Touhou 3d freeroam fangame

[Saijee]

Hello, I've been looking around the web for places where I can have a discussion among Touhou fans for a fan game I'm making.

For the most part, I'm currently working on the character models and here are the ones I have made so far (faces not yet animatable) :
(click the link to see full size)
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/329/b/b/remilia_and_flandre_now_rigged_by_saijeehiguchi-d6vimvr.png


In case you hadn't noticed, the art-style that I'm going for is not meant to resemble the manga/anime look as I wanted to go for a more western animation style. That said, apart from comments such as "touhou looks weird when it's not drawn anime style," I'd like to know if there are things about them that you think could be improved, and how so.

Also, I had a bit of fun making designs that have distinct differences than the way the characters are usually depicted. Somethings are for story telling purposes. For example, Scarlets come in 2 different sizes. That's because I wanted to have more emphasis on the relationship of Remilia as an older sister to Flandre, and I always thought that drawing them the same height makes them look more like twins than big/little sister.

Speaking of the story, It's going to be a retelling of the events of EoSD, told in a way modeled after Zelda OoT. In fact, I'm really hoping to get a Zelda OoT like gameplay/gameflow for the project as a whole. This game will be played using WASD+shift+space+mouse.  where shift is dodge, space is jump, left click is melee, middle click and the wheel are your special melee attacks, and right click is shoot. While shooting the gameplay switches to being very similar to Kid Icarus Uprising, with the multiple ways to shoot using just one button thing and all.

I'm going to make the melee battles revolve around strong vectors and want to make playing Marisa and Reimu here feel quite the same as playing them in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, except in 3D.

The story is not meant to be all that true to the original story, so even if you have beaten EoSD before, I plan to give you a number of surprises. Some events might not happen in the same order, and character motives are all changed.

I'm also hoping to get the game fully voiced in English.

[Prime32]

Ambitious, but cool if you can pull it off. What engine/tools/etc. were you using for this?

The models are cool, but the colours on Reimu's bottom ribbon + Marisa's buttons kind of bleed into the surrounding areas. Maybe something more like this?

[Saijee]

I'm using game maker with the Ultimate 3D.dll. This is going to be a spinoff game that uses the same engine as the one I made for my main project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrOlCJLkXuk

That's a strange remark to make about the Reimu model- previously the blue was a color that contrasted 100% with the red: http://oi41.tinypic.com/15zksjq.jpg
It was changed to blue because people wanted a color that settled better rather than stand out. I'm aware that Reimu is normally drawn with a white ribbon on her skirt, but the style that I'm going for isn't trying to emulate that. I'm trying to focus on evenly distributing the colors throughout the design, and I also feel like the blue ribbon sets this design for Reimu apart from all the other depictions of her, the same can be said about Remilia's black ribbon (instead of red) and red wings (instead of pink)

As for Marisa, there's another thing I'm working with, I'm limiting the number of colors for each character's clothing to 3 colors, so that it I can more effectively get an even spread as mentioned above. I did come up with another pallet for Marisa that solves the problem you mentioned, though I think it may seem a bit too far from her original look:

[Gpop]

Pretty damn interesting. I'm both curious as to how you envision Gensokyo's geography in this project, as intrigued in a more western take for the artstyle. also you western take on Koishi :V

[Saijee]

Glad to hear.

I intend to treat Touhou as a piece of mythology as many have done before. A-la the way that Touhouvania retells EoSD and PCB doesn't build off of ZUN's version of the story, it's just a reinterpretation. Just as how the story of Theseus and the Minotaur in it's most recent retelling is quite a variation from how it was told centuries ago and also different from millennium ago.

I honestly feel that Touhou has become a piece of modern mythology by virtue that so many different people wish to retell it's stories commissioned. As opposed to how most fanbases just make fan-fics that build off of points from main canon of whatever it is they are being a fan of.

[Saijee]

I've got a model for Meiling and Cirno, Rumia and Patchouli are next.

[cb5]

A freeroam game probably could work to be honest and it's a good idea.  The only real advice I have is to not try to make something more than you can realistically do.  By that I mean if you're the only person working on it don't try to make something that would require a hundred people working for years to make.

Also what about adding in mod support?  I don't mean like actively work on mods, but games like fallout, skyrim and what have you when you load up you can load up mods as well.  That way if someone else wants to add on perfect cherry blossom or later games they'll be able to as expansion mods.

To be honest I have played a lot of games and that a lot of times there's things in it that urk me the wrong way.  I'm not being mean to you in any way, but I'm going to give a list of things that are fundamentally wrong with freeroam games so that you can avoid them gameplay wise and have a really good game

Things to keep in mind with freeroam games:
1)Focus on the core story the most.
2)Only do what you can realistically do and do it well.
3)One of the biggest problems with freeroam games is that they think giving enemies more health makes it a harder game.  As someone that has taken down a mother deathclaw and her family in fallout new vegas with a knife that is not true.
4)Don't give the player the bfg 9000.  By that I mean while more powerful weapons are fun one of the biggest problems with freeroam games is that they give the player overly powerful weapons and ruin the difficulty of the video game.  Once a player is carrying a weapon that can kill everything in one shot it doesn't matter how much health you give a enemy.
5)Lots of video games with leveling systems are massively broken.  As much as I like rpgs, people like me will find exploits in leveling systems and abuse the exploits to the point we kill final bosses in just one shot.  There's nothing actually wrong with leveling systems, it's just people like me that have been playing video games since we learned our first words know how to exploit video games really badly.
6)If you don't feel like you can include all of the game in it then it's okay to cut out minor parts.
7)One of the biggest savers of time is to reuse unimportant models.  By that I mean for rocks one of the biggest time savers is to have only one rock model in the entire game and just reposition the model, scale it, turn it and such.  That way you don't have to make as many models.
         Common things you can just use one model for:  Unimportant houses, trashcans, boxes, rocks, trees(that's a bit tricky, but if it's a forest you can get away with it by randomly positioning them), dressers, doors, food, etc.  If it's not important then just make one model.
8)One of the best things to include in the game is to release the tools you use so that people can add onto it.  So that way if someone wants to add the later games in the series as expansions they can do it.  Also have a menu where people can add mods to a mod folder to play when they boot it up.  That way if someone does make a mod all the person has to do is put it in the mod folder, turn it on in the menu and fiddle around to see if there's no conflicts.  Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.  That really depends on the mod maker.
9)If you can't make a several hour long game then just make a shorter game.  What I mean by that is if it's just you working on this game realistically speaking making a world as large as Just Cause 2 isn't feasible.  It's not about how large your game is; rather it's about how well you do it.


Tl:dr;  Do what you can do, but do it well.

[Saijee]

I read it all.

In short- I'd just like to say that this isn't that kind of free-roam. It's all going to be based on Zelda OoT with some Kid Icarus Uprising elements.

Anyway, I got Rumia!

[CK Crash]

I like the outfit designs, but faces could use a bit more variety. If you come up with lots of neat palettes, consider letting the player use them as alternate costumes!

[Saijee]

Care to elaborate? As the artist, I have a very limited point-of-view.

This is how the faces all look together (side by side)

Reimu was specifically designed to look Japanese. Meiling, similarly, was designed to look Chinese.

[Spectral Nexus]

I fell in love in love with Meiling's design as soon as I saw her! She's beautiful!  :*
Keep up the great work!

[Kaze_Senshi]

Care to elaborate? As the artist, I have a very limited point-of-view.

This is how the faces all look together (side by side)

Reimu was specifically designed to look Japanese. Meiling, similarly, was designed to look Chinese.

I like the outfit designs, but faces could use a bit more variety. If you come up with lots of neat palettes, consider letting the player use them as alternate costumes!

Maybe he said this because it seems that everyone has the same emotion, you could make Flandre with an angry face, Marisa with a happy face, etc. (Ignore this if you are planning to animate the expressions too)



Anyway nice job with the models, they look awesome. In my opinion you could change the Flandre's wings material for something that looks more like a bright crystal.

[CK Crash]

My bad, I thought it was the facial features making them look the same. It's probably just that they all have the same lack of expression. Facial animations would be ideal, but even giving them default expressions (determined for Cirno, for example) would go a long way.

[Saijee]

Ahh- yes, perhaps I hadn't explained that.

Faces will be fully animated in the game.

It's common practice to model faces with a neutral expression so that they can be optimally animated for a maximum number of expressions: turning an excited smile into an angry frown tends to look uncanny valley, if you catch my drift.

They will have default expressions in the game to match their character, but those will be done by animated riggs and not modeled into their default geometry.

About Flandre's wings, would the look of Cirno's wings (but technicolor) work?

About Meiling, thanks, me too.

[Kaze_Senshi]

About Flandre's wings, would the look of Cirno's wings (but technicolor) work?

For me it would have the Cirno's wings look but it should be more brighter.

[Saijee]

Hmmmm... I think that you might be meaning something else than how you word it.

In the world of art, "brighter" means to make the colors more saturated. I think that you mean "lighter" in other words less saturated but with more white. But correct me if you mean something else... Then, I'll see what I can do.

Until then though, here is Great Fairy:

[Kaze_Senshi]

Maybe I should have said "glowing crystal wings" instead of "brighter wings"

[Saijee]

Patchouli:

Little Devil:

[Saijee]

OK guys, I've now got them all body rigged, and am working on face rigging, I'm going to use the same rig for all characters to make it easier. Here is the rig I made in effect on Marisa, I'm quite pleased with the results:

[Mr_Bob]

The center one is hilariously great.  And wow, this seems like a huge undertaking, but you seem like you've got a ton of experience judging from your Youtube channel.

[blabla1994]

Well. I'll be damned if that's not impressive.

[Saijee]

Thanks you two. I've been spending this weekend getting all of the details and what not rigged for animation (extras like hair and what have you). I've done them the entire EoSD cast now!


Click Link for full:
http://th01.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2013/342/9/8/same_pick_but_better_spaced_for_moniters_by_saijeehiguchi-d6x8yn4.png

And yes, I did choose to make Rumia the same height as Marisa.

As you can see, the faces are all rigged now!

[Saijee]

I already did the entire EoSD cast, But today I made Nitori, she is one of my brother's favorite Touhou girls, so it's my christmas gift to him.


Chiko "Tenshi" Hinanawi too!