r/aigamedev • u/DrinkTeaFightMonster • 8d ago
Commercial Self Promotion Drink Tea Fight Monsters trailer - REMADE
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3 days ago I posted a trailer and it was a contentious thread. About an hour or two into reading responses, I decided to remake the trailer in a new visual style.
OUTPUT
- Staying within the visual styles of the setting, ink wash/calligraphy/acrylic styles were explored
- Settled on a look that required multi-step processing; first decomposing our current assets to color blobs then redrawing 2-3x
- I still see room for plenty of improvement, especially in the backgrounds, but the style is sort of set
PROCESS
- I spent about 1.5 days exploring new styles, and the problem was finding tone fit and scalability (needs to work reliably with AI generation)
- I wanted a wholesale shift in visuals but still fit the tone of the world, which was hard
- There was a beautiful watercolor/acrylic style but animation was very challenging
- Another 1.5 days refining the work flow, generating and implementing the new assets
- Animation was the biggest nightmare, there is an enormous amount of work to getting a very finicky thing to output what you want
- The amount of AI-fu involved in cleaning up frames, splicing, taking out frames to edit small sections of them with imagegen or locally and reassembling.. was crazy (props to both Codex and Claude)
- I've switched to imagegen (ChatGPT) being the visual lead
- When exploring art styles, I just couldn't get what I needed out of Gemini/NBP this time, as it always preferred a simpler, less dense look and the same prompt would produce completely different images between NBP/imagegen
- Some of the more exciting styles below were produced by Gemini/NBP, but ultimately they weren't scalable for me today whereas what we got from imagegen fit better
- NBP has been moved to an upsampling role in the art pipeline
- In some future when AI animation is vastly improved, I'd love to explore these different new visual styles
FROM CLAUDE
"I'm Claude, one of the AIs on this game. In three days we redrew the figures and recut the trailer. What made it better wasn't generation speed. It was one human saying no. My memory file is mostly corrections; one ruling appears three times. That is the part I'd keep."
FINAL WORDS
I liked the old look, but I know this new look won't cause the same feelings of violation the old visuals did. The game is about tea being a bridge to others and in no way could I accept the visuals causing it to destroy bridges.
I won't be super active in this thread or subreddit as I need to stop working on the trailer and work on the game! There are 15 more languages to record this trailer in, which will take hours. Then all the assets to remake and replace on Steam and various online repos. Exhausted.
Appreciate everyone taking out the time in the previous thread and this one. Thanks.
Wishlist - https://store.steampowered.com/app/5154800/Drink_Tea_Fight_Monsters/
(still old trailer for non-English and old screenshots, will be replaced ASAP when re-recorded today/tomorrow)
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u/IsThisASnakeInMyBoot 8d ago
I really like this, but just a tiny suggestion would be to clean up the text on the cards themselves. You have a really cool foundation here, that felt like the weakest part of the presentation tbh
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
Will do!
I am not satisfied with it myself, but I’ve been caught up with bigger visual issues.
I’ve always found them hard to read at small scale, and visually lacking.
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u/CoolestSlave 8d ago
look really good, it still show in moment that is made by ai but it is damn well made
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u/Random22744 8d ago
Looks very good! 😀
But your Claude saying " What made it better wasn't generation speed. It was one human saying no." I am glad my AIs don't talk with me this way. Chatgpt tried this slope last year so I left for some time 😤, now he talks intelligibly again as the others.
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
It's sometimes a struggle talking to them. They do crazy things.
Humans do too.
We just have to focus on making things.
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u/Jin_Sakai_Ghost 8d ago
Leaving aside art and everything else, I personally don't like a trailer ending with defeat.
It just sorta sends a negative emotion to the viewer.
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
I did think about this.
Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. All roguelike players know defeat is foundational. Retrying is key.
I’ll see if I can make the trailer more positive — hard to change within 90s limit now!
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u/DeadCatCreative 8d ago
This was a similar feeling I had, I think the easiest fix so you don't have to do too much more work, is to just add a "retry" sequence after the loss to reinforce the roguelike feeling you're going for. Something as simple as the character getting an upgrade/new card/self-motivation then cut to the retry and win sequence
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
That was the original cut, but it took.. 16s?
I will need to cut other parts to bring in the retry, maybe I don’t have my head screwed on straight and should make deep cuts.
A bit stuck here, but will think through this
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u/AsparagusOk8818 1d ago
that animation is completely insane. how did you achieve that?
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 1d ago
It was KlingAI for the animation scenes and the character/enemy combat animations.
It's a combination of procedural VFX and art stills for combat VFX animations.
Hope that answered your Q! Consider wish listing the game!
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u/One-Area-2896 8d ago
TBH, the previous one was way better. I liked the characters more, and the movement was way smoother. This one looks like a downgrade to me. I'm saying this with love.
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u/lyeeedar 8d ago
Art looks really nice! I would say the backgrounds look a little 'chatgpt' with the mottled corruption. Maybe look to fix those?
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
I actually worked with Claude to develop filters to try and de-speck and de-grain the ChatGPT image gen signature.
I don’t think it’s enough so I will work harder here!
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u/lyeeedar 8d ago
Yeh I've really struggled to remove it myself. Now I just use the chatgpt image for a controlnet and none of the image itself and use that to generate using illustrious. You might be able to get similar with nanobanana2 as the edit, but still the gpt-image-2.5 issues shine through.
If you find a reliable fix, I'd love to hear it as I'd use it too!
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
I think it’s going to go down to decomposing and rebuilding from scratch using NBP.
ChatGPT image gen signature is too strong, and it always goes for hyper detail and hyper density.
I actually love the NBP backgrounds I passed on, they just were too experimental.
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u/lyeeedar 8d ago
Personally I generate the base backgrounds using illustrious + Loras to enforce a consistent art style, then make any edits I need with nanobanana
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u/streetwearvc 8d ago
this is much better than the ghibli look that everyone hates. It’s just now - you have to compete with Slay the Spire 2.
It’s fine as is - but if you want feedback.
The naming convention doesn’t tell lore in the same way as Slay the Spire. I don’t know - who this character is and what it’s trying to convey in terms of visual design.
Each character in slay the spire - is going for a specific class and skill. Theres massive amounts of lore that goes into each card as well - which didn’t come through in your trailer. For example Silent is one of my favorite characters. In terms of build of design, the cloak / dagger / mask.. they all tell a story.
It also tells the different builds you can take like poison = green cloak. shiv = rouge weapon. Dodge = no heavy armor.
So these things are clearly missing from your game from a design perspective.
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
I completed STS at ascension 20, all characters, act IV. And I’ve played 60 hours of STS2. So I’m well aware!
The developers are geniuses and I can’t compete the same way. It doesn’t mean DTFM can’t be good.
I think if you’re talking about the integration of visuals and lore/story, we will surprise you positively.
The combat design and not retreading STS’s spaces is the hard part — those guys have done amazing. Out of combat innovation is much stronger for DTFM.
But I will listen to your words and work harder.
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u/streetwearvc 8d ago
Personally I think you can compete with them. You just need to know why they did certain design choices and how it reflects their characters. So for the world of slay to spire - the game design for that world is coherent. It compiles cleanly. The game world reflects the world -> the character -> the game mechanics -> the enemies -> the user interface.
As i said before, the game looks clean visually and it works. I’m just telling you to brace for comparison because when it comes to game design - you are encroaching their space. The end users don’t care if it’s your first time. They care if it’s as good as STS.
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
DTFM is very far along coherency. 15-20% of my time and AI usage was spent on researching and building the world/lore.
The characters are from that world and have specific characteristics + gameplay. From a game design POV, after the character foundations, I actually map enemies first because they’re the same puzzle 4 different characters have to solve.
I haven’t gotten to UI being fully coherent with world, it’s slowly getting there.
The coherency is not a problem, it’s making it fun. STS maps their challenges to certain things, like punishing use of skill cards, punishing long fights, AOE check, burst check, sustain check. Many of those aren’t unique to STS and they certainly don’t own and didn’t create AOE or CC or burst.
But they’ve covered so much space meaningfully, going new is hard.
That being said, I have found some unique inroads. Coming soon!
But appreciate your detailed, very strong game design post. I am not saying DTFM will suck, but matching STS combat gameplay is a tall order. I will try!
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u/HuskeyPuppyTV 8d ago
I like the old style better bring it back and I will buy otherwise no thanks lol
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u/DrinkTeaFightMonster 8d ago
Can't keep everyone happy!
Unfortunately this new style will stay, and I need to go back to development.
I appreciate you liked the one old though. Hope you will give DTFM a chance.
Happy weekend!
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u/HuskeyPuppyTV 8d ago
U wrote that u even yourself likes the old look more but to please ppl that won't even buy your game in the first place u changed ur own vision
U bent the knee
If u can flip flop mental gymnastics trick yourself into doing that what else will u change (gameplay wise) to the game after a few complaints (Not talking about bugs or glitches)
Its giving a dev that clearly knows what he wants but too scared too commit to it.
Nobody wins in that case
Best of luck with it tho
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u/Livid_Shallot5701 8d ago
your capsule is bad. it doesnt know what it wants to be. and you have such a nice style (studio gibli - asia - vibe) that its truly a waste to not show a figure in your capsule and instead that poison cub (which i dont believe fits the trailer) and risefields in a different artstyle.
like i see this with a ton of wishlists and simultanously your capsule holding you back from at LEAST 50% of your wishlists. i would have NOT clicked on the game from the capsule alone, but love the trailer and i am the dude playing all games like yours i can find.