Design Archives - Page 22 of 63

Unity is the indie game engine of choice due to its relative ease of use and ability to output to multiple platforms. Some people complain that Unity games “look the same” but that isn’t true, and very avoidable, if you play with shaders.

First, what’s a shader? A shader is an algorithm that tells computers what something looks like. For example, you can have a dull red apple that looks red in a default shader but in a modified shader that red apple becomes a highly reflective purple apple.

Thankfully, the great people at Unity Gems have a Noobs Guide to Shaders! It covers the basics and goes into how you can use it in your Unity-made games. If you’re new to code you may get a bit of a shock, but you’ll do fine – I think.

You should read this article if:
You are new to shader programming in general
You want to build shaders to do cool things in your game but you can’t find one that fits your needs
Strumpy Shader Editor isn’t helping because you don’t get the basic principles
You want to manipulate textures inside your shader

Unity Gems mentions the excellent Strumpy Shader, which is really good. It’s an open source shader editor that is quite powerful, part of me wonders why it’s not just included into Unity. If you know the very basics of shaders than you may want to check out this introduction to Strumpy Shader:

Familiar with shaders?

If you are familiar with shaders but not how they function in Unity, check out Unity’s page of surface shaders.

Of course you can always create and play around with your own.

Lastly, if you have Unity Pro check out to create a dream-like world. This last tutorial makes use of camera effects – and camera effects will have to be a whole other post.

In 2006 when the last generation of consoles were released it was quickly discovered that all the games wanted to be puke-coloured, err, I mean brownish. This is inline with the gritty mood of the mid ’00s.

What will the dominant colour be of the next consoles (PS4, Xbox One, Wii U)? I think that we’re going to see brighter, more optimistic, colours after a decade of grit and ‘realism’. However, to try and get the actual answer we can explore the world of colour trend forecasting.

Colour trend forecasting

Colour trend forecasting is the study of colour and predicting what will be the next influential colours in the world of fashion, interior deign, and industrial design. This will come across as nothing new to dedicated followers of fashion, but is worth exploring because game designers can benefit from this field of research.

There are multiple companies and organizations focused on colour forecasting like the Color marketing Group, Para paints, and the International Colour Authority. All of whom are looking at this issue from an economics point of view for various reasons (sell data, know which dye to buy, what threads, etc.). Yes, there’s essentially a whole industry on just predicting popular colours of the coming years.

The Committee for Colour & Trends (CCT) focus on a few aspects of just the fashion world:

CCT is a leading fashion forecasting service for the footwear and accessories industries. For 20+ years we have been the go-to source for footwear, handbag, jewelry, and accessories trend tracking. Our Committee includes industry veterans around the globe and experts in each classification, creating focused and comprehensive reports that help our subscribers get inspired and maximize sales.

Pantone has a team of influencers from the world of fashion and interior design to predict the future of colour. Pantone claims that the colour of 2013 is non other than emerald green:

Their colour trend forecasting encompasses not only design choices but material choices too:

Color is the catalyst that can spark the sale, define the space and create the magic and the mood. When designing any product, knowing what colors to use is critical to your success. PANTONE offers a variety of trend forecasts for every design market giving you inspiration to make the right color choices seasons ahead of their time. Our detailed comprehensive forecast products offer seasonal inspiration for women’, men’s, active, cosmetics, interiors and industrial design.

You can see their forecast for spring 2014 here, they are predicting bright colours (but not as bright as 2013).

Bring it to digital

There is no reason to limit their analysis to just those fields – we should also apply this knowledge to making video games. Really, I can’t think of a reason not to.

Web designers have an assortment of easy to use colour scheme designers that are free online. They have already figured out what colours work best to convey what kind of basic emotion:

Clearly, colour trends don’t happen in a vacuum, just look at iOS 7, it made heavy use of bright colours to make things pop and to provide a feeling of newness/freshness – something that was not ignored by CCT.

You can use this knowledge in your games!

There are many ways to bring the knowledge of colour trends into video games. Keep in mind that you should never forget who you are targeting and what you’re trying to say with the game. If you take a game like Limbo and try to make it match Pantone’s colour of 2013 then you’ll have a very different game at the end of the day.

Here’s some basic ways to enhance your game using colour trends:

Menu screens can follow trends
Casual games like Candy Crush follow colour trends
GUIs can be adjusted
The overall atmosphere of the game is impacted by colour
Think of the brown image above compared to Katamari
App icons can grab people’s attention using colour

What does the future hold?

Beyond the companies and links above, there are more ways to get on board the colour train!

If you want to get a head start on next year’s fashion you can find out the colours for spring 2014 (and some fashion trends) right now.

You can also check out the related links below for more on fashion or colour.

Game thinking from Adam Clare

Category: DesignPage 22 of 63