Izaka's Devlog 2 - Alpha

Hello again! Welcome to my second devlog on Project Dopamine, a sandbox game set in the early 2000's, which revolves around a person trying to be productive while using the computer, when they really don't want to be. I'm Aunonna (aka Izaka), and this time I’ll be covering what I worked on when preparing for our first round of playtests. As a quick reminder, I’m mainly an Art Lead & Game Designer, along with being an assistant for the Narrative Lead/Documentation if needed (usually with editing). 

Along with the usual game design team discussions, I’ve continued to work on the visuals for our game, such as UI elements, layouts, & backgrounds. Our team decided to push the chat application idea to the next playtest and focus on making the basic stuff work (those being the essay typing game, the snake minigame, and the basic computer functionality). This meant that my work for making the chat app’s UI was pushed back a little, and I got to focus on making some first-pass background artwork. Here are some things I got done this time: 

(Above:) Final login screen layout (1st), and the background I made to actually be used in-engine (2nd). 

(Above:) An artwork I made last year for fun, which I think is fitting for our game. 

(Above:) A minimalist, liminal-space inspired, pixelated background.

(Above:) A slightly more polished version of the concept artwork from my last devlog. 

(Above:) This one is based on those nightcore background images that were so popular in the early 2000’s. 

(Above:) A somewhat minimalist background with our new logo (the eye), titled Surveillance. 

(Above:) Login screen UI buttons , our new OS logo (the eye), desktop icons for Settings & Snake, and various user profile pictures.  

While making the art for this game, I found that using references from old operating systems like Windows XP and Vista helped a lot, but so did using shape tools. I got a reply to my last devlog about the use of rigid shapes rather than organic ones, and tried to apply them to my assigned UI parts. It really helped me capture the look, and was much easier than I thought it would be.  

What wasn’t super easy was achieving the realistic style for backgrounds, like in Windows XP. As an artist who’s mostly done cartoony art for past projects, it's been an ongoing challenge making backgrounds to fit that style. Since it's first pass art, I’m letting it go for now, but I'm working on improving my realism skills so that the backgrounds can look more painterly and realistic soon. For now, though, we can say things are cartoony because the game is more of a parody of early 2000’s computers, and not a perfect recreation of them.  

Something to note is that I decided to do pixel art for the UI elements, which make the images look nice and sharp in Unity when resized. I also took the time to teach my fellow art lead about some techniques I had used, so that we could try and get a consistent art style throughout. To make UI more consistent, I provided the backgrounds for buttons in different colours for her to use, as seen below: 

(Above:) The last image here is a border, placed underneath each button for extra contrast (if needed). Unfortunately it's a bit hard to see =(

Finally, I imported assets that Caitlin and I made into Unity. Since Gleb is the Systems and Programming Lead, he’s in charge of writing the script for customization. Since the essay and snake are our priority right now, we’ll have to see if that will be useable a feature for this playtest or the next one. 

Currently, we're on track towards having a good amount of content ready for the playtest. While not all of these will be in the game yet, what we have in the engine right now should be good enough for testing how players feel about the environment, and the things that they can interact with. 

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! =)