Category Archives: WIP

DevBlog 25 / Hard Rock

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.

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DevBlog 24 / Working on new areas

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.

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.

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DevBlog 20 / Environments Revisited

Hi there!

This week Tomé and André reworked and tweaked some interiors of the game using many brand new assets. Some color calibrations were done to improve the atmosphere of each space and create distinct areas.

How'd It Get Burned?!

Secret areas are easy to be missed.

How'd It Get Burned?!

Some hidden lore in this wooden house.

How'd It Get Burned?!

Another pass in populating this interior.

André did some bug fixing and polished some mechanics. He’s preparing a new test build. Also, a first new version of streaming scenes was implemented with a great performance improvement and also an easier way to edit scenes for everyone.

Meanwhile, Pichel finished the player’s companion and is working on the other characters and NPC’s and doing a more detailed version of the painted terrain.

The outdoors are really coming along, the new areas are almost complete.

How'd It Get Burned?!

Another pass in populating this interior.

Next week we intend to redo the HUD (replacing placeholders) and make some minor functionality changes in the inventory.

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DevBlog 19 / Fired Up

Hi everyone!

This week André returned from vacation and is back in action, so we got some cool things to show besides new art and props!
He made some changes in how healthbars behave on screen (something he wanted to do for some time), they are now screen dependent instead of world dependent. Also, he improved the idle combat animations and behavior when the player has no weapons equipped. Only kicks and punches can save you in this situation.
Working alongside Iuri, they gave more life to the Elk. With some spine IKs system, ground adaptation makes the animal feel more real.
It’s still in WIP state (still doesn’t have the new Fur), we need more animations to make it like we want, but for now we are really liking the feel.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Some Elk action over here

Ricardo lent us a hand and did some awesome shader work to “fire up” the look of the wooden enemies we’ve shown in previous posts.

How'd It Get Burned?!

How’d it get burned?!

Instead of baking the burnt effect directly into textures, the shader allows for countless dynamic and randomized burnt variations. It’s a great way to empower artist and reduce production times.

Burnt variations.

Burnt variations.

Picking up where he left off last week, Tomé worked on visually improving a huge temple ruin that players will get to explore in the first area of the game. Here’s how it’s currently looking:

Old view on the left, current view on the right

The Temple revamped

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DevBlog 18 / Art Update

Hey, guys, Tomé here! Since André and Pichel are currently enjoying some well-deserved vacation time, only Iuri and I got some stuff to show you this week.
I worked on another stone built prop, a “Tempietto”. Like in previous assets we developed, this monument is composed of separate parts that can be hidden or relocated in order to organize different ruin compositions.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

The Tempietto.

Remember the Lumberjack fellow we’ve shown before? I started exploring how his house could look like in the game. It’s pretty big. Inside there will be a few surprises for curious adventurers!

Old view on the left, current view on the right

An early concept for the Lumberjack’s house

Finally, I spent some time doing an overhaul of the modular stone building kit we have. I wasn’t too happy about the tileable textures I had developed before, so I made new ones, and added a couple of new props that hopefully help these structures start to feel like ancient ruins. You can see how the whole thing’s progressing below.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Before and after the visual upgrade.

From our animation specialist, we got the polished version of the walk cycle featured in the last post, and a brand new trot animation for the Elk!

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Polished version of the walk cycle.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

New trot animation.

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DevBlog 16 / Back to work

Hi there!

Last weekend we showcased the game to some developers and players and some new bugs were found as expected. Some we already knew about and others were simply created when André was doing the combat demo scene we’ve shown. First thing Andre did in the beginning of the week was to fix these bugs and tweak the combat (feedback was very important). Seeing players playing and looking at what they do with the controller is very enlightening for improving small nuances in gameplay and making things more intuitive. This is a process that we intend to repeat in ever showcase we’ll do.

Tomé worked on some props this week. One of them is a very important prop – it’s basically a resting spot where one of our mechanics takes place. When the player uses it in order to recover, an ambush can randomly occur during the night while sleeping.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

The various parts of this prop can be rotated or hidden to achieve different compositions and avoid repetition.

Meanwhile, Pichel is hard at work handcrafting the mystical Elk’s textures and experimenting with fur. He already finished the maps for the saddle, as you can see in the image below.

Old view on the left, current view on the right Old view on the left, current view on the right

He also finished the High Poly of one of the NPCs that can be encountered in the beginning of the game. We will talk about him and the others NPC’s soon in a dedicated devblog.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

The prisioner.

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DevBlog 14 / Replacing placeholder mechanisms

Hi there!

This week, André and Tomé worked on replacing some old interaction and mechanisms placeholders with quality, animated and fancy shaded 3D models. Small logic additions and adaptations needed to be made to fit the new art.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Some new props, girl model for scale.

André is also doing some logic changes in order to streamline the localization process, the entire user interface and game text will have support to various languages.
Iuri is also replacing placeholder animations and doing some new ones for the mechanisms mentioned above.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

A Journey checkpoint is always important.

Pichel is working hard on finishing the 3d model of the player companion. The next step is rigging it.

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DevBlog 13 / Animations

Hi everyone!

This week André added some new mechanics he has been developing for the swamp zone, like quicksand and other traps. He’s also working on fixing the terrain mesh and polishing the level design of that zone. Some bug fixing, code polishing and optimization was done too. Interior zones are more optimized now, the light culling masks were not set correctly but as soon as we fixed it the performance increase was noticeable. Ranged enemies are now more efficient when it comes to killing the player.

We would like to officially welcome Iuri Monteiro, our new animator. We have been using mostly temporary and altered asset store content but now, with a dedicated animator, we can finally define each character’s personality and improve the overall consistency and fluidity. Expect great things in the upcoming months!

Old view on the left, current view on the right

New animations examples.

Meanwhile, Pichel has been doing the retopo of the Elk model, and he’ll start texturing it soon. Tomé is working on props like the ones you can see below – the Rune Stone (the concept art for it was shown in the previous Blog post) and the Shrine. The latter is meant to work as a checkpoint during the adventure.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Shrine and Rune stone in game models.

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DevBlog 12 / New props and Companion Model

Hi there!

More illumination iterations were done this week. We encountered some light probe problems and had some lighting misconfigurations, but we are working on it. Most of them are related to our scene streaming system and light baking workflow.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Illumination tests.

Tomé made some concept tests for a rune stone that the player can interact with. These rune stones are strategically placed near points or areas of interest informing the player about story lore, area information or even gameplay. We are trying to have as little as possible distracting on screen tips during gamplay, these runes and some hints in the re-load screen are given to maintain the immersive experience but the core gameplay will be clutter free.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Rune Stone and alphabet concept.

We are doing some tests for an ancient alphabet for the ancient civilization ruins and runes like in the concept above.

Pichel is finishing the high poly of the player’s companion, he followed the concept posted in the previous devblog but naturally some changes were made to match the 3D perspective.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

WIP player companion.

 

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DevBlog 11 / Illumination Test, AI and new Companion concept iterations

Hi everyone!

This week we did some more illumination tests, still not as we would like it to be but it’s getting close! Next week we will update the Amplify Color LUT textures used, our idea is to create an immersive and smooth transition between interiors and exteriors. The use of Volume based blending per-area really helps us quickly test and improve the game look without adding to the work load.

We adopted a tetrahedral light probe placement instead of a simple evenly spaced grid and so far we are getting good results on dynamic objects.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

Some issues still to fix but getting closer to the final version.

This week André made a few tweaks to the enemies AI and improved their adaptation to specific situations, in a game as ours AI is a constantly evolving area. For example, an enemy may adopt a defensive AI state depending on its weapon state; if its shield is about to break he will likely try to use it less and evade the player attacks, depending on the enemy it might even strike more. Enemies will also become gradually more offensive the longer they have to defend themselves from player attacks. On the animation side we also apply specific variations that required tuning.

Pichel is working on the new companion 3D model. We had several concept iterations until we arrived at the current result, while he’s doing the body High Poly some small changes might be made to the improvised settle and additional props.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

More fantasy iterations.

Old view on the left, current view on the right

The last concept made.

We are still not 100% sure about the item bags or props attached to the legs.

Next week we will show you the high poly!

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