Alpha - Log #1 (Weeks 1-2)

Progress:

Rigidbody Physics:

In short, the Unity Character Controller Component that exists, is pure garbage once you want to develop beyond simple interactions. This of course leads into the creation of our Rigidbody character controller, which adds layers of complexity to the character that were impossible with the old component. This includes things such as adding various forces onto the player, such as Jose’s water cannon. It simply opens up a multitude of possibilities for puzzles, interactions and, in general, fun stuff. Physics is fun stuff.

Save System

Progress is now kept track of automatically, remembering important milestones in Safa’s journey (like her completed puzzles!). You can now safely close the game, get a nice cup of coffee, and come back right to where you left off.

Climbing Overhaul

To keep a long story short, we’ve gone from needing 7 colliders to set up one climbing area and very buggy movement controls, to one script that contains the whole path and their parameters, making it incredibly easy and much less buggy to set up!

A Whole New World (1st dungeon/art assets)

Our first dungeon, which we’d use as our alpha milestone alongside many of our bug fixing objectives, is a dungeon themed around water. Using Mohaj’s power, Safa can raise and lower the water level of this two story dungeon!

It won’t be easy to build the path to the end. Vicious water torrents. Savage turrets that SHOOT water torrents. Floating cubes, variable tide levels, and breakable pillars! These are all going to bring our environment to life and they’re at a level where they can be tested and implemented.

Rock01

Rock02

Rock03

Rock04

Rock05

Acacia

Will Safa and Mohaj pull through?

A New Character Joins the Roster

Our new character is inspired by djinns/genies. An entity tied to a vessel and the source of the hammer’s power. They were designed, modeled and rigged in the second week.

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The Artists

Aidan

In the first week I concepted and modelled a bell for our sound based puzzle as well as deteriorating some runes in photoshop. The bells will lower as the player completes ‘dungeons’ so it is ideal to get the puzzle in for testing. As for the runes, there was a need for some flat blockouts of some runes for texturing.

In the second week I concepted and modelled the djinn, designing him as an assembly of rubble and other objects lying around. The goal with his design is that he appears as an imitation of his normal look.

Connor

During the first week I experimented with some of the particle systems we may need later in the production cycle. It was pointed out that Mohaj could have been created primarily using a particle system to create much of his form. I decided to see which would be the best way to approach the task. Both approaches used a pulsating border ring, but differed in whether to emit Mohaj’s particles from the shell of a mesh or spawn the particles in a 2D circle. I began creating a custom shader for our fire effects, a primary light source for indoor areas. I found reference to a flame style we wanted for our game and tried to emulate it using a mask and smoothed cloud textures.

I also created a series of rock walls.

In the second week I looked at the water puzzles discussed during the first week and created some concepts for some of the elements involved.

Once I got back after a few days absence, I claimed the task of modeling the Acacia style trees in the game. Other artists wanted differentiation so I decided on the angular growth that they wanted, a straight growth and a barren growth.

David

The first week of Alpha I began sculpting the terrain of the world using a plugin for Unity named TerrainFormer. This also involved planning the layout of the world and where the three exterior dungeons would be located while also testing the time it takes to run between each one. Jose and I played with the idea of placing smaller dungeons or interesting buildings throughout to breakup the long walk times while adding more depth to the gameplay. I created some driftwood for set dressing that can be stuck into the sand to help guide the player as well as a modelling the base mesh for a modular kit of walls and trim for building small towers following a middle eastern architecture style ready to be taken into ZBrush for sculpting.

Also during this first week Jose purchased Amplify Shader Creator for Unity which is a node based shader editor to allow the artists more control over the creation of shaders without needing any scripting knowledge. Using Amplify I played around with a few master materials that could be used to quickly texture props as well as some quick iterations of the djinn’s shader should we choose to have him as an entity as opposed to a solid object.

Week 2 started off with Jose and I planning out the layout for the first dungeon, taking his rough sketches into photoshop for a cleaner layout that I could follow while blocking out the area. A quick set of base models used for the greybox were created and laid out. I also helped out with retopologizing, baking and rigging the djinn model which will be ready for animating in week 3. I tried out baking in Substance Painter 2 which gave great results using the bake by mesh name function which bakes each mesh group separately giving a perfect bake with no artifacting.

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The Programmers

Hadley

Now that we are in the alpha stages of the game’s development. We got to begin working on some of the more exciting stuff, stuff such as fixing the broken camera, and most importantly, recreating the character controller using actual rigidbody physics instead of the character controller component that unity supplies. This created a multitude of problems off the bat, interactions between the player and literally everything else now needed to be handled effectively. Most importantly was of course movement, which needed quite a lot of refinement in order to bring it back to the level of control that it was before. Alongside a jump that felt similar to the previous iteration, but also interacted with the game world correctly. Rigidbody physics can create some awesome, but unexpected collisions and interactions.

The camera was the next major thing that was worked out, taking it away from the plague that was the previous iteration, that would get stuck and zoom right into the player and not want to leave for a while. Constant bugs with that camera, lead to the development of another camera manages that handles states, and raycasts picking up the objects that is interfering with the camera’s line of sight on the player, which will then occlude or simply “see through” the collided object. Overall, smarter, more effective system that works at least a thousand times better than before.

Now, the major issue with rigidbody physics is that, now I have to handle all these little interactions such as stepping up stairs, sliding down sloped surfaces. Most importantly is the step up, which is going to require 2-3 raycasts in order to detect slopes, future step height and whether or not that is something that is able to be transitioned to.

Jose

Alright. We’ve hit alpha and that means the game’s about to enter a whole new era of content!

After deciding with the team on what area we’d work on, David and I laid out the general structure of the first dungeon - a water themed one. I started working on the puzzle mechanics that will populate it..

I know I said it before, but allow me to reiterate: Vicious water torrents. Savage turrets that SHOOT water torrents. Floating cubes, variable tide levels, and breakable pillars! These are all going to bring our environment to life and they’re at a level where they can be tested and implemented.

The game is now fit with an autosave system that keeps track of important milestones (like completed puzzles and collection of the pole). No more starting back from zero every time!

On the visual side, now that we had the Amplify Shader, I toyed around with some emissive shaders to improve the raised pillars from the first puzzle. Instead of the light just turning on, it fades in and out!

I also remade the climbing system (again…!?). It’s incredibly easy to setup, and I spent four hours mashing my face into the keyboard to make sure it wouldn’t break this time. All in all, things are looking up!

Izzy

For the past 2 weeks I have been focused on creating the new character. I have finalised the model for Safa, texture and UV map. She is also now rigged up with facial animations and ready for animation. After this I put her in the unity engine to test out some of the cloth physics for her scarf. There are a whole lof of animations to do for her as we’re starting over again. While importing her model to Unity I’ve encountered many bugs but in the end it has been solved. We’ve also created a shader for Safa in Unity in order to have a sense of cohesiveness with David’s environment.