Another week of QA goodness and bug slaying, a real massacre of all of those pesky issues that we would absolutely hate to let you all deal with. In all due honesty, these things do take a great deal of time and effort, and we’re happy that we have the time and resources to undergo a thorough testing and polishing phase!
As usual, we’re sharing some images of the progress made in the embellishment process that has been keeping our artists busy with hand placed details and final touches. We bring you one of the Ancestral sites that we’re sure everyone will love to explore, the Vallis Sanctum:
Catchy name, huh?
It’s also one of our largest dungeons!
That’s it for this week’s blog post, thank you for reading!
With the ongoing external QA, which is going pretty well since you’re asking, we’ve been tackling the the issues all around the clock.
The art team, however, has channeled their artsy magicae to polish the skybox, which is what we’re bringing out today for your viewing pleasure, so please enjoy the following screenshots:
Politely asking the Brute to stand aside to take this sky picture!
Communing with nature while taking another sky picture!
We hope that you’ve enjoyed the content we had to share today, rest assured that we’ll have more goodies to share further down the road, so stay tuned.
In short, we’re continuing to pool our efforts into the tasks that we’ve talked about in the last posts, meaning the ports and the embellishment of all areas.
Here’s a screenshot of the Wadi of the Howling Rift, which is also getting an overhaul on its population in order to provide a level of challenge that matches its imposing looks:
The Wadi of the Howling Rift.
The vegetation, props and even architecture is being tweaked throughout these areas, and its pretty fun to see how some of the team members that have been doing runs in order to help with the balancing and QA react to the changes that are being implemented, or fall prey to unexpected enemies or traps!
Here’s one last treat, the image speaks for itself:
Development build of the Switch port.
That’s all for this week, stay tuned for the next update and have a great weekend!
This week, our biggest focus on the technical side of things was working on the console ports, while also continuing to optimize the project and its code. We want to make sure that all platforms provide the best experience possible, since we’re big fans of them all!
On the artistic side, we’ve done a good amount of polishing over the landscape, especially in the Howling Rift, hence the title, and continued to polish work on the audio, visual effects and animations.
We also have a couple of shots of the aforementioned area to share, but be mindful that they are still work in progress:
I swear she was here just a minute ago!
Improved landscapes!
That’ll be all for this week, thank you for checking out this devblog post and please stay tuned for more next Friday!
Hope you all had a good week! First and foremost, we’d like to remind you that voting for the Shield Contest is still going, so make sure to cast your vote on your favourite entries HERE!
We’ve had a total of 26 entries, which got us all very excited, and each design is pretty unique, with very different and unique sources of inspiration. Some of them even have their own lore!
Regarding our progress, we’ve been crafting some additional weapons and armor sets, and we’re up to a point where we believe that we have more than enough variety to cater to different play styles and builds. Take a look at some of the new additions below:
What have we here?
A few new props were added and placed throughout the land, together with some additional details here and there for enhanced environmental storytelling, which has been one of our concerns since the earliest stages of the game and its world design. Here’s a sneak peek:
Fallen ancient
Also, in preparation for the EGX Berlin, we’ve done a very thorough QA, polish and balance pass, which will continue next week. You’re all invited to play Decay of Logos at the event, you can find us at the Thunderful booth, so be sure to pay us a visit ( or several! ) if you’re able to attend, which will be happening from 28/09 to 30/09!
Hope you’ve enjoyed the update, see you next Friday!
We have made quite some progress this week, both in terms of polish and the addition of new content!
The enemy list has grown with the addition of a new flying creature, that is still being worked on but we’ll definitely share some screenshots in an upcoming blog post, together with new variations for the last remnants of the Ancestor legion, that will be some of the toughest foes that you will encounter throughout the land. Here’s one of them for your viewing pleasure:
You’ve come to the wrong neighborhood!
We’ve also started to work on the visual effects, as most of the ones we’ve been using are simply placeholders, and we have several new ones planned! Animations for both the main character and some enemies are being tweaked and polished, and we’re sharing an example with you:
Old Ancient Soldier animation!
New Ancient Soldier animation!
Finally, there was a major effort in cleaning up the code, while also adding a debug menu with controller support for the consoles, in order to help with development and QA for them.
Regarding the gamescom event, our team member that was present to showcase the game had a blast but, unfortunately, he still hasn’t arrived due to a flight delay, so we’ll have to share all the juicy details of the event next week!
We’ve just finished adding new props to the village, in order to breathe more life into it, as you can see in the image below:
The Song of Drying!
These include clothes drying poles, swings, pottery and more, some of which will appear as you progress through the game. The hamlet will reflect the protagonist’s actions, be it the outcome of a great battle or some other event that took place in a different area, and every time you return you’ll notice that certain changes took place. Could these be signs that life might eventually go back to normal, and that peace will take the place of war?
Cabbage fight!
The pottery is also one of the new destructible items, adding more variety to certain areas of the game, here’s an image on what can happen if they’re not handled properly:
Who knows what may lie inside?
All of the dungeons, or Arx, have been finished and might still undergo a few tweaks in order to make them even more interesting, such as improved enemy placement or even ambushes. Also, some of the new combat animations and movements were polished, and we’ll keep play testing and tweaking them throughout the next week.
On the more technical side, as the time for furthering the development of the console ports draws near, we’ve redone the input system, in order to allow for more flexibility when integrating with other platforms.
We’re excited to share with you that we’ve finished the combat animation overhaul, they’re all in-game and being tested as we “speak”!
This brought dramatic changes to the combat’s feel and pace, bringing it much closer to our vision. Here’s a taste to brighten up your weekend:
Mace to the Face!
There’s also another noticeable change which should be quite apparent in the above image if you’ve been following our devblogs for a while, and that is the visual polish we’ve been doing. We’ve tweaked the post-processing and illumination of our initial areas, and also took the opportunity to tweak environment sounds, improve loading times between different zones, tweak the enemy placement, add some ambushes and even some additional surprises throughout the game!
Some new assets were added as well, including new item icons and the town blacksmith’s tools:
Curious title right? Hope you’re having a great friday, we’re back with some freshly baked goodies just for you!
We’ve been working on vines lately, and we’re not talking about those short and funny clips, but the pesky plants that will get in your way until you can find the means to get rid of them for good. Since we’re so considerate, we did add a few ways of doing so, yay for us!
Vine burning down, still work in progress!
Fire is the key here, you can use a weapon buffed with fire, a spell or even your torch if you get it lit. These will be temporarily blocking certain doors or treasure, and if you’re not able to deal with them at that time, you can always return later to explore. Also, do note that the effect shown above is still a work in progress!
Hope it doesn’t have anything inside that melts!
In order to provide more immersion and some visual storytelling, we’ve built ( and then destroyed, mwhahaha! ) some trading carts, used by merchants and plebs who obviously wanted to take their belongings from one place to another.
Such a lousy parking spot!
There was also an overhaul of the Vallis Sanctum puzzle, which is the largest and most complex obstacle you’ll face in the game.
We’ve actually decided to have 2 floors instead of 4, in order to make it more accessible and feel less of a chore in future playthroughs, for those who enjoy the additional challenge of the New Game plus mode.
Lastly, here’s another work in progress animation for the new movesets, which are nearly done and are adding such a better feeling to the combat overall!
Sword uppercut!
See you next weekend, hope you’ve enjoyed our progress!