Hi everyone,
As mentioned in our previous post, we are currently doing a complete overhaul of our models. This means that almost all of our models will be remade and reanimated from scratch, which takes a bit of time to accomplish. However, we wanted to let you know that we have finished remodeling our models and we will be showing them here in this devlog. Keep in mind, some of them have not been rigged or animated yet so the pose would be a bit off.
As some of you might noticed, currently our models are based on dinosaurs from Cretaceous (early to late) North America. We do this because of two reasons.
The first is that, doing this enables us to bundle additional dinosaurs based on their time period and location, which means that if we were to add additional creatures later on, unless they are from Cretaceous North America, we will not only give you the creatures themselves, but also an entirely new world, with a whole new ecosystem and challenges. The second reason is that, having a bundled approach to our creatures would make it much easier for us to balance the game because we know which role each creature takes, for example: Tyrannosaurus as an apex predator that hunts tanks, Parkosaurus as a small and easy prey, etc.
A bit of a disclaimer though, we are not looking to make a full representation of the prehistoric world, because of this we must strongly emphasize that the biomes are not and may not be a correct representation. In a nutshell, we wanted to have full artistic freedom for the environments and gameplay elements, but we wanted each environment to have a specific set of creatures.
Aside from the models, we have also done a minor overhaul of our environment so that they will not look disjointed with the new models. This includes better terrain textures, grass, image effects, and the addition of volumetric lighting. Here are a couple of screenshots of our models in the game.
Currently volumetric lighting is performance intensive, especially with a map of this size, so we need to optimize this a bit further.
The next step for us is to animate the remaining models and integrate them into the game. If everything goes accordingly, by the time our next post is up, the major update would have been live. This major update would be called the “Super Model” update.
That’s currently it for this devlog, more updates coming soon!
