Collab 2021W09 - Canyon Onslaught

bOBaN · February 27, 2021, 10:00pm

Diary/scratchpad for

Main idea: re-imagining classic game of River Raid. It looked like that:

It’s not the first game I played, but it’s the first that I remember having fond memories around it.

Actually, quite a while ago I have drafted myself a plan of “learning gamedev”. There were many things on it, but one of it was - to recreate a few classic games, including River Raid. So I take this opportunity to finally kickoff this project. The end goal is to release it on itch, so I was brainstorming for a title that wouldn’t infringe on anyone’s copyrights . And I come up with “Canyon Onslaught” . Maybe I’ll come up with better idea later, but it will do for now.

To be clear - I don’t even imagine to make a game in a week (I possibly could do something if I would jam for whole week, but that’s not the point). This week I want to focus on Collab, so first of all establish “art direction” and create a prototype assets and scene for the game.

FedPete · February 28, 2021, 9:12am

hmmm … assets

sprite like
isometric
orthographic
full blown 3D

Or a totally new design look-a-like …

Pencil and paper, creating thumbnails …

bOBaN · February 28, 2021, 9:33am

For sure the assets will be 3D, the presentation is a question… and art style is also a question - even on a spectrum from low poly to realistic there are many choices… and a theme. As I looked it up there is no set theme for the game, but it’s a jet figther (so modern theme), but in my memories it was rather ww2 (maybe because of baloons :D).

I don’t think I need to be really faithful to the original concept - both in theme/style or presentation. I’m thinking of what really was ‘the spirit’ of the game.

It’s good that I’m just about to begin “Creating Thumbnails” lesson in the drawing course but for me is a drawing tablet and Krita, not pencil and paper…

bOBaN · February 28, 2021, 9:15pm

I’m not that good to quickly draw different perspectives (yet ). I will brainstorm model designs “on paper”. So instead I used google and pureref.

I don’t want it to be fully top-down perspective, or not “behind the ship” perspective like in Argon Assult (ha! that was my first post here!). Plus I like the best the art from the cartridge…

So isometric perspective it is!

Art direction

Low-to-mid poly style. Something like modular vehicles from character course.

I will keep it more or less to the original. That is, modern settings, but I will most like push it to the future. I am thinking about pushing it quite far to the future and make it quite colorful (think loads of emission like here.

Reference board points to the list of basic assets I need.

Static/environment

Riverbed (terrain) with water
Fuel depot
Bridge and a road
Couple of trees for the side of the river
Couple of buildings for the side of the river

Dynamic/moving things

Player fighter jet
Warship
Helicopter
Enemy fighter jets
Hot Air Balloon
Tank

bOBaN · March 1, 2021, 10:28pm

Another ref board (this time for main “mechanical” models):

Now onto drawing/concepting player airplane (though as you can see from the board -> it might not be an airplane at all - I am drawn to more scify-like theme ).

And btw. someone made a sequel!

PS. Now that I am over-analysing the game I think that balloons were stupid in the game

bOBaN · March 1, 2021, 11:15pm

Time to sleep, but first - update… first concept “hero” planes:

(at 8… I discovered mirror tool )

bOBaN · March 2, 2021, 11:43pm

I might be stalling here a bit… but did a few more concepts for hero plane…

Now… which one to choose?

Jaco_Pretorius · March 5, 2021, 3:27pm

Kit-bashing is probably the way to go with this project… make a couple of elements like turbines, wings, etc… then schmoesh them together to make variations. That way you don’t have to commit to a specific design.

bOBaN · March 5, 2021, 10:28pm

That would be the best approach. I’ll see how much I can progress till end of tomorrow - basically was stuck at long hours at work for whole week… that I’ll be able to do something on time