While an "early access" version of REVEREND is out the door, it's not the end of the project - duh!

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Hopefully most of us are still trying to enjoy the Holidays for a few days more, but I wanted to release some form of update. What's better than another part of "the Creative Aspects of REVEREND"? The first one was about the soundtrack, which you can read here. This one will cover some of the process in making the level textures, etc.

Enjoy!

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There's something special about early 3D (more specifically 2.5D) games, especially when they modeled themselves after real-life spaces. Visiting places like tiny shops, movie theaters, subway stations, etc, in games like DUKE NUKEM 3D and SHADOW WARRIOR always felt fun and a bit cozy to me, even if they were overrun by all kinds of evil doers. The scale and details of all those spaces were often severely compromised versions of their real-life counterparts of course; something I'd find myself struggling with immediately when it came to planning out levels and deciding their respective locations when trying to recreate a believable space.

Before realizing that I'd had to do this whole thing on my own if I wanted to just get a game done, I looked into multiple engines to see which one would suit our potential workflow the best, I actually had a look at trying to recreate or doing something in those aforementioned games engine - Ken Silvermans' Build Engine. I already wrote a bit about this (albeit very short) in an earlier post, what made me go with Easy FPS Editor for this project in the end, instead of something like Unity (dodge a bullet there, didn't I) or Unreal, so if you're curious about that process of elimination and my stumbling first steps I'd recommend you reading that. Regardless - while I found Build fascinating, and its vast and well-documented forums an ocean of great help, I quickly realized that if I got tired of learning easily approachable and modifiable frameworks as Unity and Unreal, I wouldn't last long with Build, despite the updated version of Build that is Eduke32 and all the detailed form posts on the whole wide web.

Before any true panic regarding my lack of sufficient skill had any real time to set in, I realized that the second part of the game needed to switch something up (as much as the engine and my understanding of it, and my other limited skills would allow). That something kinda had to be the locations and their graphical design, since creating the art was one of the things I felt comfortable enough with, despite several issues with it in regards to how the engine treats some multi-sided textures even now. Still, I had decided on this "compressed somewhat but not deep fried enough uncanny valley"-look, with some posterize and mosaic effects put to good use, for crunchy pixels and high contrast colors, although limited. The goal was to somewhat recreate something at least resembling the 32-bit era of consoles, with higher resolution.

I knew how I could twist this odd artstyle for some more unique and twisted levels, with neither me or the set artstyle being held back by sticking as close to real world locations as possible. Granted, that didn't really help me with the level design itself, but with some freaky looking new wall and floor textures, perhaps players wouldn't notice the basic map layouts mostly being glorified corridors (but to be fair - what early linear FPS games wasn't) and hold off the otherwise fast approaching feeling of being bored just by the default color palette. I can manage people feeling a bit underwhelmed when they reach the end of whatever I've been responsible for forcing upon them. After all, I'm just one guy doing most of this stuff (sometimes a few more when doing movies or such), orchestrating chaos in a somewhat coherent order; but someone being bored before reaching the end, or worse - before the halfway point, that would be a really bad sign. The latter half had to kick into next gear, at least in the visual department, any way necessary… And with some clever use (and recycling) of different textures and sprites here and there, the workload could be “optimized”, not having to create a different graphic for every little new thing, floor or wall.

Most of the textures were based on photos taken by myself of different things in everyday life I found interesting. During a regular walk I could come upon a fascinating stain on a brick wall, just having to take a picture of it with my phone - just in case. Sometimes I went on a “texture hunt”, just looking for cool surfaces or patterns to use in one way or another. A lot of the time it came down to a process called “photobashing”, In which you take several different photographs and combine them - bashing them together - into a new image. The source images can be of vastly different styles, but with some clever use of tricks and hacks you can end up with something coherent and new.

While I used some basic floor and wall textures straight out of DOOM (leftovers from when I still was kicking around the idea of doing REVEREND as a WAD/mod for that) for testing the capabilities of the engine, and experimenting with different resolutions of textures and such, it was important to me that I did most of the graphics by myself. After all, as I started earlier in this very text - doing the art was the one thing I was certain I could pull off with no real problems (which wasn't really true it would turn out, but when something didn't work I at least would know what went wrong). Stealing, or “borrowing” textures without any kind of modification would just feel lazy to me. That said - I never said I wouldn't “borrow” some textures, and then bash them all to Hell with some original stuff. Something I ended up doing a lot more when it came to designing some of the boss/enemy sprites, but that's a story for another time.

I also had to decide when to use animated textures, since these tend to slow down the engine quite a bit if you go overboard with them. Placing them here and there provided a more living world, especially during the latter stages - if you you know what I mean. These textures took significantly longer to create, since it wasn't just one texture that needed to be done, but at lease three or four - preferably even more than that. Keeping track of all these different textures could easily have become a nightmare, but it has worked suprisingly well thus far.

Perhaps I'll make somekind of BTS-video with me going more into detail, showing off a few of the original images and their game counterparts. It all depends on the intrest, and my time and energy.

/E