Tag Archives: Ilumination

DevBlog 145 / An extra touch of identity

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Hi everyone!

We’ve done a quick balancing pass throughout this week, together with the usual work on lighting and bug fixing for both PC and Consoles.

One of the tasks we’ve been tackling as of late is the placement of Reflection probes all throughout the game world. Having these really allows us to add an extra touch of identity to each location, making them feel different, alongside the lighting, sound and materials.

Reflection Probe workflow.

In the image below, for example, we have a Reflection Probe with a fairly high Intensity number in order to make the cave seem damper:

Improved lighting and shadows.

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 144 / Painting with light

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Hello!

The gears have been doing their usual grind, tweaking the lighting and tuning the balance while squashing whatever bug that remains!

We’ve decided to bring you something a bit more technical today, however, and this is in regards to the lighting overhaul that we’ve kept bringing up in the latest posts:

Probes among us

The pink fiesta that you see is a plethora of light probes that are being manually placed and tweaked in every location.

In short, they allow us to provide quality and accurate lighting for non-static objects while also providing some necessary light information for the static ones. Do note that this is very performant, despite the way it looks behind the scenes!

We’re also bringing you another scene that has been tweaked and is close to being ready for prime time:

Painting with light

Thank you for keeping up with our posts, we’ll see you next week!

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DevBlog 142 / Rats!

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Hello!

As promised, we’re bringing one of our new and latest additions, one that’ll breathe more life to the world, rats!

See them driven before you!

We bet that you weren’t expecting that.

Other than the addition of these little critters, more fixes and improvements have been introduced, as well as further lighting tweaks to more scenes. We can already see the light at the end of the tunnel, pun intended!

We’ve also decided to share a glimpse of our polish work:

Mind the gap.

Can you guess in which area this cave is located?

That’s it for today’s DevBlog post, we hope that you’ve enjoyed it, have a great weekend!

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DevBlog 141 / Dungeons & Lighting

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Hi there!

We’ve continued working on the lighting aspect of all our scenes, while also tweaking related content such as materials, reflection probes, color grading and so on, ensuring that everything is looking pretty and as close as possible to our vision.

As such, we’re bringing you a couple more examples of the new and improved looks that you can expect when you explore this unique world:

Overhauled lighting in the dungeons I.

Overhauled lighting in the dungeons II.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed the content that we had to share for this week, there are some new things in store that we hope to show you in the upcoming DevBlogs, so stay tuned!

Have a good one!

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DevBlog 140 / Lighting Overhaul

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Hello!

Hope you’ve had a great week.

For this Friday devblog post we’re revealing some of the results of our efforts in polishing the game, specifically regarding lighting and the mood it can bring to any scene.

The images shared below showcase a few scenes that have been through this overhaul, previous look as a reference on the top with the new lighting below it.

Improved lighting.

Some improved VFX together with improved lighting.

Enhanced mood.

Thank you for reading, enjoy the weekend!

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DevBlog 128 / Everything old is new again!

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Hello everyone!

The team is currently really busy finishing up some major tasks, so the post this week is gonna be just a quick update!

We are all adding those finishing touches to every aspect of the game that will surely bring the whole thing together and really make it shine. Working on porting the game to consoles is also very time-consuming, and that’s where we’re at.

Here’s a little teaser of one of the early locations, now reworked, that you’ll get to explore!

An imposing statue guards these lands.

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DevBlog 71 / Survival rule #1: Cardio

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Hi there!

Half of the team members are enjoying their much deserved vacations, and our programmer and game designer is back and working on the blocking of the final zones of the game! Most of the ideas are in paper and sketches including the puzzles, encounters, cutscenes and events. Blocking the final zone of the game provides an opportunity to look at the game as whole, while also considering its pacing and mood building and performing small tweaks here and there.

Right now we are blocking the Bottom of the Rift Windmills, the area inhabited by the previously revealed canyon kids. We’re aiming at a spicing up the place with a lot of exploration opportunities while taking advantage of the topology of the terrain to include plenty of vertical exploration as well. Here’s a small preview below.

Bottom Rift Windmills blocking preview.

Like we mentioned above, small tweaks and polish passes were made in the previous zones in order to achieve the intended mood. Below you will find two pictures, the first one being of the Old Woman’s House, and the second one an encounter with two cursed soldiers that are into jogging.

Old Woman’s House in the woods.

Survival rule #1: Cardio.

Hope you’ve enjoyed our devblog update, have a great weekend!

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DevBlog 40 / The Rift Windmills

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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 36 / Darkness creeps in

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Hi everyone!

Once again, this week André was improving and fixing some stuff following the feedback we got from Lisbon Games Week. Some UI changes and rearrangement were done for a more readable inventory, for example. Two handed swords will also start to behave like one handed ones, since various testers sheathed the weapon by mistake in the middle of the combat. Also the Elk control and camera were improved, and probably a change in the controls will be made at a later stage. Since the prototype that the inspiration for the Elk control was Shadow of the Colossus, but maybe it is time to test a new control system, more similar to the Girl control. We will have the chance to test these changes at Comic Con Portugal.

We also revamped the area with the cave tunnels in order to achieve a more immersive ambiance.

Close encounters of the slime kind.

One last thing, we are having a lot of fun doing some promotion captures with the cinematic camera đŸ˜›

Wandering in the swamp.

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DevBlog 33 / Straight outta the Lumberyard

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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.

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