Accomplished
- * Talked to Asher about the jittering issues – we spent hours trying to debug and still didn’t come up with a solid fix (it’s a problem with the rotation Quaternion); I’ve left a question on the Unity forums in the hope that someone will know the answer and get back to me
- * Added the blue textures for other creatures (implemented creature texture but not blue ground texture yet)
- * Placed defender characters into all the other defender nests
Next Steps
- * Implement a way for territorial critters to move from territory to loser’s circle (write a pathing AI that can switch between the wanderer type and the pather type) and back again
- * Figure out the jitter issues
- * Implement a global system of seeing whether someone “controls” a territory
- * Implement blue terrain sections
- * Figure out a third goal for the ribbonfish
- * Find a sound designer
- * Meet with composers tomorrow
I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some early reference art and some concept art. In terms of references, I was greatly influenced by the everglade photos of Clyde Butcher that I posted previously. I’ve also always been very interested in predictive evolution, of the kind thought up by artist Dougal Dixon. There was a copy of his book “After Man” at the school library in my middle school, and I must have borrowed it at least five or six times, just to marvel over the illustrations. The basic concept is just that he takes modern animals and projects what evolutionary paths they might take after the extinction of humans. It’s largely fantasy, but it’s still incredible to look at:
In this sort of vein, I started a series of notebooks when I was a child. I imagined a planet made up of forest and ocean, with no land masses, and tried to extrapolate the sort of adaptations that might arise in such an environment. For most of middle school and high school I kept these notebooks, with dozens and dozens of animals and planets drawn, described, and cataloged. It is from these notebooks that I drew the inspiration for the world-building in this game.
Finally, I work with my 3D artist, Luke Peterson, to create more realistic creatures out of my childhood imaginings. Luke does his own sketches with his own innovations on the character design, and then together we decide the final look and shape of the creature, and he builds the 3D model.
