Tag Archives: Animation

DevBlog 146 / The adventurer’s diet

Hello fellow adventurers!

In today’s blog post, we’ll be talking about the adventurer’s diet.

As you may already know, being adventurers yourselves, a dangerous profession such as this one can be very taxing on the body, and at those times where neither magicae nor alchemy are available, sustenance may still be within your grasp if you know where to look!

The adventurer’s diet!

There are, of course, risks involved when seeking nutrition from nature.

Certain sources of nourishment might get you to full strength, while others will surely lead to an upset stomach, or even death.
It’s common knowledge that the berries that are favored by many wild animals are not edible but fungi, on the other hand, can be pretty safe if you know which ones to pick.

What’s your poison? I mean…

There is always reward to the risk involved, even if the result is an undesirable one… * wink wink *

And on the technical side of things, we’ve been performing several optimizations in order for the game to be more stable!

That’ll be all for this week, be sure to stop by again next Friday for more goodies!

Thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 122 / Not the bees!

Hi everyone!

Today the post is a simple update about some of the progress we’ve made regarding a few enemies, armor sets and overall detailing.

A lot of polishing is being done on the animation side, our animator is doing a bunch of small tweaks and additions so the game feels and looks a lot more fluid.

We have a new temporary addition to the team – the wiz Paulo Pinho is helping us on the VFX side, and the results speak for themselves, but we’ll have to share that in the next post!

Our sound designer has also joined us in the office for some, so the sound/music additions will be faster and better implemented.

On a different note, a new enemy is born – this giant Stinger will haunt you wherever you go! Remember, it can fly… It features a binaural sound when it gets close, for an extra level of creepiness.

Sometimes they attack in swarms!

One of the aspects we wanted to improve on for a long time was the armor set variety. In order to give more options of apparel to the player we are introducing 3 new sets, each tied to a certain location of the game and respective lore. One of these is already in-game, as you can see below. Of course, equipping all the pieces of any set will grant the player bonuses, so keep an eye out and find them all!

The Tradesman armor-set.

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DevBlog 120 / They are Legion!

Hello!

We have made quite some progress this week, both in terms of polish and the addition of new content!

The enemy list has grown with the addition of a new flying creature, that is still being worked on but we’ll definitely share some screenshots in an upcoming blog post, together with new variations for the last remnants of the Ancestor legion, that will be some of the toughest foes that you will encounter throughout the land. Here’s one of them for your viewing pleasure:

You’ve come to the wrong neighborhood!

We’ve also started to work on the visual effects, as most of the ones we’ve been using are simply placeholders, and we have several new ones planned! Animations for both the main character and some enemies are being tweaked and polished, and we’re sharing an example with you:

Old Ancient Soldier animation!

New Ancient Soldier animation!

Finally, there was a major effort in cleaning up the code, while also adding a debug menu with controller support for the consoles, in order to help with development and QA for them.

Regarding the gamescom event, our team member that was present to showcase the game had a blast but, unfortunately, he still hasn’t arrived due to a flight delay, so we’ll have to share all the juicy details of the event next week!

Thank you for reading, have a nice weekend!

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DevBlog 118 / A new hope?

Hello everyone!

We’ve just finished adding new props to the village, in order to breathe more life into it, as you can see in the image below:

The Song of Drying!

These include clothes drying poles, swings, pottery and more, some of which will appear as you progress through the game. The hamlet will reflect the protagonist’s actions, be it the outcome of a great battle or some other event that took place in a different area, and every time you return you’ll notice that certain changes took place. Could these be signs that life might eventually go back to normal, and that peace will take the place of war?

Cabbage fight!

The pottery is also one of the new destructible items, adding more variety to certain areas of the game, here’s an image on what can happen if they’re not handled properly:

Who knows what may lie inside?

All of the dungeons, or Arx, have been finished and might still undergo a few tweaks in order to make them even more interesting, such as improved enemy placement or even ambushes. Also, some of the new combat animations and movements were polished, and we’ll keep play testing and tweaking them throughout the next week.

On the more technical side, as the time for furthering the development of the console ports draws near, we’ve redone the input system, in order to allow for more flexibility when integrating with other platforms.

That is all for this week, see you next Friday!

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DevBlog 117 / Hammer to the Forge, Mace to the Face!

Hi everyone!

We’re excited to share with you that we’ve finished the combat animation overhaul, they’re all in-game and being tested as we “speak”!

This brought dramatic changes to the combat’s feel and pace, bringing it much closer to our vision. Here’s a taste to brighten up your weekend:

Mace to the Face!

There’s also another noticeable change which should be quite apparent in the above image if you’ve been following our devblogs for a while, and that is the visual polish we’ve been doing. We’ve tweaked the post-processing and illumination of our initial areas, and also took the opportunity to tweak environment sounds, improve loading times between different zones, tweak the enemy placement, add some ambushes and even some additional surprises throughout the game!

Some new assets were added as well, including new item icons and the town blacksmith’s tools:

Hammer to the Forge!

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 113 / Polishing like there’s no tomorrow

Hi there!

This week we’re bringing you some polish-in-progress screenshots and details, so lets get right into the news!

New environments!

Our workflow has improved ever since we’ve started working on the game, and new materials and assets were added and improved throughout development, so we’ve decided to do a major overhaul of the initial areas of the game, as we’ve shared in a previous post.

More new environments!

Alot of work has been put into this but it payed off tremendously, we’re extremely happy with the result, especially considering how consistent the world feels and plays with this improvement!

Taking into account all feedback we’ve received and our own play test sessions, we also continued working on adding new combat animations and tweaking the ones already being used, in order to provide the best feeling and feedback we can to combat, which is one of the pillars of the game.

Take it, it’s yours!

For the next week, we’re going to add a new cutscene into the game that will introduce players to the basic logic on interaction between the Elk and Ada, here’s a sneak peek!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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DevBlog 104 / More weapons, more fun!

Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a pleasant week!

We’ve always intended to develop some new weapons to add even more variety to combat as soon as the major areas of our game were completed, and the team has decided that time has come! Our in-house carpenter has just been shifted to the smithy, where he’s currently tackling the following blueprints:

One of these weapons lets you be one step ahead of your enemies, guess which!

There has also been some further planning and discussion regarding our older animations, while also taking into account all the feedback we’ve received so far from testers, QA and players at PAX, which has lead us to start working on tweaking and improving some of them. Below you can see our old dodge animation first, and then the new one, which is still a work-in-progress, which provides better visual feedback to the action, and provides a better feel to combat:

Guilty feet have got no rhythm!

The new dodge animation, wip!

Last but not least, we kept the QA and bug squashing going, and every week that passes the game feels better and plays better, which is extremely gratifying and motivating!

That’s all for this week, have a pleasant weekend and stay tuned for more!

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DevBlog 96 / Ada Reborn

Dear readers,

Another week full of polishing touches and bug fixing has passed.

The development of the final area is going well, and it provides some breathtaking visuals together with a good opportunity for introspection as you make your way through its scenery.

Fabulous!

Regarding the new version of the main character, she is now in-game, as you can see in the following gifs.

Old Ada served us well throughout development, she will never be forgotten!

The way to the Elk’s heart is through its stomach, obviously.

We’re still retouching some animations because her anatomy is a bit different, and our new smith is refitting the armors as well for this same reason, of course.

Fly like an eagle, sting like a bee!

It’s hard to express in words how we are all pleased with this new version of the main character, we feel it was the right call and everyone worked extra hard to put her into the game prior to the game’s release.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this post and the sneak peek we’ve provided into the reborn Ada, see you all next week!

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DevBlog 95 / Debugging, Polish and Beautify

Hey there!

The team is still hard at work preparing the show build areas by fine-tuning animations, enhancing the mood through color grading, as well as placing new assets in the scene. All this will serve as a guide for the remaining parts of the game, particularly regarding the level of polish.

New particles on the way! Echo shells sound like waves in the distance.

Debugging some stuff on the editor, always fun!

Another cutscene is finished and now it is time to begin focusing on bug fixing before integrating the final zone of the game, adding mechanics prefabs, manage the streaming logic and such. After this last step, the whole team will be on the “polish phase”. Almost there!

In other news, Ada’s high poly model is pretty much finished, as you can see below. We are still testing which should be the main color of her clothes, as you can tell from the polls we’ve posted. We’ll share the final version once we’ve settled the matter!

Ada High Poly is done!

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DevBlog 93 / Jumping Ada, Hidden Blacksmith

Hey there!

We weren’t expecting our plaster DevBlog post to become so popular, so we considered talking about bricks today..! Jokes aside, we’ve had alot on our platter for this week, so let’s get right into it!

Woah, we’re half way there!

We’re working hard… I mean, we’re always working hard, but lately we’ve been putting some extra muscle into a show build for the upcoming Expo’s! More information will be shared when the time comes, please bear with us.

A new NPC has also been added to the world, her name is Nuri and she’s a large blacksmith that will be tucked away inside of her shop, providing additional conversations and a new mechanic to the game.

Where’s this Blacksmith I read about on the blog?

She will offer to repair your items, if they are worth her time, that is! Don’t bother trying to get her to fix your flimsy, rusty swords and battered straps of wood, pieced together as makeshift armor!

You can jump but you can’t hide!

And here’s the latest, new and glorious animation, the new jumping while sprinting that will be invaluable for bypassing gaps and traps.

On a final note, we’ve also been doing a pass on all the cutscenes for the game, revamping the old and starting to work on the new!

That’s all folks!

Have a great weekend!

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