Welcome back for another devlog about Nosun! It’s my own professional project that I’ve been working on for almost 3 years now, day and night.

"In a world similar to ours, massive creatures emerge from giant pit caves across all the continents, laying waste to cities. Nosun, a young unemployed man, finds himself embarked into the first exploration mission tasked with discovering what is happening underground." The game will be a story driven adventure.

Pre-rendered graphics are used for stylistic reasons, similar technique in Final Fantasy 9 and Disco Elyseum. This involves transforming 3D graphics into 2D images. Depending on the scene, I may incorporate some isometric 3D elements. I use both clip studio paint and blender for painting, the game engine is Defold.

I’m currently working on the starting city. The architecture is directly inspired by my country, Belgium. The buildings in my city, like many other places here, are a mix of traditional and modern features. What I like is that laissez-faire where everything is so mixed up that it makes them very unique 👇

I work with Google Map to streamline my reference gathering process. Sparing the need for travel. I draw and paint the texture of each building in Clip Studio Paint. Despite the diverse designs, those architectures often share a common structural foundation, with variations in details contributing to their distinct appearances (picture below).

Process

In Blender, I create the blockout of the level. Shadows are painted in Clip Studio. I add a sun light source to enhance the depth. To transform my 2D drawings into 3D, I directly apply my textures onto each cube.

I use the knife to cut out rectangles for doors and windows, pushing them back also for more depth. As it will be rendered as an image, the alignment of the meshes is not important as long as it looks like a street. While the camera is orthographic for the characters, it is on perspective for the level design.

That’s pretty much everything for now. Thank you for reading!

I don’t have a job as I’m fully focusing on this project. Despite getting very little sleep, Nosun is still in the early development. I am currently working on the demo and planning to release it through a kickstarter campaign, hopefully next year 2024.