Inside the Lab:Part I The Characters news - BioLAB

THE CHARACTERS

Hello everybody and welcome to the 1st part of our making of BioLAB.

Game development is hard business. It needs a lot of determination and planning because even simple ideas are hard to be turned into a fun and playable form. All elements like game design, programming, art and music must be combined into a single form that will complete the puzzle of creating a game.

THE IDEA

In this part I of our “Inside the Lab:The Making of BioLAB” we will discuss about the characters of our game. How we thought about them, their purpose and how we designed them. Its a process of trial and error as many things are in game development. First we try to think about our game. What kind of characters we need. Why we need them? Do they fill some purpose or they are there for aesthetic reasons? All these questions must be answered before you continue because these questions will direct the design they will take.

For our game we need two kinds of characters. The scientists that will work inside our laboratory and the clients that will come to us to make a contract for creating a virus or a vaccine. When we designed our game we decided to give the player the choice of 2 paths. The path of being good or evil. This will be determined by the player actions, if he starts creating viruses and infects the global population his evil meter will go up. On the contrary if he decided to make vaccines and cure people his kindness meter will go up. Deciding which path you follow will also affect the look of the scientists working for you. Finally clients that ask for viruses will look different from clients asking for vaccines.

THE DESIGN

After we have decided what characters we need we enter the design stage. First we start by making rough designs of our idea so we can see how it is shown on paper and to give everybody an idea for the style we want to give. These are very basic designs and may have no similarity to the final result.

The concept artist then takes this idea and start making sketches that will be the foundation of the final images.

When the sketches are approved by the game designer the artist starts to put more details and color until the image reach a certain quality. Sometimes different approaches are made in order to test what we like more. An example of this different approach can be seen on the picture below.

After the images have reached a certain quality we check them for any details that we would like to add or change. At this stage the art is almost complete and only minor changes are happening.

THE FINAL TOUCHES

Our art is now ready and approved. The artist put the final touches to give it this extra something that would make it look even better. The results are more than obvious.

CLOSING

We hope you enjoyed the first part of our “Making of” and expect you next week with part II where we will talk about creating the art for the main game. Everything from concept to final art. Until then we wait you in our forums at forum.demigod-studios.com to get to know us and discuss about BioLAB.