Hey guys. I'm going abroad for a week, meaning I won't be at my PC and subsequently won't be working on the game, but stuff has been done on it, and I just wanted to update you on what's going on.
Currently I'm working on the new challenge. It will feature Whirlwind (the flying girl). I'm at the art phase of it, so I'm creating new assets while tweaking lighting and materials to achieve a nice vista, while soaring in the skies. This is one of two new challenges you can expect in 0.3.0, and will function like the ones from the previous update.
Work on the two new heroes on the other hand is pretty much complete. You'll get to unlock them as soon as the new update hits. Unlike the previous update, they are both combat abilities and are directly influenced by the survey I held recently.
Today I wanted to talk about the process of new character creation and to do that I've documented the steps needed to create one of the new heroes - Hiroku. Let's dive in.
The first thing I consider when designing a character is their superpower. Usually I want their ability to be reflected in their costume or the additional tech they carry. Hiroku wields the very requested control over electricity and needed a proper costume to channel that.
In case his name hasn't given him away Hiroku is from Asia. So far all superheroes and villains in the game live and operate in America and I thought it would be nice to have a small addition to the game's limited lore. Unlike American laws, which dictate that costumed vigilantes are unwelcomed and should be incarcerated, in Japan and Korea superheroes often do contract work for the government and will usually be very public about their identities, turning them into celebrities.
My original plan for Hiroku involved making him into an android samurai with a lightning sword, but that's not really what wielding lightning is about. So I decided to instead pay homage to a legend. Since electricity is often employed in police work, Hiroku would be a police officer, who agreed to have his body augmented to serve and protect better than he ever could as a human.
First thing I do art-wise is create an adequate pose to show off the heroes power and personality. Not only does the one above show him standing strong, he has a classic police "halt", from which lightning will eventually emerge.
Next thing I do is create several face variations.
The face is the most important part of a character. Viewer's eyes are drawn to it, and when done right it can convey the hero's personality from one glance. Eastern superheroes are quite different from western ones. When creating Hiroku I not only looked at Japanese police uniforms, but things such as Power Rangers costumed and various mech designs.
In the end I wanted him to be more human than machine, albeit a stern one nevertheless, so I went with the design you see in the middle and built the rest around it.
And the final phase - coloring and overlays.
The police sirens and lights as well as the badge and overall color scheme help sell the policeman theme, while his fairly revealed cyborg face both show he's not hiding his identity and are heavily inspired by eastern sci-fi.
Drawing the person is all well and good, but we need to get him in the hands of players so it's time to implement him in the engine. I'll spare to the technical details, but the way I have my power system setup right now means I create a new one from a template, put in the new values such as cooldown, ability type etc. then implement logic using functions and events I've already written. The process is fairly streamlined on the code side of things after several iterations of the system.
Then I finish up some art tasks such as adding the hero icons and creating neccesary particle effects.
All that's left now is to add sounds, balance the power's strength and fix any bugs I encounter. And it's ready to serve up as a reward for a challenge!
I'll probably do a similar post in the future for challenge creation and the work that goes into them. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.