It finally felt like I have something within reach. There was a lot more work to do on fine tuning the ‘sewing machine’ level generator and adding in all the different variable options for each array ‘thread’. So, the perfect time to completely overhaul the visuals? Right?
While I love low res style pixel art, for Outpost Recon it was starting to become more of a hindrance and was producing visual inconsistencies with the effects I was trying to achieve. By basically doubling the resolution of all the in-game assets I unfortunately increased the art asset file sizes substantially but I think the pay off was worth it. I also worked out a pretty good workflow for overhauling a lot of my earlier turret designs in to the new resolution.
As a whole I think the increase in resolution allowed the designs to be much more interestingly shaded and better emphasized some of the smaller details. I still expect to do another pass on them later, especially as I get more experienced with my pixel art, but it feels like a nice step forwards.
I also took this opportunity to completely re-rig the Rover and do some extra reading on rigidbodies, wheel joints, hinge joints and how to get the best results out of them. The end product was a much smoother driving Rover with properly functioning suspension and less hacky settings to get the feel that I wanted. Looking back it was almost a fluke that the previous iteration of the Rover worked as well as it did.
Recon Auth Signing Out