Sinathir
Important Poll
The poll in question is here:
https://forms.gle/iLGyzUmmtQP9As1X9
Now a little explanation.
There is a lot of work to do. The game is roughly 1/5 finished story and map wise. I have a long list of things that have to be done. I simply decided to shift my priorities depending on your feedback. I would really apreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill it out.
I made a simple list of things that I would like to be done to some degree this year. I will start working on them depending on the priorities you will set to them. Keep in mind that there is much more than what is on the list.
Certain things, like more maps, quests and so on, are already included in some of the options in the list. For example, making the main faction will include new maps, quests and so on. Some things, while still planned, will require more work on previous system before I can include them. Endings, for example, are placeholders and not canon. But I can't make new, propper ones without finishing the game first. Nevertheless, you can still ask for such features in the last part of the form and if the demands is really there, I can start working on those to some degree. For example, if you really want better endings, I can make new, better ones that would still be placeholder, but actualy be canon and have atleast some actual cutscenes to them, even if I will be removing some of them once the game is finished story wise.
I will let the poll sit here for roughly a month. After that, I will publish the results and I will start working on what gathered the most votes and slowly work down the list.
Other news
I'm playing around with AI. Both for pictures and music, and in both cases, I found a good point where it makes my life easier, but doesn't take away control from my creative proces. Graphics are the first example.
I used the AI to make the dungeon tileset. I used it to make textures which I applied to 3D models. This saved me time I'd have to spend looking for proper textures on the internet and the results were pretty good for my standart.
I'm also using it to make NPC conversation sprites. These I treat as placeholders, since they don't look exactly like I imagine the NPCs looking and I will be replacing these in the future.
I'm also working on a workflow to make main character sprites with AI. This gives me great result, since I already have the 3D model finished. I can put on the proper clothes, pose it the way I want, do some basic colors and the AI does the shading and small details for me.
It's not perfect though. I will still have to touch up all images to make the fingers and eyes look normal, The sprites above were not touched up in any way and they still look pretty good. Thanks to this, I can make higher quality sprites while still having full control over posing, clothing, and so on. Bear in mind though that this is still just me playing around and nothing from those pictures is set in stone or even in the game.
Music, however, is the biggest game changer. While I can make simple, catchy loops and even make shorter pieces of music, I can't do the overal composition properly. AI can greatly help me with that too now.
I made a simple loop in midi, fed it to AI. I then edited the result and fed it to it again. I generated several songs, spliced them, edited out bad parts and put them together. And these are the results.
If you played Sinathir recently, then you know this music. It's been the main menu theme for some time. (by the way. I made the video with: https://vizzy.io/ . It's free and works well.)
This one was in the game also for some time and played when you fought againts Mr. White. You can hear the common theme both these songs have and how they are linked together.
And this one is not in the game yet and won't be for quite some time, but you can take a listen. I think most of you will guess in what situation is it going to play.
In my opinion, music is one of the hardest things to come by and make. Free music is usualy not very good and a bad soundtrack can ruin the entire experience. This AI music is not perfect. If you really focus, you can hear that something is "wrong" with it. Personaly though, I find it much better than royalty free alternatives and I still have plenty of control over the overall result.
Again, this is just me playing around and trying out new toys. And while the AI image generation is not something I'm 100% set on, the music is something I will absolutely be using, since the things I can do or get for free are much worse.
That's pretty much it. See you next month with the poll results.
Comments
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I like the non-AI Nika the most - I feel like using AI for things like that sort of takes away from the charm in a way I can't explain. Gives me flash-era flashbacks maybe?
My goal is to get something that looks simple, but slightly more detailed than the default sprite. I don't the look most AI images have. Way to sophisticated shading is my problem I guess. The images I posed are close to what I want, but still not quite there.
What I really like is the fact that thanks to the 3D model I made, I have 100% control over poses, clothes, expressions and, with enough tinkering, even the shading.
Funnily enough, using AI for those sprites will actualy make my work harder. I will still have to touch up every image I generate and I will have to generate multiples to pick the best one.
However, the shading and detailing is something I'm not capable of doing in pure 3D and 2D is something I really struggle with. I still want the sprites to look relatively simple and "amateurish", but not as amateurish as they are now.
Something that might be worthwhile is to use another engine to make specific shaders for your blender models, then take screenshots of them with the lighting you want. You might be able to skip the engine thing and just do them in blender, but from what I can tell blender's shading graphs are weaker than ex. unity's. Same with the shading, set up a scene in blender or wherever with very specific lighting or different shaders (toon-style shaders maybe?) and just place your models there. Perhaps the easiest thing would be making really strong normal maps for clothes so you simulate folds?
That's one of the problems I have. The model is quite old and also quite bad. The topology, proportions and rigging has to remain a secret, because it could actualy kill the person who might see it.
The biggest problem is my ability to make textures, or the lack of it. While objects like furniture are fine, clothing and skin ended up in a failure all the times, so all the detail you see on the model is actually sculpted and I have a pretty insane setup to make it all work.
I don't mind it that much though. I find enjoyment in navigating all those keyframes, shape keys and mask layers to get it all to work. You can only get so far without learning to make your own textures, which is something I struggle with and will probably never trully get.
I actualy found an old image where I was testing different shading, and I like some of them. The naked body looks fine, but clothing ends up looking like plastic. and that is not going to change without me actualy putting some textures on it. That's what the AI would actually help me with the most. I have no problem with modeling even the slightest of details, but texturing it is completely different matter for me.
I am also horrible at texturing so I can't offer much help there. Perhaps try out Substance Painter
Left is me manually editing some cloth, right is Substance Painter just picking color values depending on the topology. It only took 3 seconds, I just dragged a cloth-texture-mask on the model and changed the colors around. Theres a good bunch of tutorials for it and it might even be less work than the other methods.
Yeah. My tries are quite comparable to the left hat. I tried substance painter in tha past, but that was almost a decade ago I might give it another go in the future.