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Terracotta Canyon Artwork
Making Terracotta Canyon Artwork
Making Weapons and Ability Icons
Challenges
I designed all of the class's ability and weapon textures to be in a fantastical western theme. I wanted to make each weapon and icon vary greatly from one another while also being very distinct in shape and color.
When designing these textures I use a 3 color method where I pick a midtone, highlight, and shadow color which are hue shifts of the midtone. This allows me to create artificial depth in very few pixels. After using this method I then go over and apply more detailing to finish off the textures so that they have a Minecrafty feel, but are more stylized.
Numerous times throughout development classes had their abilities changed which led me to creating many different textures. A lot of which never made it into the final game, but might eventually be used later on if we decide to expand the game in the future to host more classes.
A challenge I faced a lot when designing textures and icons was how Minecraft codes some items. The trident for example only allows for texture changes and does not allow for model changes due to the trident being an entity. This is one example which limited our design space greatly. I designed and textured a trident model in Blockbench before finding out that it could not be used. However, I still found making it to be good practice.
Challenges
Making Soft Lore in a Busy World
Making a Capture the Flag game naturally has to come with some sort of lore by default in order to give background to why teams are stealing each other's flags. In our past Capture the Flag game, Warsong Gulch, the two teams are Horde vs Alliance which are sworn enemies in their lore. In Terracotta Canyon however, it's a battle between two bandit camps over control of the canyon and the town.
Its not easy to build lore into maps that do not have existing lore, but I made sure to hint at things throughout the map. Both team's bases are symmetrical which make it difficult to make certain aspects of them standout. However, I designed both bases to share a similar story of running out of resources and how they are pillaging the town's farms and train economy to stay in power. I did this by showing messy camps, rudimentary defenses, and supplies taken and stored throughout the bases. Each team also has their own version of a skeleton cowboy flag which is what players must try to steal from one another.
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