Welcome to Fantastic Weekly to follow our development process on our upcoming game: FANTASTIC ENERGY.
GAME DESIGN
We’ve had a slower week than usual. We have been studying mostly about what makes good player experience and how to think that experience in as many places as possible, even monetizing. What makes a good and fair way to monetize your game so that it’s fair to the players and to the developers.
Also, this week data-side of fantastic energy has progressed. We have been planning about the data-experience and how to make the “boring energy consumption data” interesting and easy to read. We are testing our visuals separately within the upcoming weeks and then it should be pretty ready to be integrated to fantastic energy.
For the upcoming week: We are starting with the RPG logic and work on some small fixes to crafting and overall experience. :D The update is closing in and there are SO many things still to fix and work on.
We are working on making all the AR components optional so that the game could be available to most android devices.
If you want to test the current version of Fantastic Energy Beta 1.0 download it HERE.
CODE:
Tipi:
Data project has been pushed forward so that it works. I also randomized what visuals are used, and I’m continuing on tweaking that.
Also selecting the used buildings for the testing today. This week has been bit slower for me, I’ve been reading a lot of Game Design articles and trying to get my head into making data fun. I think we’re almost there. :D
Olle:
Last week I got the data read from the files (over 2 million entries of data just from a few months). I had to improve it and make the reading multi-threaded and read all the files
simultaneously - instead of hours it now takes seconds to read the data :)
GRAPHICS:
Noora:
I’ve continued working on the graphics for the data project and I will most likely continue to do so over the weekend as well. I’ve gone through quite many ideas in my head this week, started making something and realised the idea is too big for the time limit I have.
It can be super frustrating at times but I guess it’s just a part of the creative process. I do have a solid plan now and I think I have enough time to finish it by the end of this week. Here’s a couple of gifs of some of the things I’ve done this week.
Joviaal:
Last week I finished the old model and I started to design a new one. This time, I want to focus on the pollution theme. Here is my some of the first skeches for pollution monster:
The caterpillar(2) character wins the vote 6-0. So that was a clear path to continue. Caterpillar fits perfectly in the pollution theme because,
Random fact:
industrial pollution has been affecting many species’ appearances, especially moths. Pollution makes the environment darker, and that’s why also animals have been evolved to camouflage to the environment and become darker. This effect is called industrial melanism.
Here is more variations for the caterpillar. We have many discussions, does the ribbon fit in the design of the creature, because it is an accessory. Well, but in the real nature the caterpillars have also a really diverse appearance. Some species have parts that look like a leaf, big eyes or even snakes head! So I think the pink ribbon is quite small compared to that :D
Aapo:
I have continued working with the new skins for the homebase. The basic modelling process is quite fun and fast. Topology optimization, uv mapping and texturing is what takes time the most. That’s what I’ve been doing this week.
I aim to make the models look as cute and soft as possible using round shapes instead of sharp edges. And that gives me some headaches topology-wise. Plus, our platform is mobile, which means that the polycount is somewhat limited. That has pushed me to learn to ‘fake’ the geometry here and there with textures.
However, I enjoy working with something that challenges me and makes me try out different solutions and ultimately become a better 3D artist!
Thanks for reading and cya next week!
With love,
Punnu Games team
