A typical day, Devlog 5

Good morning, or Good night..It depends !
Any game depends on scoring by collecting items, must have an attractive item to collect, as it will be catching the player’s eye/interest the majority of the gameplay time. Most of the casual games (~80%) of it depends on collecting “Coins“. but my Toucan will be collecting something that is more tasty delicious & worthy ^_^ Its “Mango“..

I spent all the night trying to take some decision of how to make that fruits looks nice. I was hesitating to make it 3d or 2d. I started with the 3d solution as it is the quick way for me, and the easiest for me as well. When I was thinking about the spinning coins in the other casual games, I was thinking to make my mango spinning or at least floating in the air. But with my thoughts about spinning it, it gave me only choice, to make it 3d.

I know, it looks a lot like Crash Bandicoot’s Apple..It is one of my favorite games and I must get inspired by it. But let’s face it, When I entered the*. fbx file into the Editor, I realized the forgotten truth, that I’ve to insert a light in my scene to let the Spinning Mangos appears ! otherwise they will remain back…and it does make sense. It might be normal thing, but for me, as long as the main character, environment DOESN”T need any light (as it is 2d assets), so I have to find another way to avoid using lights ( not a big fan of it in 2d games, unless it is essential for the game play, let’s say a dark 2d cave with some flames!).

So I decided to go with the hard way…. ;( make it in 2d. I kept making several versions of this damned mango, and it never looks as good as it should be. Until I realized one thing, thought I never read about it, but I figured it out with trial and error with several drawings and renderings. 2d also have surfacing techniques!

With a small, mini, tiny, little trick; which called radial (none liner) gradient, I was able to give the mango the feeling of a rounded surface. I found that the issue I had it was not in the Mango shape itself. neither in the mango colors too. But it is in how I spread that colors to fill the 2d shape. Glad that I was able to learn something new that night, and that new thing, made me start to re thinking about what I’ve already done from 2d art, and thinking about going around it and try to sue that solution with some background elements.

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