Art Bible - GangBug/AgeofEmpiresII GitHub Wiki

The game will follow the artistic style of the original "Age of Empires II" ("AOE"). For the enemies will be used demons of the game "Diablo", adapting its sprites to the color and tone of "AOE".

We will have a medieval oriental environment and a demonic one, which means that all elements of the game based on reality must be as realistic as possible, on the other hand the demons and their elements can be invented due to their non-existence.

The colours palette of the environment and the buildings will not be very saturated and will use colors that can be found in the nature, with this we get that the pennants that will be added to the buildings and the units use colors highly saturated, this will produce a high contrast o be able to clearly differentiate them, also recognizing their faction.

With all this we transported the player to Asia in the middle of medieval times but with a touch of fiction, allowing him to fight against fearsome demons in arduous battles.

The most important reference will be the art of "AOE", for the environment and the characters controlled by the player. Medieval Asian culture.

For AI enemies and their corresponding game elements, we use as main reference "Diablo". It is the touch of fiction, gloomy and dark.

The team uses the program "Adobe Photoshop CS6" for editing images, sprites, etc.

The "Tiled" program is used to create the map.

The files with which the sprites are worked will be in the format ".psd", uploaded to the "Google Drive" folder of the project.

The extraction of the sprites used by the game will always be in ".png" format and will be uploaded to the project's "Github" repository.

The sprites are sorted according to the following folder structure:

• Environment
• • TileSet
  • Props
• Buildings
• Characters
• • Enemies
  • Allies

Within one of the folders above will create a folder with the name of the item and inside will place all the files of sprites you need. The sprites files will have the same element name and followed by the status if required, separated by an underscore.

Spaces will not be used and the first letter of the words will be written in capital letters. P.E .: For the sprites of the red samurai, a folder would be created inside the folder "Characters / Allies" with the name "SamuraiRed" and inside would be placed their corresponding files that could be:

• SamuraiRed_Idle
• SamuraiRed_Walk
• SamuraiRed_Dead
• SamuraiRed_Attack
• …

The camera will be put in bird’s-eye view format this allows to have the control of the troops and the surroundings. It will show an axonometric perspective, in this case the dimetric projection with the horizontal axes at tan-1(0.5) ≈ 26.565° from the horizontal line.

The environments and buildings will have natural colors and not be overly saturated. Being neutral at the time of expressing some kind of feeling for the player to focus on the game, leaving the expressiveness for the characters and structures. Here are two examples of terrain with the color palette used:

The color palette used to differentiate the units is as follows:

As you can see it has a contrast with the color palettes that were used in the previous images very high.

They are the most contrasted elements of the game to be able to differentiate them from the environment. They will have to be visible in the 8 directions, the cardinal and their diagonals.

They are the most contrasted elements of the game to be able to differentiate them from the environment. They will have to be visible in the 8 directions, the cardinal and their diagonals.

Simple villagers in cloth robes, weak in appearance.

Unit looks like a normal soldier, with protections and katana. More powerful than they seem.

Soldier with bow, without armor.

Powerful soldier on horseback with armor.

Slow and weak unit with cloth clothes, but with magical healing power.

Enemies controlled by AI. Being demons they must have a humanoid look but they look stronger than humans. With a reddish aspect related to fire and hell.

Small demons and not very strong. Annoying by their amount.

Demons powerful but a little slow. Bigger than the rest.

The most powerful demon and chief of all demons. With a formidable appearance because of its great size and strength.

The player will have the following buildings. All with an oriental style in its architecture.

Central building with square shape, looking like a meeting place.

Building for the resources, a more rustic and simple building.

Place where the soldiers are formed, it requires yard and elements to train.

It requires space to store and care for the horses used by the soldiers.

Site in which the archers are formed, with a shooting space to practice.

The place of the monks, sacred site with religious elements.

This building stands out for being slender. You need to have open space in the upper part so that you can control the entire area around you.

For the environment is taken as a reference the nature and culture of the eastern countries, during the Sengoku period in which the samurais had their peak.

In the game we will have areas of grass, land and water in the form of rivers or lakes. There will also be ravines and mountains.

Elements of nature with which the player can interact.

Non-natural structures that are not destructible and that are on the map from the beginning.

The animations of all units in the game must have the 8 possible directions in which they are to be placed.

The basic ones for all units will be: Idle, Walk, Attack, Get HIt & Dead. Some units such as the villager will require some extra animation such as felling trees, or in the case of the Boss a special attack.

The UI of the menus as the in-game will have will be Skeuomorph, will be used textures for the elements that look natural like the wood or the stone. Also keep in mind that these elements should have a medieval look to fit the era represented in the game.

It uses a non-diegetic and meta UI for menus and the HUB, also a spatial on units to give information of their life.

The fonts used in the game will be as follows:

• Georgia, for the main menu texts and the UI in game. It is the clearest and most readable typography to be able to read quickly in the middle of the action.
• Lucida Bright, for the texts of the narrative.
• Lucida Calligraphy, for titles.
• Papyrus and Poor Richard, for decorative texts.