up    |    index

nicole's game

August 26, 2021

Around 1.5 years ago, I drew this girl called "Nicole." She's actually been in my sketchbook since 2017, but now she will be the playable character of my first 3D PS1 game. Here's some early concept art:

a female stick figure sporting a bobcat haircut looks down on you from a railing. She's holding a taser.

It's unfortunate that I had the largest mental block just trying to draw her again. After a couple of hours, my (limited) knowledge of human anatomy and proportions did eventually start to flood in and I ended up enjoying the process. It's supposed to be an up-shot of her looking down on you, but I question whether or not I portrayed that accurately. I suppose that's the consequence of not drawing for 6 months straight.

I'm not too worried about my art progressing at a snail's pace since I usually prioritize programming over drawing, but criticism is welcome.

On a separate note, I'm planning to use simple tech for this game so that I can actually finish it. We're talking box collisions, state-machine AI (as opposed to using genetic algorithms or any of that fancy stuff), baked lighting, etc. However, I do want each game I make going forward to use progressively more sophisticated technologies, eventually culminating in stuff like dynamic motion synthesis + ragdoll (e.g. euphoria from GTA 4), lighting, advanced collision, etc...

This past month I've mostly been focusing on pre-production, so I won't be able to show anything running on the PS1 just yet. All I know right now is that electricity is meant to play an omnipresent role in the game, which is why Nicole is holding a taser atop a ledge. The electricity premise was taken from a previous failed ps1 project (video).

There's a bunch of programming gruntwork related to file formats and 3D animation that I need to take care of so... see you in a month or two.