Call of Saregnar, RPG In Development

I haven't posted here for a while.

A mockup of the camping screen. You can use the sundial to set the time to rest to, camp until dawn or until the party is healed. In dangerous territories you may also opt for a cold camp (no campfire) and/or set up guard shifts. All is WIP of course, and subject to change.

ldcqggf.png
 
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A night scene.

Thanks to @Xerxes1138 (on twitter), CoS now runs on 100% custom optimised shaders. On my crappy integrated graphics I was able to squeeze an additional 20 FPS, which is nothing short but amazing. The trees now look really good and many glitches have been solved.

7qf3Bs0.png
 
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Just a quick, but exciting update for you guys.

I'm kicking the development of CoS into high gear. In other words, I'm taking a year off to work on the game full-time. If my calculations are right, I'm 40 days away from the beginning of a year-long dream job.
 
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I've been working on a new web site for a while. You are all invited to take a peek at it: www.callofsaregnar.com
 
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This looks sweet, good luck with it. Are you planning to do a Kickstarter?
 
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This looks sweet, good luck with it. Are you planning to do a Kickstarter?


Thank you! At this poiny I am looking to make a demo in a year’s time (taking a year off to work on the game), then it’s either looking for a publisher or crowdfunding.
 
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Looking great! I especially like the idea of using the high quality sprites instead of exclusively 3D models. Are you committed to keeping it this way? It seems to give it a unique modern look while still keeping the old school feel.

Also, what were you using before moving to Unity?
 
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Looking great! I especially like the idea of using the high quality sprites instead of exclusively 3D models. Are you committed to keeping it this way? It seems to give it a unique modern look while still keeping the old school feel.

Also, what were you using before moving to Unity?

Thanks! Yes, definitely. The billboards (sprites) are what make the game stand out... also, I love them. :)
 
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Looks fantastic! Great website too. I am jealous of your venture to work on Call full time. :) Love the music... Kudos to Tony. Best wishes in your venture.
 
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Just found this and subscribed to the newsletter. It looks fantastic and all the feature descriptions on the site are totally up my alley.
 
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Many thanks to both of you! It's always nice to hear people enjoy our work. :)
 
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In the last days I've been working mostly to get the shopping system to work. That is nearly done, but I've also been modifying the custom shaders to support lightmapping. This is the result:

5YABDuv.png
 
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Since I’ve got thousands of photos of actors now, I just thought to mock up the conversation system.

SOLHvlB.png
 
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Well, I already commented on facebook that I don't think the photo-pics match too well with the environment of the game, and mentioned Lands of Lore 2 and The Quest.
You're right that Krondor also went for realisitc pics for protagonists and actually Stonekeep did as well. But as much as I love stonekeep, these pictures aged horribly compared to npc sprites of Lands of Lore 1 or Eye of the Beholder, and some are downright cringeworthy (speaking of the Ice-Queen)

What do others think?
 
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Yep, I also find the photographic character jarring. I wouldn't go in that direction.
 
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Maybe decreasing the number of color shades in the pixelation would help? Worth a try if you already took all of those pics. There must be a tool out there to do that easily and try it.
 
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Are these single pictures or are these sequences of pics for small animations?

Maybe there is a way to make them "smoother" in a way so that they appear less to be photos.

I didn't think to ever mention them as positive example but Blade of Destiny HD has some great character art, which looks "almost realistic" but as far as I get these are drawn:

78a9f609049e1ef1549df2ac57d6cc23--character-portraits-character-inspiration.jpg


A somewhat different style, but also almost realistic looking are the characters in Expeditions Viking:
logic-artists-portraitskule.jpg

They have a very realistic look with some "ink smudge" on them.

I am no artist but maybe there is some way to alter the photos into these directions (before applying the pixelated look).
 
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I appreciate all you feedback guys, but I like and don't really want to steer too far away from the photographic/photorealistic look. I'd rather modify the world textures than make the characters look more "painted". While my approach may appear jarring to some, others like it, me included. I guess it all depends whether you played certain games of old. This will also allow my game to stand out from the rest.

Know that every character has a sequence of photos taken, so almost all are animated, and low-framerate on purpose, otherwise I would go filming them instead of taking sequences. The exception are conversation shots, which only feature one photo, and at max another making their eyes blink (I'm not sold on that yet, but got the photos taken just in case). The combat animations, on the other hand, which I have yet to take, are composed of about 8000 frames of animation per character, so any major artistic approach at modifying them would be a bit too much for me to handle.

That said, I will still search for a way to make them fit the world better (or the other way around), but it will be a filter-only approach so I can do those changes easily in batches.

Again thanks for all your feedback, it's always good to hear what everyone thinks on the subject. It has certainly given me brain material to dwell on.
 
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