Hello Neyyah adventurers, far and wide! Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!
I have just released a new devlog on the 'blocking phase' of creating new scenes for Neyyah in Blender. Feel free to have a watch here:
It's great being able to share the inner workings of what goes into creating a world like Neyyah, and being able to discuss the process with the Neyyah community! :)
In this update, here in the world of Steam, I want to discuss something a bit different ... Something I suppose, after nearly four years of having worked on the game, I have taken for ... well, somewhat granted. However, this particular something plays a vital role in how Neyyah is delivered to you, the player, the adventurer, the explorer ...
Cameras!
Open GL solid state view of one of the current scenes being rendered out in Blender for Neyyah
Cameras are the windows to Neyyah. Due to Neyyah's prerendered nature, the player is only able to traverse through the Neyyah world through clicking to prerendered screenshots, which display the world. It's quite an interesting journey of analysing and challenges when implementing this navigation style into the engine, and making it work, so that when the player does click around the world, they have the smoothest experience possible.
Open GL solid state view of one of the current scenes being rendered out in Blender for Neyyah
The many cameras that have been set up for the current scene being rendered out in Blender for Neyyah
Cameras are usually set up to show four views from every position the player is in. The best way to annotate this is through a simple node label of 1, for example, and each corresponding view being: a, b, c and d. Or, occasionally, you might be able to look down, or look up, or zoom in, etc. So, this would be 1a look up, 1a zoom in, etc. Here is a visual example of a basic four node position within the game:
1a:
1b:
1c:
1c look up:
1d:
Interestingly, after analysing games such as Riven, and how the player is seeing the game at any set point, certain camera angles need to be positioned in a particular way to convey an effectiveness in how the player is moving, or might move if they click forward, etc. For example, the cameras are never completely set to a 90 degree straight angle, looking ahead. I tilt the camera slightly forward so that the path they are on is a bit more visible, so the feeling of 'moving' forward is exaggerated.
This also goes for moments where you might walk up a staircase.
The camera is position just so that you really feel like you are able to move up the stairs. This works in nicely with Neyyah's Journey Mode option, which plays more FMV sequences during the game, at certain points of traversal such as climbing ladders or walking up stairs.
Feel free to have a watch of my devlog, which delves into the creation of Journey Modes in Neyyah:
The following screenshot I took just coz it looked cool!
Screenshot of all cameras selected
Thanks for taking a sneak peek into the world of Neyyah's cameras!
Looking forward to sharing the thousands of camera views which will be your windows into Neyyah! :)
- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment