I spent some time using chatgpt to summarize all the previous devlog posts in order to make a document to share with the artists, to give them an idea of what the project was about. I even used some of the screenshots as inputs to get an idea of how this would look with a unified art direction. Not bad?
I added more 3D elements to the scene, including a sailing ship and some simplified birds in the distance (very placeholderish). I also changed the Torii gate to be a 3D model instead of a sprite, so that it blended better in the environment.
In the process Gemini taught me the different parts of a Torii gate: the top beam is called the Kasagi, and the beam below is called the Nuki. I provided a reference to get add a vertical beam in the middle, which I found was called the gakuzuka. Interesting.
Since the bridge was conflicting with the elements in the lake, I decided to go ahead and change it for a 3D model as well- That didn’t go so well… I was able to get a simple bridge at fist, no problem, but when I tried to replicate the architecture of the reference bridge over lake Hamana, it was a long back and forth with incomplete results.
I even provided several samples of how it should look, manually crafted, but it wasn’t enough. In the end I tried to fix it myself but I couldn’t. So that rolls out for the next day of dev.
Slashie's Gamedev Adventures 