ABSENT LOG Dev Update 2/15/2024

We march onward in our perilous development Journey! Since our last update, we’ve had a rough go of it, lots of sickness has ravaged through the team and we have been a bit held down as a result, so a few items we wanted to make into this update unfortunately didn't make it, most notably, updated attack animations for the sparkjack, and hotkey weapon swapping. However, we are starting to fulfill content to be implemented in game, from an ever growing backlog of work. This update, we bring a first look at some of the beginning groundwork of our rebuilt melee system, some visual reworks, various bug fixes and refinements, a closer look at some new game assets nearing completion and implementation, and a look at some new locations in the works.

Included change list for 2/15/2024:

- Created and implemented game assets for updated Sparkjack design.

- Implemented updated Idle and equipped animations for Sparkjack, including physical stowage.

- Added a specific equip slot for Sparkjack.

- Implemented a new timed idle animation for TW.

- Implemented a new standard idle animation for TW.

- Reworked materials and textures for TW’s pouch gear.

- Added Physics simulation to TW’s pouch gear, giving it some bounce and secondary motion when she moves.

- Fixed mismatched colors with Main menu UI and Pause Menu UI.

- Main Menu has a facelift, looks a bit nicer.

- Added hotkey mapping for “Evade” “Inventory” and “Mantle.”

- Fixed lightmap resolution values for “OVERLANDE” and Testing Lab maps, reducing processing load and load times slightly.

- Added fade map transitions when loading levels to hide asset loading.

- Created game level mockup for “OVERLANDE” Central Data Access Network.

-Created map transition with in depth custom UI animation specific to “OVERLANDE.”

- Created and added new sound loops for ambient sounds, such as Wind, Spatial Ambience, and Water Flowing for OVERLANDE.

- Assigned physical material slots for certain level materials.

- Created a Path Tracing fog system and implemented it into all levels.

- Created various new particle systems, including a “data dust” effect, visible emanating off Peris, in OVERLANDE, and in the main menu.

- Reworked sparkjack hit detection system, now they register only the first object they hit in a single swing, as opposed to every object, in every frame of animation. This fix essentially makes our melee actually usable.

NEW MECHANICS:

In an attempt to make a more intuitive melee system, we took a step back and really thought hard on how we would approach this. Managing multiple enemies at once only with melee, especially when they are all shooting at you, can be difficult. The first step in this overhaul was to find some way to “focus” on a single enemy if the player chooses to do so. After some discussions, we decided to try a “lock on” approach, that can be quickly toggled on and off and was easy and quick to manage. Something akin to Souls-esque combat, though our melee system is not going to be quite that robust. We view the Sparkjack as a necessity in that the player should have at least some offensive capability if ammo is either scarce or depleted. We are approaching melee with those situations in mind first and foremost. At some point when levels are more established and we have a better idea of how to approach puzzles, the Sparkjack will also act as a tool in puzzle-solving. As development continues, Expect the Sparkjack’s identity to become more refined and realized.

With the sparkjack equipped, you can press R to lock onto an enemy.

ART ASSETS:

Here is a small showcase of some current items in the works.

World Ship Industrial early Exploration:

“While I've continued work on Huey and TW's ship, it doesn't look much different than last time around.  It's nearing a point where I can UV unwrap it and begin texturing, so expect to see some of that before long.”

Art by Tekka Croe.

“In the meantime, I've been thinking about ‘Industrial.’  This is currently planned to be the first real level of the game after the tutorial area (‘Resource Intake’ on the below map).

My current plan for Industrial's setting is an enormous chamber in the world-ship's belly.  A series of specialized manufacturing platforms are arrayed along a central spinal structure, all suspended in this wide open space.  The defining repeated visual element that I'm going to be pushing with Industrial is that everything is built around these heavy, modular frame plates.

By my current thinking, only a couple of the manufacturing platforms would be traversed in gameplay.  The openness of the chamber they're suspended in will hopefully give some perspective on the scale of the ship.”

Art by Tekka Croe

“Trying to communicate scale while keeping development scope in check is something we’ve been thinking about since early in the project, and from the beginning I’ve tried to lay out the world-ship in a modular way that would let us put a variety of unique environments near to each other.  This lets us have a huge ship (with plans to give plenty of first-hand glimpses of that hugeness) while keeping the actual gameplay environments mostly constrained to the ship’s front right quarter.”

-Tekka

World Ship Crewman Game asset - Security Uniform

(Original art posted for reference.)

Art by Looming

“I was pretty happy with where our original concept for the Security Officers landed, and tried to keep the game asset faithful to that with a few refinements. The neat thing about this PBR workflow is that when generating the texture work, I can easily play with materials in a way that would take an exorbitant amount of time in the concept phase. It's easy to call it out on the side, but doing it in real time opens up a lot of possibilities.

However, one thing that became apparent when making the uniform, is that we need a way to set up a modular character body asset, and cut apart the body into parameters that can be easily swapped out to have an artificial sense of diversity in character appearance.

For example, the uniform might be the same for all characters, but swapping the head with different head sculpts and skin tones on the fly is the most ideal setup.

A plan I've brainstormed on how to approach this is to set up a base body, with the head on a separate material slot. Once that is done, I can generate various different “shape keys” , each shape key a different sculpted face for an individual character, that way it's not generating a new mesh everytime it spawns in the game world, it's streaming the same mesh.

Create each “outfit” as a separate instanced skeletal mesh, overlay it on the body, and hide the base body material slot so only the head is showing with the outfit.

I've already started laying the groundwork for male bodies, using Hueys base mesh as a template, since his topology is fairly solid, and his mesh is already set up to be rigged for UE4, the female body I will have to generate from scratch, as Peris and TW are too unique in terms of their geometry to functionally be used as templates.”

-Looming

“OVERLANDE” In game mockup and quick exploratory sketch.

Art by Looming

“ “OVERLANDE” as a concept and location has been stuck in my head for quite some time. What it basically is, is a CDAN, Central Data Access Network. Large ships with hundreds to thousands of crewman aboard dont have the luxury of a powerful, expansive communications or “internet” network, so a lot of these ships use some form of CDAN to operate as a central network, and storage for data, information, media, and allows the ship to communicate instantaneously with its various decks, systems, AIs, and crewmembers. It is the beating heart of the ship. I imagine that it has a form of neural integration, and you could “jack in” to OVERLANDE, in order to perform certain tasks, however it's important to note that it is not a form of “limbo” or “Cyberspace” hell, but rather, what it says it is, a data access network. One's consciousness does not leave one's body when they are plugged in, and if they are disconnected non-consensually, they do not go into a coma or die, they simply wake up, maybe with a brief headache.

“OVERLANDE” refers to both a physical construct, and a digital location. In terms of its physical appearance, I imagine its a large cylindrical room, with massive chunky Nihei-like cable structures snaking throughout the room, coiling and wrapping together in the center and spreading outwards towards the top connecting to large modules on the ceiling, almost looking like some kind of olive tree. This structure would be massive, as its cable roots are actually connecting to nearly every part of the ship.

In terms of a digital location, “OVERLANDE” would appear as a consensual hallucination, a large, foggy pool of cool water, expanding almost infinitely, fluttering specks of data moving freely like floating leaves or reverse snow, scattering across the horizon. In its center, lies a large, white olive tree, standing stoically within a chilly breeze. Perhaps when the crew were still around, it may have been a warmer, more bustling place, now it lays isolated, ghostly, dead, and alone, waiting for the “spring” of its denizens, never to come.

One thing that was interesting in doing this mockup, was that with a small handful of premade assets, custom work and custom shaders, custom models, and a path tracing fog shader, I was able to quickly and effectively mock up an almost exact replication of what i envisioned this consensual hallucination to look and feel like, the key “vibe” being an area that felt unfathomably distant, isolated, and almost dreamlike.”

-Looming

SIDE NOTES:

“I have become aware of some visual issues regarding the sparkjack not properly playing its stowaway animation when swapping to specific weapons, unfortunately I didn't get a fix in time for the dev update, but later in the next week I will drop a hot fix addressing this as well as a few minor issues regarding UI and Audio looping I found.”

-Looming

Demo build can be accessed here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11DHQPpnJUpWkUI3aUCyxahKzFE_aFs7r/view?usp=sharing