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DevBlog 33 / Straight outta the Lumberyard

Hi everyone!

It has been a very tough work week for everyone. We are closing a new area of the game that will be shown in Lisboa Games Week in 17-20 of November. A lot was added or improved, from characters, props to polished code. We are also doing some playtesting.

The swamp area is practically complete, and now we are tweaking the overall colors and exploring ways of adding details that enhance the mood, like thick fog and small water puddles. Here is a shot showing how the whole thing is coming together.

Unknown lands.

In the previous blog update we’ve shown the concept for the Lumberjack’s twin brother, and now that we’ve wrapped up the production for that character we can show how it turned out.
We also added a few minor details to the UV maps of the first Lumberjack, including a placeholder “hand-painted” fur texture to his shoulder pad which we plan to eventually change into “hair cards” further down the road (similar to the system we’ve used for the Elk model).
You can see in the image below the Lumberjack siblings chilling together.

You walked into the wrong neighborhood.

Here’s a sneak peak of the Wanderer’s idle animation. Remember to go talk to him!

The Wanderer, idle animation WIP.

DevBlog 32 / The Lumberjack Brothers

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Hi there!

This week André was working in the logic pass in the new area Tomé was populating a while ago. This area suffered a lot of changes, now has a lot more to explore and this led to a more careful balancing in enemy placing and rewards like the plants of the treat mechanic, what is inside the chests, etc. Collision testing is also a very monotonous task and there are always a few places where the character can get stuck during this phase of development. André also added these areas to the streaming logic for a more fluid progress throughout the game. Next week we will show some environment screenshots with the new Amplify Color calibrated.

Iuri is now rigging and animating two new NPCs we’ve already shown you, the prisoner and the wanderer.

Lonely prisoner.

Remember the axe-wielding mini-boss we have shown in previous blog posts? There are actually two of these foes roaming about, the Lumberjack twin brothers that inhabit the Forgotten Forest. Tomé has been working on the look of the sibling we hadn’t mentioned yet. He is supposed to appear very similar to his brother, with a few distinct features like facial hair, tattoos and differently colored garments. This hulking giant will also be carrying a particular kind of weapon, which we will show at a later stage.

Concept paintover of the Lumberjack’s brother.

Pichel made a lot of progress with the model of another enemy we are adding to the game. This opponent is very important narrative-wise since it shows an early stage of the transformation of flesh into bark, which the peasants from the surrounding villages have been undergoing. It hopefully shows that the fully transformed wooden aberrations you may encounter were not actually born that way.

First phase transformation Wood Enemy.

DevBlog 31 / The Wanderer and Elk treat mechanic

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Hi everyone!

This week Pichel finished the first version of the Wanderer, the next version will include a cape and additional details. This is a very important NPC that will appear several times through your journey and will keep you informed about lore if you talk to him. He is also currently working on new enemy variations.

The Wanderer model next to you for scale.

André and Iuri continued their work on the treat mechanic. In order to mount the elk, players will have to gain its trust by feeding it a particular type of berries. The player can then mount it for some time, provided that there are no enemies around. The elk is not meant to be a simple mount, but more of a journey companion. Tomé did a berries prop plant that will be available in some zones (larger zones). You can pick them up and feed them to the elk at any time in order to mount it and travel through the world faster. Be very careful when approaching enemies, the elk will likely force a dismount and run away!

Revisiting a calm zone.

Raw run animation clip.

Berries Plant prop.

André also did a complete rewrite of the elk mount control code, it had a lot of prototype junk, a total revamp was due. This piece of gameplay is heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus control and feel. He improved the elk turn control, the object avoidance and the enemy reaction threshold system.

DevBlog 30 / The cave of NOPE!

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Hi there!

This week André was working with Iuri on the treat mechanic. This is a mechanic where the player needs to gain the confidence of the Elk by feeding it. Then the player can mount it for some time if no enemy is near. Since the beginning, the Elk is not meant to be a simple mount, but more of a journey companion. André also improved the deferred decals and started polishing/fixing the action of riding the Elk and its control logic with the new animations.

On the environment art side of things, we’ve been experimenting with the mood of the sprawling underground tunnels below the swamp area. They are meant to be pretty dark, filled with stalactites and stalagmites that create interesting shadows when adventuring with a torch in hand.

In some places a torch is mandatory.

Pichel has already finished the high poly model of the Wanderer (we’ve shown the concept in the previous blog entry) and is almost done with the low poly version. Similarly, Tomé wrapped up the high poly model for the Wanderer’s guitar. We’ve decided to change its design a bit so it would be reminiscent of the traditional portuguese guitar, with a fantasy touch. You can check both the character and his musical instrument below.

The Wanderer high poly.

DevBlog 29 / Wanderer NPC and companion interaction

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Hi everyone!

This week André was working on some minor improvements regarding the feeling of impact during combat. A pause of 2 frames was added to the attacker animation when a successful hit is landed, as well as HUD vibration whenever the player takes damage. With these two small additions, the feeling of causing/taking damage is even more noticeable. We already have hit animations, particles and gamepad vibration, but we think these small details are super important.

André also merged some sub state machines in the Animator for more fluid transitions and to simplify the Animator tree.

Tomé finished a new concept for an NPC that the player will frequently meet throughout the journey. He is a very enigmatic character that will often inform the player about lore, comment on the state of affairs and even open some shortcuts. Pichel is working right now on the high poly model for this character.

The Wanderer Concept.

Iuri and André are developing interactions between the Elk and the Girl. One of these consists in a “treat mechanic” which is being implemented. Basically, the player needs to feed the Elk some fruit in order to gain its trust and be able to mount it. We have always leaned towards the idea that the Elk is not a simple mount, and we hope that with details like this one we can make that show through.

Idle interaction with the Elk.

We intend to have this mechanic ready in a few weeks. Afterwards we will start populating the various locations with fruit props and control the zones where the player can mount freely.

DevBlog 28 / GDD updates and new zone study

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Hi there!

This week, Amplify Creations moved to a new office, so the Decay of Logos team had the chance to improve and complete the Game Design Document of the game, and do a review of the overall production plan. Some minor plot holes were covered and the history was enriched.

Everyone helped but some other things got done obviously. André fixed some pending bugs and he’s working on improving the elk control when mounted and implementing more of Iuri’s new animations.

Pichel is finishing a very important enemy, a very peculiar boss that will have a special video preview.

Tomé did a concept study for an upcoming new zone that we are preparing.

The Rift Windmills.

DevBlog 27 / Dynamics, NPCs and facial Animations

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Hi everyone!

André was busy adding some dynamic bones for our characters, and save a lot of time in animations. Small portions of the model like pony tails or small bags now don’t need to be animated so the animation pipeline is more straightforward.

Dynamic jiggle physics, exaggerated effect.

He also added a first version of Audio Occlusion. In practice, the sound is occluded by a low pass filter and the volume is decreased when not in sight of the audio listener. This leads to a more immersive experience, since the player will be able to notice when a sound comes from inside a building or from the outside.

Iuri this week improved the main character’s RIG, imbuing her with a lot more feeling and life. Now we feel like we’re able to convey emotions more easily, which helps a lot with storytelling.

New facial animations.

Pichel is currently working on a very important character, which we will show further down the road. He recently finished up an NPC, a prisioner, and you can check below how the model looks in-game.

Prisoner NPC.

Also check it out our newest WIP gameplay trailer:

DevBlog 26 / A Mount and Blade

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Hi there!

Iuri has been working on more animations this week and he’s showing a little bit of the process:

“For this animation I didn’t just want to make a generic mount, I wanted to portray the relationship between the two characters, as well as the agility of the main character and kindness of the elk. I started by exploring some poses that would evoke what I wanted to transmit. I analysed videos as well as images.

My first approach on this stage is trying to get the poses that describe the movement in place, I check if the silhouette of the pose is working for the camera view as well in other perspectives, the line of action, twinings, balance, etc. On a second approach to blocking I start to work on timing and improve on some poses, I also add breakdowns until I have all the necessary poses. Going on through spline after having to make some iterations to the animation, I work on timings, ins and outs of poses, arcs, exaggeration, movement resistance, which part is leading the action and which parts are following, etc.

Having arrived at the polish phase I improve the arcs, spacing, overlapping, animation curves, pops and other minor adjustments.”

In the meantime, Tomé decided to take a break from working on the swamp scene (after weeks of only focusing on that) and started developing new weapons. These will mostly be hidden in chests and are meant to work as rewards for players who carefully explore each location of the game.

New weapons concepts.

At the character art department, Pichel is doing retopology and UVs for the new character we mentioned last time, which will be shown in the next devblog update.

DevBlog 25 / Hard Rock

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Hi everyone!

This week André worked on improving the streaming system of the game. Some shortcuts and hacks were made for hiccup-free loadings, most of the loading is made in a background thread but the activation of the game objects is made in the main thread. So that forced us to make a frame by frame loading system only for the activation of some chunks of zones. André also finished the localization logic so now it is easy to translate the game.

Iuri is back to work after a deserved vacation, he’s working on the mount animations of the companion and player movement while mounted. Riding the Elk is a very important part of the game; we removed it temporarily because we only had placeholder animations.

One of our challenges this week consisted in producing low poly assets that would allow us to improve the look of the rocky cliffs that limit the first areas of the game. Tomé developed a few modules that can be bashed together inside the engine in order to create the steep rock faces you can see below. For the moss on top, we chose to duplicate the geometry from the upper part of each asset, and then we used a grassy material with the Cutout Rendering Mode selected.

Our rocky cliffs building kit.

Here is an example of what we can come up with inside Unity using the kit.

Meanwhile, Pichel is hard at work sculpting a new character model that we will show a sneak peak in a future devblog.

DevBlog 24 / Working on new areas

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Hi there!

Today we are showing you a new area of the game featuring a very different mood from the previous ones. We want the player to experience very diverse atmospheres along the journey, so we are crafting locations with varied terrain topology, distinct architecture and enemies with a different feel.

In this next area the player will be able to explore a sprawling swamp. Mysterious ancient ruins, half sunken into the earth, hide rewarding secrets but also great peril. You can check the screenshots below to see how the work on this location is progressing. Keep aware that they are very WIP with no final lighting nor final textures.

WIP temporary lighting and textures.

Pichel is working on new characters that will be shown later. André had the tedious task of preparing the UI and other text for localization and also implemented a volumetric light effect.