After getting the alien’s overall look the way I wanted, I had a few more things to tweak and try out. The main thing I wanted to play with was the eyes. So, I came up with a look that seemed even angrier and more alien-like.
A few screenshots in-game seem to confirm it for me – I like this!
It also occurred to me that I should make the eyes/brain color something that you can change. So, that’ll be a coming feature. So many options I could come up with! Regardless, the alien model seems finished. Time to move on.
After playing the game some the other night, I decided to fire up Alien Arena: Warriors of Mars and play some against bots. The first thing I felt about that game was that the feel and movement are really different, and clunkier than Saucermen. It’s notable that in Alien Arena, the eye position is lower to the ground, and everything feels bigger. Saucermen seems to have the scale better. Movement is no contest. The old Quake based movement feels awkward, unpredictable, and slow. I think that the fluidity of the movement will be a huge attraction for the current AA fanbase.
This also showed me that Saucermen and the engine have a good way to go before it is on the level of AA. Not having played AA in quite some time, I was actually surprised at the attention to detail we had. The various weapon effects and animations, sounds, and engine shader effects is amazingly robust. There is a good bit of work to be done there.
My other concern is that the weapon array is not going to be enough to satisfy the AA community, or most AFPS players. I’ve already stated I will add a melee weapon, but I think an additional weapon is warranted. What that’ll be, I don’t know, but most likely a rapid-fire type hit scan weapon.
I’m starting to also think harder about the other player models…they will be (as I’ve probably mentioned years ago) grotesque and follow along the stylism that I started with this project.