Weekly Bulletin 15/07/2015 news

Welcome back to the allegedly weekly bulletin, redefining how long we can declare a "week" to be - one month at a time!

I've been pretty busy with real life struggles, so time for working on assets has been pretty limited. With all the vehicles for both sides being finished with solid, final art there's not much to do that isn't technically complex and difficult. Which isn't the greatest state of affairs for someone such as myself with such limited time. However, I have been working through a couple of them.

Last time Morpher posted up an image of the work-in-progress Poseidon deploy state. Since then, I have finished tying this to the ship's mobile form by way of an intricate animation. The Poseidon is GDI's highest tier ship, when deployed it's virtually a small superweapon and it has stealth detection capabilities. So the anchored platform needed to be reasonably big, reasonably visually imposing, and clearly a missile silo. But it's all a compromise: It's a 3x3 cell building, but in an environment where a regular GDI building's aesthetic would look out of place. The final design has had to walk the fine line between being a structure and being an immobile evolution of a vehicle. It's the same issue faced by things like the Tick Tank and the Shock Artillery, but on a larger scale.

I chose to retain many of the shapes and forms present in GDI's buildings, but at a much smaller scale and with the lighter yellow of the vehicle set. Thus is borrows from both. It's the perennial problem of the camel - a horse designed by committee - but I think it serves the required purpose and telegraphs to players the importance of the unit.

The other technically complex and time consuming task is the Nod Construction Yard's deploy animation. Hassan_2030 did a good voxel of the MCV based on concept art, and DonutArnold did a good model of the Construction Yard. My previous attempts to tie the two together were hampered by not having DonutArnold's model, but this challenge has pushed me towards remaking the CY in such a way that the deploy animation can more smoothly transition. Naturally, the constraint upon the CY that it has to transition between vehicle and structure form adds another layer of difficulty to the process. Like the Poseidon, it has to look good as both. Unlike the Poseidon, it has to follow the aesthetic style of the faction's buildings, since it's the central Nod building when deployed.

This one is still in the works and I'm showing it here as a demonstrations of the process rather than as a finished product. At the moment it is perhaps too nondescript and lacks a strong, defining silhouette like the GDI CY. It does however have a very smooth transition from vehicle to structure, which I believe is especially important considering Nod's mobile style of play. For GDI it is not as worthwhile to undeploy and roll out, but for Nod it can occasionally be a game changer. I've taken this opportunity to make the model a little bit more squat, which unintentionally upped the bunker feel of the building. In most of Nod's stuff I'd call that a problem, but the CY is the central building of any base and it deserves to be represented with as much armour as it functionally has - GDI will need to bring a fair few bombers to take down a Construction Yard.

And that's what I've been doing this week-ish!