07 May 2024Developer post

PHANTOM FURY - Patch #2 LIVE

Hey folks, We're pleased to bring you our second patch for Phantom Fury, you can find the detailed patch notes inside. Patch #2 - Patch Notes Fixed an issue in "Chicago On Fire" where the game could crash while loading into a specific checkpoint under certain circumstances Fixed

Hey folks,

We're pleased to bring you our second patch for Phantom Fury, you can find the detailed patch notes inside.

Patch #2 - Patch Notes

Fixed an issue in "Chicago On Fire" where the game could crash while loading into a specific checkpoint under certain circumstances
Fixed an issue in "Grand Canyon Facility" where players could get softlocked inside the Microstinger Testing Range if they shot the Fleshware Robots too quickly, causing the garbage chute to be locked until players reloaded to last checkpoint
Fixed an issue in "Underwater Passage" where players could spawn at the start of the submarine section without a submarine, forcing them to swim all the way back to the beach of Chicago
Fixed an issue where Arm & Suit Upgrades could be lost, if players died while on a vehicle, and reloaded to the latest save
Fixed an issue where Arm & Suit Upgrades could be lost, if players reload to the first checkpoint while underwater in Underwater Passage, and then did a second reload to last checkpoint after reaching the first checkpoint on land
Fixed an issue where certain Weapon Mods would get unequipped if they had recently reloaded to last check-point, or after continuing a save
Fixed an issue in Grand Canyon Facility where players could get softlocked after clipping through the floor of one of the lifts
Fixed an issue where ammo would sometimes stop regenerating for the Bile Breather or the Psychic Giant's Head
Added audio to the Psychic Giant cinematic at the end of "Underwater Passage"
Fixed an issue with Level Select where travelling to certain levels would not properly award players with an appropriate amount of Nanite Cores (Upgrade Points)
Fixed an issue in Grand Canyon Facility where players could accidentally skip the Microstinger Rocket Launcher by solving the puzzle without picking up the weapon in the Microstinger Test Range. Players will now have to use the Microstinger to shoot the Fleshware Robots in order to solve the puzzle. We've also added a much larger quantity of ammo pick-ups added to the room to avoid potential softlocks from players who may run out of ammo.
Fixed an issue with the Bile Spitter, Psychic Giant's Head and the HSKL-9M Tazer Mod where these specific weapons could break and no longer regenerate ammo, if the player used their alt-fire and then immediately mounted a weapon, like the Automatic Grenade Launcher, or the Mini-gun
Fixed an issue with the Loverboy where its alt-fire would do 0 damage, if the player presses and holds main-fire while the alt-fire auto-aim is executing
Fixed an issue with the Loverboy where it would ignore the first main-fire input after the player has fired its alt-fire, essentially forcing player to press main-fire twice after alt-firing in order to fire again
Fixed an issue with the Bile Spitter where it would no longer regenerate ammo after players loaded an earlier save while the Bile Spitter had 0 ammo
Fixed an issue where players' movement controls would break if they punched an enemy and picked up a weapon while the punch was executing, for example in Phoenix Medical Facility near the Stun Baton pick-up
Fixed an issue where ammo meters would disappear from the HUD when switching between weapons that each had their own cooldown to show on the HUD (or when switching mods that had a cooldown on the HUD, like the Psychic Giant's Head or the HSKL-9M Tazer Mod)
Fixed an issue in End of the Road where players could get softlocked outside the 2nd Phase Room for the Colonel fight, if they engaged the 2nd Phase and then immediately stepped outside the room
Fixed an issue in Demon Core Retrieval where a placeholder test beep sound could still be heard near the Demon Core
Tweaked balancing in Chicago On Fire by adding more resource and health pick-ups in the most sparce areas
Fixed an issue in Lake Michigan Submarine Facility where players could get softlocked if they got squeezed between the smaller elevator and the nearby computer server meshes
Fixed an issue where the Auto-Switch Weapon When Empty option would only work for some weapons
Fixed an issue with the HSKL-762AP where the alt-fire firing sound did not correctly trigger
Fixed an issue with the Los Alamos Defender boss where it would not always explode after dying
Fixed an issue with the Echis SMG where the player could pick up more than its max amount of rounds when the Ergonomic Grip Mod was enabled
Fixed an issue with the Echis SMG where the ammo for it would be doubled if the player loaded to an earlier checkpoint while Ergonomic Grip (dual-wield) is enabled
Fixed an issue in Grand Canyon Facility where a Grunt would not react to the player, specifically the Grunt in the two Turrets corridor
Fixed an issue in Grand Canyon Chase where the player's rockets would often be unable to home in on its target
Fixed an issue in The Cabin where certain Drones would not engage in combat until the player got very close to them
Fixed an issue with Automatic Weapons where weapons such as the Echis SMG would not automatically reload until the player lets go of main-fire, and then clicks main-fire again
Fixed an issue in The Crater where players could easily skip past a music fade-out trigger volume, potentially causing 2 soundtracks to play untop of each other, once the player arrives at the old western town section
Fixed an issue in Chicago On Fire where a certain car model looked unintentionally messed up and broken
Added additional signposting at the end of The Cabin to lead the player towards the helicopter at the end of the level, and added a barrier to avoid players backtracking all the way back to the start of the level by accident
Tweaked audio levels for music generally throughout the game; made music slightly louder
Tweaked the audio mix across the entire game, turned up certain explosion sounds (Microstinger explosion, Los Alamos Defender explosion & Crawford Mech boss missiles)
Tweaked the Echis SMG , the HSKL-762AP and the Microstinger sounds
Fixed an issue with the Weapon Selector HUD where the player would always switch to the 1st weapon in a category, even if they were holding a later weapon in that same category
Fixed an issue in Alburquerqe Outskirts where an invisible wall was present behind the punchable train-car, forcing players to punch the train-car in order to progress. Players can now either climb over the train-car, squeeze past it, or punch it out of the way in order to progress.
Fixed a few issues across the game where objects where not correctly attached to something and instead hovering mid-air (For example, we had some floating spotlights in White Sands Facility)
Fixed an issue with the Automatic Grenade Launcher and the Mini-Gun where the player would not automatically drop them, once they've run out of ammunition and could no longer be used
Fixed an issue in Chicago On Fire where debug text with a "0" was floating behind the Bowling Pins
Fixed an issue where it would sound like the player is permanently underwater, if the player was underwater and then loaded into a save where the player was no longer underwater (For example, loading into an earlier save while underwater in Underwater Passage).
Improved level progression in White Sands Facility by no longer requiring players to pick up the Triangulation Data and insert it into the computer before being able to launch missiles at the end-of-level vent
Improved level progression in Demon Core Retrieval by moving the Red Keycard to a location where it is easier for the player to spot
Fixed an issue in Los Alamos Research Facility where the pause menu would open up after players used ESC to exit the Power Generator Terminal
Fixed an issue where the Los Alamos Defender introduction sound-file would play over-and-over again, if the player waited around in the boss arena for 30 seconds after killing the boss
Fixed an issue with the Echis SMG where it would not automatically reload after exhausting its whole clip while Ergonomic Grip (dual-wield) mod was enabled and the player either punched, used the shield, or picked up a drone
Fixed an issue in Phoenix Medical Facility where two specific Drones would not engage the player in combat, until the drones reached a specific point in their scripted pathing
Fixed an issue where some weapons (like the HSKL-9M, or the Echis SMG) would no longer be able to reload, if the player used their alt-fire, and then shot the final bullet in their magazine
Fixed an issue where some weapons (like the HSKL-9M, or the Echis SMG) would no longer be able to reload (until players shot another bullet), if the player used their alt-fire

That's all for now. Thank you for your continued support of Phantom Fury!

Original post

26 Apr 2024Developer post

PHANTOM FURY - Patch #1 LIVE

Hey everyone! The first patch is live and we're bringing a lot of fixes to the table. Patch Notes Fixed an issue in Lake Michigan Submarine Facility where players could get soft-locked after reloading the final check-point of the level, causing a gate to no longer be open upon lo

Hey everyone!

The first patch is live and we're bringing a lot of fixes to the table.

Patch Notes

Fixed an issue in Lake Michigan Submarine Facility where players could get soft-locked after reloading the final check-point of the level, causing a gate to no longer be open upon loading last checkpoint
Fixed an issue in Grand Canyon Facility where players could get soft-locked after placing the ISD if they had reloaded to last check-point before placing it, or after continuing a save
Fixed an issue in The Phoenix Tower where players could get squished through the floor of an elevator if they hugged the wall of the elevator while it rose upwards, potentially soft-locking players inside the elevators
Fixed an issue in The Crater where players could get squished through the floor of an elevator by floating ammo boxes if they had recently reloaded to last check-point, or after continuing a save
Fixed an issue in Phoenix Medical Facility where players could no longer see the first gate that they have to punch and crouch through, if they had recently reloaded to last check-point, or after continuing a save
Updated signposting in Grand Canyon Facility to better indicate the main progression path; specifically around the Microstinger area where players has to drop through a garbage shute to progress
Slight performance improvements to Chicago On Fire; specifically lighting changes, improving specific particles, etc.
Fixed an issue in The Crater where players could be stuck with a black screen if they loaded into another level while sitting in the car with Gus at the start of the level
Fixed an issue where players could be stuck with a black screen if they loaded into another level while a fade-to-black sequence was playing, for example at the end of a level
Fixed an issue in The Dream where players would pull out their weapons and re-enable the HUD after interacting with a Terminal
Fixed an issue in The Dream where players would pull out their weapons after vaulting
Fixed an issue where StimShots and StimPacks would not overheal HP over 100
Fixed an issue in The Cabin where an ISD was difficult to pick-up
Fixed an issue with the Zealots where they would explode if they were directly below the player, even if the player was very high up compared to the Zealot. Zealots now explode based on a 3D calculation, instead of 2D.
Fixed an inconsistency in Demon Core Retrieval where the red keycard door had blue paint on it
Fixed an issue where ammo counters in HUD would break if players switch from weapons on cooldown to Bowling Bombs
Fixed an inconsistency between The Cabin and Grand Canyon Facility where Shelly's Helicopter was using an outdated model after the player arrives at Grand Canyon Facility
Fixed an issue where players' weapon selection would show the 'Microstinger' and -1 ammo after players pick up a downed Drone enemy

That's all for now. Thank you for supporting Phantom Fury!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/

Original post

26 Dec 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Blog #6: "Designing the Minigun" by Gustaw Mackay

Hey there! I'm Gustaw Mackay, a 3D artist working on Phantom Fury. My focus on Phantom Fury is creating weapons and vehicles in the game, I've also had the chance to work on larger environmental elements and smaller props. In this dev blog, I'll take you through the journey of cr

Hey there! I'm Gustaw Mackay, a 3D artist working on Phantom Fury. My focus on Phantom Fury is creating weapons and vehicles in the game, I've also had the chance to work on larger environmental elements and smaller props. In this dev blog, I'll take you through the journey of creating the in-game Minigun model, including all the different design iterations it went through. So, let's dive in and explore the exciting process behind bringing this powerful weapon to life!

Step 1: Concept Art

Creating concept art is the first step in developing an important asset like the minigun. In our team, concept artists collaborate with everyone and gather feedback from all team members. They usually sketch multiple ideas, and one is chosen and refined through several iterations before the modeling process starts.

The concept artist created four different variations of the Minigun, and the team discussed and voted on which one they thought was the best. In the end, they decided to combine the barrels from variation A with those from variation C in order to create a big and powerful weapon with a strong visual impact in the first-person perspective.

Minigun sketch variations by Richard

Building upon the feedback provided, the artist then proceeded to refine and enhance the initial concept by incorporating colors and shading, resulting in the finalized concept.

Minigun concept art by Richard

Step 2: Base Mesh Modeling

With this concept in mind, I crafted the base mesh for the minigun using Blender. Starting with a simple silhouette.

While I was working on the model, I noticed a few functional problems with the design that could cause issues for animators later on. The rear handle was positioned too low and too straight, making it difficult for someone to reach if they needed to carry it. Additionally, the ammo box was at a different level than the rest of the gun, so it couldn't lie flat on a surface. Lastly, the front brackets were too small to fit the rotating triangular barrels.

During the modeling phase, it is very common that functional issues pop up which may impact the asset's usability or animation. A lot of strange things can happen in the transition from a 2D image to a 3D model. Something that looks awesome on paper might end up looking a little wonky in 3D. This is not something that is a reflection of the the concept artist’s abilities, it's just part of the back-and-forth process we go through to make things right.

I made some notes to highlight my feedback and discussed them with the concept artist and the team. Eventually, we found a solution to address these issues, moving as well as removing the problematic aspects of the weapon.

As we're going for a low-poly look, I hold off on adding too minor details until I’m in the texturing phase. So, when it comes to the modeling part, my main focus is on nailing down those basic shapes without getting bogged down in the small stuff.

In this phase I really like to think a lot about shape language. I’m a big fan of older games because they have a really strong use of shape language. Games like Crash Bandicoot and the Warcraft series have shapes that are extremely exaggerated in order to produce something that's super memorable and interesting to look at for the eyes. The same goes for classic FPS games – those guns in Duke Nukem are massive! So, for me, it's not about making things super realistic; but rather creating something memorable.

Final model with the design changes.

Step 3: UV Unwrapping

The next step in the process is UV unwrapping (everyone’s least favorite) where you create a 2D canvas for applying textures to your 3D model's surface. When it comes to UV mapping, it's essential to carefully plan how to avoid texture distortion and make the most of the available texture space. This task is extra quite tricky for our project, since when dealing with pixelated textures, as you must ensure that every pixel fits neatly within the boundaries of the UV Islands, which are those cutout sections you see in the image here.

UV Map of the Minigun.

Step 4: Texture Painting

Now comes my favorite part – particularly texture painting. After completing the unwrapping phase, I import my model into 3DCoat, a 3D software that functions much like Photoshop, but with the feature of allowing you to paint directly on the model. It's incredibly convenient.

In games that aim for a more realistic art style, you often work with various texture maps, such as albedo maps, normal maps, and roughness maps, among others. These maps help simulate lighting, define materials, and even create the illusion of lighting on details that might not even exist in the model. But for our game, we're taking the old-school approach, where we bake and paint all the lighting and materials directly into the texture.

Before I start painting, I create an ambient occlusion texture, which adds some basic shadows and saves me time. Then, I start with the base colors, giving each part its own color. When it comes to lighting, I try to imagine it coming from the top right, but I don't stress too much about it. If it feels right and looks good, I'm not overly concerned with the technical details.

After adding base colors I add in the basics of the lighting.

Model with AO map.

In addition to the base colors, I apply basic lighting by shading the angled sides and tops of the weapon. At this stage, it is crucial to consider the values, which refers to the relationship between the dark and light areas. If the values are not correct, the texture will look off, regardless of how well everything else is done.

The relationship between black and white is fundamental in determining the appearance of a material. Shiny metal exhibits a high value contrast, with deep blacks and pure whites. On the other hand, materials like leather or brushed metal tend to have various shades of grey.

Quick and dirty demonstration of light values.

After I'm happy with the overall lighting and shading, I add layers for rust, scratches, and other weathering effects. At this point, I think about how the weapon has been used and which parts would be most likely to get damaged and worn.

One issue I had with the weapon was the rotating barrels. If I painted lighting on them, it would rotate along with barrels, which would look pretty strange. So, I had to make sure that all sides of the barrels had the same brightness, which meant I couldn't add as much detail as I wanted. But luckily there are lights in the game that will handle that for me, so it’s all good.

How rotating barrels would look if they had light.

After painting for a good while, I end up with the final result, and here it is!

Designing the Minigun for Phantom Fury was not an easy task. It went through many changes and design iterations before it made its way into the game. From the game designer to the concept artist, the 3D artist, the animator, the sound designer, the VFX artist, the programmer, everyone had a hand in shaping the final version.

And that concludes our journey through the process of creating the Minigun for Phantom Fury. I hope you found this dev log informative and enjoyed a peek into the world of 3D modeling and texturing. Stay tuned for more updates and behind-the-scenes insights as we continue working on bringing this exciting game to life. Thank you for your support, and we can't wait to see you in action with the Minigun when the game launches!

Original post

09 Oct 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Update 10.09.2023

It has been a bit over a week since Realms Deep ended, and we feel that now is the perfect time to thank you all for checking out the Phantom Fury demo! We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to play it and share your feedback and thoughts with our team. Rest as

It has been a bit over a week since Realms Deep ended, and we feel that now is the perfect time to thank you all for checking out the Phantom Fury demo! We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to play it and share your feedback and thoughts with our team. Rest assured, the feedback we’ve received from the community will be instrumental in the further development of the game.

We will keep the demo up on Steam until tomorrow Tuesday @8 AM PT / 5 PM CEST, as this was intended as a special drop for Realms Deep only. The primary goal of the demo was to solicit feedback from the community as well as to display what we have been working on. You have all been gracious in your appraisal and accurate in your criticism and the team is taking both of these factors to heart and working to implement this feedback to secure the highest-quality product. Below is a list of key takeaways from the feedback we have selected. Some of the highlighted issues, as listed below, have been in development already but due to time limitations they weren't added to the Realms Deep demo.

Enemy voice lines are still in the process of being cut and will be present in the full game.
Auditory hit feedback and gibbing sounds are still worked on and muted on purpose in the demo.
Full-gibbing enemies when doing over a certain damage threshold was not implemented in time for the demo. It is now.
Insta-use arm punch (instead of manual equip) and targeting towards the center of mass are being worked on and refined.

Furthermore, the following issues are being investigated and addressed.

Various bugs with saving and loading, such as inconsistent collision with gas tanks causing soft locks, lack of camera animations on checkpoint load and other miscellaneous bugs in regards to player input.
Various game settings and rebinding keys were missing in the demo and we profoundly apologize to all our non-WASD users. They will be added to the full game.
Profile system causing issues has been noted and being investigated.

Regarding the overall polish on the game:

Game balance is not final and subject to change in the coming months.
This includes AI which is currently in the progress of getting balanced and bugfixed.
Performance will improve closer to launch - we are aware of issues with older machines and are working hard with our QA team to optimize for them.

Moving forward we will continue our push towards completion of the game and aim to release an updated version of the demo in February for the Steam Next Fest. This also means that we are going to move the release date to 2024. We feel that this is a necessary adjustment to ensure that the game meets the standards of the 3D Realms/Slipgate Ironworks community and of the underlying IP which the game is being created.

Once again, we appreciate you checking out our demo and we will be seeing you soon.

Wishlist Phantom Fury here.
Follow Slipgate-Ironworks on Twitter.
Follow 3D Realms on Twitter.
Join the 3D Realms Discord.
Join the 3D Realms Subreddit.
Check out the 3D Realms Website here
Check out the Slipgate Ironworks here

Original post

23 Aug 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Blog #5: "City in a Garden" by Jacob and Willem

SHRINKING A METROPOLIS Hello and welcome to the 5th Dev Blog of Phantom Fury! My name is Jacob Østergaard and I’m a Senior Level Designer at Slipgate Ironworks in Aalborg, Denmark. Today we will focus on the creation of our hero level Chicago, which we have set ablaze! Chicago on

SHRINKING A METROPOLIS

Hello and welcome to the 5th Dev Blog of Phantom Fury!
My name is Jacob Østergaard and I’m a Senior Level Designer at Slipgate Ironworks in Aalborg, Denmark.

Today we will focus on the creation of our hero level Chicago, which we have set ablaze!

Chicago on fire.

While we will go over select elements of the level in this dev blog, we won’t be revealing it all as we would like to save some for later and for you all to experience yourselves.

We wanted it to retain certain hallmarks of the real Chicago city while also being heavily modified to fit our visual style and flow.

Said hallmarks would be elements like:

The Chicago River and the many bridges
The Navy Pier
The Marina City towers
Iconic parts of Wacker Drive
And other recognizable buildings from Chicago

Downtown Chicago.

But, like mentioned before, we wouldn’t want to make a copy of those hallmarks but rather imitate their look and feel with a Phantom Fury spin on them.

The Navy Pier.

The difficult part of this task was that Chicago is absolutely massive. And while a lot of the hallmarks we picked out are close together in real-life, we would have to cut away parts in-between and compress the overall location tremendously to avoid overly long travel times between sections. We would therefore create a trimmed, compressed and stylized imitation of Chicago to fit our needs.

Chicago Theater

In addition to the hallmarks we decided to also include a park area and a large city mall with tons of interactive elements and a full arcade!

Looking through the images in this blogpost (and when you get to play through this level), we hope you can recognize certain parts of the real Chicago.

CHICAGO ON FIRE

Hello there!

My name is Willem Verheughe, and I am a 3D Artist at Mantis Games who has had the great opportunity and pleasure to work on Phantom Fury. My tasks vary from environment art, lighting, props, and a small bit of scripting. Now I’m here to tell you a bit about the destruction of Chicago.

Chicago will be one of our most important levels where we will throw everything that we have at Shelly.
It was very important for us that this is not only experienced through combat, but also through sounds, atmosphere and through the visuals of the city. Our focus was to make this level feel dynamic, and to add an extra layer of immersion

Chicago on fire.

To achieve this, we had various departments of the team adding their element to bring the city to life, or in better words, to set it on fire. During the action, we made sure there are plenty of environmental events that keep you on your toes, from bomb runs that put the battlefield on fire to collapsing buildings… But you can also admire these efforts when you are taking a moment away from the action and take it all in.

Chicago on fire.

The smoke-filled skyline of Chicago, The echoes of the chaos, the screams, and the gun shots from the center of the battlefield, the flaming debris floating through the war torn city and so on… All these elements combined are put in place by the team to make sure you get the best experience.

As with everything, it is very important that we balance this to not overstimulate the player, and therefore the pacing of the action is an essential part to the flow of the level.

CONDUCTING THE ACTION

Going through the design of a level the size of Chicago we decided to create a tension graph in our pre-production phase of the level to help visualize where and when to turn up the heat of the action and when to have downtime between combat and give the player time to compose themselves and take in the sights. (Note: Some of this is too hot for the public right now and has been redacted... you'll have to pick up the game to see what we're hiding)

While high tension combat is important in a game like Phantom Fury, quiet moments are also just as important to put the high tension moments into contrast.

Chicago Park.

We internally also refer to this map as one of our “hero maps”.
What we mean by that is that it is built and paced like an action movie.
There are memorable setpieces, boss fights, intense combat as well as hero moments like rescuing civilians and defending key points in the city from extreme GDF attacks. But also moments of exploration with ample time for the player to do what they want before the upcoming fights.

While we also showed off extremely short clips of Chicago in the Phantom Fury reveal trailer, it has since gotten a heavy visual overhaul in terms of style and color palette.

FACELIFT CYBERPUNK-STYLE

Alright, so, we have Chicago, our landmarks, and we have set them on fire, but it was missing something. It was time to add another layer of visuals to make this level even more memorable.

At first, our concept of Chicago was very much focused on the destruction of Chicago, but it was missing character, so we reworked our concept to make this level stand out more. To do this, we added a sci-fi/cyberpunk style, much like the style you see in Ion fury. Before the overhaul the streets were being lit up mainly by streetlights and the buildings were quite empty, now the city is lit up by holograms, massive billboards and neon lighting which fill the city with color and life.

Back Alley.

Like mentioned before by Samuel in Dev Blog #3 Chicago has been built using a modern modular workflow. This has also allowed us to easily swap around our custom-made assets, adjust the buildings to our needs and give our level the facelift it needed.

Downtown Chicago.

And that is it! The rest is for you to explore. We can’t wait for all of you to experience the amazing work that has been put into this Game. Chicago is waiting to be saved by you.

Jacob and Willem

Original post

15 Jun 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Blog #4: "Designing the Weapons" by Nate

GUNS GO BRRR Hey everyone! This is Nate, I'm a game designer working at Phoenix Game Productions here in Osaka, Japan who has had the pleasure of working on Phantom Fury and I heard ya’ll like to shoot stuff. We see you; we hear you. Huddle up, let's talk for a sec. MOAR!...PLEAS

GUNS GO BRRR

Hey everyone! This is Nate, I'm a game designer working at Phoenix Game Productions here in Osaka, Japan who has had the pleasure of working on Phantom Fury and I heard ya’ll like to shoot stuff. We see you; we hear you. Huddle up, let's talk for a sec.

MOAR!...PLEASE

In “Ion Fury”, Shelly had some awesome weapons. And as awesome as they were, the team heard the feedback from fans and that feedback was “Yeah good stuff but umm…more?”. We take requests like this very seriously so we did make more…In fact we may have gone mad with power. In addition to greatly increasing the base roster of weapons we have added tons of add-ons that can help make your favorite weapons more powerful. You can make these changes at various upgrade kiosks sprinkled throughout the world.

“Wait, that's NOT a bomb?”

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Everyone has their preferred way of killing things and we would NEVER discriminate. That’s why we also made sure to include a broad variety of weapon types and add-ons so people can approach the game the way they want to. In fact there are more than double the amount of base weapons Ion Fury had and made sure that we had a nice spread of conventional, Shelly classic and “experimental” weapon types to keep the gameplay fresh. This is not even mentioning the dozens of add-ons that can totally change how a weapon is used. So, Are you a straight shooter who just loves a clean buckshot to the face? We got you fam. Want to make your enemies suffer as you laugh at their writhing bodies? Yeah, welcome aboard.

Hmm what could this be?

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

I’ll take some time to be a bit more serious to mention that it takes a tremendous amount of effort from a whole team of people across multiple disciplines to get even one weapon fully up and running. A brief overview of the process looks something like this 😊.

*inhales deeply*

Design: First off, careful planning ensures each weapon's purpose and role in the arsenal, maximizing the chances of captivating players and giving them solid utility. As mentioned above we wanted to have a lot more weapons but we also want to make sure we don't have a ton of role overlaps in our arsenal. Quality and quantity requires us to take a critical look at weapons utility in context of the entire arsenal and change or remove ideas that only favor novelty. This can sometimes be a trap though as “balance” isn't always what people want. Ultimately we want to feel powerful but not handed victory on a silver platter and weapon design is a piece of solving that puzzle. So yeah…a little more than “Gun go ‘boom boom’ then people are happy.”

Concept Art: Next some very talented artists bring ideas to life with captivating mockups. This helps inspire excitement but mainly gives everyone a better idea of what their part of the work will entail.

Motherflakker by Arturo Pahua

Modeling and Rigging: Concepts evolve into stunning 3D models and are expertly rigged for seamless animations.

Model by Mathias Gabriel

Programming: Even in the early stages programmers work with designers to start building all the functionality needed to make the weapons actually work. True heroes that always love game designers no matter how crazy their ideas are…sorry Davey I love you.

Animation: Our skilled animators breathe life into each weapon, delivering fluid movements and lifelike actions. This is where you really start to feel these weapons come to life!
Visual Effects: Eye-catching additions like muzzle flashes and explosive impacts are essential to making every hit feel satisfying and unique. These additions with animation take the weapon to near final quality.

Animation by Domenico Antonazzo

Sound Design: Then our audio wizards create immersive effects, ensuring each weapon packs a powerful auditory punch that just makes you just want to keep pulling the trigger.

Playtesting: Lastly, Iteration is key to perfection. Through rigorous playtesting, we uncover any overlooked issues and discover unforeseen opportunities for improvement. Our dedicated QA team and other members meticulously test and refine the weapon until it's simply hard to not smile while using the beautiful bastard.

*exhales deeply*

And then it's DONE. That was a pretty big simplification of the assembly line but as you can see it's a huge team effort to complete even one weapon. Game design is a large part of that but it's certainly only a fraction of what ends up making it fun. I feel privileged to have a small place among all the other talented people at Slipgate Ironworks that tirelessly and passionately work to make not only the weapons but the whole game fun from start to finish. Can’t wait for everyone to play the game and can’t wait for you to pull the trigger on these weapons we have been cooking up!

Nate

If you haven't wishlisted Phantom Fury yet, do so!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/

Original post

28 Apr 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Blog #3: "Making the World Come Alive" by Sam

Greetings, My name is Samuel ‘Samuel2213’ Bryan. My role on the Phantom Fury team is 3D Lead and overall 3D Generalist. I handle environment art, scripting, lighting, characters, props and a bit of level design, which is about as ‘Generalist’ as you can get. I’ve worked on a numb

Greetings,

My name is Samuel ‘Samuel2213’ Bryan. My role on the Phantom Fury team is 3D Lead and overall 3D Generalist.

I handle environment art, scripting, lighting, characters, props and a bit of level design, which is about as ‘Generalist’ as you can get. I’ve worked on a number of projects: primarily ULTRAKILL, Graven, and Wrath. I’ve also worked in all kinds of various art styles, usually in AA, indie and mod projects, but Phantom Fury is by far the project I’m currently the most deeply involved in.

Phantom Fury is a project that everyone on the team is extremely passionate about, and not only on the raw gameplay front. Having a fun shooter is incredibly important, but you can not underestimate the importance of providing the player plenty to do and look at outside of combat.

In this regard, all the various teams within the project work closely together to focus on immersing the player in the game world through as many avenues as possible, including interactivity and visuals.

Rose Tinted Glasses

The visual design of Phantom Fury is not to be period-accurate, but rather what people remember old games looking like. The ‘Rose Tinted Glasses’ effect, if you will.

With this in mind, we try to stick to period accurate models and textures, but while taking advantage of more advanced modern lighting and shader to push the environment's visuals further than what was possible back in that era.

A vast majority of our characters, weapons and prop/environment assets are built using a modern PBR workflow, baked then crunched down using an excellent filter ‘Pixel8r’ created by Victoria Holland, along with additional custom-made smart materials to recreate the hand-painted shading look of some of our more painterly artists, unifying the style between the various artists and workflows.

An example of one of character assets, created with a PBR workflow then baked down to a diffuse.

Ooo What Does This Button Do?

From the very start of production, interactivity has been one of our strongest pillars.

Everyone on the team adores the interactivity found in older games. Sin, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, even Half-Life in places had so much to fiddle and interact with in the world. Every little interaction made it feel less like you were running through a predetermined film set, and more like you were running through an actual living breathing world.

With this in mind, we place a heavy emphasis on developing as many interactive or dynamic objects as possible. If there’s something you think you can interact with, more than likely, you can. It can be something as simple as a usable Tap or a Vending Machine, up to something as complex as a Fish Tank, Boiling Chemicals or a fully functional Arcade Machine. Every little bit counts to add immersion and fun to the player experience.

These interactables aren’t used just for gimmicks. With many breakables and interactables, we try to integrate it within the combat and gameplay loop itself. From providing additional pickups, to giving them an edge in certain battles, or just being fun, there’s a mountain of things to interact and play with!

With actual development of the interactives, we keep a very open development cycle. The beauty of working with a smaller team and studio is everyone has a voice. Everyone can pitch ideas and suggestions and generally brainstorm and try different things to see what works! Internally we regularly brainstorm and experiment with various ideas that we feel would be cool or fun to build and interact with.

The World

Phantom Fury has an extremely varied world. Throughout the campaign, Shelly explores a large variety of unique areas and locations, with almost every level providing its own unique twist on gameplay loop, atmosphere and visuals.

We want each level to feel memorable, To be its own unique, fresh experience.

As many of us originally came from modding and fan game backgrounds, along with being a small international team, we adopted a very iterative approach to our level design and detailing.
Each level starts with a few large passes to get about 90% of the way to completion, then it constantly receives regular sweeping passes for lighting, set dressing, and level geometry. You name it, levels get repeated passes on it.

This isn’t only done for visuals, but also scripting refinements, balance and other aspects as the game further develops. Not only does this keep development loose, but it also allows the whole game to develop at an even pace so the quality is as unified as possible through every level and gives the team plenty of breathing room to experiment, as there’s always new challenges to overcome, something new to learn, or something fun to implement.
This combined with regular live work sessions and a very open communication policy allows us to provide live feedback to each other on the fly, regardless of timezone and constantly adapt every level to new features as they are developed.

No level is ever truly done, it can always be further refined as long as time allows.

Levels themselves are built using a hybrid workflow based on the requirements of the level. Certain large levels such as Chicago are built using a modern modular workflow for asset turnaround with a decent level of fidelity, while more enclosed levels such as the various underground labs and bunkers are built either in JACK or Trenchbroom for that authentic retro brushwork feeling akin to the workflow adopted in Graven. Some levels even use a combination of the two. Many of the outdoor environments usually have the large structures built in Trenchbroom as individual maps, then imported and placed in the environment as a unique piece.

An example of one of the Trenchbroom levels

Epilogue

In the end, the entire game has been a monumental endeavour by an incredibly dedicated team. The wonderful community support and feedback has really helped us push the game to increasing heights, and we are all excited to finally release it into your hands.

Wishlist now!

Sam

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Original post

24 Mar 2023Developer post

Phantom Fury - Dev Blog #2: "The Music" by Aleks Kmiec

Hello everyone! My name is Aleksander Kmiec, and I have had the tremendous privilege of composing the official soundtrack to Phantom Fury. I was brought onto the project by my good friend and fellow composer Michael Markie back in early 2021, and it was he who envisioned the dist

Hello everyone!

My name is Aleksander Kmiec, and I have had the tremendous privilege of composing the official soundtrack to Phantom Fury.

I was brought onto the project by my good friend and fellow composer Michael Markie back in early 2021, and it was he who envisioned the distinct identity of the OST. The goal was to aim for a unique blend of synth and symphonic - the bold and bombastic energy of an action film with a healthy dose of saturated electronic tones and pulses.

A lot of you will probably pick up on the influences of Alexander Brandon, Michael McCann, and Sascha Dikiciyan, as their work on the Deus Ex OSTs were a big part of my listening rotation for several months. However, it was Ludwig Göransson and his work on the film Tenet that inspired us most. There is a cold, dour, and bitter tone to his music that really spoke to me - I wanted to try and strike a balance between that bleakness and more triumphant elements.

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I think much of what we wanted for Phantom Fury is perfectly encapsulated in the trailer track, “Motherflakker”. The song opens with a thunderous drop punctuating the tried-and-true saturated horn bellow we’ve all come to know from movie trailers. However, as the song progresses, familiar instruments and sounds start to reveal themselves in unexpected ways. Juxtaposing the natural cinematic percussion are distorted synth arpeggios over a blend of chamber strings and airy pads. Finally, to tie it all together, I used a solo viola for the lead, employing some tasteful portamentos and a ton of distortion - in the end, it sounded more like a wailing wounded animal than it did a conventional instrument.

All of these parts combined to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It was a violent collision of disparate and contradictory conventions and pieces that resulted in a surprisingly harmonious marriage of old and new. This description holds true for the majority of the soundtrack. I think a lot of people are going to hear it and think, “I know this… but I don’t at the same time.” Like the game itself, I’ve attempted to invoke the familiar while still delivering something fresh and unique.

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I’m really excited for you all to hear more of the soundtrack - it’s been a dream of mine to write music for a game, and I cannot overstated how grateful I am for this opportunity. Thank you all for your support, it has meant the world to me. Until we speak again, have fun, be safe, and take care of one another!

- Aleksander Kmiec 黄仲波

So what are you waiting for? Wishlist Phantom Fury Now!

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Original post

Updates & announcements

Patch #2 - Patch Notes

Patch Notes

About Phantom Fury

Step 1: Concept Art

Step 2: Base Mesh Modeling

Step 3: UV Unwrapping

Step 4: Texture Painting

SHRINKING A METROPOLIS

CHICAGO ON FIRE

CONDUCTING THE ACTION

FACELIFT CYBERPUNK-STYLE

GUNS GO BRRR

MOAR!...PLEASE

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Rose Tinted Glasses

Ooo What Does This Button Do?

The World

Epilogue