Tag Archives: Showcase

DevBlog 86 / Full Steam ahead!

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 81 / Oh my guard!

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Hello all!

A lot has happened this week, we’ll do our best to keep it short and sweet with all the juicy details, so let’s jump right into the news!

Pun intended!

The Canyon area has been under heavy construction, our chief mason has been busy chipping away at all the rocks and cliffs so it won’t be long before we share some details on this zone!

Some of the dungeons have been blessed with added complexity and intricacies and several new sounds have been added to the game, as some are still temporary, but there is still a handful of work to be done here.
Also, here’s a shot of the Royal Guard in-game, on a scale of 1 to Big, he’s pretty big!

And as tough as he looks!

We also came up with a new solution for the torches and their mechanics as we weren’t at all pleased with how they were working before even though they were working as intended. As it was, our beloved main character had to look for a torch every time one was needed because she wasn’t able to store them, but it quickly became more of a chore than a complementary mechanic to the game. For this reason, we’ve changed their logic and now a torch is available at all times, yay!

Our QA army has been combing the game for all those nasty pesky bugs, much squashing was heard throughout the week with more to come in the next!

What’s this? The Royal Guard is being animated already? Uh oh!

Oh no!

We honestly can’t wait to see them in action, terrorizing our protagonist!

Stay tuned for next week’s DevBlog, thank you for reading!

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 74 / I could barrel-y dodge that!

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Hi everyone!

Today we will show you one of the new enemies we added and teased recently, the Mimic Barrel. Even sneakier than the Chomper, it will pounce when you are carelessly looking for some random items inside barrels and crates. It delivers fast attacks and is very agile, which will certainly make killing it your top priority.

The Chomper is also complete, with all the attacks it requires, such as throwing things at the player depending on the zone it spawns in, like mud, sand, etc.

We also tuned the camera a little bit, which now adds a small offset when the player is locked to a target, so he/she can always see the focused enemy.

Oh my God!

The work on the new area is progressing smoothly, we are using the following concept as the main guide for the mood we intend for this location:
Meanwhile, the high-poly model for the new boss is pretty much finished, so the game-ready version will surely be developed during next week!

Mood concept for the canyon.

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!

DevBlog 67 / Not everything is what it steams…

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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!

DevBlog 65 / Steam Valve

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Hi everyone!

This week we’ve discussed some new ideas and concepts for the next chapter of the game. It will take place in the bottom of the canyon, bordering the windmills zone which you might be familiar with.
We already have some concepts of the new characters and a lot of references, so the ideas are getting close to a conclusion.
For the previous chapters, André had already made some blocking, level design and testing. This final zone is currently drafted on paper, so the next devblogs may be focused on its level design and the details we would like to add.

The boss of the previous chapter is nearly done and currently being worked on by our animator. Here’s a small WIP preview of his weapon in action:

Steam weapon shooting animation WIP.

This zone has a steam theme, which is noticeable due to the mechanisms that are clearly inspired by it. The player will be searching for valves to activate and new paths to unlock. Although the steam particles are an early work-in-progress, they have already been implemented to set the mood for this theme.

Interacting with the valve.

Examining the valve.

For the next week part of team will be working on the new characters and level design of the next chapter of the game. Stay tuned if you are into level building!

DevBlog 64 / A glimpse of the water workflow

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Hi there!

This week the team was grinding intensively, as we’re slowly but steadily approaching the completion of Chapter 2.

Since our animator has been with us in the office these past days, we spent plenty of time developing, polishing and implementing animations. In particular, the Elk has received quite a lot of attention, and it is feeling more alive than ever.

The artists are busy tackling the arena where the Girl will battle this Chapter’s Boss, as well as painting the texture maps for that character.
As promised before, we’re sharing our current workflow to produce the bodies of water we’ve been featuring lately in this blog.

It’s quite simple, as you can see in the following breakdown:

Small lake mesh workflow.

Shout-out to Paulo from our tech team for coming up with it in the first place. As mentioned in point f), both the ripple effect and the water surface require materials with shader work developed using Amplify Shader Editor. Here are the nodes needed for the water surface (we’ll show the ones for the ripples on a later date, since we’re still perfecting the effect!):

Water surface shader in ASE.

DevBlog 63 / The water wheel is in motion!

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Hi everyone!

This week while the art team was working hard adding props and populating the battlefield zone, some logic/code was improved, like the responsiveness of the dodge after an attack animation and also the time after a big hit attack from an enemy. After these tweaks, the Girl won’t take so much time getting up to resume the fight, making it possible to avoid possible follow-up attacks. We are also adapting the prototype logic to the new props added, for example, the logic of this enormous gate is ready to go.

Surprise encounters and a puzzle awaits.

Animation wise, Iuri has joined us in the office (he usually works remotely) and is producing new animations and polishing some others. Afterwards he will tackle this chapter’s boss!

Remember the Water temple concept? Here is watermill in action (still WIP).

The low poly model for the new boss is pretty much complete, and we’ve started to work on the retopo of the weapons. Next, we’ll do all the texturing and fine-tuning. Regarding the environments, we have been busy putting together the largest ruin in the game (so far), a very tall tower. As soon as it is ready, we’ll be sure to show some screenshots.

Undead Soldier new attack example.

This chapter has a lot of small ruins and dungeons to explore, set loose your explorer’s instinct!

Explore everything!