Welcome To a New Era

Hello everyone. Exciting times at the isoChronal Panic! offices. While Alpha testing was supposed to start last Monday, we found a bit of a bug in the code and decided to hold off a bit before releasing it. We just recently squashed that bug and are polishing things up for the Alpha release later this week. In the mean time I have some more art to show you, and it offers a tantalizing look at how we are going to handle the concept of levels in the game.

Eagle eyed players out there may have spotted that the two computers in the test level are looking a bit older and spottier than they used to. What happened to the polished machines we saw several art updates ago? Don't worry, they're still around, in fact they're even in the game, if you don't know what I'm talking about have a look at the images below:



An old computer console. Looked kind of out of place with the high-tech door and containment force-field in the current level.




An old reel-to-real relay computer, those things are ancient. What is this the 1960's?

 At first we sort of wanted the time period Dan Guymore was in ambiguous, hence the old computers mixed with advanced technologies. But then when we got more into the particulars of our timestream we decided we needed to be more exact with where (or more accurately when) Dan Guymore was in the timeline. Eventually we decided that the two computers were old relics maintained out of nostalgia by the guys working in the time lab, but recently upkeep had been neglected for whatever reason.

So if the two computers are old relics now, that must mean they were once top of the line back in there day. That sort of gave us the idea of having various objects serve as ongoing threads between different era's. To that end, we remade the lab into it's 1960's digs. Here have a look:

 

Nice shag carpeting.

Nice huh? Let's have a look at each of the elements up close. Of course I'm going to skip over the stuff we've seen already.

Anyhow, we wanted to acheive three things with the differences in artwork between eras. First and foremost we wanted to show how objects change between eras. Somethings like the pipes and vents are pretty constant between this era and the previous one, but other things have changed. For instance:



Chemicals are chemicals now matter what time period you're in, glass beakers work no matter what year it is. Much more fickle are the whims of interior design. The modern industrial gray desk just doesn't fit with the sensibilities of the 60's, so we introduced this jazzy little teak desk design to spice things up.

Same goes for the office desk. The paper trays are strickly functional, but the desk is now a lot more decorative.

Notice anything weird about the skyline just now? It might be hard to see against the white background, so I'll enlarge the image for you.



See the crane in this one? It's adding the finishing touches to the Space Needle, also the skyline in general has shrunk relative to the more built up skyline of the previous era. Just wait until you see both of them in game, then you'll see what I'm talking about.



Our desk jockies still need someplace to sit. Instead of that purely functional chair from the modern era, we now have a little more fun with an oak roll chair. Granted rolling chairs weren't common in the 60's, but we figure these guys are ahead of their time as far as technology goes, for obvious reasons.

Another one of the themes we wanted to drive home with the art is the idea of finding different solutions for the same problem. We use this theme not only because we have to find a way for the past era's to experiment on and hold the Timetanium with fewer technologicakl resources than the era preceding them, but also because we want to encourage players to find different ways to solve the same puzzle of getting the Timetanium to the portal in different ways. Here are a few examples:


The researchers in the 60's don't have the benefit of having sliding steel blastdoors on hand to secure the room, so they're going to have to make due with a stout oak door instead.

 

Whereas before we had the Chrono-Bowler blueprints tacked up onto the wall, in the 60's era all that's on hand is a chalk board. This doesn't so much show the difference in technology between the different era's (I'm pretty sure they still drew blue-prints back in the 1960's), but rather how far along the development of the Chrono-Bowler was. Having the designs and formulas being up on a chalk board gives the impression that this is all kind of theoretical at this point. Although from the looks of things, they've come through with some kind of breakthrough just recently.

Each era is going to have to deal with the problem of how to keep the Timetanium secure, (and fail at it since Dan get's away with the loot every time). The high-tech magnetic field from the previous era isn't going to cut it here in the 1960's. This contraption is one part nuclear core, one part isolation chamber, and one part diving bell.

Finally we also wanted to use the items in each era to sort of tell the story of how the world came to be, why something was made, and who made it. Let's look at the objects that tell the story of the game world:


Here we sort of see the origin of the Chrono-Bowler. The nameless mad genius who invented the Chrono-Bowler which Dan uses in his history spanning crime spree was apparently known to wear a Bowler himself. Although the inventor himself isn't really important to the plot as a whole, we thought we'd leave traces of him throughout the level.

With this poster, we get a hint at why the Chrono-Bowler was created, or at least begin to understand the setiments of its creator. Perhaps the Chrono-Bowler was meant as an instrument of peace, and the inventor wanted to use the wonderous creation to bring us all together? Or maybe he's just reflecting the attitudes of his time. Who knows?

The display case doesn't so much explain a lot about the Chrono-Bowler's inventor, but rather it will provide another thread between eras. I haven't add some elements to this official release yet because I didn't want to spoil things before we get there, but this case will hold a few relics from next era in our trip back through the timeline, once again showing a link between the different eras. I'll show you the full display case during the next art post, where I introduce the third era we'll explore as Dan Guymore.

So that's a sneak peak at the 60's era. We still have two more era's planned for the final release, but let's take things one at a time. Until next time, see you later.

My, How Time Flies

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay, but we're back with some big news. A lot of things have been clicking into place recently, and we're just about ready to come out with the Alpha Version of the final product. This comes with several different announcements: first, obviously is the date of the Alpha Test, Alpha versions of the game will be going out August 6th. Secondly, we're actively looking for play-testers, so if you have a touch enabled phone and want to give isoChronal Panic! a try post a comment and we'll arrange to send a version to you in the upcoming Alpha test.

These great steps forward started with a breakthrough started with our finally nailing down Touch technology. We're looking to make a blog post about that as soon as we get the Alpha out the door. Jon is going to be tackling that article because it involves a lot of technical detail. So look forward to that coming up.

Other than that things have been a bit less glamorous, mostly we've been smoothing out the animations and doing touch ups to all the visuals. If you want to see how things are looking now, check out the most recent version here.

Look for this blog to be a lot more active in the coming weeks.

Bringing It All Together

Hey everybody, we here at isoChronal Panic! are getting really close to having our first level done. All the art is in, and I thought I'd give you a look at how things stand now.

Originally we thought we'd really stress the outlines of the shapes with thick border lines around each shape, for example if you were looking at a 3D cube and could see three of its faces there would be an outline around each of the three faces. However we moved away from that, and instead emphasized our shapes through contrasting colors. You can see the difference in the two art styles in the example below:

This is the original design for some wall pipes throughout the lab, see how there is a thick dark gray outline around all the shapes? It certainly helps the pipe stand out, but you can't really see the small bolts for their outlines.

Here's the same pipe again, although we changed the look to match it's place in the level. The different segments of the pipe are differentiated by contrasting shades of a certain color, in this case gray. The bolts are a light tone, the pipe itself is medium gray, and the fittings are dark gray.

Don't our game is as dull and lifeless as all those brown and gray games on the consoles, there's a lot of color in this game, and adding more a lot of color was one of the big things we did in the first levels art design. Take a look:

We've got some nice warm chemicals for the chemistry set on the table . While the desk itself is brown, it helps the brightly colored vials and beakers stand out.

The wet floor sign from before, now a lot cleaner and focused on the bright yellows.

We even have some rich blues with the redesigned blueprints. check out the fold lines on the  paper, the blue prints now look like they've actually been handled by someone.

As you can see, a higher level of detail has been added to the new art assets. We're trying to make the different objects interesting without overloading the art with details you just aren't going to see. Here are a few examples:

Now the window looks out  on more than just sky. This view gives players a sense of where the lab is in space. They can now tell they're on the ground floor, (which makes sense), and that there is a city out nearby. The city is just an skyline, but there was no reason to get too detailed with the city itself.

The rug has a bunch of little fibers and knots in it's weave. If you look closely you can see that they're all just the same shape. Areas of more solid color just don't have the little details in them.

Even the stage itself is more detailed, there are now little cracks in the floor, and the whole lab seems to have a lot more texture to it.

Let's see how this looks all put together:

Alright, can't wait to start playing in this new environment.

Art Show

Let's look at this weeks art shall we?

Let's start with something familiar, the vents have been tweaked a little to be in scale and flush with the newly sized-down walls.

Another item you might recognize from before is the office desk, although this time the In and Out boxes make sense in perspective.

The security doors have also been adjusted for scale, perspective, and are now a lot more subtle in their outlines.

The chemistry set also got a face lift, except this isn't like the minor tweaks of the desk and vents, it's looking  a lot sleeker now.

Alright, enough with the old stuff, let's have a look at what's new. Check out the new area rug, to give the lab a bit of a more lived in feel.

Also, we've got two dests and no chairs? This is unacceptable! We picked this little beauty up at a yard sale, the guy there told us it was authentic Quaker craftsmanship, and I for one believe him.

Finally, a reading lamp, for looking over lab reports late at night.

So what's this all look like when put together? Something like this:

Finally a look at Dan Guymore, fully ambulatory:

Front

Back

That's all for this week, I think by next week we'll have a whole level to show off.

Art Heist

"Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal."

-Pablo Picasso (attributed).

Stealing a sentiment from someone else seems like a good place to start our larger discussion about art, and the theft thereof. This week we'll discuss where the inspiration for isoChronal Panic!'s art style came from, and why we did it that way.

Now to clarify that bit about stealing up above, I'm not claiming to have plagiarized any other works of art for our game; my personal mark is on every single element of the game and it's all original, in the sense that anything can be considered original these days. While I can honestly claim that I didn't go in and literally trace any pictures directly into the art folder of the game, I can't say I didn't get some inspiration from other sources. Ideas for drawings don't just come out of the ether, and as such I've looked at possibly thousands of images for inspiration of what to draw.

To give a good example of just this sort of thing, we recently decided that we wanted to give the laboratory that Dan Guymore is stealing the Timetanium from the look and feel of a nuclear waste storage facility in order to imply that the Timetanium was somewhat dangerous, and say something about Dan's character that he didn't seem to care about the risks presented by the dangerous material he was about to handle. Okay, great, that's a good direction, but real quick art test for you guys at home: Without looking, draw me a room consisting of walls and floor that conveys the feel of a nuclear science. With only things like the wall and floor to go by it's pretty tricky.

To help you out, try a google image search for Nuclear Waste Facility. You'll start to see a lot of industrial concrete and safety railings, and upon looking at them you get a real sense of what these kinds of places look like. Specific knowledge into these sorts of facilities helps too, you could see some of the more famous nuclear science facilities, like Oak Ridge and Los Alamos; modeling the art in the game after these sites in particular makes the location seem more fully realized and less generic.

Once you have some inspiration for the art, then you need a specific style. In the game, the art style has a lot of crisp clean lines, with a few parabolic curves thrown in. Color is handled with overlapping simple geometric planes, or if we want to add a sense of texture, gradient meshes. All the shapes have a strong outline to help them stand out on the screen. Every object in the scene is viewed from an exaggerated top down perspective, the perspective is looking down from above, but all of the objects are themselves slightly skewed so that their tops are visible to the camera.

In the next art blog post, we will run through this entire process with one particular asset, so stay tuned.

Modern Art, (as in we just recently made it)

Here are some new art assets we made for today:



A window in the lab, it might look a little transparent around the boarders, but when placed within the environment it looks built into the walls. Later on, we plan to change what the player see's outside to imply some time related hijinks caused by Dan's tampering with the time stream.

Another computer, we've got a retro thing going with our technology I guess.

Another pass at the desk, this time with a lot more surface area, and both of the in boxes share the same perspective as the desk. Looking good!

A closer look at the Timetanium, actual game size. This is the most precious mineral on earth, so I'm glad we got it to look sparkly.

Radioactive waste, I like how it's leaking and generally looks unsafe.

A couple of vents for the walls, they look pretty good when integrated into the environment.

A take off on the work desk, this is a chemistry station. Look at all those colorful liquids!

Some schematics for the Time-Bowler, giving the player some idea where this thing came from.

Here is the game space without anything in it, just for reference, if you want to see it with a bunch of stuff in it, play our current version of the game.

And a mock up of how the lab will finally look.

Finally, here is Dan Guymore, stomping around in his usual way. Keep on strutin' Dan!



More Art!

Check out the new environment everybody:

Okay, time to fill it up with something: