SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Here's a test concept for the fps view of BloodCrypt i'm thinking about.
Anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, etc?

I find it weird to mix "2d" (flat shapes) and 3d shapes. But it can be done if the graphics style is consistent enough.

I suggest to choose a texel size and to try to have approximately the same on all shapes...
take a look at : http://store.steampowered.com/app/249630/Delver/ (of course you can choose a smaller texel size, but this is just to illustrate what i mean : all shapes have approximately the same texel size and graphics style)

And also have a lighting shading which affect the shapes the same way (what do you use ? per pixel lighting shading i suppose ?)

good point about the style. I'll make sure all the UI stuff matches.

The lighting is per pixel, but actually cpu based and fed back into the gpu.

In your scene, the candle, the tree, the creatures, the tiles (of the floor), don't seem to have the same graphics style, because the texel size and the number of colors used (for coloring each shape), and the "sharpness" of the textures is too different...
(it looks ok, but you asked for ways to improve it...)

You can texture / UVmap flat shapes with a uniform texel size, easily, by creating the texture first, by choosing a width / height in texels which correponds to a width / height in units (in the 3d world) (for example 1texel per 0.01unit, so it would be 100x100texels for a 1.0x1.0tile).
But for 3d shapes it is too complicated to create a texture with the exact number of texels for each part, so an easier way is
to have a textured quad with the texel size that you have chosen and use it as a reference when UVMapping each part of a 3d shape then scale up / down the part on the texture area to have a similar texel size.

Also be careful about bad UVmapping which stretchs too much some texels (on your tree !)

..arrows at right low corner would be nice if there is some outline to separate it from 3D scene..for some reason, it feels off to me...i do not know why exactly, but i think outline will sort it out..

Yep, your quite right about the trees. they were done very roughly.
I've been back and created the trees from scratch with new models and textures:
Here's the new tree type without color (good to see the texturing and how the light is being cast:


And with color (i redid the palette to include some very dark colors to work with)


The arrows have also been altered so they match with the black outline added and shading now hand done

Here's the new bottom right icons
in normal mode - they rotate the camera:


in inhabit mode, they show the entire range of controls - these are also mapped to the keyboard arrows and qweasd:


The 2 swords will attack to the left and right of the forward position. so you can attack in 3 directions.
In essence Inhabit allows you to see things from the knights point of view and use the icons (like DungeonMaster) or a keyboard (or both at once)