Tag Archives: Showcase

DevBlog 62 / Water gazing

Hi there!

This week we added more animations to NPCs to accommodate the later encounters with them. As the game flows, the mood of the NPC’s change so extra animations were needed. We also made some progress regarding the in-game water, it’s still not finished for a complete step by step devblog post, maybe next week!

A small lake for relax.

Some “dungeon modules” were added too, for a more dense and labyrinthic experience when player wanders through them. We believe that every small place to explore must have some reward, so keep looking!

A Dungeon entry, beware what lurks inside!

We also changed the impact particle that shows up when the Girl’s feet hit the ground (dirt) so it looks more stylized. We will continue with this approach for the rest of the VFXs, like fire and smoke.

Puff example.

Populating some new zones with props and creating the mood is also in the works. On the art department things are also progressing nicely, even though this new enemy is probably the most complex character we have developed so far, especially due to the arsenal used…

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DevBlog 60 / Into the woods

Hi there!

This week we continued working on polishing the combat system, this time on the feeling of the combo attacks. We tweaked once again the window between the consecutive attacks that could form a small combo. We also added a slope detection so the player cannot climb to places that he/she is not meant to. In this case, the character will decelerate when the player tries to climb something with a slope greater that 45 degrees.

One thing that was asked of us at PAX East was an option to auto hide the HUD, so the player could have a more immersive experience. This was easily added, although, every time the player gets hit, changes weapon/potion, has low stamina or the current weapon durability is changed it appears again for a few seconds.

Beyond that, it has been quite a grind to populate and wrap up the environments. Getting the mood of each location just right is a big challenge. Here are some shots of the game that showcase what we are going for in a couple of areas, but keep in mind all of this is still very much work in progress.

Cabin in the woods.

Very WIP water temple.

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DevBlog 58 / The Ancestor Soldier

Hi there!

This week we have finished the AI behavior of the Undead Soldier with the new animations, and started testing the group control with various enemies of this type, as well as with the big Ancestor Soldiers. The game model for the latter is already completed, as you can see in the GIF below. While exploring the battlefield area, if the player isn’t aware of the surroundings, several enemies can be triggered to attack. Mind the bodies lying around!

As always, various small bug fixes and small details were added to the code; a feature that was planned a long time ago was finally implemented – the dual weapon logic for the enemies. To put it simply, the enemies equipped with bows will now draw their swords for close combat situations, for example. Lastly, we’ve also added the Ancestor Soldier’s Mace and helmet to the game as wearable player items.

The Ancestor Soldier.

For the larger terrains we’re currently working on, the team has been trying out quick ways to achieve good results. The image below shows our simple pipeline to produce that kind of content, static environment parts. We first come up with a basic blockout of the scene, then we take it to Zbrush and refine the shapes and silhouettes, while keeping the model rough (since most details will be lost in the following step). Afterwards, the resulting mesh gets decimated, using Decimation Master. A little cleanup is often required, but after the UV’s are ready we bring the whole thing into Unity and start giving it life with Vertex Painting.

Workflow example.

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DevBlog 56 / Combat improvements

Hi there!

This week we worked on getting the new undead soldier ready for in-game logic and AI behaviors. Our animator is giving life to this undead soldier (no pun intended) and we can already show off a simple idle animation and the dynamic armor system in the gif below.

Undead Soldier turntable.

With this new enemy comes a new armor set and weapons. The player can farm this armor set by killing only these type of enemies, or by finding hidden chests with core armor pieces and weapons. With each full armor set the player has a small bonus in defense, so keep looking!
Lock-On Camera behavior and improved hit detection is something that we can now say is much better than in the PAX build. Sword/shield logic has been improved, much less bug prone, it’s really starting to feel on point.

Smooth kill.

Parry all the way.

We also added some audio details, for example if Ada has a full helmet armor, her voice is muffled. We love this type of small details, when possible/fast to implement, we add them right away.

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DevBlog 46 / Road to PAX

Hi there!

We’ve been having a very busy week – preparing everything for PAX, making posters, testing, bug fixing and adding new improved material.
New fresh sounds were introduced, and we hope the american audience will be able to notice them 😛

Final look of the current buildings.

Mostly it has been all about polishing what we’ve got. Small additions like flag vertex animation and candles’ behavior, or the placement of simple props laid out strategically allow us to enhance the mood and fine tune the visual storytelling.

Cool illumination effects with particles.

This is a small devblog post, there are way too many last minute things to do right now!

The flag says it all.

Wish us luck! Next week we’ll write about our experience at PAX.

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DevBlog 45 / PAX East here we go

Hi everyone!

We are extremely excited to announce our game will be played at PAX East on 10-12 March in the IndieMEGABOOTH space. Our first overseas adventure to showcase Decay of Logos. Here’s the lineup: http://indiemegabooth.com/indie-megabooth-pax-east-2017-line/

This week the team was polishing and finishing the art and the gameplay for the area prior to the end of Chapter One.

Exploring sometimes is worth it.

We decided to design banners that bear the Coat of Arms of one of the Princes, and we placed them on specific locations. By doing this we wanted to convey the feeling that the Ancestor ruins you find throughout this part of the Realm have been occupied and repurposed by the Prince’s men. Additionally, the banners allow us to really show how windy the area we’ve been working on really is.

Path to dangerous encounters.

There’s a trailer in the works, and we aim to show off some of these new areas in full glory and display a dramatic and accurate feeling of this game!

Keep smashing till you have stamina!

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DevBlog 40 / The Rift Windmills

Hi there!

This is our 40th devblog entry! We want to thank everyone who has been following us in this journey.

During this week of work, a boss battle was born. There is still a lot of balancing and small tweaks to be done in each combat phase, but it’s getting there. We are targeting for an intense battle with various phases, different attacks and transformations. Some of us are hardcore Dark Souls players, so the difficulty is being calibrated in favor of everyone.

We will show some parts of this boss battle in the upcoming trailer we are also working on.

The Rift Windmills

Meanwhile, the work on the new Canyon area continues to keep our artists busy. Most of the props have already been laid out, and the big Windmill that punctuates the landscape is also practically finished.

We are currently focusing on the task of texturing very wide surfaces, and to make that process easier, we asked our colleagues from the R&D team to lend us a hand. After some discussion, we decided to add the Amplify Shader Editor to our toolkit, so now we have a much easier time blending maps.

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DevBlog 37 / The Kid from the Mills

Hi there!

Remember the concept art for the Kid we have shown a few posts ago? We have finally wrapped up the model and textures for that character, and he is ready to be brought to life by our animator!

In-game model of the Kid.

On the environment art side of things, we have started to work on a new zone of the game, which is a canyon-esque area with lots of windmills. Here is a mood and shape concept piece that is meant to guide us while we produce and put together all the various new elements that will compose the scene.

Concept art for the new canyon area.

Comic Con Portugal was a blast! Lots of feedback and people testing and enjoying the game. We will definitely be back next year. For those who did not get a chance to play, be sure to keep an eye out for future updates.

Praise the Sun!

To everyone who got to play our game, thank you!

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DevBlog 15 / We showcased Decay of Logos and it was awesome!

Hello everyone,

We apologize for not posting an update last Friday, we were away for the entire weekend showcasing our game at ISMAI Legends, an event organized by the fine folks at ISMAI, a technology centric Portuguese University. The event hosted an E-Sports and a small GameDev gathering with varied talks and interesting guests. Not only did we have the chance to play some awesome games we also set up our own playtest area with a fully playable combat showcase area.

Feedback is awesome!

Feedback is awesome!

It was a great experience, we received loads of feedback that will definitely allow us to improve the final game. We are very happy with the results, the game was stable, the players had fun playing it and were mostly comfortable with the intuitive controls; those that were not provided valuable feedback on how to improve it. We took note of the issues found, as with any game in development there were a couple of animation and input problems regarding interactive objects, although the combat and navigation is already pretty cool we will definitely improve it in the next couple of builds.

Sprint like you meant it.

Sprint like you mean it.

Some issues were pretty weird, the kind of problems that only show up when you are showing your game to a large crowd such as the sudden mini-boss multiplication bug seen bellow. We never encountered anything quite like i but it was pretty fun seeing players trying to fight them.

A wild lumberjack appears!

This was also the first time we showed off our game without restrictions, we are not quite ready to start posting gameplay videos here but we are getting very close. We also had the chance to give a talk about our game development process, it was a short but colorful talk about the game and the products made by Amplify Creations.

Andre describing how little we have shown of the game world.

Andre describing how little we have shown of the game world.

Thank you for reading, don’t forget to check out our new blog post on Friday, we have some new cool stuff to show you.

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