@@Otakubro6 it's not technically a downgrade, considering making a game by yourself is already hard af, making super realistic looking stuff is basically impossible unless you want to spend the rest of your life making your game, and since you'll have to settle for simpler graphics, it's much better to base them off the old stuff that still looks good and make your simpler graphics look more appealing. it's about having a clearer vision of what you want your game to look like, since you're trying to replicate a specific style. you could very well just do what you can and think is enough for every piece of your game, but if you don't have a specific 'look' in mind for your game, it's probably gonna end up looking kinda ugly, for example, look at "asset flips" games, which are usually made with a lot of assets that have already been created and you can get in the unity store or wherever else, these games usually look really bad because even if they use high quality textures and models, they're all over the place, meanwhile you look at a game like ULTRAKILL, that replicates the PS1 era graphics perfectly, and it all looks amazing, even though it's obviously not "modern graphics" and it's technically a purposeful "downgrade"
Ah, memories. I was working as a character modeler during the PS2 era and I remember creating assets with these kinds of polycount and texture size limitations. There were definitely other limits at that time which aren't really relevant anymore if you're just going for the look of the PS2 game assets(like low influence bone count per vert when skinning/weightpainting) . I know you started from a base mesh for the character, but if you ever wanted to create something from scratch(like a creature or a human), you can use a modeling technique that we often used at the time called "cylindrical modeling". It's a variation of the box-modeling style but it allows you to really control and manage polybudgets. Because you can determine overall polycount by either using 8-sided, 6-sided, or even 5-sided cylinders(lowest you can go while still maintaining a "cylindrical" shape with gouraud shading before you get to box shapes). You shape out the body, arms, legs, tail, whatever, as separate cylinders before you start cutting into them and joining them together.
thanks for this! I used cylinders as my primitives for the bases over cubes most of the time, way easier than using unfilled vertexes or subdividing cubes
Reminds me of Airport Inc., an airport management game from 2000. The graphics were 3d but the models were so low-poly the airplanes had triangular engines. I guess anything can be a barrel if you are desperate enough. Then again the game looked ugly even back at the time so I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make tbh...
i’m really really glad to see PS2 graphics getting more attention-even if the same hardware limitations that defined the PS1 aren’t present, the aesthetic is still amazing and deeply nostalgic and worth remembering i am very very interested in this project and whatever team re:liminality will do in the future
HOLY SHIT.. ive been obsessed with ps2 games for super long and im an aspiring indie dev who also wants to make ps2 styled indie games and watching this video inspired me so much for my passion projects, its really hard to find other game devs who talk about making ps2 styled games so it was a huge relief finding this video. Im really excited to see the future of liminal cage and hope to play it once it releases!
Hey, loved the video and I instantly realized it was inspired by P3, but I also noticed that the running and walking animations are missing their ups and downs, Basically the start of the walking/running cycle is when the character have their knees unfolded, but as they walk near the middle of the cycle their knees fold and their body goes down with it, if you add that to animations you will noticed how much more alive they are, you can even customize it a little to convey personality, there are a bunch of videos explaining running cycles so I hope this helps.
Thanks again for sharing your dev history! The character/monster design look great. Best of luck to you and your dev team I’m sure the final product will be amazing!
I love when games r made with older visuals and modern mechanics. There's so many quality of life improvements that can make old games even more amazing.
so cool! i want to make my own jrpg as well, but always told myself i wasnt ready or didnt have the skills yet (i dont have the programming side, just art). and you always hear that advice of "make your first game simple," so i was intending to work on a different idea for my first. but i just cant get my original jrpg game out of my head! it lives in my head rent free because i really love it. i still "work" on it, but dont have a demo or anything really, because ive told myself im not ready yet. but here you are, going full steam ahead on your idea! granted, you have more dev skills than i do, but its showing me i straight up have no more excuses getting started lmao.
I just watched the video and OMG this looks pretty awesomeee! I know that the inspiration is from persona but it just really reminds me of one of my favourite games on the psp Fate/Extra, even the games logo kinda looks like the Fate/ExtraCCC game logo! I am very hyped to see where this project goes, you guys are cooking good!
Greetings! RUclips suggest your video and I glad that it do! I'm a beginner GameDev and my goal it's do game with visual/graphics of PlayStation 2 era... There is a lot tutorials to make a "Low Poly" PlayStation 1 or even N64 stuff, but not so much about the "Not so Low and not so High Poly" of PlayStation. YOU SAVED ME! Now I know what I need to do with my models to look like something will put on DVD
I like seeing technical devlogs that show how it's done like this, while also talking about the game itself. It looks like it's going to be sick and a more sinister take on some of the Persona series ideas, I'll be keeping up to see the progress
we're definitely going for more of a horror angle than Persona. A lot of the similarities between LC and Persona are almost exclusively in the visual style. thanks for watching!
happy to see somebody i've been following on twitter on my recommended :o thanks for the peek at your process. it's reassuring that someone making things of this caliber is also still tinkering the same way i do :) fantastic work here, and elsewhere! ( i LOVE your tunes in They Speak)
I just came across your channel over on twitter by chance and I'm so glad I did, I absolutely love videos like this, watching you work through the process of making a rpg gets me so inspired to start making a game of my own at some point. Keep up the great work I just hope the next devlog is quicker than 6 months because I am invested :D
Oh hell yeah. Earlier this year, I wanted to do exactly this and make a game in Unreal with PS2 graphics, but I couldn't find any good resources on how to do it, and quickly gave up. I didn't really know what to look for outside of that one video on RUclips of that guy talking about his horror game project, and it was rough. Especially because I felt like an idiot asking anyone for help. This is a really nice place to start, if I ever want to pick that project up again.
"you shouldn't make a jrpg as your first game but someone's gotta do it" I feel that brother... I decided to make mine nonlinear too. Almost a decade in the making... Almost done. Best of luck to your project as well!
This was a lucky find for me. I happened to be working on my first ps2-inspired model for an Air Gear character, but I was procrastinating because I got frustrated with UVs. This'll definitely be useful.
there's one video i watched that goes over UV mapping by CG Cookie that I found really helpful. I also recommend Easeam and UV Squares or ZenUV if you're using blender. Easeam has a mark by flat surface so you can mark UVs around a selected portion of an objects surface.
@@iamdemidevi Thank you so much! Which would you recommend the most? ZenUV is a bit pricey, but I would be willing to go for it if it's better than the other 2 put together.
it has different uses. I caught it on sale so it wasn't too bad. Easeam id recommend over squares cuz you can achieve it in a more janky way (select quad, align its vertices horizontal and vertical till its a straight rectangle, select your other quads while its selected and then hit Follow Active Quads, and itll make all the other follow the same quad size. Easeam also has a better unwrap algorithm than base blender
If you manage to accurately recreate ps2 ambiance without clogging it with too many “modern” “filters” that will be extremely impressive. I’m really hyped and looking forward to this.
Hey, guys! I loved your video 😁 As a fan of Kingdom Hearts, I am rooting for the success of your game! That art style is truly amazing. I'm really curious on how, exactly, you rigged those characters. As an animation student, I have already rigged some humanoid characters, but specifically rigging low-poly models has been quite challenging to do, as the models "break" with the distortion the rig causes. Could you show your rigging method, please? Thanks in advance, and hope to see your game soon!
I use an addon called auto rig pro. It basically places bones based on points and then skins them based on a voxel heat preset. You still have to go back and do weight clean up especially with overlapping geometry but it's not too bad if the character doesn't have a lot of dangly bits like belts or skirts, hair etc. I think good topology is more important than weight painting, especially in the joints.
great video!! I'll be following your project for sure, you have a great future ahead of you. loved the char designs, loved the modeling... this made me want to start developing my stuff too haha keep it up!!
these character models are incredibly cute. I'd love a more full look at how you go about making them. most tutorials are either low poly or too high fidelity
Cool devlog! Really love the style and aesthetic! I also appreciate you sharing a lot of your techniques! For Playstation controller support... I believe you can use the RawInput plugin for Unreal Engine to get it working. I haven't bothered to try it myself, but I seem to recall that's what people recommend. Besides that, a more technical (and C++ heavy) method is implementing Steam's API into your game itself. How do you handle exporting the environment textures? Are you just baking the entire scene to a single texture? And out of curiosity, have you tried composing the environments in UE and baking it in-engine using static lighting? If so, how did it compare?
The work that has been displayed so far has been majorly groovy - I know I'd greatly appreciate seeing small screencaps & shorts of **any** production material in the community tab, especially if making proper devlogs ever becomes too daunting. Either way, don't torture yourselves, and keep up the great work!
that's a great idea! I have been looking at doing shorts with the team but with multiple people its a bit more of a task to figure out whose doing what
@@iamdemidevi Ahh, I can see how that'd be a bit of a chore, haha. Honestly, you could really cut out that middleman as long as your coworkers send you random progress updates unprompted, right? I can see it now - Nothing scarier than receiving a .blend file in the middle of the night with: a massive model clipping the bounds + unapplied scale & rotation + inverted normals + stretched textures + looping UVs + 200 unmerged vertices + rendering in cycles w/ too many light paths... The horror!
I think a jrpg isnt the worst genre to start for your first commercial game for me it's perfectly fine its actually nice to see a rpg devlog my own game uses ps1 graphics since I am more of a jack of all traits then a master of 1 but this is just impressive
finally, an indie game with ps2 era visuals
Yeah. PS2 had some of the greatest games. So great that AAA studios keep remaking them.
Why would you want too downgrade the graphics on purpose?
@@Otakubro6 it's not technically a downgrade, considering making a game by yourself is already hard af, making super realistic looking stuff is basically impossible unless you want to spend the rest of your life making your game, and since you'll have to settle for simpler graphics, it's much better to base them off the old stuff that still looks good and make your simpler graphics look more appealing. it's about having a clearer vision of what you want your game to look like, since you're trying to replicate a specific style.
you could very well just do what you can and think is enough for every piece of your game, but if you don't have a specific 'look' in mind for your game, it's probably gonna end up looking kinda ugly, for example, look at "asset flips" games, which are usually made with a lot of assets that have already been created and you can get in the unity store or wherever else, these games usually look really bad because even if they use high quality textures and models, they're all over the place, meanwhile you look at a game like ULTRAKILL, that replicates the PS1 era graphics perfectly, and it all looks amazing, even though it's obviously not "modern graphics" and it's technically a purposeful "downgrade"
@Otakubro6 are you /srs?
@@Otakubro6 stylistic choices
Dont even think about abandoning this project, this game has a huge future
Will this age like milk, or wine? Input your SNS votes now!
So is p6.
@@ultimaxkom8728 like milk man wtf are u ppl even serious. It’s all so soulless and built on a pre made model LULLLLLLLLLll
Ah, memories. I was working as a character modeler during the PS2 era and I remember creating assets with these kinds of polycount and texture size limitations. There were definitely other limits at that time which aren't really relevant anymore if you're just going for the look of the PS2 game assets(like low influence bone count per vert when skinning/weightpainting) .
I know you started from a base mesh for the character, but if you ever wanted to create something from scratch(like a creature or a human), you can use a modeling technique that we often used at the time called "cylindrical modeling". It's a variation of the box-modeling style but it allows you to really control and manage polybudgets. Because you can determine overall polycount by either using 8-sided, 6-sided, or even 5-sided cylinders(lowest you can go while still maintaining a "cylindrical" shape with gouraud shading before you get to box shapes). You shape out the body, arms, legs, tail, whatever, as separate cylinders before you start cutting into them and joining them together.
thanks for this! I used cylinders as my primitives for the bases over cubes most of the time, way easier than using unfilled vertexes or subdividing cubes
Any tutorials on this form of modeling?
Reminds me of Airport Inc., an airport management game from 2000. The graphics were 3d but the models were so low-poly the airplanes had triangular engines. I guess anything can be a barrel if you are desperate enough.
Then again the game looked ugly even back at the time so I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make tbh...
An indie JRPG game with PS2 styled graphics?
Pure greatness. 😭
i’m really really glad to see PS2 graphics getting more attention-even if the same hardware limitations that defined the PS1 aren’t present, the aesthetic is still amazing and deeply nostalgic and worth remembering
i am very very interested in this project and whatever team re:liminality will do in the future
I loved the bit about the fog hiding the fact there's no building in case anyone tripped, pretty funny
Def looking forward to future dev vlogs and eventually the game's release
HOLY SHIT.. ive been obsessed with ps2 games for super long and im an aspiring indie dev who also wants to make ps2 styled indie games and watching this video inspired me so much for my passion projects, its really hard to find other game devs who talk about making ps2 styled games so it was a huge relief finding this video. Im really excited to see the future of liminal cage and hope to play it once it releases!
glad you found it :)
Absolutely psyched for this one. Been keeping an eye on it for a while!
thanks!
It's looking a beautiful, the style of that era is my childhood!
Hey, loved the video and I instantly realized it was inspired by P3, but I also noticed that the running and walking animations are missing their ups and downs, Basically the start of the walking/running cycle is when the character have their knees unfolded, but as they walk near the middle of the cycle their knees fold and their body goes down with it, if you add that to animations you will noticed how much more alive they are, you can even customize it a little to convey personality, there are a bunch of videos explaining running cycles so I hope this helps.
I really appreciate the Serial Experiments Lain transitions. That's hella unique.
Thanks again for sharing your dev history! The character/monster design look great. Best of luck to you and your dev team I’m sure the final product will be amazing!
Much appreciated!
Definitely gonna follow this project from now on! This game looks absolutely amazing!
yo those models looking amazing
I love the old graphics, especially ps2 era, happy other people feel the same too
Loving the visuals, definitely spot on with ps2 like models and environments
I love when games r made with older visuals and modern mechanics. There's so many quality of life improvements that can make old games even more amazing.
Got this recommended from a friend and MAN am pumped for this game once it comes out! looking forward to the progress, take your time and don't rush!
I am actually so into this. I love the ps2 Persona games and their aesthetics, so this is like a dream come true!
so cool! i want to make my own jrpg as well, but always told myself i wasnt ready or didnt have the skills yet (i dont have the programming side, just art). and you always hear that advice of "make your first game simple," so i was intending to work on a different idea for my first. but i just cant get my original jrpg game out of my head! it lives in my head rent free because i really love it.
i still "work" on it, but dont have a demo or anything really, because ive told myself im not ready yet. but here you are, going full steam ahead on your idea! granted, you have more dev skills than i do, but its showing me i straight up have no more excuses getting started lmao.
hey I was just thinking about this channel the other day, glad you're uploading again! ^^
thanks!
Yo, this looks cool! I'm definitely interested in seeing where this project goes.
Dude, loving your OST!!
thank ye!
I been seeing this project through Phil's twt and honestly I love this!!
I'll start following this project!!
I just watched the video and OMG this looks pretty awesomeee! I know that the inspiration is from persona but it just really reminds me of one of my favourite games on the psp Fate/Extra, even the games logo kinda looks like the Fate/ExtraCCC game logo! I am very hyped to see where this project goes, you guys are cooking good!
that was another reference game for me! I love the OST and presentation, incredibly underrated
Amazing project! I'll certainly keep an eye open to this, it's something really specific I've been wanting for a while.
thanks so much! i listen to your tunes all the time
@@iamdemidevi that's a big honor! Good luck with development (and if you need anything, let me know).
@@_mosq hit me up on twitter or discord. lets make this happen
Greetings!
RUclips suggest your video and I glad that it do!
I'm a beginner GameDev and my goal it's do game with visual/graphics of PlayStation 2 era...
There is a lot tutorials to make a "Low Poly" PlayStation 1 or even N64 stuff, but not so much about the "Not so Low and not so High Poly" of PlayStation. YOU SAVED ME!
Now I know what I need to do with my models to look like something will put on DVD
let's all love lain!
This was so interesting and cool! Thanks for sharing how you achieved such visuals. I'm definitely staying tune to see how the project turns out 😊
The Lain transitions got you a sub! I loved that show!
I like seeing technical devlogs that show how it's done like this, while also talking about the game itself. It looks like it's going to be sick and a more sinister take on some of the Persona series ideas, I'll be keeping up to see the progress
we're definitely going for more of a horror angle than Persona. A lot of the similarities between LC and Persona are almost exclusively in the visual style. thanks for watching!
the fact your wearing every hat required, fairly well, is really commendable - good job!
slowly giving hats away but i try my best!
Holy moly all this could be avoided with therapy lol the best descripting I've heard of SH2
happy to see somebody i've been following on twitter on my recommended :o
thanks for the peek at your process. it's reassuring that someone making things of this caliber is also still tinkering the same way i do :)
fantastic work here, and elsewhere! ( i LOVE your tunes in They Speak)
thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This video was amazing. Very interesting devlog and funny at the same time. Good luck with your project, even though you don't need it!!!
I just came across your channel over on twitter by chance and I'm so glad I did, I absolutely love videos like this, watching you work through the process of making a rpg gets me so inspired to start making a game of my own at some point. Keep up the great work I just hope the next devlog is quicker than 6 months because I am invested :D
Thank you, we'll get it out as fast as we can!
Very Cool Project, keep up the good work 👍
looks amazing cant wait for more the ps2 look is so nice to see im so glad peeps are bringing it back :)
This looks very promising and I can’t wait to see what else you have in store for this game!!! I’m going to be keeping up with your project lol
this looks sick
Excited for this game it looks like it will be the type of game I’d love good luck and enjoy the development excited to watch your game grow ! 🎉
This looks so cool!!!!!!! Good luck with your game making^^
The Spiderverse intro is just amazing.
Oh hell yeah. Earlier this year, I wanted to do exactly this and make a game in Unreal with PS2 graphics, but I couldn't find any good resources on how to do it, and quickly gave up. I didn't really know what to look for outside of that one video on RUclips of that guy talking about his horror game project, and it was rough. Especially because I felt like an idiot asking anyone for help. This is a really nice place to start, if I ever want to pick that project up again.
seeing the behinds the scenes creation of this project is pretty interesting.
Visuals look great but i may be a bit bias lol. Also the sense of humor in vlog was fantastic as well so keep it up. I'll be keeping an eye on this
This is Amazing! Great job working on your dream.
Great video, thanks for sharing.
Keep pushing! Keep showing us your learning :D
Especially great to hear how you built this team, that's the hardest part sometimes.
Good luck with your endeavor
This is soo good omg, we will be seated
👏👏👏Congratulations!🎉🎉🎉
i love the enemy designs so much
noemata my beloved
Love it! happy to see this project is still going strong! Love the visuals already. It is super refreshing to see an indie with ps2-esque visuals!
Very inspiring for a fellow game dev! great job so far :D
I'm so excited for this project, keep at ti !
Here for this bro this looks sick
"you shouldn't make a jrpg as your first game but someone's gotta do it"
I feel that brother... I decided to make mine nonlinear too. Almost a decade in the making... Almost done. Best of luck to your project as well!
really cool video, love the intro lol
The Noemata look so incredibly cool!
Such an underrated channel, you have the humour and presentation down to a T
omg I just watched your ps1 computer tower tutorial the other day! thanks for the kind words :)
This was a lucky find for me. I happened to be working on my first ps2-inspired model for an Air Gear character, but I was procrastinating because I got frustrated with UVs. This'll definitely be useful.
there's one video i watched that goes over UV mapping by CG Cookie that I found really helpful. I also recommend Easeam and UV Squares or ZenUV if you're using blender. Easeam has a mark by flat surface so you can mark UVs around a selected portion of an objects surface.
@@iamdemidevi Thank you so much! Which would you recommend the most? ZenUV is a bit pricey, but I would be willing to go for it if it's better than the other 2 put together.
it has different uses. I caught it on sale so it wasn't too bad. Easeam id recommend over squares cuz you can achieve it in a more janky way (select quad, align its vertices horizontal and vertical till its a straight rectangle, select your other quads while its selected and then hit Follow Active Quads, and itll make all the other follow the same quad size. Easeam also has a better unwrap algorithm than base blender
You had me at "alright, guys"
7:28 digital devil saga spotted
If you manage to accurately recreate ps2 ambiance without clogging it with too many “modern” “filters” that will be extremely impressive. I’m really hyped and looking forward to this.
Let me introduce our new artist philozoid. *Solid Snake starts speaking.*
I'd like to see more PS2 era style tutorials in your dev logs
Lovely video, I wish you success!!
Fantastic work buddy!
yooo, so excited to play this even tho i dont got a pc
I'm hoping you guys cast soon because i'd love to try applying for a role.
Hey, guys! I loved your video 😁
As a fan of Kingdom Hearts, I am rooting for the success of your game! That art style is truly amazing.
I'm really curious on how, exactly, you rigged those characters. As an animation student, I have already rigged some humanoid characters, but specifically rigging low-poly models has been quite challenging to do, as the models "break" with the distortion the rig causes. Could you show your rigging method, please?
Thanks in advance, and hope to see your game soon!
I use an addon called auto rig pro. It basically places bones based on points and then skins them based on a voxel heat preset. You still have to go back and do weight clean up especially with overlapping geometry but it's not too bad if the character doesn't have a lot of dangly bits like belts or skirts, hair etc. I think good topology is more important than weight painting, especially in the joints.
@@iamdemidevi Thanks a lot for the reply! I'll give auto rig pro a try once I have the chance, and pay more attention to the topology :)
great video!! I'll be following your project for sure, you have a great future ahead of you. loved the char designs, loved the modeling... this made me want to start developing my stuff too haha
keep it up!!
gonna watch this in a couple years when i start making my own PS2-type game
This looks like a fun project!
This was great. Would you consider making a video on how you went about learning 3D Modelling and the tools you used?
This is so amazing!!
these character models are incredibly cute. I'd love a more full look at how you go about making them. most tutorials are either low poly or too high fidelity
GO TEAM
Immediate like for the Lain reference
Cool devlog! Really love the style and aesthetic! I also appreciate you sharing a lot of your techniques!
For Playstation controller support... I believe you can use the RawInput plugin for Unreal Engine to get it working. I haven't bothered to try it myself, but I seem to recall that's what people recommend. Besides that, a more technical (and C++ heavy) method is implementing Steam's API into your game itself.
How do you handle exporting the environment textures? Are you just baking the entire scene to a single texture? And out of curiosity, have you tried composing the environments in UE and baking it in-engine using static lighting? If so, how did it compare?
the lighting is vertex color, I do it by hand and then set up a shader with multiply blending
The work that has been displayed so far has been majorly groovy - I know I'd greatly appreciate seeing small screencaps & shorts of **any** production material in the community tab, especially if making proper devlogs ever becomes too daunting. Either way, don't torture yourselves, and keep up the great work!
that's a great idea! I have been looking at doing shorts with the team but with multiple people its a bit more of a task to figure out whose doing what
@@iamdemidevi Ahh, I can see how that'd be a bit of a chore, haha. Honestly, you could really cut out that middleman as long as your coworkers send you random progress updates unprompted, right?
I can see it now - Nothing scarier than receiving a .blend file in the middle of the night with: a massive model clipping the bounds + unapplied scale & rotation + inverted normals + stretched textures + looping UVs + 200 unmerged vertices + rendering in cycles w/ too many light paths... The horror!
luckily i know all the cleanup techniques hehe
BLOOD CRISIS MENTIONED 🗣️
And they speak from the abyss too, holy shit
I’m doing the same mindset as you, but instead of ps2, it’s Gamecube style graphics
Yep, I'm completely interested in this game. Lemme just search everything I can about it...
Pixel Era, Ps1 era and now the Ps2 era has finally come upon us
Looks cool bro hope things workout for you
my name is myka and i nearly had a heart attack when 9:46 came up😭
She's based on you clearly.
This is amazing, thank you so much for sharing.
Lmao, that controller hack is incredible.
I think a jrpg isnt the worst genre to start for your first commercial game for me it's perfectly fine its actually nice to see a rpg devlog my own game uses ps1 graphics since I am more of a jack of all traits then a master of 1 but this is just impressive
This is literally the coolest shit ever
what?????? beautiful??? I love it????????????????????
i'm ngl using steam input to work in UE is banger of an idea
devlogs like these make me want to switch to 3d lol
Beautiful work, keep it up
Lapina is just too cute >_
Id love to look at a timelapse of your blender workflow!
Im Gana sub for this man
His a Genius