Feedback What is the right place to discuss game visual style?

Hi All!
The problem: I'm working on this Yeti Home Defense game:

And hear from people around about over-saturation and not having single style, but nothing in particular.
What is the right place to discuss game visual style?
E.g. top-5 things that would distract you from playing?

 

What they mean implicitly is to hire an artist to oversee the creative direction, which also is an implicit question of can you afford it, given the expected ROI of the game.

 

Exactly. While I have no idea about roi, how much actually could I spend for an artist?
And if I don't spend anything, would I get any roi at all?

 

Every $ that potential only pure profit.

 

I don't think over-saturated colors are an automatic negative, but you have a lot of colors that don't really mesh together very well. The crystals and the ground, for example, look too different (almost like they're from different games). That kind-of makes the scene look fake. Same with the particle effects. I think you could make the assets a lot more cohesive just by adjusting the colors, though.

One thing you could try is to look at art or other games that look good and have a similar color scheme and style that you're going for. Use that as reference to adjust your colors. There's no copyright on color choices, so you can even steal those directly (within reason).

Also I think some depth fog would help a lot.

 

ROI is return on investment, if you don't spend (invest) anything you don't have any return to compare too. So it's expectation vs reality, does the game sell enough right now? how much more it will sell with better graphism? If you can answer those two questions you can have the expected ROI. If you hire an artist you can compute the ROI, and in hindsight know if it was worth it. So it's a kind of a catch 22, you can't see the future.

What I would do in your position, is basically try to pay an artist to make an audit, or find someone kind enough to point at obvious flawed, and then estimate for you how much it would cost. Since the project is done you have a set number of assets, it's fairly straightforward to estimate the amount of work needed. Once you have that final price, well you decide if the expected ROI is worth it.

If the game is doing good enough, and is a live services, it might be worth it to grow the bases, if it's not a live services, maybe it's better to reinvest the profit into making a better new game, which will provide values in contrast to the current one and an incentive to upgrade.

 

Something is out of place with spell/cooling icons.
They seems from different authors, different styles.
Main character doesnt fit game style in my opinion. Mainly because is high poly, compare to other characters / enemies.

 

I would start with the UI. It seems too random. The font is too default Arial. The cooldown is a just a white box. Some buttons are glossy, some not, etc.

Look at games like Dragon Age Inquisition or Dragon Quest Builders 2.

3D graphics have the same issue. Cannonball is just a white sphere.

 

Thanks for your comments, guys!
That REALLY helps!
I fixed ui buttons to one style, does that look better?

 

What would you recommend as better font and ball? Snow is not easy to model...

 

Ok what place would you recommend to find that artist and to assess the price ?

 

Regarding snow ball, while I didn't realized it suppose to be snow ball at all, you may want snow texture, or shader.

 

The updated UI screenshot shows what people might be talking about needing a single style. The rocks, ground and tower all seem to have different amounts of texture detail. The crystals and particles seem more toon like (over saturated) than other parts and the background looks like scaled up rocks and appear blurrier than the ground they contact. The blue spikes and yellow text at around 40 secs in video stuck out to me too. Hope my brutality helps

 

I appreciate any feedback, brutal too
So I need your advice:
1) how to make fog on mobile more natural. That pink fog seen in trailer is particles additive shader. Alpha blended is not transparent. What to do?..
2) how to make something like fog of war instead of wall of rocks at the camera far plane? Or something else that makes good transition from ground to skybox?

 

I might not be the best person to ask as I'm just coming back to Unity after a long break (2017.x) and I'm not up to speed on everything yet.

Thinking about what an additive shader does, adding the particle color to the background, then my first test would be to use fewer bigger particles to reduce overdraw and thus the particles accumulating to saturation.

I then might experiment with a custom blend shader perhaps separating rgb and taking max(background.r, particle,r) or lerp(b.r, p.r, p.a) for each channel instead of adding them to control the maximum shade. I'm not sure what mobile performance would be like with that though.

The rocks give a clear limit to the area, I'd just rework their texturing to better match the size they are on screen.

 

Thanks

Thanks a lot!
Crystals are aliens in that world so they should look weird..

Do you have good example of depth fog for mobile?
Or this 2012 Shadowgun example with planes fog is still best
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/03/23/shadowgun-optimizing-for-mobile-sample-level

 

Ok, i have set low saturation and changed explosions and fog from additive to blended shaders -do you feel this looks better:

 

That article seems to indicate that global fog is slow on mobile, which surprises me. Have to tried it?

 

Not yet.
Do you think I should? Something changed since 2012 dramatically?

 

Ok your idea with few big particles I believe should be great for distant fog - a plane with additive shader slightly moving.
Will look similar to spherical force fields seen in my trailer

 

Most likely mobile processing power.
And Unit evolved in many areas.

 

That does feel better than some scene in the earlier video, having less harsh shadow does help unifying contrast a lot. It seems you added a bit of global tint that bring color together? If yes that works. The gray rocks enclose the scene and offer a saturation contrast that focus on the inner scene where are the most saturated elements, and the ground color also contrast enough with active element (yellowish vs redish) that's great! It's way more readable now the various contrast (color, value and saturation) are better distributed.

From a artistic taste point of view, it's still a bit garish, but that can be a style, it has that heavy metal comic vibes, I'm not mad about that.

Less interesting is how the decoration is scattered and how plain visually the background is. But more importantly I think readability could be further improved with composition. That depend however on functionality. Is the camera fixed? does it pan? I mean in the gameplay sense. Because You could use the decoration to better frame the field and further guide and soft delimitate where the action takes, place, as of now, the field bleed out of screen with no anchor and ecoration are fighting for visual importance with unit, and it doesn't feel deliberate. What I would do is push decoration on the visual boundaries and decrease their contrast in a way that move them out of confusion with active elements. You could also add a few element on teh ground, that doesn't pop up, that break the monotony of the texture repétition, not too many, probably just the same decals but distributed randomly enough.

An example I like to pick is phantasy star 0 on nds, because it's on a cheap hardware it's easier to parse how they use teh few elements they could afford, although the same rules applies to all visual composition, not only for games.

Jump anywhere in the video and skip the lengthy intro. Look at how the composition is layered, and how they use color contrast to visually distinguish elements. The game field is generally with an understate pattern with a neutralized color, as you move toward the edges of the area, you have soft boundaries in the form of color blending or pattern trim, that smoothly blend the hard boundary as we shift to elements that signal out of area. Most visual decorative elements lay beyond the boundaries, but still have their own visual contrast relative to the main area and the dynamic elements, so they can be lush yet make these elements pops.

My advice would be to reproduce similar composition, blend the texture color as it goes out of the screen move decoration to the boundaries such as it frame the action on the screen and do not compete with elements inside it.

 

Had a quick play with Unity's GroundFog from their Particle Pack as a base to work from. I changed it's shader to Mobile/Particles/Alpha Blended, removed Noise from particle system, set Max Particles to 50, added Rotation by Speed of 5.0

The particle systems "Start Color" rgb can then be used to tint the fog, and its alpha controls the fog density. (0.7, 0.3, 0.4, 0.95) was my guess for a thick red tinted fog without overlaying your video.

No guarantee on performance, Frame Debugger still doesn't work on Linux editor yet, it's one of the reasons I took a break from Unity last time.. But it's the easiest way to see what I was trying to describe..

 

The buttons are the same style now, so it's better.

I don't know about the snow, but there are lots of fonts you can download here for free - https://fonts.google.com

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Medula+One

Add the Outline and Shadow components.

 

New version of explosions - made from fireball yellow texture is much brighter on alpha blended mobile shader:

 

And question: how do you recommend to get rid of particles clipping when they touch the ground?

 

Ok as i understand there is no simple solution against clipping...

Many thanks, will try!

 

Many thanks, will try!

 

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation!

Regarding saturation and tint, it was my manual adjustments

Regarding camera, it is fixed except superattack which could be seen here -

Do you think that wall of rocks behind the crystals in video above is better than open field to horizon in latest video?

Regarding decals, as I see I should add some more dirts instead of snow, and add some smaller rocks to accompany bigger ones

Regarding terrain, I tried this in separate project
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/landscapes/free-island-collection-104753
But on mobile performance drops to 10 fps each
time your camera has to render that beauty...

So, my ground now is simple plain, i will try to add some mountains far away and near the camera to have something like this:

https://miro.medium.com/max/7680/1*JDuU8FK4RkkWeNvbyTImjA.jpeg

 

Rocks does fit in in my opinion.
Weather they are better .. I am missing that up close camera on video, when is fading, before reaching the crystal.
I would stick with rocks. At least for now.

 

Hi All!
Have asked an YouTuber to publish small news about this game on his channel among other games he reviews.
The video had 22 000+ views, but only 38 gamers has installed the game and only 2 of those has not deleted it after a week.
Do you think the game has to be improved further or should be abandoned completely in favour of something more usual - maybe runner?

 

@alex1st1 is because you game at current state is boring as hell.
Well, hell actually may be more interesting

But what you should do, is work on fun factor.

 

You should shoot for 1% to 5% conversion for anything to be considered good, you are at like 0.001% that's no good, from a business shark perspective you failed, and you should move to next project, from an artistic perspective, the very fact you ask show you have no confidence nor attachment, you should move to next game.

The first thing is what is your market? is it you? other people? a group of people? how well define are their taste? do the project cater to their taste? is there any value. It looks like the main driving factor of your design value is "I make a random game", that's personal achievement, it also mean that the game value has no value in itself as it is just a foil for personal satisfaction, in this case, good job, but you won't go much further than that.

I would advise you to pull a Scott Cawthon, and do the shotgun approach, made THOUSAND of games, until you get good enough and one sticks.

 

Do you think this very popular game has much more fun?
Into the dead 2:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pikpok.dr2.play

Or this Defender
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.droidhen.defender3

What would your top-3 fun improvements be to make game more fun for you?

 

Not random, but something not usual.
Quivr vanguard could be my inspiration -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/581460/QuiVr_Vanguard/
Although I have never heard of it at the start of development.

That's interesting that in other thread you advise me to find an artist, and here to switch to next project...

 

Different faces, same coin.

The implicit is you need to get better in some way. Practice makes perfect, the more game, the more experience, the more refinement. Even in art, you will just get more feedback up until it click, because nothing I say make sense to you right now, therefore you need more mileage.

 

I haven't, nor I have intent to play any of suggestions. But I have watched brief introduction.

First one is barely comparable, to what you offer in your game. ItD2 Is light years ahead.
From video, does not fill like much fun for few hours. But is hard judge just base on that.
However, it offers multiple options for enhance gameplay.

Second is quite different. Howver, it looks much more challenging from video, than your, or ItD2.

First thing, if you willing stick to this game, you should work on challenge and dynamics.
Don't let get player fall a sleep, watching your game.