The Journey to the New SMG Model

Hey guys, Austin here again; this time with a deep dive into how the weapons of Compound Fracture are designed/chosen and how/why we ended up completely changing the SMG.

PART_1: THE SHOTGUN

It all started with the SPAS-12 shotgun model, created in May 2020.

This shotgun model is so old, it essentially predates Compound Fracture. It was made for a PS1 style FPS of some kind, but it wasn't until a month later that it was decided that the FPS should be about dinosaurs.

The model looked fine for the time, but as we developed our render pipeline and our rules for how materials should behave it was becoming apparent that it would need an overhaul. Originally, all weapon models and dynamic objects received shading from lights (as is the norm in video games). However, we eventually decided that to look more like a PS1 game, they should be evenly lit and have all lighting hand-painted in.

Unfortunately, some of the color variation was lost as it looked really bad once you added all the lighting. I had to make it monochromatic but at least it had shading now. Who knows, maybe some of that color will return someday.

For some context, the shotgun was made by hand painting details in Photoshop with the help of Layer Styles for things like small bevels and the help of things like ambient occlusion maps exported out of Substance Painter (which are then used to assist in the painting of further details in Photoshop). It was a bit of a pain, but it worked; especially on simpler models like a SPAS-12.

PART_2: THE SMG

The SMG was based on the LF-57 and created sometime in late February of 2021. It was chosen because the real thing is quite blocky in nature, which made it feel like a good fit for the PS1 art style. Also, it's not used in any other game (the presence of the SPAS-12 in other games has been a bit of a... problem).

The SMG was made basically the same way as the shotgun. The main difference being that the UV maps were still done by hand, but this time manually placed to fit on the pixel grid. Wings3D has no pixel snapping, which meant manually placing the UV islands juuust right inside the pixel boundaries. This was an absolute nightmare. It did however mean that on the final model, pixels were far less likely to be cut off at the edges cause everything would be aligned properly.

So you might be looking at this going "Well Austin, it looks great! Why throw it out?" We'll get to that later because at this point, we had no real issues with it. The animations were in need of a big overhaul (I lost my original animations and had to remake them using GIFs I had taken as reference, but they never came close), but the gun itself was fine.

PART_3: THE PISTOL

The pistol is based off the P99 and was made in May 2021. As the player's service pistol, this gun and color scheme were chosen as it provides a nice blend of that very faint "futuristic" feel without being too flashy. The presence of the cocking indicator (the red dot) in addition to the metallic slide also would give it a unique look in first person, compared to similar games.

The model was made pretty much the same way as the SMG, except this time I did a better job of actually keeping things within the pixel grid. It was becoming very apparent however, that this was not a sustainable way to make weapons. Certainly possible, but not quite as streamlined as I would like. Heck, the pistol texture isn't even technically finished because of this. It looks fine at the moment though, so it isn't high on the priority list.

Upon finishing the pistol and looking at the SMG in the context of it, the shotgun and the updated PDA, it was very clear that it was far behind in quality for us.

PART_4: THE PROBLEM

The problem with the SMG is that it just does not look very exciting or interesting in first person. There's nothing that can move on it while firing, no details to look at from this perspective, nothing. It looks great from the side! But that isn't what you actually see in-game. Combine that with the fact that nobody knows this gun actually exists and is really just that blocky, it just looks like a very poorly made "artist gun". In addition, it looks very old and we really want the game to have a tiny bit of that futuristic flair (as reflected in the change in the promo art). It also doesn't help that the animations and sound effects were all quite subpar and would need to be redone anyways.

Our dislike of the old SMG also stems from a shift in how we approach PS1 style graphics in Compound Fracture now compared to when we started. Originally the goal for the game was to make it feel like an existing PS1 game. The more time went on the more we wanted to make it feel like a new PS1 game, as if the PS2 was never invented and people just continued to push the PS1 into the 2000s. 

The desire to choose a weapon that is already blocky looking seems crazy to us now. If you wanted to push the PS1, why would you ever choose something that already looks like a PS1 weapon? With this realization among the team and a discussion on what should replace it, I set out one weekend to model, texture and animate the successor to our SMG.

PART_5: THE SOLUTION

Say hello to the PP-Bizon, featuring a translucent magazine, a mounted holographic sight (for decoration), and a foldable stock. It solves basically every issue we had with the old SMG and also allows for more interesting animations due to the presence of a unique magazine and a foldable stock. Not only does it have that futuristic flair and interesting first person details, it truly feels like it is pushing the limits of the hardware. 

The gun uses the same exact texture size and fewer polygons than the shotgun, keeping it inline with the technical limitations we've been setting for ourselves. This is also the start of a completely new way of making weapons for the game. This time around, I cut up the UV islands by hand, but with the help of a Blender plugin and the built-in pixel snapping feature of Blender, automatically sort and pack the UV map to use as much space as possible while sticking perfectly to the pixel grid. This means that weapons can use as much texture space as possible, be perfectly aligned, and save me many hours of difficult work. In addition, I have mostly abandoned painting every little detail by hand in favor of what I am far more comfortable with: photo sourcing. The texture now makes use of sampled pieces of images of the real thing to give it a level of detail that would take me ages to do by hand.

Of course, not every detail (like this translucent magazine) can be photo sourced, so I still hand-paint in details where necessary. In a perfect world, everything would be hand-painted by an extremely talented pixel artist. However for my skillset and the time we want this game to be made in, that is simply unrealistic. I will likely do a pass over the older weapons to add in a tiny bit more detail with photo sourcing, as they now look a bit on the plain side by comparison (no more replacing weapons though!!)

As you can see, there's just a lot more going on visually in the first person perspective. That combined with the (still work in progress) animations make the weapon really stand on its own now. The texture still isn't completely finished but like with everything, there's always time for polish down the road.

I hope that you have enjoyed this history of the weapon models in Compound Fracture. 

I also hope that you enjoy the new SMG model as you will only get the old one back over my cold dead body lol. In all seriousness I know there will be people that will always have a soft spot for the original but at the end of the day we have to do what we think is right and what we think is best for the game, even if it means completely redoing parts of it.

Until next time!