Dreadline Kickstarter Campaign Updates #1-3, $16,000 and Counting

In case the Kickstarter pitch for Dreadline has got you curious, you might want to check out the latest updates for it, dealing with the title’s “sketchy renderer”, level building and how you can spread the word on the project.

A snip from the first:

I spent some time looking at Steve’s concepts, which tend to be very loose and have an amazing childlike innocence to them. I thought it would be cool to be able to play as a group of rampaging monsters in a world that looked like Steve’s cute but twisted fairy tale illustrations. Steve agreed, but I wasn’t quite sure how to start.

I decided it would make sense to attempt to copy the way Steve drew his pictures. Basically, he would make a black and white sketch, and then hastily color it in, sometimes going outside the lines. So, I decided to make a renderer that would do the same thing. First, I render all the visible objects with black and white textures that look like the outlines. I also use a technique a bit like the game Okami to produce the silhouette of the object, but also mess with it to make it look like it was more crudely sketched.

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Next, I do another pass of the visible objects using colored textures. The objects in this pass are also (bent around) a bit in order to make it look like it’s coloring outside the lines. This pass is blurred to make it appear even smudgier. This is the point where lighting and shadows are also added.

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Finally, the two passes are combined so there are the outlines, but the objects also get colored in. The renderer also adds additional effects at this point like bloom