Bobcat

Hi! Today we're showing you the second playable character, a bobcat named Jagger (not sure if the name will stay).

He's the eldest of the playable characters. He's masculine, self-confident, agressive and short-fused. He likes gambling, curse words and being in control. He trusts a few people, but only respects his dad, and tries to follow in his footsteps. In the beginning of the game, he's trying to find a job because he's indebted to the wrong people.

The 3D model and the textures are not finished, but you get the idea.

(We designed his clothes with Mad Max / Han Solo in mind)

We tested what his facial expressions would be like (in Blender):

The Boulder is conflicted

Update:

Maps and control

Hi!

We're constantly working on the game's controls, and also on a map so that we can test the controls. We drew a sketch for a map structure, and we already made it functional in the UDK. So, here you go: enjoy the sight of the player character jumping around in a sketch, in a textbook, within a wonderful, low-FPS gif. If it loads.

(Next time the quality's going to be better, I promise.)

Apart from the sketch, we made another simple map, without a real structure, to see how the environment would work with the control mechanics. The design is very basic. We only have a few world objects, that's why it doesn't have any detail and looks kind of boring. We'll be working on those later.

Here are some pictures of the map:

Shapekey Test

We've been planning to post info about the gameplay for a long time now, but we'd rather not discuss it just yet. Instead, we're going to show some interesting stuff.

One of the playable characters in the game is going to be Eslie. I'm going to write about her technical properties today but her story and personality will be covered in another post.

Her lip-syncing is kind of difficult to create and adjust with her being part wolf. Morph targets - or shape keys - deform her base mesh into a given position (for example, her mouth making different sounds). It can be adjusted, how much (a gaping mouth-morph target can be adjusted to become a slightly-open-mouth morph target by changing the values) and when (they are made into keyframes) the mesh deforms. With some effort, these morph targets can be adjusted so Eslie can (almost) perfectly lipsync any given speech.

A demonstration of this:



I (Geril) used a free software called Papagayo that creates lip-sync using sound and text. It's not very accurate, and it doesn't adjust the jaw movement unfortunately, so there's still a lot of adjustments to make after it finishes. It's better than creating it all from scratch, though.

The importing didn't go very well, but I managed to put it all together in Blender ver. 2.63. I also added some very basic facial mimicry to see how it would look.

And the character can now sing. Not in perfect sync, of course, and without any animation on her body... in T-pose. But it's working. (Makes a great imitation of the decapitated robot in the first Alien movie.)

Hi!

Sorry for the long silence. There have been major changes in our team: there are only two of us working now. So for this reason, we needed to pause working on our current project, and instead focus on another project we planned to make sometime later. This other project is set in the same world, so the already introduced elements will be implemented in this project as well.

This project is a side-scrolling platform adventure co-op game (really hard to describe it). It has a single player mode and a co-op mode of up to 4 players either locally or online.
We're still using the Unreal Engine 3, so we can use the content we already have.

Main aspects of the game:

fast-paced gameplay
teamwork
advanced crafting
detailed story
puzzles
dungeons
exploring

Happy New Year!

We wanted to post a drawing this time, but we are working on the first gameplay video, so we'll just show you a screenshot of the level as it is right now.

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!