Dynamic facial normal maps!

Hiya!

We've been working on ideas for Lemniscate, and we were reminded of something we've wanted to try doing for a long time: dynamic facial normal maps tied to morph targets. You know: when a character pulls up an eyebrow and wrinkles appear on his forehead, and the like. It took us about a single workday to implement this using UE4 Blueprints (maybe eight hours including creating the normal maps).

We don't want to spoil anything of Lemniscate, so we've applied this technology to one of our characters from OLP, Beat. She hasn't had a singing video yet, so with this, all of the characters have lip-sync videos where they make fools of themselves.

This animation isn't final or fully detailed, the body animation is still in progress so this version is made of recycled, already existing animations. Oh, by the way, we've also made the texture based eyes work.

The quality of this gif isn't great, but you can hopefully see how the normal maps change. We should really make some older characters, this would look perfect on them.

If you're interested, we can probably make a quick tutorial on how to make dynamic normal maps (EDIT: here it is) and texture based eye movement work in UE4 Blueprints.

Just to make it clear, we're progressing with the development of Lemniscate. This is one of the rooms (the staff quarters):

See Lemniscate's ship in 3D!

Hi!

We've uploaded a new model to Sketchfab: now you can see the game's ship in 3D!

OuterLine: Lemniscate - The Ship by ProjectOL on Sketchfab

You can click on the annotations to take a simple tour, but you can also explore it yourself. We recommend using the first person control mode for this, and adjust the walk speed with the mouse wheel, or else you'll fly right through the ship.

This model isn't exactly like the in-game map -  we had to leave most of the props so we could upload it to Sketchfab. We've halved texture sizes, left some out, but it might still be tough for SF's engine to display it in a browser. It's still amazing what this engine can do in a browser window.
The rooms' shapes and sizes were exported directly from UE4 BSPs, so until we release the game, this is the closest you can get to exploring the ship.

In other news, our Greenlight campaign is progressing fairly well, considering we suck at marketing. Seriously. We've visited forums and wrote posts to get more votes, but I guess we're not pushy enough to be successful marketers. Also, there are a lot of people who want to talk to us and who we need to talk to, and it's wearing us both out. We're not very good at social situations either, so instead of feeling tired because of 14-hour days, we feel tired because we had to talk to three people in a single day instead of just one. Oh, the struggle.

Keep the votes flowing!

OuterLine: Lemniscate

Good news!



We've finally launched our Greenlight campaign. You can vote for us here

So the final name of Project Blind is OL: Lemniscate.
To be honest, we wanted to do a flashier reveal of the OL abbreviation's true meaning, but... it's not flashy. It stands for OuterLine. It's basically the universe which we have created that houses all of our game ideas (for now). So, due to financial constraints and to our limited experience with game development, it so happened that Lemniscate will be our first released game - after it got through Greenlight (so, please!).

We've also changed our team name to ExceptionGate, and changed the blog title accordingly. And created a new Facebook page. And now we're hoping our likers will slowly trickle over to it. wink wink

The last few weeks were a mess of trying to properly record footage from Unreal 4 and video editing. In the final days we chose to record footage with the built-in matinee recorder, but that makes gameplay really hard so there are some lower quality clips in the trailer from earlier screen recordings. Also, we're not good at trailers. (actually we've figured it out: it's magic, and we're muggles) We've managed to leave out most of the gameplay we've implemented from the video. We still hope it catches some people's eyes and makes them read the description and take a look at our gifs. Seriously, we're better at making gif posts. Just look at the gif posts. Don't judge from the trailer.

Anyways... we're considering crowdfunding. We're short on money, and currently this project doesn't generate any profit. Using free software means we don't have to pay for licenses, but even with minimal expenses.. we have to eat something. The downside of crowdfunding is that taxes are ridiculous.

And now it's the middle of the night, so we're going to sleep. In the next few days, I'll sit back, relax and watch the votes flow in. Hopefully. oh crap, I have finals And Geril's going to work on a Sketchfab model for the Greenlight campaign. Because he's a workaholic.

The new model for Lemniscate, of course, will fit right in with our previous works in our Sketchfab gallery. Such colorful and bouncy.... spaceship. Yeah.

G'night!

Feature Update!

Hi!

It's time for another update on how the development is going. We've, since the last update, added:

Objects that can be picked up and thrown, and if they are thrown with enough force, they break/explode. These are not using UE4's built in fracture mesh. They spawn gibs and particle meshes on impact, destroy themselves and of course, make noise, too. 

We can't show you yet, but the monster can now react to noises. It's possible to distract him with throwing an object somewhere far, and if the monster is close enough to hear it (or it is loud enough), he will inspect the sound's location.

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The doors also got an upgrade. The door system itself changed, now every door uses a certain color, and the corresponding colored card opens the door. They also got this flashy sign on the buttons that shows if they are locked or not.

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We've added a note system to the game. Every in-game character has a Personal Assistant Device (P.A.D) that they use to take notes with. The P.A.D assigns these notes to the locations they were recorded at inside the ship. If you find someone's P.A.D, their notes will become visible and readable. 

Like this poor fella's.

And this is how the note looks if you activate/deactivate the found P.A.D.

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We've added visible points to the spine of the monster, so he can be seen from farther away.

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One of the biggest features we've added is the fire detection system in the ship. If there is a fire, the sprinklers will activate (if the water system is active, of course), and put it out over time. The fire can also kill the player if he stays in it for long enough. Also, if the player stands under the sprinkler, he gets wet and the camera also gets an effect that makes it hard to see. It fades over time, but while he's wet, electric devices will be dangerous to him.

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The last thing is the way the day ends. After a set amount of time, time resets, and we've added an effect that sweeps through the ship, representing the time loop starting everything over.

Also, related to this, we've made a clock that shows the current time. This will be the clock that wakes the player every day, and he can also use it to determine how much time he has left of that day.

We're still working on the interface, there are a lot of placeholders and debug stuff there, please excuse the messiness.

In other news, we're preparing for our Steam Greenlight campaign, and trying to find legal ways to release the game (we're in Hungary... it's not easy)

This is all for today, see you next time!

Project Blind story details!

Hi! It's Geril.

We're on Steam Concepts! (And soon Greenlight) Check it out!

***

We haven't really talked about the story of Project Blind, because obviously, we don't want to ruin anything. But I'll try my best to give you an overview.

The game is set on a transport spaceship that carries supplies from and to a city-sized science base. In the game, there are also four people being transported on it, one of them being the player, an ex-engineer who had a severe accident and lost his vision, and therefore his job. He is in a coma after the surgery that replaced his eyes with a machine.

The other three people are a newly retired doctor, a scammer lawyer and an insane designer. All three of them leave messages in their portable devices, which the player can check to find out more about them.

The spaceship has a crew of five people who keep the ship in check, while the ship carries them through space on a predefined path.

Among the cargo, there is a military experiment hidden, the result of an ongoing gene-modifying project. This creature wakes up from cryogenic sleep for unknown reasons, and breaks free.

The player wakes up after this happens. Most of his fellow passengers are dead, and he can only find out what happened by discovering clues and reading writings on the wall. The only other survivor has locked himself in the surveillance room, watching the player through the cameras, and he is the one leaving the messages.

The loose monster isn't the only thing standing in the way of exploring and fixing the ship. About eight minutes after the player wakes up, the ship enters an anomaly that resets time and the player wakes up again. Time goes back by about one and a half days, but the player always wakes up in the last minutes. By that time, the other survivor has changed what he could in the ship based on his own experience and the player's actions, to help the player progress, and locked himself in. For example, if the player rearranges a room to get to a valve to turn off the heating in the room, then the next day, the other survivor will have already exposed the valve for him. Of course, he won't repeat everything the player does, but he tries his best to help. This is why he writes the notes on the wall, although those can be misleading sometimes.

Ultimately, it is up to the player how many times the day repeats, and what the ship's fate will be.

Features in Project Blind so far!

Hi! In this post, I'd like to show you some of the features we've added to the game this month. (Because we realized that the video showed nothing) So, let's go!

First, we have: automatic doors that open when you walk into their range.

The same doors can be closed/opened with access cards, here is one such card:

Using it, you can lock the doors. There are three security levels (three colored cards), each color adds a new level of security to the door. This helps keep the monster out.

We have an inventory system with 8 slots (controlled via the mouse wheel), with which you can pick up, use and drop items. You can even use items with other objects, like putting duct tape on something!

For the items, we have a fully functional vending machine. As you can see, all of the usable items are able to display their names and two info sections on the HUD.

We have two view modes in the game, one lets you see your near surroundings in black and white, the other lets you see electricity, other types of connections, and you can see much farther with it, although in significantly worse quality.

We have a power supply system, any item has the ability to run on electricity, there are power supplies that can be chained together, and switches to trigger each individual item, or multiple items at the same time. With these, we can build a full system, perfect for puzzles. Here you can see power cores that can be inserted into the sockets, which provide power for the circuits. There are other items that can be picked up and thrown as well.

The latest addition is the ability to climb into air vents. This has no animation or transition yet, so it looks weird, but it is also fully functional.

We'll try to update more frequently, as we're moving faster and faster in development. See you next time!

Pic Update!

We're still working on Project Blind, and we've spiced up the graphics a lot. Have a look: