Hello everyone!
As always, we’d like to say a huge thank you to our amazing community. We know we’ve been a bit quiet on the updates front lately. Hopefully this dev blog will help explain why.
So, the best place to start would be to show not tell. Thanks to Jesse-Delta for his great work on the showcase.
Please see as follows for a showcase of our recent progress;
Over the last few months, the three main areas of development have primarily been:
-The swap from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5
-The total animation overhaul
-Creation of the new 4x4km map with new biomes.
One of the reasons we’ve been a bit short on news, is we didn’t want to be one of those teams screaming about how Unreal Engine 5 will solve all of our problems. While a great tool, nothing in game design is ever that easy.
In our case we did a lot of estimating what could be useful from the new systems which are available to us now.
Then it was a matter of when to do the swap over, our logic is it's better to do it now when we are in alpha instead of later as it would be more time consuming and riskier.
I’ve asked if Mr. Z could prepare a more skilled explanation of the physical effects from the swap over.
There have been various new developments since the last time we spoke. Many systems changes and optimizations have been made to allow for a giant open world map, mocap work is full swing, and UE5’s new features are being fully utilized now.
As some may have noticed, a new survival map was briefly tested to iron out all the issues of scaling up to larger map sizes. I may have jumped the gun a bit with the map as I ended up making it 8x8 kilometers. It’s good to test a bigger than expected map as our final survival map is around 4x4 km so this gives us quite a bit of breathing room. Lots of systems had to be changed for this to work, including the ingame map menu, the way resources are populated in the world, additional systems for placing points of interest in the map, and on a more boring note plenty of code had to be optimized or rewritten for this to work. It was quite a time consuming ordeal but I’m glad we’ve taken care of all the large obstacles for the final survival map to be technically feasible.
Alongside this work, we have also gone into full production with the new mocap animations for the characters. We’ve been quite busy with retargeting all the motion capture animation data to our character and getting them into the game itself. Lots of work had to be done on the animation controller to support a wider array of animations. Where it stands right now is we’re part way through implementing the Longsword animations, so hopefully it won’t be too long until we can have at least one animation set using fully motion captured animations. Motion capture is a very lengthy process but we’re confident with this type of workflow now and we’re very excited to get these animations finished and in our backer’s hands.
The switch to Unreal 5 has been fully completed, meaning we’re using all the new systems we’ve intended to utilize and the legacy systems have been fully removed. What are these systems you may ask? For starters we’ve fully switched over to Chaos Physics, which is the new physics engine for Unreal 5 that allows for a higher degree of complexity in destruction physics. We’re also now fully using World Partition, which is a new feature that allows us to build substantially larger game levels while still maintaining good performance. Another important feature we’re using is Lumen, which is a next generation lighting engine for the game. It has done wonders for the look of the game, especially with how much better the armors look in real lighting now. Finally, we’re also using Nanite, which is another next generation feature, what it does in effect is it makes LODs (Level of Detail) models obsolete, by removing the jarring transition of models to lower detail ones that’s plagued 3d video games since the first days.
2024 will be a very productive year for us going forward, we’re making very rapid progress on the game, but it is a big game to make especially for only a handful of developers working on it. As we’ve seen time and time again there’s no use in rushing out an unfinished game just to get it in people’s hands quickly. So we’ll give a proper release date when we’re confident we can actually deliver a game we’re proud of.
We’ll have more regular updates coming in the near future as we move past the transition to UE5 including more words from Mr. Z
I’ve also asked if KZ could prepare a short note for you folks explaining in detail his side of stuff a bit more. It should be noted while a team effort, what you’ve seen in the above showcase is largely the result of KZs hard work.
The last few months have seen significant progress on the art front. A lot of work has been done to establish a strong foundation for the new year. Essentially, much time has been dedicated to developing the new map. This endeavor has presented substantial challenges, considering it's no longer a small map; it's a world. Nevertheless, we are making good progress.
We began by designing how we wanted to shape the world itself and envisioned all the interactions across the map that we would like to see or open up possibilities for. Our approach prioritized function before form. From the ground up, we designed additional biomes to give the world a more rounded feel.
A big challenge was to design the transitions between biomes, but a lot of thought was put in, and tests were conducted, and I think we got there on the feeling of traveling seamlessly through the biomes while still feeling inline.
We have expanded from one biome to nine, including Meadows, Forests, Swamp, Snowy Fields, Snowy Mountains, Steppes, Arid, Canyons, the Desert, Beaches, and rivers to break it all up. Safe towns have been developed for some of the major biomes, and while these are still being fleshed out, they are mostly completed.
Specifically, there is a big castle with a town and port included in the Meadows biome, a Norse Village in the mountains, a Steppes village, and finally, a Desert Town. Lastly, a lot of thought and work have been put into the placement of Points of Interest to keep players entertained with plenty to explore and fight over.
Fortunately, the new biomes have accommodated this effort and will introduce biome-specific Points of Interest, adding more intrigue to different parts of the world.
Hopefully we’ll have some more of KZ’s work to show off for you soon!
Alongside all the topics Mr. Z has discussed, one main goal for the new year is to get organized weekly wipes going again as soon as possible. We’ve had to put regular testing on hold for the UE 5 swap.
This means we can start to rebuild the weekly population on servers across the major regions of our backers.
We’d like to thank everyone again for their patience with the lack of activities and low pop over the last little while. It’s an area we’ve keenly aware of and hope to address quick smart.
We’ll also hopefully have some more flashy news for you folks in the new year as we start to see the results of our recent work.
Again, folks from our entire team, thank you so much for your amazing support this year. The last 3 months (and this entire year honestly) have been tough but your enthusiasm and kindness are one of the main things keeping us going. We hope to have some good results to make you proud soon!
Thanks again and till next time
Ashur