{"author_link":"\/users\/ava-skoog","author_name":"Ava Skoog","author_uid":"ava-skoog","comments":[],"epoch":1544450057,"event":"LD43","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":137050,"likes":7,"metadata":{"p_key":"126934","p_author":"Ava Skoog","p_authorkey":"1000196","p_urlkey":"343054","p_title":"F.O.U.R. | Minimalistic methods [part 1]","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD43","p_time":"1544450057","p_likes":"7","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1000196","us_name":"Ava Skoog","us_username":"ava-skoog","event_start":"1543536000","event_key":"71","event_name":"LD 43"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD43","removed_author":false},"_superparent":120415,"_trust":15,"author":196,"body":"Yo! Occasionally I will do a post-jam writeup on technical stuff that went into the making of my LD game.\n\nFor my last few jams I've been focussing a bit more heavily on graphical fidelity than I did this time, as you can see below, but that doesn't mean there aren't things to be said about the kind of approach I went for this time either! c:\n\n![kollasje-50p.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f89f.png)\n\n### You can play my LD43 entry F.O.U.R. [here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/f-o-u-r)!\n\n---\n\n# Single texture\n\nOne thing that helps a lot when going for graphics as simple as this is just making one texture used by all assets in the game, just moving the UV's around. It can do wonders for speeding up both the game and the content creation, which was vital for me this time, as I wanted to cram in as much narrative and puzzly content as possible for the detective story of this entry, which forced me to downplay the graphics this time.\n\nHere's the texture used by everything in the game world (but not UI):\n\n![tex.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a5.png)\n\nAs you can see I ended up not even using the last three rows on the grid!\n\n---\n\n# Tiling the world\n\nSo what's a good way to speed up your content creation by using just one texture? Building the world using the grid-based texture like a tileset!\n\nThis is the entire map of the game:\n\n![kart-800-2.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f5b7.png)\n\nEverything that rises off the ground (houses, vegetation et cetera) is a separate model, but the ground itself was just modelled as a plane subdivided into a grid and when I was done designing the layout of the time I just removed the superfluous tiles!\n\nHere's a WIP screenshot from Blender:\n\n![blender-kart-wip.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a7.png)\n\nAll I did was unwrap each square separately and move it around on the UV map, holding the control key to easily snap it to the desired tile. Rotating UV's as necessary allowed me to keep the needed number of road tiles low. The road tiles are twice the size of the other tiles which meant sometimes scaling the UV's by exactly 0.5 or 2, but Blender makes that sort of stuff very easy. c:\n\n---\n\n# Materials\n\nUsing just one texture meant that every object in the game was able to share the same material, and everything static was set up for batched rendering on top of that, making the whole thing incredibly cheap. The one exception were the house rooves, which needed to be able to fade out and so use a transparent version of the material instead:\n\n![itchgif3.gif](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a8.gif)\n\n---\n\n# Next\n\nThat's it for this post! Next post will be about setting up the code and assets for easily churning out unique characters since I needed quite a few of those in the game. Thanks for your time! c:","comments":2,"comments-timestamp":"2018-12-11T09:48:14Z","created":"2018-12-10T13:30:13Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":137050,"love":7,"love-timestamp":"2018-12-11T03:34:42Z","meta":[],"modified":"2018-12-11T09:48:14Z","name":"F.O.U.R. | Minimalistic methods [part 1]","node-timestamp":"2018-12-10T17:40:49Z","parent":120490,"parents":[1,5,9,120415,120490],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/f-o-u-r\/f-o-u-r-minimalistic-methods-part-1","published":"2018-12-10T13:54:17Z","scope":"public","slug":"f-o-u-r-minimalistic-methods-part-1","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":412500},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"137050","n_urlkey":"343054","n_parent":"120490","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/f-o-u-r\/f-o-u-r-minimalistic-methods-part-1","n_slug":"f-o-u-r-minimalistic-methods-par","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"196","n_created":"1544448613","n_modified":"1544521694","n_version":"412500","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/f-o-u-r\/f-o-u-r-minimalistic-methods-part-1","text":"Yo! Occasionally I will do a post-jam writeup on technical stuff that went into the making of my LD game.\n\nFor my last few jams I've been focussing a bit more heavily on graphical fidelity than I did this time, as you can see below, but that doesn't mean there aren't things to be said about the kind of approach I went for this time either! c:\n\n![kollasje-50p.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f89f.png)\n\n### You can play my LD43 entry F.O.U.R. [here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/f-o-u-r)!\n\n---\n\n# Single texture\n\nOne thing that helps a lot when going for graphics as simple as this is just making one texture used by all assets in the game, just moving the UV's around. It can do wonders for speeding up both the game and the content creation, which was vital for me this time, as I wanted to cram in as much narrative and puzzly content as possible for the detective story of this entry, which forced me to downplay the graphics this time.\n\nHere's the texture used by everything in the game world (but not UI):\n\n![tex.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a5.png)\n\nAs you can see I ended up not even using the last three rows on the grid!\n\n---\n\n# Tiling the world\n\nSo what's a good way to speed up your content creation by using just one texture? Building the world using the grid-based texture like a tileset!\n\nThis is the entire map of the game:\n\n![kart-800-2.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f5b7.png)\n\nEverything that rises off the ground (houses, vegetation et cetera) is a separate model, but the ground itself was just modelled as a plane subdivided into a grid and when I was done designing the layout of the time I just removed the superfluous tiles!\n\nHere's a WIP screenshot from Blender:\n\n![blender-kart-wip.png](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a7.png)\n\nAll I did was unwrap each square separately and move it around on the UV map, holding the control key to easily snap it to the desired tile. Rotating UV's as necessary allowed me to keep the needed number of road tiles low. The road tiles are twice the size of the other tiles which meant sometimes scaling the UV's by exactly 0.5 or 2, but Blender makes that sort of stuff very easy. c:\n\n---\n\n# Materials\n\nUsing just one texture meant that every object in the game was able to share the same material, and everything static was set up for batched rendering on top of that, making the whole thing incredibly cheap. The one exception were the house rooves, which needed to be able to fade out and so use a transparent version of the material instead:\n\n![itchgif3.gif](\/\/\/raw\/4c\/z\/1f8a8.gif)\n\n---\n\n# Next\n\nThat's it for this post! Next post will be about setting up the code and assets for easily churning out unique characters since I needed quite a few of those in the game. Thanks for your time! c:","title":"F.O.U.R. | Minimalistic methods [part 1]","wayback_source":[]}