yeah like so the game looked like this
right
um the game looked like this i had like
some very basic tools in it and i'm
going to go over all the tools once we
go into
the game being more fleshed out because
it could be easier
the question was how do i want the world
to look like how do i go from this the
final game and and that's where you get
a concept artist like a concept artist
he literally he looked at this we spoke
about
you know how i wanted the game to look
like the the and there were things like
there were things that i knew
were
would be problems later in development
like one of them is facial animation
right facial animation is a lot of work
it never looks that good you have to do
thinking you have to have expressions
i'm like yeah but if we're top down we
don't have to do any of that
uh so i don't have to deal with that as
a developer so trying to see what are
the things i had to deal with and and
figure out how a game looks right is
literally i took a screenshot of the
world i send it to to a concept artist
and he just did a paint over of
of a screenshot
right this was literally a screenshot
that looked like we did a
screenshot like this
and then he just did a paint over right
and and a lot of questions start to come
in like about
like what's important is what's
happening inside the floor
the walls are almost a frame to the
picture that's what's inside a wall so
so suddenly we're having conversations
about the colors of items like if the
knife is interactive you have to pop out
if the radio is interactive it has to
pop out so it has to be framed maybe on
a white background the soup maybe let's
get some detail in the soup so you know
it's interactive right so you're not
pixel hunting about what are the
elements you want to use in the world so
just just hiring someone to do a concept
art
like it was huge it was a big
understanding of
of what is going to be to take
right to take this
into
a final a final game and then once i
know this right i can go into the 3d
artist and that's what happened then i
was like now let's get a 3d artist who's
going to start kind of
figuring out how to
make a stylized world so the reason for
the stylization that i wanted to go for
was
the goal was if you
if you kind of s
like if you if you close your eyes a
little bit
and everything is out of focus it has to
look real but if you open your eyes
clearly there's brush strokes there's
there's it's it's an indie game right
there's no attempt the realism will come
out of the real-time global
illuminations the way the characters
move that's what's gonna ground the
world
and things have been everything has a
scale the way things react that's where
the realism will come from everything
else will almost be a sketch as possible
so it's not
so it's easier for production it's less
money that's being spent
right because i'm not there's no team
that's just me gluing all these things
together and
and visual development takes a long time
and money so cutting on all that um
so yeah so this kind of informed so i
could go into a 3d artist right and i
was like look we have this
we have this couch like it's like this
was the end result of the house like how
how do we make a couch for the game it
has to be realistic which means we need
some folds
but we don't want to be doing every
single photo could be some brush strokes
that simulates folds
you know where the lighting is coming
from
so we did some visual tests
it's like early on like how would the
painterly door look like
um and i guess i could go like one of
the big influences for the game like
once once i knew i wanted to go
painterly was like
what does painterly look like so looking
at a lot of
you know a lot of painters a lot of
projects that have used painterly looks
and kind of see what would fit for 12
minutes and
and and the answer was like like if you
look at this image like
there are some issues here like you need
to know there's a room here but this
vent is standing out a lot more than
this room um
or you it's important to feel what the
wife is doing but this clock and this
painting are totally stealing your like
your eyes are are moving around these
objects
versus what's actually happening in the
world
so it's like okay we need to mute the
colors in the world so suddenly like the
walls need to be pretty dark
uh we can use the wood framing right
almost to outline
the the rooms you can go into you know
like so let's keep the doors brighter
than the world the vents you're gonna
figure out their events so let's just
keep them like on a third level of of
importance
and same with the closet like you're
gonna figure out there's a closet but
it's more important to know there are
other rooms so suddenly you you start to
have this color
composition defining the importance of
things um
so yeah there were some visual tests
like this kind of looks like what's
final but this was pretty big for us
where
you were he was doing like some big
blocky
shapes and and you could get what the
objects are you don't need more than
this you don't need to
we don't need to be modeling we don't
like there's barely any normal maps in
the game it's mostly done through
geometry and lighting because like
lighting right with with real-time
global illumination you get
the different surface properties and
then you can get right like
you can get the reflectivity working and
if the values match the real world
values things just they just go work and
then that's a big thing in unity right
it's very very quickly we we could be we
could be talking about these things not
in an abstract level but
looking at the world and seeing them um
how they react and
you