jfcwilson, thanks man.
Yeah-Im the only one working on the game. Im learning as I go along!
Tommy, I never considered the visuals to be fap-worthy.
Essentially how you described it is exactly how it works.
The scene is animated, and rendered as a whole. Then I do an overlay of details like the smoke, sparks, dust falling, etc. The 2D elements and effects that are easier to do in a compositing program. This is also where I do things like flashing lights, computer screen readouts, etc.
Everything is colour corrected to make sure it all 'blends' together properly, then everything is rendered again. Each 'block' of animation is cut out of those renders, and placed inside the engine.
This is really what gives it the detail. Each and every item and area in the game is 100% unique. There are no tiled areas in the game (like many other isometric games). It makes it MUCH more time consuming to put together, but (I think) makes for a much more 'realistic' scene.
Each area of animation then has its triggers set up, and values applied that tell the engine when to play them. There are some cool details that aren't seen in the video, like when a door first opens, dust falls from it-but any time after that, the door will open without a dust cloud. Its a shitload of work for something that people may never notice, but it really helps sell the scene...
It gets tricky with some things, because you have to remember that the player wont do things in a prescribed order, so you have to ensure that the lights\effects in certain animated areas don't effect other parts of the scene that are also going to be animated. For example, the DOCMATE SCANNER DOOR has a yellowish light that spills from it. It is quite far from the lights above the hospital beds which are flickering. This means that if the DOCMATE door is open or closed, it doesn't effect the flickering lights.
There are some cool things to notice, like at 2:38, when the door opens, the door opening reflects in the shiny metal on top of the console next to it.
Then I take the animated areas into my NLE, and layer the sound effects to match up with the animation. So when the door slops and starts, it clunks in all the right places.
These 3 areas are quite basic in terms of rendering tricks...later on in the game I have an area where as you move through small sections, the lights automatically turn on and off depending on where you are-so each item has to be rendered with it looking like its in the light, and rendered like its in darkness. There are also some really cool effects in the engineering decks....and oh man, the medical labs are beyond awesome.
It can get quite tricky, with layering elements like holographic scanner-but the end results (I think) speak for themselves!
I know that the details in putting in are probably overkill, but I really want to make STASIS the best damned game I can. I've done quite a bit in terms of interface design and how you interact with the game world to make sure that the environment is the second character in the game.
Any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.
-Chris
