Art Bible - ChillChiliStudio/Order227 GitHub Wiki

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Introduction

In this document, which will be updated during the development of the game, will be used as a container of information about the assets of the game and the different processes took while developing, as well as the game's art style, concept art, characters' design, etc.

Note: For efficient, time and space matters, we are not going to show all the sprites used by this game in this document because there are many of them. Instead, you can watch them all well classified here

Art Style

The art style of Order 227 it will be similar to the C&C: Red Alert 2 due to the fact that we used the assets of this game, so the art style will be a realistic pixel art which transmits a serious scenario, reassembling to Post World War II times (Cold War). This feeling is well-transmitted thanks to its colors and the different designs in characters and structures.

Character Art

In this section, as in our game there won't be any important or highlighted character, we will review the art, concept and design for the troops. As will be seen, many troops are shared between factions with some exceptions.

Troops

Basic Allied Infantry (GI)

The GI is the basic (default) infantry troop that the enemies will have. This troop will have American light assault rifles to fight against the soviet forces. We can see an overall american style. This troops give the sensation of being able to perform the enemy role and fight the player's forces since its military aspect avoid him to have the "aspect that has what's morally good" and to also have an aspect of soldier, as can be obvious.

Basic Sovientic Infantry (Conscript)

The Conscript is the soviet basic infantry troop which the player will be able to control. They are provided with light assault rifles too and are able to perform the next mechanic actions: Move, Attack, Hold, Move&Attack and Patrol, as well as the majority of the troops (for more info about the possibilities in gameplay of this mechanics click here). They have a russian and defensive as well as aggressive aspect as can be seen.

Machine Gun Infantry (Chrono L)

The Chrono L is the heavy troop of infantry, at the contrary from the basic infantry troop, this heavy unit will have higher caliber bullet which increases their damage per shoot and their machine guns provide them with a bonus on the fire rate speed. Also, visually they have a more fearsome aspect than the basic units, they must give the sensation of being more dangerous and powerful than a standard infantry unit.

Sniper Unit

The snipers will be a solo unit for both factions a with higher damage per shot, but with a slower fire rate. They don't have specially an aggressive aspect since they don't need it, they wait in the remoteness to its enemy to appear and mortally wound him. The long-range weapons allow the player to have a better visual area in the field, being able to see an incoming threat for a further distance. Also, they are able to shoot farther than other troops.

Engineer

This unit will be the one in charge if constructing the different structures and reparing them, as well as to repair armored units. They can't seem dangerous, they must be felt as smart people that know how to fix things up. They are harmless.

Bazooka Infantry (Flak)

The Flak will be the troop expert in destroying armored vehicles, nflicting them a higher damage with their explosive guns. As obvious, they inflict damage in a determined area when shooting but a lower firing rate (they have to load big weapons).

Desolator

The Desolator is an experimented juggernaut soldier (a special unit given as a reward) which has a huge amount of life and presents a high threat to infantry troops thanks to its and "tank" properties and high damage and cadency. Is a troop that must look tough and hard to beat, as well as a trophy, invincible, the player has to feel that this unit is way a reward for doing it great.

Spiders (Terror)

The spider units are a bit fast and damaging troop able to immobilize all type of units. They must look dangerous but beatable as well as a bit skilled.

Dogs Unit

Dogs Units are used by the allied forces as fast melee attack units. They are very vulnerable but must look loyal and obediant since they are well trained to attack its objective at all cost. In our game this is not the unit that has explosives, they only attack.

Suicidal Cows

This cow seems very normal, but the unscrupulous capitalists put them explosives on its backs to make them explode when killed, when arrived at its objective or when it's near to a player's troop. Poor cows... They must look pretty vulnerable but also unguilty, the player should feel the weight when deciding to kill a poor cow for him to survive, but also to blame its enemies for forcing to do so. They are just animals.

Structures

Central base

The structure will be the one the player will have to defend from the hordes if this one is destroyed it is game over. Being this one of the most important buildings of the game, will be protected with cannons and also will be producing a standard quantity of income in order to create more defensive troops/element.

Tank Factory

This structure Unlocks the creation of Armored Units & Bazooka infantry. It gives 5$ every 2 seconds.

Radar

Eliminates all the Fog of War and gives 5$ each 2 seconds.

Goldyard (SB3)

Gives 15$ every 2 seconds.

High-Performance Training Center (HPTC)

Gives more velocity and resistance to all player’s units. It gives 5$ every 2 seconds.

People’s Heart

Communist statues surrounded by barricades. It has the inscription “Sing to our Motherland, Communism’s triumph lead us on!” - It Unlocks the communist bar, which will be filled by killing enemy units (not animal ones!). If filled, the atomic bomb will be unlocked and thrown from here. It gives 6$ every 2 seconds.

Expropriated Production Center (EPC)

Gives the Defense Buildings and base extra life and reduces 4s the build time (6s in total now), the Strategic Points are harder for the enemies to conquest and easier for the player (increased/decreased time in 4s, so 6s and 14s to conquer/unconquer them). Gives 6$ every 2 seconds.

Vehicles & Weapons

Light Tanks

This light armored vehicle is exceptional to eliminate agglomeration of troops thanks its damage in the area. Is a fast and mortal vehicle, and it has to feel like it, with not many guns but though enough.

Heavy Tanks

The heavy tank units are slower than the light ones but, but more powerful, so they must look like it, with more weapons and tougher (the fact that, because its weight, will make them slower). They apply extra damage to structures.

Turrets

The turrets will act as a deployable asset used as a defensive unit against incoming enemies, which means that could be used by the player in order to protect his strategic structures. It's just a static fast gun to clear fast the enemies, but not very powerful.

Nuclear Bomb

The nuke is a massive weapon that the player will be able to use a few times when the communist bar is full of energy. This one will eliminate any threat within its radius of damage. It must be desolating and impressive, as the real ones.

Level Of Detail

As the game is a war RTS (inspired in a real conflict), the art of it has been designed to be as much realistic as possible, therefore most of its designs have grey tonalities and degradants of such. Most warm colors except for the allied forces, some energy weapons, and the snow biome in the scenario.

The terrain has a high level of detail, thank to degradant that each tile has and to the definition that particles such as rocks have. Also, there are transitions from the different biomes such as connecting the sea (tiles which represent water surface) with a beach (tiles which represent sand), the sand tiles with other with vegetation an so on.

Also, the fact that the scenarios have a lot of elements to complement the scene such as civilians taking a bath in the beach or the light post, give more realism, comedy, and melodrama to the game. Animated traffic lights, the definition of the different city infrastructures. Also, contribute to it and to feel the scenario as a real stage.

Camera

The game is seen in a 2.5D perspective in which the camera is located in a high angle position where the player has a clear visual over the different troops and buildings in a match while playing and keeping the game loop, being able to have more comfortable access to the different entities of the game and controlling them on the field, so he has a pretty clear and general visual over the terrain (remember that it has to feel in command of the troops in a remote place, so this contribute to it a lot). The player will be able to move the camera around the map, making him feel a sensation of movement in three different axis X, Y, Z (zoom), being only in 2 dimensions (X and Z).

Color Palette

The game has a variety of palettes depending on the environment, the troops and the UI. About the environment and terrain, it has dry colors, mainly the palette for this ones are tonalities of green, brown and blue (warm colors). These specifications are valid only for the first biome, for the second and last biome (snow), white and blue are predominant color (cold colors).

Troops palettes depend on the faction they obey, the allied forces will have blue and grey tonalities and the Soviet faction will have a strong variation of red tonalities and grey, as historically and culturally accepted (remember that we seek for realism, so we must keep the historical reality).

For the UI, the main colors are red (since the player controls the communist faction, and red is the communists' color) and tonalities from black to grey, since it seems that the player controls everything from a screen in a command center. See more information on UI Artistic Style and Guidelines in the corresponding section of the UI, by clicking here.

Environment, Terrain & Scenario

About the environment, will only have one scenario, which will be based on one of the biomes of red alert 2, which could be described as a green forest map with some transitions to sea and land cliffs surrounding the playable area. In the central part of the map, there will be the base and all over the terrain, there will be different structures which the player will have to control. They are located strategically with the environment element (trees, cliffs, etc) in order to provide a better playable experience.

You can see here the tileset for the terrain and another one for the trees (see the other tilesets in the Assets folder previously mentioned):

The testing map here:

And the walkability map for the testing terrain:

Technical Guidelines

For this section, we are going to write down the different rules and the formats each artistical asset should have. Generally, we will have a module of textures to fastly load textures and spritesheets.

Exporting

When exporting we will use jpg or png for any documentation in relation to the game, but, when working with the game, more in concrete using assets such sprites and background that will go along the code, this must be in a png file.

Tools

For now we have used the next tools:

-XCC Mixer:

used to locate the assets inside the games file, such as sprites for terrain, troops and vehicles, building , UI and Cutscenes.

-Photoshop:

Photoshop will be used in order to modify any type of artistic assets such as loading screens, UI elements, and even sprites if it is necessary, also will be used to organize the sprites extracted wit XCC Mixer and create the sprite sheets that will be used in the game.

References

Our main (and mostly unique) reference has been the Red Alert Saga (since we are basing our game on it), which currently has a number of three games published under this IP (Command & Conquer Red Alert, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 ). For this project, we will use the Red Alert 2 assets, including the post-launch content Yuri’s Revenge which we have obtained thanks to a program called XCC Mixer.

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