{"id":284,"date":"2014-07-10T10:30:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T08:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/?p=284"},"modified":"2018-05-11T17:33:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T15:33:50","slug":"2nd-adventure-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/2014\/07\/2nd-adventure-entry\/","title":{"rendered":"History in Letters &#8211; How we create backgrounds for the game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After our announcement of \u201eHistory in Letters &#8211; The Eternal Alchemist\u201c and a bit of background in regards to the story and the main character, we now want to talk about how a level is designed and made.<br \/>\nPrior starting the game we asked ourselves how we want to approach a few tasks, one of it being the making of backgrounds for the game.<br \/>\nSince we are a pretty small studio we often have to approach things differently, in this case we wanted to find a way how to quickly generate backgrounds and at the same time use the talents of our colleagues the best way possible. That\u2019s why we decided to go for a \u201cmixed medium\u201d route, to get the best from 2D and 3D and at the same time combine our available work forces and shorten our work time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_sketch.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-289 aligncenter\" title=\"crypta_sketch\" src=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_sketch-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_sketch-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_sketch-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_sketch.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It all starts with this.<br \/>\nOr, well, actually it starts with the story. After we had drafted a rough storyline for the game we picked out the places that would be important for our main character to visit.<br \/>\nBackgrounds are also designed and made with the concept of an adventure in mind, i.e. we need places where items can be placed and spots that seem \u201cclickable\u201d to the player.<br \/>\nOur 2D artist will then scribble a first sketch of the room, including a rough placement of the light sources, till it resembles the picture we have in mind for the location.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_3D.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-293 aligncenter\" title=\"crypta_3D\" src=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_3D-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_3D-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_3D-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_3D.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Afterwards we use this sketch to make a 3D rendering of the room in 3Ds Max.<br \/>\nThe sketch is used as a base for this.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_fin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-294 aligncenter\" title=\"crypta_fin\" src=\"http:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_fin-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_fin-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_fin-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/crypta_fin.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Then we overpaint the rendered room; we add textures, light sources and \u201cflaws\u201d to let the location look more realistic and hand made.<br \/>\nThe clickable objects and items are added later on top of this background.<\/p>\n<p>Going that route made it possible for us to quickly generate rooms with a mix of 2D\/3D graphics using completely self-made materials. This not only reduced the workload for some of our colleagues in regards to the backgrounds but also made it possible for them to work on other things instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After our announcement of \u201eHistory in Letters &#8211; The Eternal Alchemist\u201c and a bit of background in regards to the story and the main character, we now want to talk about how a level is designed and made. Prior starting the game we asked ourselves how we want to approach a few tasks, one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,10],"tags":[35,34,31,32,33],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-in-letters","category-projects-blog","tag-art","tag-graphics","tag-history-in-letters-2","tag-the-eternal-alchemist","tag-work-in-progress","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-software.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}