Monthly Archives: August 2017

DevBlog 70 / Hi! Anyone seen my toothpick?

Hello, everyone!

This week, we’ve got some character art and a few new animations to show you guys. It’s vacation time for the members of the team, but we made sure to schedule everything so that there’s always at least one of us working on the game. This way, the development is never really halted.

As part of our current objective of adding more enemy variety and flexibility to the project, we designed a new creature that will pester the player in any area of the game. Just like the monster that hides in a barrel, which we showed last time, this new enemy is not “chapter specific”, and that allows us to use it freely while building the world.

Hi! Anyone seen my toothpick?

Basically, this little fellow hides beneath the ground with only its leaves sticking out to blend with the surrounding vegetation. Once the player gets close, it will pounce!

Why hello there! ( Jump Across animation )

Take that! ( Sweep Kick animation )

Oops sorry! I was just kid-ding! ( Being Hit by Player animation )

On the animation department, the masked youths are rocking a couple of new moves. While fighting, they react to the player’s actions by chaining attacks or dodges. For example, if their low kick does not connect, a quick dagger slash will follow. As you might have guessed, facing this opponent will prove to be a very different challenge from the ones in previous chapters.

Have a nice weekend!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

DevBlog 69 / QA is coming…!

Hi everyone!

Actually, QA came early during the week, and we’ve been doing some extensive sessions which led us to implement some additional tools and on-screen information for assisting with the playtesting and debugging of the game!

On-screen debugging info.

The new streaming logic we mentioned last week is still being tweaked and optimized, and we’re pretty happy with the results we’re getting!

Streaming chunk visualizer.

A new animation for the masked youths is also nearing completion, as you can watch see below.

Canyon kid evade animation.

We felt the need to add a little more variety to the game’s enemy pool, and we thought it would be cool to have less “area specific” creatures the player could fight with. Most of the ones we have so far are basically bound to the chapters they first appear in, and there’s no way around that because of the lore. So we are coming up with new ideas for creatures that can spawn anywhere throughout the whole adventure. The first one is a monster that inhabits barrels, and it will keep you on your toes anytime you’re about to destroy these wooden containers in hopes of finding random items.

Producing the assets for this enemy also forced us to remake the basic barrel and crate props, for the sake of coherence, especially because the ones we had previously were recycled placeholders.

We could Barrel-y see it coming!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

DevBlog 68 / Who’s the boss?

Hi there!

This week, a lot of structural scenes were changed and re-arranged, all to accommodate the new streaming logic that finally supports fluid streaming even in very slow hard drives (like the HDD of the Xbox One).

The boss featured in the sneak-peak below is basically ready, we are finishing and implementing the cutscenes that will show off this hard and intricate boss.

The art team is making decent progress regarding the development of the new enemies for Chapter 3. The model for the boss you’ll be facing at that point is almost done, and the masked youth we’ve previously shown is finally game-ready, prepared to be animated! And on that subject, our animator has joined us once again in our offices, so we are having nice discussions about the challenges that await the team.

Let’s take this chance to show a little teaser of the boss battle everyone has been working on. We’ve filtered out the details so the experience of the fight won’t be spoiled for you!

Jump back animation of silhouette boss.

Some weapons were also made and improved, all usable by the player and game-ready.

New weapons, new movesets.

We reworked an older enemy to create a new mini boss. The player will only encounter it in dungeons so beware when you wander in the ruins!

This is fine.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

DevBlog 67 / Not everything is what it steams…

Hi everyone!

A busy week with a final sprint to finish the steam themed chapter we have been showing off lately, while also performing some final touches and working on logic testing.

The streaming world logic is undergoing some changes for the best. We’re hacking at optimizing the loading of new areas while also removing the stuttering that sometimes happens, which is noticeable on slower hard drives.

The new cutscene system we are using, that was also mentioned it in the last post, is looking great! This tool will be crucial for our emotional cutscenes.

These particles steam a bit out of place.

Don’t just stained there looking at all that cool glass!

For this past week, our artists have been fully focused on producing the 3D models of various enemies, including the new chapter’s boss. The high-poly version of the orphan kid character we’ve shown in the last update is pretty much complete, so here’s a sneak peek!

High Poly of the masked youths, featuring Blanka cosplay.

Hope you all have a great weekend, stay tuned for more updates!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail