Suzy Cube Update: December 8, 2017

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames 

Gotta make this one quick as I need to help my wife with some last minute stuff for an Embassy reception this afternoon.

Polishing Up

My early week was spent crossing T's and dotting I's on Level S-3 and continuing to decorate main world levels. Part of this process is to look at the packing density of the lightmaps on levels after decoration to try and squeeze the most lighting resolution into a single 2048x2048 texture. 

Still some room left...

The process is a bit tedious as it, usually, entails me bumping up the lightmap resolution, baking (takes several minutes) and discovering I've still got space on the texture or that the lightmaps have spilled onto a second texture... At that point, I've got to adjust my resolution up or down a bit accordingly and hit bake again. I repeat this process until I get ideal results or I get sick of waiting for bakes.

Jump on down... What could possibly go wrong?

Here, we see a shot of the opening of Level 3-2, now all decorated up. The lightmap above is actually from this very level. As I write this, I'm running another bake at a slightly higher resolution to see if I can further minimize the artifacts.

Moar Levels!

I've started the design of Level S-10 as well. It should be a fun departure from what the game has had to offer so far. I think I'm going to have fun working on this one.

I also gave all the Special World levels a thorough play through on my phone noting a number of small tweaks I'm going to have to make to improve performance and playability. I sometimes don't test on the touch screen as often as I should, but fear not, I am 100% committed to the lofty goal of making the experience on touchscreens top notch!

Technicolour

And, finally, I had a call with Noodlecake this week to discuss, amongst other things, the look of the game. Late last week, I received an email containing some mockups from their graphic designer. I won't lie, I was taken aback by the audacity to mess with my graphical perfection at first, but once I let things sink in, and following a very productive call, I'm feeling better than ever that partnering with them was a great move.

A big part of the call was discussing the overhaul of the menus, of which Noodlecake have agreed to take ownership. The mockups I received were quite a departure from my current menu designs, but after a very productive discussion, I think they are going to turn out great! Once we have something we're happy with, I'll show it off here. I think folks will be pleased!

What I am going to show off now, though, are some of the initial steps I've taken to address their concerns about the muted colour tones I've been using. It might be somewhat visible in the screenshots above, but we'll be moving to slightly more vivid and saturated tones to, as they said, "better match the tone and fun of the gameplay."

Here are a couple of before and after shots:

before

after

It's not an Earth shattering change, but we are looking at a warmer and slightly more vibrant colour palette along with a more saturated but out-of-focus background.

More pop!

Along with these changes, we've also decided to experiment with a more pronounced vignetting effect and starker, whiter, texturing on Suzy herself to make her pop more.

Well, I guess, I failed on that 'quick update' goal. Much like face to face, once you get me going about Suzy Cube, it's hard to shut my yap trap! Next week, I'll be propagating more of these graphical colour tweaks to the rest of the game's levels and continuing (and hopefully completing) the design on Level S-10.

I guess that'll do it! See you all next week!