Monthly Archives: July 2017

DevBlog 66 / Jetpacks, picnics gone wrong and tribals!

Hi there!

This week we continued working on the current chapter’s end boss, nearly all of its move-sets are complete, while the AI polish and behavior are currently in the works. This boss has a lot of extra moving parts and we experienced some problems managing several of its animations simultaneously, but we’ve solved this in the end.

A fully functional jetpack!

We also finished populating the environment of this chapter while also adding the logic to support it, now it’s time for testing and to finish balancing! Here are some combat encounter screenshots:

Two’s a company…

…three’s a crowd!

Unity 2017 released an awesome new tool for cinematics, so we’ll have to port our existing ones and create the future ones with it for a more cinematic and professional feeling.

Regarding the next chapter, players will mostly be facing a new threat, the masked youths that dwell in the depths of the Rift! Their visual concept was inspired by a Portuguese tradition, the “caretos”, as well as Princess Mononoke’s battle costume. Their motives for attacking the girl on sight will have to remain a mystery, for now…

Orphan kid.

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DevBlog 65 / Steam Valve

Hi everyone!

This week we’ve discussed some new ideas and concepts for the next chapter of the game. It will take place in the bottom of the canyon, bordering the windmills zone which you might be familiar with.
We already have some concepts of the new characters and a lot of references, so the ideas are getting close to a conclusion.
For the previous chapters, André had already made some blocking, level design and testing. This final zone is currently drafted on paper, so the next devblogs may be focused on its level design and the details we would like to add.

The boss of the previous chapter is nearly done and currently being worked on by our animator. Here’s a small WIP preview of his weapon in action:

Steam weapon shooting animation WIP.

This zone has a steam theme, which is noticeable due to the mechanisms that are clearly inspired by it. The player will be searching for valves to activate and new paths to unlock. Although the steam particles are an early work-in-progress, they have already been implemented to set the mood for this theme.

Interacting with the valve.

Examining the valve.

For the next week part of team will be working on the new characters and level design of the next chapter of the game. Stay tuned if you are into level building!

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DevBlog 64 / A glimpse of the water workflow

Hi there!

This week the team was grinding intensively, as we’re slowly but steadily approaching the completion of Chapter 2.

Since our animator has been with us in the office these past days, we spent plenty of time developing, polishing and implementing animations. In particular, the Elk has received quite a lot of attention, and it is feeling more alive than ever.

The artists are busy tackling the arena where the Girl will battle this Chapter’s Boss, as well as painting the texture maps for that character.
As promised before, we’re sharing our current workflow to produce the bodies of water we’ve been featuring lately in this blog.

It’s quite simple, as you can see in the following breakdown:

Small lake mesh workflow.

Shout-out to Paulo from our tech team for coming up with it in the first place. As mentioned in point f), both the ripple effect and the water surface require materials with shader work developed using Amplify Shader Editor. Here are the nodes needed for the water surface (we’ll show the ones for the ripples on a later date, since we’re still perfecting the effect!):

Water surface shader in ASE.

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DevBlog 63 / The water wheel is in motion!

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Hi everyone!

This week while the art team was working hard adding props and populating the battlefield zone, some logic/code was improved, like the responsiveness of the dodge after an attack animation and also the time after a big hit attack from an enemy. After these tweaks, the Girl won’t take so much time getting up to resume the fight, making it possible to avoid possible follow-up attacks. We are also adapting the prototype logic to the new props added, for example, the logic of this enormous gate is ready to go.

Surprise encounters and a puzzle awaits.

Animation wise, Iuri has joined us in the office (he usually works remotely) and is producing new animations and polishing some others. Afterwards he will tackle this chapter’s boss!

Remember the Water temple concept? Here is watermill in action (still WIP).

The low poly model for the new boss is pretty much complete, and we’ve started to work on the retopo of the weapons. Next, we’ll do all the texturing and fine-tuning. Regarding the environments, we have been busy putting together the largest ruin in the game (so far), a very tall tower. As soon as it is ready, we’ll be sure to show some screenshots.

Undead Soldier new attack example.

This chapter has a lot of small ruins and dungeons to explore, set loose your explorer’s instinct!

Explore everything!

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