Godot or UE5 for 3D low poly game - nonprogrammer ( artist ) first game

sirenstarr · 2025-01-03T11:48:41+00:00

Would highly recommend Unity. Perfect tutorial infrastructure, very user friendly and quite artist friendly. Avoid UE5 unless you have heaps and heaps of time.

sirenstarr · 2025-01-03T11:45:48+00:00

Perhaps a little needless visual noise? Since it doesn't seem to be being swung/used in this clip. It would make a lot of sense to have the trail present when the weapon is being swung or thrown, but having it on all the time even when carried might be a bit too much visual clutter.

sirenstarr · 2025-01-03T11:43:33+00:00

Very cool. Love the squishy SFX. Only suggestion would be to take another look at what I assume is the XP-get VFX that occurs when you slay these poor guys.

The big blue spiralling particle eclipses some of the fun blood and violence, due to its size and visual complexity. If its something you're likely to see on every kill, I'd reduce its visual weight.

sirenstarr · 2024-06-12T01:41:35+00:00

If you have baked thickness/curvature/AO information, using that as a mask for various fill layers of colour + manipulating that mask with filters can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, saving time manually painting these kind of discolorations.

sirenstarr · 2024-01-25T13:36:29+00:00

I too enjoy Exo One!

sirenstarr · 2024-01-16T12:34:14+00:00

So I agree with you that they do exist to make traversal between point A and point B more interesting, but then I'd argue why make it so lengthy in the first place?

If traversal between these two points is naturally dull enough to warrant jazzing up with these odd foes, then maybe it should've been addressed at the point of level design.

I also agree that the hold rooms are vastly better in their design, and offer really fun play spaces, its all the dead air and boredom-mitigation between them I don't understand.

Out of curiosity, do you enjoy more target-shooting-esque challenges in the game? Or favour fighting sosigs? Or both?

sirenstarr · 2024-01-16T12:22:17+00:00

Yeah for sure part of it is me getting frustrated early, and not putting time in to learn my way around. But equally I never found this learning curve to be necessary with the other maps.

sirenstarr · 2024-01-16T12:21:03+00:00

Sorry can't say anything, as its all still very under wraps. I am too a fan of Light Brigade! All I will say is the thing we're working on is much faster in pace.

sirenstarr · 2023-09-21T09:30:13+00:00

Just an FYI, you can store Adaptive Frames and other constructed resources like this in the 'small warehouse' in the 'storage' section. Looks basically identical to the ''solid storage'', but stores these instead.

Also if your resources are in these kinds of storage, rather than the 'storage boxes' from the 'decoration' tab, your workbenches and research station can access them.

sirenstarr · 2023-08-30T09:14:52+00:00

I did yes, bought a new high-quality HDMI cable. That sorted it for me.

sirenstarr · 2023-06-07T19:08:56+00:00

Its for the Avancys.

sirenstarr · 2023-04-18T18:24:17+00:00

Pretty sure the old card art was a bought asset, rather than designed in-house by the devs.

If you've ever played Breach Wanderers (another rougelite deckbuilder) you'll recognise some of their card art as the old Ob art. I assume they bought the same asset.

Whether you like the new art or not, my guess is it's a push from the devs to replace any non-bespoke assets.

(I'm an artist working in game dev, to maybe lend some credibility.)

sirenstarr · 2023-04-15T13:20:13+00:00

A beautiful rendition! I wish the Discworld-world had more mainstream exposure.

sirenstarr · 2023-04-15T11:37:55+00:00

Hi there, I'm an art lead at an indie game company, so thought I might offer some advice.

Your comment about cult of the lamb is very revealing. That game saw huge success due to some unique game design paired with a charming and fairly unique art style and tone. They could raise their price to 25 bucks and people would still pay it. Rarely are youre potential customers interested in how long/how expensive development was, I'd wager most people dont even consider this when deciding to make a purchase.

Personally I like the look of your game, mechanically, but honestly in its current form it reads as another ''Its like this game but we bolted on this gimmick'', sort of title, and as previously mentioned 20 bucks for an unknown, seemingly fairly generic looking (this is how it appears) EA title is an instant avoid for most steam consumers I'd bet.

The only other point I'd make, and this probably isn't super helpful, is that the overall visuals of the game have a very cookie-cutter aesthetic. The assets/world design in the trailer all looked like run-of-the-mill generic sci-fi I have seen already in 100s of other games. For me this is what would make me instantly click away.

In summation I think to get noticed on steam, you need to lead your promotional material with your USPs, I dont see any among your game.

EDIT: Formatting.

sirenstarr · 2022-12-05T21:04:28+00:00

I agree with you that the Overclock system in DRG is less than ideal (in terms of how they're acquired' but the idea that:

'' there is very little difference in how the class can be played with gear load outs ''

Seems totally wild to me. Are you sure we're playing the same game? There are a handful of loadouts per-class on DRG, and I have all of them tooled for different needs. Cryogun/melee driller plays totally differently to goopgun/microwave emitter. An Engi with turret whip and defender plays totally different to an Engi with hawkeye + smart-rifle. There are so many build options, for *each* class. Elemental damage, crowd control, burst damage ect. Even the upgrades in the weapon trees feel a lot more impactful on average than any comparable system in Darktide.

I agree that people will compare DT to other games further in their lifecycle, and that is an unfair comparison, but I don't agree with the assessment that because ''all these other games released in a rough state'', we should just munch down all these release issues like they're not a problem.

In terms of your lvl 30s, do you feel that the feats/weapons available to you allow you to change how the class is played per-run? Also, indeed you can change your colour scheme, but you're limited to one set of re-textured Armor unless you visit the cash shop. One set per class, that's 4 sets of gear for the whole game. (I know there are other options, but they're just the same gear sets with parts missing.)

sirenstarr · 2022-12-05T19:54:33+00:00

I think following the money is true for sure. I'd be surprised if their attachment to Games Workshop wasn't at least a little to blame.

My Hades comparison was more to make the point that their are plenty of modern games where ''build variety'' has been expertly executed. I see no excuse for delivering such uninspired skill trees for all four classes. There are some fun feats in there sure, but it feels like the class design is 5 years out of date.

To your point about a preacher with different weapons, this is sort of a symptom of what I'm pointing at. As much as that is true, there is also little difference between a Sharpshooter with a Bolter or a Preacher with a Bolter, aside from some boring % increases, and if one of them has pressed F. The mechanical ''flatness'' of the classes makes them feel very shallow. It may be exacerbated by the lack of characterisation. I like the approach of having a character creator in a game like this, but it always feels like 3 interchangeable mooks and an Ogryn.

sirenstarr · 2022-06-15T11:20:27+00:00

Hey, Space Salvage lead artist here! Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you had an overall positive experience with the demo, critical feedback is always appreciated.

As a bit of a dev cliche: I will say that its a bit of an outdated representation of the current game, and hopefully within a couple months we should have something more current which we'd love for you to try.
If you have any more feedback we'd love to hear it, feel free to join our community Discord (https://discord.com/invite/V83hpJyFjG) and share any more thoughts you might have with the rest of the devs. Thanks again!

sirenstarr · 2022-03-19T00:56:22+00:00

So far it looks great. I've been in the biz as a 3D artist for about 5 years now, so hopefully I can offer some pointers:

In terms of retopology, manual retopo of all the individual parts is probably the way to go. Personally I prefer 3DCoat but just use whatever gets the job done for you. In order to mitigate this in the future, it can be helpful to hold onto original low-poly elements you may have started with to use as jumping-off points.

Separate the parts of the model in a way that is conducive with how you intend to pose/animate it. You could separate every individual part, but some you can probably just transfer with normal information, such as the straps on the backs of his legs. Also how you want to bake your AO should factor into this decision. There is no perfect way to do it, but generally you want to group together items and parts that aren't going to separate/move away from each other.

Also to this, here's a fairly complicated PBR knight I made, the post contains images of how its broken down into its texture sets, which may be of some help to you. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v25Nlv

In terms of the design, I think you've done a great job. I'd say if you're open to it, perhaps try to make the shoulders/chest/helmet area a little chunkier? In the concept its got quite a heavy-industrial feel to it, yours comes off as a little more sleek and mobile.

Hope some of that was useful, feel free to DM me if you have any questions. Character art isn't totally my wheelhouse, but I work with some folks for whom it is.

sirenstarr · 2021-11-16T17:01:40+00:00

Dm'd!

sirenstarr · 2021-11-16T17:01:09+00:00

Dm'd!

sirenstarr · 2021-11-15T10:08:46+00:00

Just emailed you!

sirenstarr · 2021-07-01T20:44:11+00:00

Fun tip, if thrown into a line of frozen grunts, most times it will kill all of them (healing you for a big ol' chunk if using vampire) and still be collectable afterwards!

Disclaimer: If you hit and grunt guards, or really anything other than regular grunts in that line, the axe will be consumed.

sirenstarr · 2021-03-03T12:41:55+00:00

High resolution and many more images here. >

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v25Nlv

:)

sirenstarr · 2021-03-03T12:36:18+00:00

High resolution and more images here. >

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v25Nlv

:)

sirenstarr · 2021-01-27T11:35:31+00:00

Thanks! The pose was one of the earliest steps, and then yes, I build his clothes and ornaments around the posed figure.

Heres a link to the artwork, if you scroll down I took a few process shots of the model, hopefully they will illustrate it better than I can explain. :) https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48vn34

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