#design process

me: The beginning of the round makes a jog in my repeating texture, which annoys me. I could add a narrow vertical stripe, just a couple of stitches, ribbing maybe, to make the break in the pattern look like an intentional design feature. It's still pretty simple, though.

me: Actually this vertical stripe should be a little wider, more of a decorative panel, so I can put some cable-y things on it.

me: Now I need to decide how to end the textured section, and make a transition into plain stockinette for the foot.

me: plain stockinette is boring, I think it needs a little border just before the toe.

Oh, this is a good one.

The first Mass Effect famously made players wait in elevators while assets streamed in. There were a lot of elevator-specific conversations that triggered in that game.

When I did some level design on a game (that eventually got cancelled for other reasons), I would often have to construct narrow hallways between larger areas that required a player to enter on one closed door and be unable to see the next area from the entrance so that the game could stream in the assets for the next area. We called them "decomps", short for "decompression chamber".

There was a Tiger Woods Golf game (Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour Golf) that famously got recalled for padding their disc with a South Park episode so that the game data was closer to the outer ring of the disc and would thus be read faster by the device laser.

We will also hide many loading sessions with cutscenes and cinematics. While the cinematic is playing (with camera angles carefully chosen, visual effects constrained, and timing controlled), we can load the next gameplay area without the player noticing.

Many environment designs will feature a short dropoff in the geometry after navigating through a play area. Most players will never look back, but the dropoff exists to stop players from backtracking to the previously explored area. Once the player passes the dropoff, it is safe to unload the previous environment since the player can't easily go back.

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Another commission for Moxtea on twitter, this time I got to design and make a character sheet of their Enot inspired sona ^^

Chocolate themed horror sans!

This was a fun design idea I cooked up @erineas for valentines- and uh it’s past that now- but I’m still gonna post this!

The top image is the final design along with his store- and than the design process/ variations in order of creation

I don’t think he’d actually wear his current outfits when he’s working at his store but instead wears it when he’s baking at home for his special valentines ;)