Peripheral Graphics Experiments

We won a hackathon for our game. The publishers who hosted the hackathon really like the game concept. But the harsh reality is that our primitive graphics are just not good enough for prime time. In fact they are so primitive that that the OSVR fund won’t give us any money so that we can then hire an artist.

So what does one do with zero budget, no funding and no artistic talent? You experiment.

Here is what peripheral originally looked like compared to 3 very simple experiments with edge detection, colour correction and grayscale.

Here is a shot with edge detection and bloom

This one is pretty boring

Here were are after adding some simple textures, with normal maps for a bit of depth on the lines. We like this a lot, keeps it simple but adds some much needed polish.

Here we are after further refinement with Bloom, Edge Detection, Color Correction, and a few others. Personally I’m a fan of the bright, loud colours. However I think the combination of that along with the bloom is washing the scene out too much.

And here we are after experimenting with some wireframe shaders. We think we will use this shader for tutorial objects.

All in I think it’s safe to say that the graphics still need some work but it’s pretty impressive how much polish you can add to a game with some free and built in effects and textures. And without changing the existing models.

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