Category Archives: WIP

DevBlog 89 / What sorcery is this?

Hello dear readers!

As promised last week, we’re bringing you some magical goodness for this devblog… so without further ado, let’s all put on our robes, wizard hats and get our hocus pocus on!

*Ahem* Oh! And please take note that both the names and effects are work-in-progress!

Magic in the world of Decay of Logos is called Magicae, an ancient art that has been nearly lost to time, and that may only be tapped into by prodigious individuals with a strong life essence.

Light spell and Fire potion in action.

While we’ve decided that it would be optional for players to learn and use Magicae, those who choose to practice it must be aware that it comes at a cost, as it will slowly drain one’s vitality.

If the main character gets involved with the world and its characters, the opportunity to learn the following spells will come up at specific times during the adventure:

– The Light spell will be useful for navigating dark areas without the need of handling a torch, and might even blind some enemies.

– Shockwave will damage and push certain enemies away, possibly causing some of them to topple!

– Finally, the Fireball will do what fireballs do best, burn and bring pain to your foes!

As you can tell by the disclosed information, different enemies may react differently to spells, and some may be more resistant than others to certain damage types or effects, which brings us…

To the potions! We’ve talked briefly before about how we’ve added new potions for buffing the main character, and now we’re finally ready to share some additional details. We’ve added the following potions buffs that will add additional depth to combat and inventory management:

– Apply/Anti Fire
– Apply/Anti Poison
– Apply/Anti Paralize

The anti/drinkable potions remove the respective status effect from the main character, while the appliable ones are used to enchant the currently wielded weapon for a short duration, causing each attack to stack the effect on enemies!

Shockwave spell and Paralyze potion in action.

Similar to the spells, some enemies may be resistant or even immune to certain effects, while others vulnerable. Feel free to experiment on them, for magical science!

That will be all for this week, hope you’ve enjoyed the reveal of this new mechanic and that you partake in the mystical arts of Magicae when you get your hands on the game!

Have a great weekend!

Ah, yes, you can take off your robe and wizard hat now… bye!

DevBlog 86 / Full Steam ahead!

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Why hello there!

If you’ve ever heard of Steam, or if you’re currently using it, you’ll probably be ecstatic to know that we’ve included the Steam API into our project!

This allows us to have some sweet features such as Achievements, Cloud Saving and Stat tracking. It also means that our game might or might not be on Steam… take a guess.

Since you’ve probably guessed it right, we can also share that our Steam page will be online in the near future, so stay tuned!

Navigation mesh fix.

What is this? It’s our navigation mesh for the Canyon Puzzle, which had some issues that are now solved through navmesh control, allowing it to be updated as required by this event.

New area accessible by boat!

What is that? The boat we’ve showcased before is nearly fully implemented, and it will allow our hero to go forth and explore a new area which contains a quest item, some additional challenges and loot, of course!

A sanctuary, its buildings currently work-in-progress.

And this is the Village Hub we’ve mentioned before, which is shaping up to become a sanctuary to all, being not only rich in visual storytelling, but also holding its share of secrets! Oh, the houses are still work-in-progress, as such they are enveloped in a black, velvet fabric.

This tool will definitely come in handy!

Our Master Puppeteer, or Animator as some would call him, has implemented his new physics tool that will allow him to breathe even more life into his Puppets! We asked him how he does it, he said “Animation Magic”.

That is all for this week, everyone is thrilled for having the game on Steam and for all the progress that has been made so far, we can’t wait for the upcoming devblogs and to share more Decay of Logos goodies, so thank you for reading!

DevBlog 84 / A Hole new area to explore!

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Hello noble readers!

A Hole new area to explore!

This week we’ve made great progress in populating the Bottom Rift Windmills area, which is nearly fully implemented in regards to both props and logic, as we’ve also prepared it for our area streaming system!

Water we doing here?!

Ambushes and enemy placement throughout this area have been carefully considered as so to provide a different feel and encouraging players to be on their toes at all times.

Canyon ambushes!

The village, our main hub, has passed to an artist blocking phase since we’ve only had the initial designer’s blocking for quite some time already. We’ve drawn inspiration from Dark Souls 1’s Firelink Shrine, Dark Souls 2’s Majula, “Quinta da Regaleira” in Portugal, Sintra, and Everfall from Dragon’s Dogma! We’ll have more to show in a future DevBlog post, and we know you will all love it. * wink *

The Royal Guard continues to learn new moves, preparing himself to become one of the most dangerous and challenging elements of the game’s combat, one many would try to avoid rather than engage.

That is all for this week, we hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s updates, and thank you for tuning in!

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.

DevBlog 75 / Canyoning

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Hi there!

This week we added a lot of new sounds to the game, both character and background related. And with that a very important immersion component of the game was improved. This is of course an ongoing task, and with new zones and enemies, new sounds must be added.

We worked on the logic for the small lakes too. The drowning, walk in deep water and splash interactions were implemented, but without the proper polished particles we intend to show at a later stage.

As stated before we re-used armors from enemies as player items, so there’s now a scary version of the main character!
Shadows in general have undergone some small but crucial modifications; basically we now use the same technique used in CryEngine/UnrealEngine and other custom engines.

Left: Scary mask! Right: New point light shadows

Same as before, the new canyon-esque area is progressing nicely, and we are spending quite some time adjusting the mood and materials to achieve the proper feel for the place. The work on the new character models is also headed on the right path.

Some progress on the Canyon Mood.

Check out these moves!

DevBlog 73 / Bite me!

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Hi there!

This week we had fun awakening this small but aggressive enemy we call Chomper, and it’s already fully prepared to provide some surprise encounters throughout the game!
The Orphan Kid is also finished, sporting plenty of unique animations that meld with its intricate combat style, we will provide some more insight on him in next week’s blog post. We added some additional dungeon modules to the big picture, allowing for some interesting maze situations and secondary challenges for those who wish to explore every nook and cranny!

Bite me!

Jumping all the way.

Surprise!

DevBlog 72 / World Design inspirations

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Hi everyone!

This week we worked hard on the Bottom Rift Windmills area, It’s pratically done, and ready to apply the workflow we talked about on the Devblog 58

For this particular zone, we did some research on real locations and came up with a lot of architectural influences. The image below show places like Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park in Spain (Pyrenees), Phugtal Monastery in India, Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the US and Puente Nuevo in Ronda, Spain.

From left to right top: Puente Nuevo and Phugtal Monastery. Left to right bottom: Ordesa y Monte Perdido and Chelly Monument.

Like we said before this is a very early blocking of the zone, it still needs a lot of detail and beauty props on top.

Top-view of Bottom Rift Windmills blocked zone.

This zone is perfect for a stroll by the riverside!

Our animator is almost done with this little fellow that will be haunting you in the Rift Windmill zone!

Acrobatic attack no.2!

DevBlog 71 / Survival rule #1: Cardio

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Hi there!

Half of the team members are enjoying their much deserved vacations, and our programmer and game designer is back and working on the blocking of the final zones of the game! Most of the ideas are in paper and sketches including the puzzles, encounters, cutscenes and events. Blocking the final zone of the game provides an opportunity to look at the game as whole, while also considering its pacing and mood building and performing small tweaks here and there.

Right now we are blocking the Bottom of the Rift Windmills, the area inhabited by the previously revealed canyon kids. We’re aiming at a spicing up the place with a lot of exploration opportunities while taking advantage of the topology of the terrain to include plenty of vertical exploration as well. Here’s a small preview below.

Bottom Rift Windmills blocking preview.

Like we mentioned above, small tweaks and polish passes were made in the previous zones in order to achieve the intended mood. Below you will find two pictures, the first one being of the Old Woman’s House, and the second one an encounter with two cursed soldiers that are into jogging.

Old Woman’s House in the woods.

Survival rule #1: Cardio.

Hope you’ve enjoyed our devblog update, have a great weekend!

DevBlog 70 / Hi! Anyone seen my toothpick?

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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!

DevBlog 69 / QA is coming…!

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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!