DevBlog 115 / Let the old be new again!

Hello friends!

This week we’re starting you off with a little treat, a comparison of the old version of the game with the new one!

Let the old be new again!

We’ve also been having a whole lot of fun with the new combat animations, both in their conceptualization and in the in-game testing!
They truly add a whole different feel to combat, putting additional emphasis on the weight of the weapons and the effort put into each specific attack, also allowing for better feedback when it comes to executing the combos. Also, we’re about half-way done with them!

Together with the combat animations, the logic for the Knuckle and Spear weapon classes has been implemented, both being new weapon types that have been discussed before and will definitely provide more options and variety on how to keep baddies at bay.

The canyons sure seem inviting!

The cutscenes are also continuously being refined, we really want them to convey all the emotions and personalities of our NPCs and scenarios, so we’ll keep on tweaking them until we believe they’re perfect.

Always mind your surroundings!

Last but not least, additional props have been created to embellish our world, as the new windows and shrubberies were a good starting point but not nearly enough, so here are some of the latest additions that are specific for caves and the likes, spider webs and roots!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this post, see you next friday!

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DevBlog 114 / Fly like an eagle!

Hello dearest community!

Fly like an eagle!

Don’t let the title fool you, this animal is actually a hawk, and its purpose is for you to find out, not for us to tell…

So, after setting in some mistery, we’re going to make this week’s blog post short and sweet, like the Elk’s favorite meal, Lulaberries!

All of the audio recordings for the characters’ voices are done and already in-game, and the music is coming along nicely and will soon be complete as well.

A new phase of polishing and balancing will also take place in the near future, together with additional work into the console ports.

On the artistic side of things, the cutscenes are all getting a little bit of shine and tweaking before we’re done with them for good, and more progress has been made into the new combat animations, each of them being added into the game almost as soon as its ready!

POW! Right in the kisser!

Oh, and we’ve been designing and adding some new extra props to populate the scenarios, making them feel more rich and detailed, here’s a screenshot of some additional windows we’ve been crafting:

Care for some window shopping?

As you can see, it’s been an extremely busy week, so we hope you’ve enjoyed the content we’ve decided to share with you all today!

See you next Friday!

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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 112 / Unite Berlin Feedback

Hey there, we’re back!

…the team that went to Unite Berlin 2018, that is! And we have some photos and information to share regarding the event, our booths and all the feedback and love we’ve got from the community!

A panoramic view of the event area, where hundreds of visitors and developers gathered!

The event area was HUGE, with so many people attending that our booths were busy at nearly all times, which was amazing! As we’ve stated in a previous post, we had two booths in the event, one for the Amplify Creations tech, and another one for Decay of Logos which, as some of you already know, uses all of our assets.

The Amplify Creations booth revealing the new Impostor Editor, featuring our talented Developers Paulo and Ricardo!

In the tech booth, we had Paulo and Ricardo, two of our developers, showcasing our upcoming asset Amplify Impostor Editor, while also providing information regarding the award winning Amplify Shader Editor to all those who were also interested. We were overwhelmed with the excitement of the many attendees and developers who were interested in our new tool, and it was also a pleasure meeting so many people whom we’ve already been in touch with through forums and email!

The Decay of Logos booth, featuring charismatic Hugo from Support and QA!

In the Decay of Logos booth, we had Hugo from Support and QA and the other Ricardo, Producer and Developer Relations at Amplify Creations, spreading the good word about our passion project! We were extremely pleased to see how solid the show build performed, and gathered plenty of useful data that will be invaluable for the polish and balancing phase, that we’re currently on.

The showbuild consisted of two areas from the main game, where we’ve tried to fit as much variation as possible, the first one with the initial enemies that you will fight in the initial areas of the game, and the second one with advanced enemies that you only meet about 4 hours in.

Dozens of gamers and developers played the game, and most were kind enough to share their opinion regarding the experience they’ve had!

Thankfully, most enjoyed the visuals, the world and the character design. While many also enjoyed our simple approach to character progression and combat system, it came to our attention that we still need to tweak how the difficulty scales in the show build, and we will definitely be making it more balanced for the upcoming Gamescom event!

All in all, it was a very positive experience and we were delighted to meet so many people throughout the three days of the event and to have gathered so much valuable feedback!

Also, it was also a pleasure to be next to our publisher, Rising Star Games, that was there to showcase Trailblazers, check them out!

See you next friday for another blog post, and thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 111 / The calm before the storm

Greetings!

While our teammates from the tech side of Amplify were busy showcasing our products at Unite Berlin, the rest of us kept working on the game… So we do have some goodies to show!
To start things off, here are some shots from the last area of the game. The Palace is still work in progress, but we feel like we can already offer some sneak peeks.

Imponent King Statue !

The calm before the storm…

The process of revamping the terrain meshes is pretty much complete. Below you can see a “before/after” comparison – we added more geometry to help with both the silhouette and the vertex painting.

Terrain mesh revamp!

Meanwhile, the last cutscene is finally in game, featuring perfect integration with gameplay. Also, the intro of the game is going very well – it’s a mix of a cutscene and gameplay.

Next week we will recap the Unite Berlin experience, have a great week everyone!

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DevBlog 110 / Meet us at Unite Berlin!

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!

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DevBlog 109 / Hoarders, rejoice!

Hi everyone!

We’re here for another weekly devblog post, this time with some fresh, new screenshots to share, and some additional information regarding our progress!

Hoarders, rejoice!

We’ve finished adding some additional content and logic to the village, such as the bottomless well, that you can see in the screenshot above, which allows you to stash all the goods you find without any limits.

Perfect for anyone who, like us, loves to hoard stuff!

Look how cozy he is now!

The NPCs’ positioning has been adjusted, and they will show up as you meet and interact with them during your adventure, and the village’s mood will be changing as you progress in your quest for the truth.

We’ve also continued to work on polishing the game, adding some further detail to the characters’ textures and animations while also reworking the terrain for certain areas, as we’ve mentioned in a previous post.

And now for something completely different!

We’re sharing a sample of the music that’s being worked on for the village, which will also change dynamically throughout the game, let us know how you feel about it, all feedback is welcome!

Next week, we’ll do another extensive bug fixing run with all the issues and nitpicks we’ve found during out daily QA sessions, which have been both fun and gratifying as we see the game shape up to our expectations!

Enjoy your weekend!

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DevBlog 108 / We won our first Award!

Hello!

We’re back from the Euro Gamer – Portugal Summer Fest, and we brought something back with us!

We won our first award!

And even though we’re really happy and humbled to have won the Best Portuguese Game award, what really made our day was both the warm reception and all the wonderful feedback we’ve got from all the gamers that stopped by our booth! Our show build had some further polish and tweaks since the Pax East show, and we were really pleased with the results.

Here’s a panoramic picture from the Arena where the event took place:

Are you not entertained!?

And another one, this time from our booth:

The booth where magic happened!

Regarding this week’s development progress, the final cutscene has been completed but, unfortunately, we can’t really share any footage as it would… you know, spoil the ending! The item descriptions that were missing are also being written, taking place of all the placeholder text that we had, and the old ones are being overhauled as well.

Soon we’ll be tackling the new combat animations, resulting into more animated gifs and gameplay that we’ll definitely share with all of you, so stay tuned!

Have a great weekend!

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DevBlog 107 / Gotta get them all!

Hi all!

We’re going to be present in a big event here in sunny ( but somewhat rainy as of late ) Portugal during this weekend, the Euro Gamer – Portugal Summer Fest, in which a demo of our game is going to be available to be played so, if you’re currently in Portugal, come and meet us! This also means that we’re going to get even more invaluable feedback from many different players, and that is very important to us as developers since we get to see all the distinct reactions and gather all sorts of input that will definitely help us shape the game.

Come and visit us for a chance at playing Decay of Logos!

Regarding this week’s development progress, we’ve continued reworking the terrain meshes for the first areas, working on the cutscenes and preparing a build for this event, while continuing to fix issues and polish certain mechanics.

We’ve also got a few new weapons, fresh out of the forge, which will add variety to the combat and also work as sweet rewards for players who enjoy exploring. Our blacksmith focused on crafting many types of equipment so that we have at our disposal a balanced number of swords, bows, caestus, shields, among others. Here are some of these tools of war:

Gotta get them all!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s DevBlog post, stay tuned for the next one and have a great weekend!

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DevBlog 106 / Work, work!

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!

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