Merry Christmas!

(Sorry for posting it so late.)

World details

Our game's world is based on metal. The lifeforms developed according to this, so we have created our own circle of life and have organic metals. For example, a chitin-like material is as common in their world as keratin is in ours - it's mostly a layer of defence, but it may even be the base of a plant's body.

Many plants that can be found in this metal based game world are similar to plants we are used to, the only difference is how they accommodated to the nature of the world. This might not explain much right now, but some of the questions will be answered through the actual game.

Next, I'll tell you about a gameplay element we're currently working on.
"Human" intervention is causing the metal based planet to change, similarly to how Earth may have changed in history.
The temperature became vacillating, which created bigger thermal expansions, so the planet's surface cracked and shattered in some places. It's important to note that the magnetic effect is the strongest one on the planet.

The Chasm:
There are two notable chasms on the opposite sides of the world. In these chasms the magnetic field is enormous. Most things levitate in the air, or orbit around bigger objects. The magnetic field affects everything nearby, again, since everything is based on metal. Even the living organisms have large amounts of metal inside them - everything they consume or inhale contains some metals. At the bottom of these chasms the magnetic field is so strong that it could tear nearly anything apart.

There exists a metal that generates a magnetic field under pressure. The greater the pressure, the stronger the field. With bracelets made of this metal worn on the hands and feet, and a belt worn on the waist, the ability to hover becomes possible. The bracelets and the belt need to be connected with a rubber-like tight rope, so that the farther the user holds their limbs from their body, the higher they will begin to levitate.

Lastly, the technology in this world is simple. Some would even say it's steampunk, and they wouldn't be far off. More details on this will come clear in the future.

In the next posts to come we'll write about more gameplay mechanics.

Have a nice day!

Pictures of our progress 02

Hi, I'm Geril. I'll just post a few pictures again so you can see how the project's going. You can expect more of these posts regularly.

Since my English isn't very good, Lussy's translating and putting all the posts together.

Have a nice day!

Short post: Writing system

Hi, I'm Lussy.

In this really small post, I'd like to talk about another thing we're planning on putting in the game: a writing system. Since creating a whole language for the game would take way too much time, we decided to only create a writing system. I'm the one who's working on it, because I love learning and studying languages.

There's going to be two versions of this system; a simpler version that almost everyone can learn (although the analphabetism rate is high in the game's world), and a more complex version, used only by a few well-educated people.

The simple version is based on the Latin and the Korean alphabet, and it's quite easy to figure out. The complex version is inspired by the Korean, Japanese and Chinese writing systems. If you look at these examples, you can see why the simpler one is more well-known among the people of this wild, dangerous world:

When creating each character, I first start with something complex, and I write it down by hand hundreds of times, so in the end it becomes something that comes naturally, and isn't tedious to write down.

You can be sure that it is going to play a part in the game. If someone takes the time and trouble to try and decrypt the characters, they might unveil in-game secrets.

That's about it for this post. Since it is so short, I didn't want to bother our proofreader, Maffy with it (by the way, Maffy, THANK YOU). I guess you already figured out that we are Hungarians, so our English isn't perfect. Sorry about that.
Have a nice day!

Pictures of our progress

Hi,

Since we haven't written too much about our game's world in the previous posts, we'll now share some pics. 

Everything shown on the pics is still under development, and not final.
(In the meantime, we're working on a tutorial. We hope to post that too, as soon as possible.)

About Fox - Part 1

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Geril and I'm mainly working on the graphical design of the game. In this post I'm going to write about our protagonist, mostly from the technological side.


Fox was created out of boredom on a piece of paper, and at first he had a more cartoony look.






 After that, I made other drawings to help me create Fox in 3D, these usually focused on his face.





At first, he was supposed to be a background character, so I made him with the lowest possible polygon count and the smallest possible texture size. I only gave him sunglasses so that his eye movement could be kept to a minimum.





When he became the main character, I tried to give him a more distinctive look; I made a scar on his right eye and eyebrow. As we were putting the game's story together (I will talk about the story in a later post), his right eye got replaced by a mechanical eye, and his face got an older, more mature and tired look.

Fox's clothes were a Max Payne-like leather jacket and a pair of jeans, but later, to make him more fit for the game's world, his clothes became cowboy-ish, with a poncho. The poncho was later replaced by some shoulder-protecting equipment due to the technical problems with the poncho (too many bones and unnecessary cloth physics).

Some say that Blender and the UDK are incompatible, but personally I think it's just more difficult to export certain kinds of meshes from Blender. For example, most of the problems happen while exporting the animation. That is why Fox's armature contains the least unconnected bones as possible. His movements resemble a human's more than an animal's, but of course his posture is influenced by his animal-like skeleton and body.

Fox has two different models, the first one shows when the player is controlling him and the second one is for cinematics. The cinematic model uses morph targets (or shape keys, as Blender calls them) for facial animation, while the other one only uses bones. These morph targets make it possible for me to make believable facial expressions for lip-syncing.

Morph targets in Blender (upper) and the UDK (lower)

The model is far from complete, it still needs lots of adjustments in every area. The biggest issue right now is the hair, but I hope we can fix that soon. I also plan on making him look like he has more fur.

In later posts I'll make a few tutorials on importing a skeletal mesh from Blender to the UDK. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to help in the comment section.

Have a nice day!

About the game

Hello,

I am Lussy, a member of a video game developer team. We're working on a project codenamed O.L. The game is in its very early stage. We're constantly brainstorming and still figuring out which gameplay elements to implement.

Our story revolves around an anthropomorphic fox, currently only referred to as 'Fox'. Fox lives on a planet which is mainly made of iron. The inhabitants (also anthropomorphic) live mostly in small colonies, or small cities at best. Technology is vastly different from what we know due to the many elements with unique characteristics.



The game will be powered by the Unreal Engine 3, featuring a third person perspective and will focus on adventure game elements, problem solving and combat (mostly melee). We'd also like to emphasize animal instincts and senses. For example, smells would be kind of visible for the player, and would help in pathfinding. We want to make it a unique game that players will enjoy, so feedback is greatly appreciated. After developing the core of the game and finalizing our concept, we aim to launch a Kickstarter campaign to see if our idea is interesting enough for it to be brought to reality. We're experimenting with different graphical styles, so far we like the cel-shaded and watercolor-like look the most.

Currently, we're working on the control of the main character, but we already have simple maps to test in, so looking at the pictures I upload, you can get the basic feel of the game. I'll be posting about the progress of the project on this blog regularly. In the next couple of posts I'll write about the protagonist, the world, the story, the gameplay and technological information.

Until next time, then.