UV Unwrapping the Player Ship

 At this stage in my workflow, with my player ship model complete.
I exported the Player Ship as an .obj file and then imported it into Zbrush 4.0.
The purpose of doing this is that Zbrush has a rather nifty plugin that allows meshes (from simple to complex) to be automatically unwrapped in a tangible and understable manner. 

 This plugin is called UV-Master can be obtained from here.

Simply place the plugin with ZBrush's plugin folder contained within the installation folder.

The fruits of such labour can be seen below.
The below UV map allows for consistent application of accurate textures onto the 3D model.
This will prove to be especially useful in creating aestheticly pleasing textures that will allow further development when considering the application of vertical displacement maps and normal maps.

The UV Master plugin allows the user to 'paint' areas that require to be preserved and allow a quick and easy function for the user to also 'paint' where the seams will exist on the UV map for the model. This aspect of ZBrush really astounded me in how it cut many hours out of the workflow for this section and allowed a much faster transition between the production stages.

 

Now this is where I encountered a multitude of problems within ZBrush.

For some reason I just could not get to grips with the general functions of the program and found the HCI aspect of using the program to be quite encumbersome at times.

 In terms of the quality of results when sculpting within ZBrush I was very impressed however its operation on an interaction level began to really grate me after a while and that is when I began to look into an alternative approach to producing my vertical displacement/normal maps.

Player Ship Update - Continued...

Player Ship Update

Heres a quick update of the state of the player ship in the modelling phase. I will sort those rear thrusters out after some sleep I think.

Orthographics - Player Ship

Finally got these finished for the player ship and I'm working on the 3D model right now! ^_^

I aim for the majority of detail and extra cosmetic work to come when I finish the modelling stage and mess around with it in Zbrush.

Aspects that I am very likely to change are the wings, personally I'm not sure about them curving so much, I will figuire this out in the modelling stage whereby I'll be able to fine-tune the shape.

 

Level Map Concept

Admittedly from first glance, this may seem quite chaotic and unclear but it is my intention to produce this into a short animatic that would correctly show the flow at which the level unfolds.

For stages 1 to 2 of the player ships waypoints, the capital ship and friendly fighters are absent (as well as the enemy vessels).

It is upon the appearence of the asteroid en route for the orbital relay station (upon completion of stage 2) that they jump in to assist the player in destorying it (stage 3).

Shortly after this happens then the enemy vessels turn up (stage 4) and the player (along with the friendly fighters) must make their way over to combat them.

An enemy capital ship appears (stage 5) en route to the friendly ships/stations and it is up to the player, the friendly ships / capital vessel, to destory it before it has a chance to strike at the defenceless stations.

This purpose of this 'evolution' of stages for tasks for the player is so that they are steadily required to use more of what they are learning in the game environment.

The flow is progressive, with players initially destorying static enemies to understand firing the weapons, then destroying a (albeit slow) moving target to understand aiming correctly to hit a moving target, and then they must deal with enemies that move in a similar manner to themselves with similar firepower and finally it is the culmination of all these skills in a boss battle against a capital ship, whereby the player must shoot at critical points to cause enough damage before they reach/destroy the friendly ships/stations in orbit around the planet.

 

As this is the first level in my game, it is appropriate for the fundamentals of ship-to-ship combat to be a priority in teaching the player. 

It is expected that after this, the player can dock with stations to repair/buy/sell and then either continue on with story missions or utilise a map function to begin flying around and exploring other regions of space.

Pulse Design / Font Experimentation

These are some wallpapers to give a clear indication of what to expect from my game.
They include use of various pieces of concept art, the maya render for the background and several pieces of photoshop trickery in getting it to look aesthetically pleasing.

I've experimented with the 3 chosen fonts from my research and tried to construct them in a way that would give me a better idea about how they would look within my game's universe.

The font 'Denton' is still my personal favourate.

 Denton Font

Promethean Font         -           Quasitron Font

Pulse Typography

This is an important aspect to consider as it reflects a considerable amount of presentation to the player.

I have made this list that utlises a number of fonts that could have potentially served to represent my game. I then rated them out of 5 stars as to how appropriate I believed they were, for reference the font names can be found in the center column.

 It is to my opinion that Denton would be the most suitable, however what I like most about Quasitron and Promethean is that the font height is consistent.

While perhaps the more interesting fonts, Alpha Sentry, Aetherfox, 5th Agent and Moon Dart, I feel that detract away from my intended visual theme, that comes across so much better with my higher rated fonts.