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[Chris Polus]

We were asked how our lighting setup looks like and what camera components we use. I thought this might be worth sharing. Wo here we go. We use Unity, so some things listed here are specific to it. Other things are generic and can be used anywhere.

For starters, we use one skylight that casts shadows as well as 2-6 additional directional light sources from different directions (no shadows) to improve lighting and simulate bouncing of light. This not only helps getting more interesting colors than with a single light and sometimes introduce contrasts but also makes sure we don't have any completely black areas. Those additional lights have a veeeery low intensity, they're just to simulate bouncing and give some color splash.

We also use some Unity features only available in the pro version of Unity on our camera. Bloom and glow for example. Then we put the whole screen through a tone mapper to compress colors further and in the end we use a commercial plugin called Amplify Color. The great thing about this is that we can make a screenshot, export it to Photoshop, use Photoshops tools to modify colors and set them how we want them, and send it back to Unity. The Amplify Color plugin maps all the colors to what we did in Photoshop.

Here's a Youtube link to Amplify Color

[Henry_Oswald]

Hey, found you here too! Small world it is.

Oh, and thanks a bunch for talking about your lighting setup. I've been struggling in getting things to look the way I would like in my own game, so those tips were nice to see.

Anyway, best of luck to you. I look forward to getting updates on this project twice as much. It's that dandy. 

[Chris Polus]

More polishing and Son of Nor now starts to feel like a "game" even for us! Some NPCs talk about bananas.

• It's hard for us to think of Son of Nor as a playable game as we're working on so many ends, we're constantly seeing behind the scenes, we're testing little pieces all the time so that we literally don't see the big picture. There's a nice saying in German: Wir sehen den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht mehr (not to see the wood for the trees). But now that we play through the game in bigger chunks, everything comes together, also for us. Which is really cool to see. Son of Nor is fun
• You can now interact with NPCs and they have a separat little icon that indicates you can talk to them or interact with them (quest givers).
• All dialogs are localised. Text is pulled from external files we can edit and translate outside the game. Have a peek inside.
• More color and lighting improvements.
• Rocks you can pull out of canyon walls now have a great representation in-game.
• To prevent players from being without ammo, we introduced re-growing crystals and things that can be picked up again and again.
• We updated the tree shader to take lighting better into account and also bend in the wind. Settings need to be tweaked though, currently trees wobble funnily
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Follow Chris as he creates monster sounds. And behold the "Child of Nor" super suit™ for kids!

• We tweaked the plant shader some more. Trees now gently wave in the wind. No more spastic dancing. There were some funny side effects along the way.
• Chris completely reworked creature sounds for the Sarahul. They now sound more aggressive. We show the sound design process in this diary with lions, horses and our own voices.
• Take a peek behind the scenes: stillalive studios threw a BBQ party in Innsbruck, Austria, a week ago. See Julian being the grill master and us having fun.
• While Chris was there, he got a super hero super suit for his soon to be super kid, hand made by the team.
• We love our fans. Chris got a 3D printed belt buckle as a present!
• We declare this day to be the show-your-favorite-game-developer-some-love-day. Pick your favorite dev and write them a nice mail that you appreciate what they're doing!
• Get into the discussion and leave your comments here, on YouTube, or join our forum at http://forum.sonofnor.com so we can discuss your opinion in our daily team meetings!

[Chris Polus]

Son of Nor BETA is out! We announced a great distribution deal this week and new spells have landed!

• Our closed beta has arrived! Beta backers: download and test the game!
• We announced a great partnership this week with Viva Media and bitComposer. They'll help us with the distribution of Son of Nor. Read more here: http://stillalive-studios.com/2014/partnership-with-viva-media-bitcomposer/
• New spell: Fire Nova. Powerful but use it with caution.
• New spell: Wind Field. A shield and crowd control in one.
• New spell: Summoning. Summons a ghost that helps in fights.
• To keep our sanity, dev diaries from now on will be released MONDAYS so that we can take the weekend off, too. It all got a little intense. Besides, everybody likes to watch videos on Monday instead of working. So this is good timing.
• We also renamed the generic "Dev Diary" to "SASDiary" and specify the game "Son of Nor". You never know when we might start developing a new game for which we then need another name!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Play some game jam games for free this week

• Son of Nor Closed Beta is out! People downloaded their beta on Steam and are playing the game.
• Look at how the menu currently looks like, some work was done there.
• One backer who's in the closed beta group did a pretty cool Let's Play as he's a YouTuber. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9WYuOrIRuKc2t_-Df1P-p8RAyes955mp
• This weekend the whole team was busy with our own internal stillalive studios game jam. 3 teams, 3 games. You can look at them in the video and download and play them here: http://stillalive-studios.com/games/
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Great new sounds and lots of awesome polishing was done this week thanks to let's players!

• New player models are being implemented. Textures are still missing, though.
• New animations are being tried, some are not set up correctly
• There's now an audbible indicator when your life is low.
• Some more quirky settings with the player character, you turn into the female model when you die. 2 steps forward, 1 step back.
• We were watching a lot of let's play footage and a guy streaming Son of Nor beta and started improving many things they complained about: puzzles, information, player guidance, bugs.
• We have to break levels up because they just crash Unity 3D because of their size. We have to make them smaller. There were levels nobody could even start anymore in the editor.
• Intermezzo.
• Visual tweaks were applied to Yant'shaza to make it look hotter and more jungly.
• There's an easy way to kill scarabs nobody has found yet. We're going to keep it secret, too. It's fun discovering it.
• Sarahul Mages now have their proper sounds when they cast spells like Ray of Light and Solar Flare!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[laxwolf]

awesome! really glad to see it forming into a game, thanks for the update.

[Chris Polus]

thanks laxwolf appreciated!

[Guitarmatt21]

I didn't know you guys had a devlog! I was talking to whom I believe was Mike yesterday on reddit about the soundtrack to your game and thought the music was great. Good to see such a thorough devlog, especially for a 3D game.

Keep up the good work guys!

[Chris Polus]

Hey! Yeah we're doing this for quite some time now already! Cool that you talked to Mike, he made such a GREAT AWESOME track. All the stuff he does fits SO WELL. We're super happy.

[Chris Polus]

We've got an explosive package this week: The Fire Pillar spell variation.

• All kinds of weird animation strangeness. We keep laughing at them because we get so bizarre results sometimes. It's mostly configuration work, but see for yourself.
• After the essence ghost, the fire nova and the wind field we have new spell variations to show.
• Jason made an incredibly cool effect for the fire pillar spell variation. You've got to plan casting it though, it takes some time.
• Julian also shows a new wind and essence magic spell variation. The "wind self tornado" (internal name) and an essence spell that doesn't even have an internal name yet.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Our release on Steam Early Access is approaching and we're preparing things like crazy! You can also light up stuff and decorate a Christmas tree in multiplayer.

• So the game development process comes into its final stretches. We do a lot of things to wrap up all lose ends. Some examples.
• We're working on promotional material with our render artist Ruben doing new poses and new high resolution character models. See how the male character model evolved and how the female character looks. They look amazing!
• Multiplayer now works! We had some fun in multiplayer sessions. Splitscreen also works and we'll be able to show it in one of the next dev diaries.
• We're creating the trailer for the early access launch and Julian implemented some neat functions to be able to record cooler scenes from the game. If you have a game you want to do some videos for, plan in a lot of time and code some extra functions to make it easier for you to stage game situations. The trailer will only be about 90 seconds but we're on it already for more than a solid work week. Especially when you try to record features that are in a very unstable state still: Hello coders? Fix this please. Wait, update, try again. And then something else breaks
• More things we do to prepare for the launch is our localisation database. We use keys that then call the text in a specific language. Like in a poor man's database. This way we can translate text in different spreadsheets and just switch the file to completely switch the game to a different language.
• We also use documents that tell us who says a line and with what emotion. This will play a role once we do voice-overs for the lines. Every bit of dialog in the game will be voice acted! Yay! For a limited amount of languages, however.
• We are polishing cutscenes and level design. We added ivy flowers that help players spot interesting things.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

This week we show some weird matrix IK movement bullet dodging. Steam Early Access will start July 24th! SPLIT-SCREEN!

• You can get Son of Nor on Steam Early Access from July 24th! We've been hard at work polishing the areas that will be released that day. Please note it's still Early Access, meaning beta. Not all the levels are implemented, not everything is polished to it's final state but we should be pretty close!
• Our Steam Early Access coming soon page is up! Take a look: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264000
• Weird matrix IK movement bullet dodging
• Work on the main menu progressed. Note to developers: Don't underestimate the work it takes to implement all the menu functions. Resolution changes, gamma correction, sound volume sliders, fullscreen modes, controller setup, the menu's aspect ratio (oh my) and so on! It's a huge pile of work and we definitely thought it was going to be easier. Usability is also important. Don't frustrate people with a cryptic menu and a 5 level deep structure.
• Multiplayer via Steam is working! No port forwarding, no router configuration, no firewall disabling required. It's a very smooth and simple experience!
• Multiplayer via split-screen is working!
• We want to take some time in our SAS diaries to answer questions we get and turn them into a video FAQ or Q&A. Tune in, it's fun!
• Questions: Can you show us split-screen? Are backers going to get Early Access access? Any plans for final release? What about the Oculus Rift? Why carrots?
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Son of Nor will be available on Steam Early Access Thursday, July 24th! Also: Lots of sound and music updates in this week's SASDiary!

• I added sounds to rolling boulders, lava being poured, moving the lava pourer, important things hovering and moving, assembly line shutdowns, Sarahul Seers throwing and catching their discs, regrowing crystals. And saving best for last: Enhancing throwable things with fire and wind!
• We demonstrate the music controller we made for Son of Nor. It controls what music is being played in exploration and battle situations, how tracks are crossfaded, stinger sounds can be defined, and boss battle areas.
• This week's share of bugs and strangeness happening: Falling through the ground, swimming, Sarahul Seers that suddenly fly away during battle, multiplayer sync issues, huge people turning up out of nowhere.
• "Circus Sarahuli" showing tricks while recording Early Access footage.
• Sneak peek at our upcoming Steam Early Access trailer.
• Son of Nor will be available on Steam Early Access: Thursday, July 24th. Mark the date
• Back of the book: Our Q&A session with questions from forums and comments.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Finally we made it to this point. Today is a huge milestone for us: Son of Nor is now available on Steam Early Access. There's still a lot to do but this is a big step and we hope to get a lot of great and useful feedback to fill our polishing lists

• Read our announcement here or head over to the Steam Store page to have a look.
• We also invested a lot of time to make this brand new trailer! Enjoy!

[unsilentwill]

Wow, it's been a long time since I've taken a good look at the game and there's been some excellent progress. Glad to see you all working hard for years on this.

[Chris Polus]

Thank you unsilentwill. I appreciate it very much.

[Chris Polus]

Son of Nor is now available on Steam Early Access! We're busy listening to feedback from the community and implementing it.

• Son of Nor is now in the Steam Store: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264000/ Thanks for everybody's support in kickstarting us or buying the game now already! We're grateful!
• We're actively roaming the forums. It takes a lot of time but player feedback is extremely valuable. We hear about exotic bugs, not so exotic bugs that we just seem to have missed, and loooots and lots of suggestions we will discuss in our daily meetings. Extraordinary ideas. We certainly get a lot of value and can make the game much more fun. So far, all our community experience has been extremely useful.
• Our in-game error reporting tool is a blessing. By using F4, players can directly send a bug report from within the game. No account creating, no navigating to another website... This takes too much time and people don't do it. This way, we get exactly what the player's position is, what players look at, and the error log. Thus, making it easier to identify the error / bug and fixing it.
• Jason made new visual effects for when players pick up a wind, fire, or essence element.
• While the Early Access version of Son of Nor already has a lot of playable levels, the level list is not yet complete. In the background, we're working on the last levels of the game. One of the not so finished still is Taro. We have a rough level layout and are iterating on it to make it more interesting and fun.
• The placeholder Horastes statue that was in Yant'shaza now was replaced by the correct Lur statue, which looks godly.
• The Early Access version also has a placeholder intro video to kick-off the game's story. Ricardo is working on the finished intro with the final illustrations by our illustrator Simon.
• The Early Access build already sports a multiplayer mode. Ricardo shows some gameplay scenes.
• On the other hand, cutscenes in multiplayer sometimes suffer from strange effects
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

We're taking an in-depth look at how some of the core aspects of Son of Nor evolved over the past 3 years! This week: Telekinesis.

• As we're working more and more on end-game content we don't want to spoil, we think it's a great opportunity to zoom out and look at the development of Son of Nor in the past 3 years.
• We're going to look at the three core game concepts telekinesis, terraforming, and elemental magic and look at how these concepts changed during the development process. It's an interesting game design and technological view at making games, taking risks and changing things to make them better.
• In short: Telekinesis was an all-encompassing power. There was a telekinesis-meter that served as a life bar and - at the same time - it was the power you needed to lift items in the world. If you lifted heavy items, the power would go down significantly. If you let them go, your power regenerated, too. If you were hit while carrying something heavy, your telekinesis shield would not protect you and you'd die quickly.
• Telekinesis was also used to conjure sand balls. If sand balls were arranged in specific patterns, players could cast a spell. As if the spell needed to be charged first. But doing this action took time and made combat sluggish. Players were busier with arranging sand balls than battling each other. It slowed down combat to a halt. We scrapped this concept of casting magic via telekinesis.
• With telekinesis, you could also draw paths objects should follow. This feature should have been used to make multiple objects spin around you to form a physical shield. But you needed so many objects to make a shield effective and painting the paths for every object was again so cumbersome, that combat came to a halt as well.
• Today, telekinesis is a very basic, lean and quick power with many uses. You can solve puzzles, move items blocking your path, pick up rocks and use them as weapon by throwing them. It's easy to use and understand, and streamlined to fit an action adventure well. We're very happy how it turned out even though we still have to tweak it a bit!
• Son of Nor is now in the Steam Store as Early Access version. Thank you for supporting us: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264000/
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com