate and animation speed for that given rate, then yea, it helps to have the artwork first

Toukiden Kiwami and monster hunter are the examples I enjoy most. Toukiden because it's a poorly done port and monster hunter because I actually have experience running speed hacks on it. Something bugs out with blunt weapons and causes your animation to hit multiple times per frame.

Conclusion : Cubes and capsules and such are fine for developing gameplay. Even if you want to do something horrible like the above games did, you can always write those features in after you have your models.

 

Great thread! I'm definitely in the camp of keeping the presentation side as simple as possible while focusing on the mechanics, objectives, finding the fun and so forth.

Although I am a programmer first and foremost I actually enjoy and have spent many hours on pixel art and 3D modeling. The problem is, like @BoredMormon and @Hasanaj said, focusing on the presentation just becomes a huge distraction. I have a lot of graphics, songs and sounds I created for projects that never went anywhere because I spent all of my damn time focused on the presentation side.

Graphics and music take a lot of time. It can become almost like an obsession to continually improve them. Tweak it a bit here. Tweak a bit there. Maybe throw it out completely and redo it from scratch. Mess around with the colors trying different variations. And on and on. So I just stopped doing it. At this point I don't care if the game is just solid color rectangles or cubes. There is just no sense in wasting so much time focusing on graphics and never actually getting the project done (or even really started!)

So my two cents on it... use the most basic graphics possible. Free assets are fine or quickly knock out graphics yourself using ultra simplistic drawings or models. The only thing I pay attention to are the technical considerations. If you are making a 2D game and know the walking will be 6 frames of animation then just make 6 rectangles of the proper size with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 stamped on them.

This way you can get on with development and when you have an actual game to play and it is fun you can focus on the presentation side. Hire an artist, team up with an artist or focus exclusively on the art yourself.

EDIT: Presentation stuff is fun. It can be quite addicting just modeling or pixeling or crafting music and before you know it many hours have passed.

I just don't waste time on gfx-music any more unless it is something I am doing for fun like this little tune I created last year. It had no real purpose other than just "for fun" and I have not worked on any music since that time.

 

As discussed in other threads it depends on many factors:

• If you're new to games, or you don't have a plan set in stone and it will invariably drastically change. It's a better idea not to put the mass amount of time into artwork.
• Usually even in high end production you will at least block out first then add details later, you NEED a blockout of levels with something like Pro-builder (just as one example). Why? To test AI, Physics and path finding solutions but you need to stick to the layout once built. Generally I'd prefer not to tweak thousands of lines of code when I come back to it later.
• You are going to need base character art to test collision, sockets, environment, shader work, character interactions, all sorts of things. Which is the basis of a game.
• The UI is artwork, doesn't need to be fancy but also needs to be done pretty early on.
• Promo shots are always great for generating interest.

It's better to keep everything simple early on, but you do need artwork straight out the bat. The trick is using common sense and avoiding the gut urge to play with shaders / textures and lighting constantly looking for the OMGZ GFX. Or you'll start avoiding what needs attention, like the game itself..

The more you add, the more the once sparsely generated environment will start to make sense. So best not to worry about art too much in the beginning..

 

Even assualt android cactus a steam early access game is using proxy art until the final art is done.

 

The only caveat, I feel, to the received wisdom in this thread is the idea that looking at your own art can actually help motivate you while you develop your game. When I find myself losing interest in the work, creating some cool art—like a visual effect or UI sound effects—always picks me up.

 

I am very pleased that my very first topic here at Unity3d Forums has so much to talk about
Thanks everyone to the invaluable insights.

I am building my demo for the last hours simply using the default elements from Unity3d. Nothing fancy and just focusing on the game itself and the code. Eventually, if the idea is proven to be fun, I'll spend money on a freelancer because artwork is totally not my thing!

Cheers

 

Ok, but what game are you trying to make? Does it need a lot of artwork?

 

I've seen and used a decent number of quality placeholder assets on the Unity Asset Store, Turbo Squid, and OpenGameArt. OpenGameArt assets are entirely free, and there are many free assets on Turbo Squid as well as the Unity Asset Store.

 

I think that, in the more general sense, how important the art is in general depends on how much meaningful information needs to be conveyed to the player visually.

Let's say that you're doing some kind of open world crafting survival game. Let's say that you can interact with different objects in the environment using different tools: you can cut down a tree with an axe, you can use a pickaxe on a rock. Being able to tell the difference between a tree and a rock is a pretty huge deal, if both of these are just cubes you're going to have a problem.

There's also sometimes very significant amounts of code (and data) that needs to be defined in order to manipulate some art. Stuff like animations, particle effects and audio need to be properly synched together and defined. It may not be easy to correctly stub all this out if you're not seriously experienced.

 

Another option to consider is simply re-designing your game around primitive art assets. I mean, it worked out pretty well for Minecraft...

 

You can't base one game as the absolution of the game industry, sure it did well. So did Pac Man when it was a new fresh idea..

Artwork has to come at some point (Games are a visual medium), as fun as it is watching a cube do a backflip.. The problem is (I enjoy art too) it's boring, repetitive and an absolute time sink. Even artists way better than me spend ages on some of the littlest things..!

It'd help if every modelling program I've ever used wasn't quirky as hell!.. I might be an AHole and create puzzles written in a mixture of assembly and some ancient dialect at the end of every corridor, so they can appreciate it!>..

 

Blasphemy! Games are many many numbers and other types interacting with one another. Games can also be defined as a series of [interesting] choices. Zork and nethack are both games

 

@Tomnnn: Hmm... Zork is a game. But is it a "video-game"? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Video: "A sequence of images processed electronically into an analog or digital format and displayed on a screen with sufficient rapidity as to create the illusion of motion and continuity."

 

As far as I remember, I played Zork Grand Inquisitor and that was one pretty looking game (well at the time)..

 

I played the original zork in high school in a computer science class. Nothin but console.

nethack might meet that definition. It updates where the ascii characters are to simulate motion

 

This is a great thread and while it is very old, hopefully it doesn't mean I won't get an answer. I'm a Unity newbie. I'm a game designer and I used playmaker just to get a sense of the core mechanics, which I create with only shapes etc. I now want to use some standard artwork to make it look a little more palatable for playtesting. Any recommendations on good workflows for this?

 

I would say to use simple, free art as much as possible, till you get to the point where you need the "real" art to finish your game.

 

You have to figure out what works best for you. I always start a character with a cube or sphere, but as soon as i got the mecanics working i start on the artwork, because if i wait to long i forget stuff like how i spawned the bullet.

 

How do you replace the cube or sphere with asset without loosing the scripts or components attached to the cube/sphere? I downloaded some assets from the store but couldn't figure out how to replace my cube with the asset.

 

You separate the logical and visual parts of your character or prop. This could be as simple as making the appearance a child of the primary game object, where you keep your other components.

Then, when you need to change the appearance, you just replace the old game object (cube) with a new one (animated character asset or whatever).

 

yes that's how to do it. To add more explanation, create an empty GameObject and attach your scripts to that. Now parent the model to this empty gameobject.