Hello everyone! Thank you everyone for your kind words and support last post. We are working very hard over here, and it's always nice to hear understanding and appreciation.
We decided to give you guys a sneak peak at some of our latest work:
Friday, September 20, 2013
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Underestimations, End of Summer Catch-Up, and 100 Island Lake
Hello Everyone!
It's been a while and we'd like to let you guys in on everything that has been going on in development.
First things first: it has been a slow but steady realization for us that we will not be completing this game by our original goal of October this year. Over the past 3 months, we have worked almost every day, and still there is much to do! In those months we continued to learn and produce more technologies for the game, as well as better ways of getting the atmosphere and mechanics that we feel are crucial to the land of XING - especially when it comes to the Oculus Rift!
Instead of finishing quickly and giving you guys a game that is less than we want, we have opted to continue our development into the winter - striving to hit all (or most) of our creative goals for the game. Quality is what we are striving for, and we hope that everyone will understand that the wait will be necessary for a better and more polished product.
Long story short, the release for XING: The Land Beyond is now looking closer to early-mid 2014.
This was us back in April:
Also, we take one day off each week :)
We make good use of our small amount of time off:
Videos will be coming out later, showing some of these things off.
When they arrived, we were really ecstatic with the results:
As always, feel free to comment or send us a message if you have any thought, questions or concerns!
Cheers!
It's been a while and we'd like to let you guys in on everything that has been going on in development.
Underestimations
Instead of finishing quickly and giving you guys a game that is less than we want, we have opted to continue our development into the winter - striving to hit all (or most) of our creative goals for the game. Quality is what we are striving for, and we hope that everyone will understand that the wait will be necessary for a better and more polished product.
Long story short, the release for XING: The Land Beyond is now looking closer to early-mid 2014.
This was us back in April:
End of Summer Catch-Up
Our Daily Routine
Now that summer has ended, we have all gone back to our homes and are working remotely each day. A typical day means waking up around 9am and turning on Video Chat with the other two members by 10am. The rest of the day is spent working on XING, with breaks for lunch and dinner. We generally work until around 9pm, but many nights go on till around 12am. Then it begins all over again. That may sound like a lot, but we are all still excited to be working on this awesome project - with each day bringing new challenges and solutions.Also, we take one day off each week :)
We make good use of our small amount of time off:
Look what we found!
By the Ocean
Ice skating
Yar! We Be Pirates!
Puzzles and Mechanics
Let's just say you guys will be in for a treat! We have tons of exciting new gameplay we have added to enhance the PC and Oculus experience! Everything from new types of puzzles to how the player can interact with objects to the detail of the material applied to each mesh.Videos will be coming out later, showing some of these things off.
Kickstarter Rewards : The Miniatures!
We decided to order a few 3-D prints of our latest models to see how they would turn out. At first we were unsure of how some of them would come out, knowing many of them have fine details.When they arrived, we were really ecstatic with the results:
Unpainted:
Displayed in a cabinet:
Painted:
If you missed out on getting one of these guys any would like to still help raise funds to support the project, we are extending the Add-On for miniatures until the game's release date.
After you play XING: The Land Beyond, choose your
favorite character statue from the game. Let us know what it is (within the
first 3 months of the game release) and you will get a paint-able miniature
version of that character to have and to hold. That's right, you get a real
physical miniature of any character you want.
These are $65 + Shipping.
If you decided to donate through paypal, please leave a note that says that you would like one of the miniatures. Thank you!
Shipping:
+ $10 for US/Mexico/Canada
+ $15 international
Donate Here
Rainforest Screenshots
Some detail:
Sunset above the canopy:
100 Island Lake
Sneak Preview of the Work in Progress:
Check out the new reflections!
As always, feel free to comment or send us a message if you have any thought, questions or concerns!
Cheers!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Deep in Development
Hey Everyone!
So over the past month we've realized that keeping up the blog and updates while developing isn't as easy as you might think.
Our workflow and overall pipeline has seemed to run smoother each week we've worked, so we decided to show you some of the fruits of our labor (well, at least the visual fruits).
Firstly, let's get this out of the way, we are all pretty new at this. None of us have had any specific video game art education, so going into full time development has forced us all to learn content creation on the fly. As a result, over the past year we have gone through many different workflows and methods of creating assets.
The first step, as I've preached many times before, is research. Sometimes it's great to come up with your own methods of working, but without guidance from the tried in true, you are in for a long development process. Sites like polycount and the UDK forums provide a ton of knowledge and insight into whatever it is you want to achieve, provided you spend enough time there.
The pipeline:
We use Zbrush on a remarkable number of our assets. For our characters and other heavily sculpted meshes, it is nearly a one stop shop for us. Koriel, with her background in traditional clay sculpting, has become our resident Zbrusher - if the mesh has sculpted details, Kori has probably had her hands on it.
This monkey started out as z-spheres and was converted to a few hundred polys. He is then subdivided and low detail sculpting is applied. High detail sculpting is done last. Our high detail sculpt does not need an incredible amount of detail as the material we apply in UDK provides noise and detail normals.
Once the sculpt is complete, high poly and medium poly meshes are exported. Sometimes the UV map plugin in Zbrush gives an adequate mapping, but often we have to manually unwrap the mesh. Once unwrapped, the mesh gets sent to MeshLab for optimization. The number of triangles depends on the mesh; the tablet above is 610 tris, for example. The high poly and the low poly both get sent to xNormal for their final bake. We bake out a normal and AO map for each sculpted mesh. The low poly is cleaned up and finally converted to FBX for import into UDK.
Both maps make their way into Photoshop to create the diffuse for the mesh. We use NDO2 to convert the normal map into a base for our diffuse. Depending on the mesh, we overlay photo-sourced textures and hand painted elements on top of the base diffuse as well as the AO. The normal generally gets cleaned up and softened to avoid any noise. The finished texture maps are converted to TGA and are imported into UDK.
This workflow provides a unified look to our assets and makes it easy to keep track of the progress of any mesh. Check out this sneak peak of some of the models in and out of the rainforest:
John here to talk about the art pipeline.
Firstly, let's get this out of the way, we are all pretty new at this. None of us have had any specific video game art education, so going into full time development has forced us all to learn content creation on the fly. As a result, over the past year we have gone through many different workflows and methods of creating assets.
The first step, as I've preached many times before, is research. Sometimes it's great to come up with your own methods of working, but without guidance from the tried in true, you are in for a long development process. Sites like polycount and the UDK forums provide a ton of knowledge and insight into whatever it is you want to achieve, provided you spend enough time there.
The pipeline:
We use Zbrush on a remarkable number of our assets. For our characters and other heavily sculpted meshes, it is nearly a one stop shop for us. Koriel, with her background in traditional clay sculpting, has become our resident Zbrusher - if the mesh has sculpted details, Kori has probably had her hands on it.
This monkey started out as z-spheres and was converted to a few hundred polys. He is then subdivided and low detail sculpting is applied. High detail sculpting is done last. Our high detail sculpt does not need an incredible amount of detail as the material we apply in UDK provides noise and detail normals.
Both maps make their way into Photoshop to create the diffuse for the mesh. We use NDO2 to convert the normal map into a base for our diffuse. Depending on the mesh, we overlay photo-sourced textures and hand painted elements on top of the base diffuse as well as the AO. The normal generally gets cleaned up and softened to avoid any noise. The finished texture maps are converted to TGA and are imported into UDK.
Man:
Walls:
Totem Pole:
Bird Head and Floor:
That's all for now! Thanks for checking in and have a great rest of your week :)
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Rainforest Revisited...and taken to the next level!
After creating the majority of the beach environment, we are excited to be resuming construction on the rainforest!
We went over many of the "bigger picture" ideas and outlines for the whole game this week, just to make sure everything was still fitting together nicely. It is always good to take a step back from the parts and pieces we are working on - to see them in the grander scheme of the game world which we have created.
This week was a focus on story, updating level designs, and puzzle planning. We now have some awesome puzzles in the works for the rainforest! Also, given the great response to the weather effects in the sandbox, we are happy to be working with them again - especially now that we can test them with the Oculus Rift!
We are excited to be employing newer and more sophisticated techniques while updating and revisiting this level. Here are some of the latest looks at the rainforest environment:
Super High Resolution (4976 x 3002) :
The Big Picture
We went over many of the "bigger picture" ideas and outlines for the whole game this week, just to make sure everything was still fitting together nicely. It is always good to take a step back from the parts and pieces we are working on - to see them in the grander scheme of the game world which we have created.
This Week
This week was a focus on story, updating level designs, and puzzle planning. We now have some awesome puzzles in the works for the rainforest! Also, given the great response to the weather effects in the sandbox, we are happy to be working with them again - especially now that we can test them with the Oculus Rift!
We are excited to be employing newer and more sophisticated techniques while updating and revisiting this level. Here are some of the latest looks at the rainforest environment:
Super High Resolution (4976 x 3002) :
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