Tag Archives: Technical

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!

DevBlog 110 / Meet us at Unite Berlin!

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Hello!

This year we’re going to be present in Unite Berlin with two booths, one for Decay of Logos and another one for our Amplify Creations gamedev tech, so you’ll have a chance of trying out the game AND also to know more about our products!

Visit us there!

If you have the opportunity, come and visit us to meet the developers and play our game, we will definitely love to meet some more of our community members and fans!

Regarding this week’s progress, we have started working on using our newest asset within our game – Amplify Impostor Editor, which has already been submitted and is going to hit the Asset Store VERY soon.

We’re going to be using it in great scale in objects like bushes, trees and other small props, in order to achieve a considerable performance boost without compromising the user experience – you won’t even know they’re there!

New Bushes and Impostors LODs!

In addition, this is also extremely powerful for further optimizing our console ports, so we’re very excited to test the results.

We’ve also continued polishing textures and animations, doing Q&A runs and fixing bugs, so every day that passes the game matures into our vision!

To those who are visiting us at Unite Berlin, looking forward to meeting you soon!

Have a great week everyone!

DevBlog 106 / Work, work!

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Hello fellow readers!

This week we’re writing a short post, as our efforts are currently focused on QA and bug fixing. We’re also finishing the implementation of the new UI, with special attention to user experience, and tweaking the FMOD system that has recently been introduced to the game! Here’s a totally unrelated image:

A soothing environment for your enjoyment!

There are not many details that we can share regarding the above, as bug smashing is not as interesting to write or read about as to actually experience the arguable thrill of figuring out what exactly went wrong and how to replicate the trickiest issues, which sometimes requires inhuman perseverance and unbreakable spirit!

At least we’re not stuck with recording and going back and forth in VHS tapes, right?
Thanks to technology, we make use of software that allows for recording through a replay buffer, so all it takes is a key press and we’ve captured that nasty bug on a short video file, proceeding to watch a few times until figuring out how to replicate it consistently and then jot it down step-by-step, which makes it much easier to be tackled by our code wizard.

We also make use of several debug data present on screen, including key press information, which really helps!

That will be all for this week friends, lets see what we can cook up for the next one, see you!

DevBlog 105 / Treats for the eyes and ears!

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Hi!

Remember us mentioning in the previous post that we’re cooking up some new weapons? Some of them are already modeled and ready to be pushed into the game, feel free to let us know what you think:

Pro-tip: poke the baddies with the pointy end!

Also, the small introductory area, that will serve as the starting point for Decay of Logos, has just been completed! It will provide some gameplay and a cutscene, allowing for players to be introduced to the game’s Lore and mechanics just before being set free to roam our world.

Next, we’re going to overhaul the initial terrain and environments, bringing in some of the workflow that we’ve adopted while setting up the more recent areas, since these zones are ancient in terms of their development stage. In practice, they’ll be tweaked to look better, play better and feel better!

The new HUD is also in the game in its entirety, and its a treat to the eyes while also providing an overall better user experience while navigating those menus!

New UI, simple and elegant!

On the more technical side of things, namely audio, we’re done with fully implementing FMOD, a sound engine used by many popular titles, both AAA and Indie, that melds quality with flexibility. Trust us, your ears will love it!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this update, tune-in next week at the same time for more Decay of Logos goodies, and have a great weekend!

DevBlog 96 / Ada Reborn

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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!

DevBlog 92 / Today, we bring you…

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…plaster. That’s all you’re getting today. Hello!

Today’s post will be a little bit technical, since we’re still working on the last area of the game, which should have no plaster, planning and tweaking the final battle, adding some new animations and working on an unexpected and surprising new… thing, which is not plaster.

We aren’t ready to share any details yet since we want to make a full reveal of it when it’s done so, for now, all we have to give is this tease! … and did I mention that we also have plaster?

Plaster.

In all seriousness, we’ve implemented these two workflows to achieve two different types of results that, albeit simple, convey different moods. The faded plaster on the right is simply one mesh with two textures blended through Vertex Paining, while thick plaster technique is achieved by combining two meshes, as you can see on the right wall.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the fine plaster we brought you this week, we promise to make it up to you in the near future with some exciting revelations!

Have a great weekend!

DevBlog 81 / Oh my guard!

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Hello all!

A lot has happened this week, we’ll do our best to keep it short and sweet with all the juicy details, so let’s jump right into the news!

Pun intended!

The Canyon area has been under heavy construction, our chief mason has been busy chipping away at all the rocks and cliffs so it won’t be long before we share some details on this zone!

Some of the dungeons have been blessed with added complexity and intricacies and several new sounds have been added to the game, as some are still temporary, but there is still a handful of work to be done here.
Also, here’s a shot of the Royal Guard in-game, on a scale of 1 to Big, he’s pretty big!

And as tough as he looks!

We also came up with a new solution for the torches and their mechanics as we weren’t at all pleased with how they were working before even though they were working as intended. As it was, our beloved main character had to look for a torch every time one was needed because she wasn’t able to store them, but it quickly became more of a chore than a complementary mechanic to the game. For this reason, we’ve changed their logic and now a torch is available at all times, yay!

Our QA army has been combing the game for all those nasty pesky bugs, much squashing was heard throughout the week with more to come in the next!

What’s this? The Royal Guard is being animated already? Uh oh!

Oh no!

We honestly can’t wait to see them in action, terrorizing our protagonist!

Stay tuned for next week’s DevBlog, thank you for reading!

DevBlog 80 / And there was much rejoicing!

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Hi everyone!

Hope you’ve all had a great Halloween and hoarded a ton of sweets!

Let us start by celebrating the 80th DevBlog Post, yay!

And there was much rejoicing!

We kept working on the Boss for the Canyon area, concluding its fight mechanics and animations that will surely provide a memorable challenge with a unique twist!

Some extra animations were also added for the main character, allowing her to dash diagonally in order to give players more freedom in dodging melee and ranged attacks, we’re pretty happy with the new dynamic they bring to combat. Here, have a sneak-peek!

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting!

On a sidenote, we’ve already added the first animations for the Magic system in the game, more information on this in a future DevBlog!

There were some polish passes on the AI of all enemies regarding their behavior while engaged in combat, mostly in terms of rotating towards their target, to be more specific.

The Royal Guard we’ve shown in the last DevBlog is already in the Low Poly phase, looking as awesome as it looks menacing!

Finally, the architecture for the massive Canyon puzzle is mostly complete, here’s a screenshot just for you!

Plans for the weekend? Spelunking!

As always, thank you so much for taking the time and interest to follow our blog posts, see you next week!

DevBlog 79 / No tricks here, only treats!

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Hi everyone!

We’ve been working on the final modules for the massive puzzle in the Canyon Area, which should be finished soon enough! Here’s a beautiful scenic shot of the Canyon, taken from higher grounds.

Such Canyon, much windmill, wow!

The Elk also had a few more tweaks and polish in its behavior, including proper fear mechanics that have it getting scared and running off when enemies are nearby, which wasn’t quite working as intended before. As a result, it behaves more realistically now and helps with creating better immersion.

The Boss for this new zone is short of being completed, we’re setting up the third and last phase of its encounter, which can be harder or easier depending on how you handle the first two phases… but you’ll have to find that out for yourselves! No tips for you!

Regarding combat, we reworked and improved the Bow logic, providing a much smoother experience for those who like to grab that opportunity to land some extra damage from a safe distance before fully committing to melee combat.

Speaking of melee combat, here’s a screenshot of the Royal Guard’s high poly model… and yes, these foes will be as tough as they look, beware!

You don’t want to mess with these guys!

Thank you for reading, hope you have a great Halloween and enjoy the treat we’ve prepared for you, here goes!

Happy Halloween, Om Nom Nom!

DevBlog 78 / Hey there, how’s it hanging?

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Hi everyone!

This week we continued working on the Elk behavior and polish. The challenge was providing a smooth control and feeling inside dungeons, mounted or not. The canyon has a huge rotatory temple so dealing with ramps and slopes forced us to rework some path-finding logic.

With our animator in-house now, it has been easier to iterate the animation tree and logic. For a long time we intended to add acceleration and stopping animations when the player is in “exploration mode” (when there are no enemies around). In our prototype we had this feature but we removed it temporarily. Below is our first test:

Small run/walk acceleration and stopping animations.

Here’s a possible encounter in the dungeons!

Hey there, how’s it hanging?

Regarding the environment art, we are finally focusing on the previously mentioned dungeon. It’s a huge structure, with an overarching puzzle. Meanwhile, the outside areas are awaiting a final pass, which will include some texture variation and plenty of vegetation props. Here is a work in progress shot showing the current state of things:

Another canyon WIP view.