#red gamedev

[redswaberkez]

minecraft is my life man

[andbloom]

Things can get dicey with the coralmander

[vivinkstudiosailuri]

Hey everyone! It has been a while, but we wanna just let you all know that we've been still working on our game about the little red panda, Ailuri! We missed our small community here. So, what's been happening? We had a Kickstarter! We have a Steam Page (Wishlist if you'd like!) The game, Ailuri, now has a heap of Endangered Species that you need to rescue by defeating the invasive Enemies. Befriend them and they'll stay in your Sanctuary!

[sdmsims]

not to stir the pot intentionally but it’s very telling how i’ve yet to see a single fat person coming out of a certain new game’s chara creator

[pixelfireplace]

Red

[4noki-vns]

The Art of Asset Reduction: VNConf 2024 Write-Up

This is a write-up for my Visual;Conference 2024 talk on asset reduction: presentation of scenes with reduced art labor.

I will discuss how to reduce production requirements via various methods of asset presentation and staging, walking you through case studies of existing visual novels. This talk will guide you to answer the question: How do I fulfill my project scope without asset bloat?

This is an art talk that assumes you have already scoped down your story and have created a list of scenes that you need. This is not a talk about scoping down your game's story.

You have scenes you need to make. How are you going to make them (and with style)?

Abstraction

Cut-ins

Reduce

Reuse

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I. Abstraction

I start off with abstraction as a reminder that visual novels are a combination of visual and novel (amongst other aspects)

Abstraction

Abstraction is a strong tool for bringing focus to the writing, highlighting ambiguity and setting the mood with colors.

Examples I mentioned in my talk include:

Black screen

Solid colored screen

Sky BG

Of Components

The mood-setting power of abstraction also extends to scenes with characters, especially CGs.

As again, abstraction draws focus to what you choose to emphasize: the characters.

(FLOWERS -Le volume sur ete-)

They are gay. Thank you for coming to my VNConf talk.

-

You can similarly abstract characters.

(Lachesis or Atropos)

Consider representing irrelevant characters (e.g., NPCs) as silhouettes. The reader can fill in the details within the shapes themselves.

Silhouettes are especially great for crowd scenes where you want to draw focus to the main characters.

This will be a recurring theme:

What do you really need to draw?

-

II. Cut-ins

One common not-quite full screen piece of art you'll see in many visual novels is the cut-in.

The cut-in typically consists of the:

Item/focus

Frame

And is often for topics such as objects or small animals, which may exist in the scene but may not be within the same frame of reference as the background and sprites.

The separate framing informs the players that the item is "separately framed."

(Who is the Red Queen?)

For example, this small bird is not huge and would not be the size of a character's head even had a sprite been on screen.

The Foreground-Backdrop Heuristic

Cut-ins make strong use of what I refer to as the "foreground-backdrop heuristic."

(Shikkoku no Sharnoth)

A general backdrop informs the reader of a broad location or scene (especially if characters are present). Then a more specific foreground (the cut-in) informs the reader of the specifics.

As the foreground cut-in is in a different frame, the pairing of the two helps create a mental model of the space in the reader's mind.

Cut-ins can be used for:

Backgrounds (mix and match foregrounds with a backdrop)

Reduced CGs

Presenting existing assets in a different frame of reference

CG variants

Try tackling your visual presentation in a layered, comic book-esque fashion with cut-ins!

Just be careful about clutter.

Whether you want to go for the layered cut-in style, the 3d stage cinematic style, or a combination of the two, make sure you have a vision before you jump in.

SD CGs

I had to make an obligatory mention of SD "super deformed" CGs in this talk, so here it is in the write up as well.

(Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Vol. 1)

SD, chibi. However you call these, they're great for playful scenes that might require more art than your classic sprite-background combination.

What SD CGs do best is that they:

Fulfill the role of a CG

Are easier to draw than fully rendered non-chibi art

Can be distributed to different artists to reduce artist workloads due to style difference

Just keep in mind that a simplified CG is still a CG and thus may lack reusability.

Consider what scenes really need a CG.

-

III. Reduce

Now, consider asking yourself: "Does what a player does not see need to exist?" (mostly applicable for games with opaque UI)

Yet, what you need to draw is what you need to draw. How can you reduce the work in what you need to draw?

One option is:

Palette Limitation

You've heard of gray scale games, but don't forget about other ways of limiting your palette to reduce workload.

Dramatic, mood setting color power

Less rendering work

(Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows)

A similar idea can be applied to NPCs for a more detailed take on silhouettes.

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IV. Reuse

Lastly, please remember to be economical and reuse assets as necessary. One of the great joys of cut-in BGs, for example, is reusability.

I had to give an obligatory mention to CG variants in my talk, such as:

(Fatal Twelve)

However, overall, you never know when you'll want to use various components of your art elsewhere such as intermixing CG and sprite art.

Please keep your working layers if possible.

Other reuse examples:

UI (especially in episodic games)

Gameplay (e.g., Kogado's rhythm game)

Consider asking your programmer to work on a framework to reuse, reducing repeated code work.

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Conclusions

All in all, you can make your game.

And it doesn't need to be hellish on your budget or timeline.

If you take anything away from this talk, let it be to:

Prioritize reusable assets

Maintain aesthetic; avoid clutter

Display important scenes

Do not scope up; aim for a set goal

A scene can be presented in many stylish ways, some of which will suit your workflow better than others.

So, go on. Make your game!

-

Interested in my works? Find me on itch:

And check out my newsletter:

-

VNConf 2023 Talk Write-up:

[bf-rally]

hii! I'm looking for random people willing to mess around on a partially built 'boyfriend collecting' site.

If you're interested in checking out Boyfriend⭐Rally in the (hopefully) near future, please look at this form!

[classic-oatcakes]

3D sketch of Javier loving life on guard duty in Colter

[s0ckh3adstudios]

Question question! So as you may know I said the other day that I'm working on a little RPGMaker timeloop story game as of two days ago, Red Leaves

Should I post stuff about it here on my blog OR should I make a separate individual dev blog for it? Wanna know your guys's opinion! I just worry about it getting buried and crowded against things I reblog or other fandom things I post.

I'd still reblog things from there to my account but like. It may be more organized on its own. What do you guys think?

[oceandiagonale]

😔

sorry about that folks, I kept putting off the backgrounds and alt text

[gamemaster-redrobin93]

After binging hours of dungeons and dragons on YouTube and Twitch my most recent hobby is learning all of the ways to become the best game master ever!

My first big homebrew project was to convert yugioh monsters to dnd subclasses. While I have seen duelist classes and monster stat blocks what I really wanted to see was classes inspired by classic yugioh monsters.

So today I bring to you: The School of Chaos! Inspired by the most iconic yugioh monster; the Dark Magician along with Dark Magician Girl and their chaos forms.

Chaos magicians focus on battlefield control by using illusion magic to trap and counter enemy attacks.

Please feel free to comment any changes you would make and follow if you are interested in seeing more yugioh inspired classes.

[redswaberkez]

ive been into gamedev lately

[andbloom]

When a keeper uses magic against a poppy they all gang gang.

[blood-red-rebirth]

Campfire guitar

[pixelfireplace]

Red.

[doodlesfromjupiter]

For my graduation project I created a little game called Enchanted Echoes, so here is some character design work I did for it!