Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 110's demo has a high-quality feel.

Chen Mo left the conference room and sat down in his seat.

Open the Starry Sky Games official website.

then
He actually saw a link on the Starry Sky Games website for a free download of the "Final Front: Origins" demo.

"coming!"

Chen Mo's spirits lifted.

The game client is not large; its size of a few hundred megabytes was downloaded almost instantly.

Click, install, and log in to your "Final Front" account—all in one smooth motion.

Game! Start!!

Upon entering the game, the same PV animation as shown in the press conference earlier plays.

To save time, Chen Mo skipped the video, and soon the scene that flashed briefly at the end of the press conference video appeared before his eyes.

This is a classic top-down view of the game.

The lush forest from the animation has now been transformed into a detailed scene.

Although the game is played from a top-down perspective, its 2D art style results in a high level of detail, as seen in the dappled light and shadow cast by tall trees.

The ground was still littered with broken branches and rubble, or the remains of broken wood blasted to pieces by PKP, and even the spent cartridge cases scattered on the ground were depicted.

Full of details.

"Huh? Holy crap, the view can rotate? And the light and shadow move with it?!"

After personally experiencing the scene, Chen Mo's first reaction was that the quality of the scene was much better than he had imagined, mainly due to two aspects.

Firstly, "Final Front: Origins" uses the same engine and technology as "Final Front".

The lighting and shadow rendering feature, which will be implemented in Final Frontline 1.1, has also been used in this demo. And because it is a demo, some new ideas have also been incorporated into it.

Among them are 2D games, which are technically mature but not widely used, and 3D lighting and shadow technology.

This technology was developed as early as 4 years ago in Fez.

Its technology consists of three modules: pseudo-3D lighting system, dynamic lighting, and visual deception design.

The first two are easy to understand. 3D lighting and shadow transforms a traditional 2D horizontal scene into a three-dimensional space and dynamically calculates the projection effect of light sources on objects in the scene.

Dynamic lighting is even simpler; it involves creating a 3D lighting system for a 2D model and using 3D lighting technology to achieve changes in the lighting of the scene and characters.

Lastly, visual deception.

In contrast, 2D games use traditional art techniques, such as parallax scrolling and color layering, to create depth effects and enhance the sense of three-dimensionality when drawing scenes.

Combining these three elements can create quite impressive lighting and shadow effects in 2D games. If the artists put in a little more effort, they can even create unique art styles.

However, at this time, although the technology was already mature, there were not many manufacturers using it.

Big companies are too lazy to bother with this; for them, it's better to just focus on making 3D games.

Smaller manufacturers can't afford to do this, since this kind of thing also has costs, not only learning costs, but also slowing down development time by adding these systems themselves.

Therefore, this system, which matured in 12 years, didn't truly become a mainstream technology until 18 years later, when Square Enix's Octopath Traveler became a huge hit.

This technology was also used extensively in "Back to 1999".

Now, in 2016, Final Front: Origins adopted some of these effects.

For example, the sunlight filtering through the trees and casting shadows on the ground; the grass swaying in the wind; and the occasional leaf falling from a tree. These details, when combined, ultimately create a sense of "texture."

"This scene is great!"

Chen Mo couldn't help but exclaim in admiration that, apart from the scenery, the game's UI also looked quite sophisticated.

The bottom left corner of the screen displays the team members' avatars and status bars.

At this moment, the three playable characters in the team are M4, PKP, and Mosin-Nagant. UMP9's avatar is grayed out and marked with the words "Out of Contact".

Below each character's portrait are two status bars: green represents health, and blue may represent skills or stamina.

The characters in the game scene look the same as the illustrations in "Final Frontline", but when you actually play, you can clearly feel that the animation skeleton and the animation illustrations have been redesigned.

It's very smooth to operate.

After selecting a character, the UI center will display the weapon information of the currently controlled character, including ammunition, firing mode, and two skill icons.

These art assets are consistent with the UI style of the original Final Frontline, but are more refined and flat.

There is a simple mission prompt in the upper left corner of the game screen.

"Proceed and track for the commander's crash signal."

The tutorial is very simple, so simple that it only has one picture. The first one shown is the M4. Use WASD on your left hand to control movement and the mouse to control aiming and shooting.

Chen Mo tried to move it a little. M4's steps were light and its movements were smooth, without the slightest sense of sluggishness.

The left and right mouse buttons correspond to the aiming and shooting stances, respectively.

When you right-click to aim, the M4 will assume an aiming posture, at which point the crosshair will shrink. Of course, you can also fire directly without aiming, but the bullet spread will be larger.

I naturally moved the M4 forward and then naturally pressed the space bar. The M4 immediately executed a standard tactical roll, clean and efficient.

After completing all the tutorial actions, two enemies will spawn in front of the scene.

As for the design, it's still the same iron lump from "The Final Front," but there seem to be some differences in the details. Chen Mo didn't hold back and fired a few shots.

"Bang bang bang!"

The gunshots were crisp and pleasant, and the M4's body leaned back and trembled slightly with the rhythm of the shooting, with a smoke effect from the muzzle.

"Yes, the recoil is also well done, and the realism is good."

"This shooting feel deserves a high score!"

Chen Mo nodded to himself.

Having worked as a game editor for so long, he has some understanding of the concept of "feel" in games.

To put it simply, the feel of a shooting game boils down to three aspects: shooting feedback, hit feedback, and visual feedback.

This demo clearly shows a lot of effort put into its shooting feedback.

When a gun is fired, not only is there a flash and smoke from the muzzle, but the character will also experience a slight tremor due to the recoil, causing even the strands of hair and the hem of the skirt to quiver.

Chen Mo's gaze involuntarily fell on M4's skirt, which was slightly lifted by the shooting action, and those shapely... cough cough.

"This skirt, these legs... they're really well done!"

Although it was a top-down view and the view wasn't very clear, and he knew that even if the production team was daring, they couldn't actually create any wardrobe malfunctions, the effect of the skirt swaying was indeed pleasing to the eye.

She couldn't resist firing a few more shots, and then rolled around a few times from a different angle, wanting to see how the skirt would move under different actions.

I still couldn't see the color of the pants.
(End of this chapter)