[Ciel Devlog #22] Background Graphics Overhaul

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Hi everyone, it’s num, in this devlog I want to talk about recent changes in graphic that we have done in the past few weeks. I also want to say happy holidays and happy new year since this will be the last devlog in 2017.

Decision to overhaul the graphics

First of all, I realize that the background graphics are not that awesome, it lacks so many details and refinement and just feel flat in general. Especially the background in player’s home. Aside of quality reason, there is also a lore-related reason. The current player’s home design is designed as a two-story house. Disregarding the limited space of the Ark, average citizens should’t have their own two-story house, they live in the allocated flat and apartment across the residential and business area. You can see this if you observe that in the end turn mode, Ciel’s starting point before she move to various place on the map, is an apartment building. This was entirely my fault since the design come first before the lore. With that in mind, I started to re-design player’s home to resemble more of a flat/apartment room, rather than a two-story spacious house.

Ciel’s starting point in end turn mode.

Re-design Process

The redesign start with imagining what would the flat looks like. Since the player is supposedly living alone before adopting Ciel, I took many references from studio apartment room layout then begin modelling the room in Blender.

I also model all the objects from the old drawing such as end table, desk, and stove to 3d models to fill up the new room.

Converting objects to 3d models, above is the old kitchen background picture, below is the 3d objects from the kitchen.

With all the layout and objects converted to 3d objects, it’s time to get to work to convert them to new background pictures. a bit of playing with render settings and a little bit retouch here and there, and we get a near hand-drawing, 2d-like background:

The new living room background picture.

It’s not that perfect, but I’m quite satisfied with the result.

Finishing and Comparison

Here are some of the comparison of the old and new background pictures:

Living room, old vs new
Kitchen, old vs new
Balcony, old vs new, notice how spacious is the old one compared to the more realistic size new balcony.

Closing

That is all for for the devlog, see you in the next devlog entry! A reminder that you can also follow the game development progress on twitter or chat with us directly on our discord server.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/studionamaapa

Discord: https://discord.gg/yvecEAn