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[HopFrog]

Hey this is looking great! I am very much looking forward to where the project is going 

[mzn528]

Looks awesome! I love everything from the design to mockup, keep up the great work!

[phosphorous]

I just read through this devlog, can't believe I have missed this before.

I am impressed by your levels and the 3D dimensional movement. Also the fact that you are making this with your own engine, that is amazing to me. Keep it up!

[JustRadek]

Thanks guys! Yeah, the custom engine stuff has taken a long while since we're not just jumping into Unity, but it's also been nice to learn more and have a custom tool that we know we can take in any direction.

[JustRadek]

A few more unit animations:


Koschei's run on all fours.


The Supplier overheating.


Scavenger bird's idle state.

[HopFrog]

Oh God, I am loving that bird SO much

[Zanetski]

I love that this is so stylish.

[JustRadek]

Thanks guys, appreciate it. We definitely want to make sure we imbue the units with as much personality as possible.

[JustRadek]

Here's another batch of concepts:


The sombre Konstantyn.


The trains of the Sprawl.


Potted plants of the Aerie.


Miscellaneous icons.


The Sleepless Forge

[JustRadek]

Since we have multiple layers for the textures, lets start by adding some basic fringes to our house:



The above image has vertically-fringed corners, but we quickly ran into an issue with horizontal fringing. Since our heights are done in half-blocks (64 "pixels", which are half of the 128 minimum texture height) and the fringe textures occupy only a small portion of a tile, it was possible for the textures to be applied with no visual alteration. The animation below shows the same fringe being applied to different elevations, with some of the textures not appearing until they're "nudged".



This nudging alters the anchor of the texture so that the fringe part starts 64 pixels lower and properly aligns with the tile. This nudging was required in numerous places, so we also implemented it for horizontal orientation. This allows us to quickly fine-tune other decorations such as vines:



And here's our house with some grass fringes, extra vines, and a few windows:



Will do a quick update on lighting next time!

[JustRadek]

Just a quick update showing some lighting variation via different skyboxes/light point samples.



The lighting intensity and skybox saturations are purposefully overintensified to show off the contrast between them. It's still all fairly subtle to ensure that coloured lights don't completely distort the painterly style. We hope this approach gives us some options for "tinting" each biome and giving them all a unique atmosphere.

[JustRadek]

One more update on textural decorations: decals.

Unlike regular textures that are placed on top of each other, decals don't have to conform to a specific tile size and can be smoothly moved around. They can also scale easily and wrap around objects as shown below:



However, since decals are projected down, they tend to unintentionally overlap multiple objects. In the case of the house, any prop standing next to it would "absorb" a part of the crack decal, which didn't really work out. In the end, we used them somewhat sparingly and in more desolate areas.



Next up, we finally decorate the scene with some objects!

[JustRadek]

Finally, it's time to add some decorations. These make a big difference.



Objects by default snap to the ground tile beneath the cursor, and like textures can be rotated around. Since objects contain collisions and can be of any size, rotating ones that have a large base uses the top-left corner as the anchor.

With objects, we generally didn't need to worry as much about snapping to corners or rotating by 90 degrees as with textures, especially for aesthetic ones. We also added the ability to rotate around any axis, not just the y, and "nudge" each object by a small fraction of a tile.

With those capabilities in hand, we went ahead and added object sets. Like with textures, these allow us to "paint" with a randomly selected object from a list, and rotate/nudge it up to a maximum amount based on given parameters. Here's how it looks in action:



Once the trees and tree trunks were put in, we manually adjust them so that clipping is not a visible issue, and add various other decorations such as brambles, miscellaneous plants, benches, lamp posts, fallen leaf clumps, etc.

A few dirt patches later, and we get this:



Of course it's still not done yet, but it's beginning to look more and more like an actual place, don't you think?

[Osteel]

it's beginning to look more and more like an actual place, don't you think?

Yes. 

This is one of the nicest/best looking 3D map editors I've seen. I love map editors in general, because the possibilities are endless with them. It looks great. :D

[JustRadek]

Thanks! It's still something that needs lots of work, but what's there has proven to work fairly well.

[JustRadek]

Thanks a bunch; I'm sure our artist will love to hear it!

[JustRadek]

We've finally gotten ourselves a proper website!

Check out the accompanying teaser trailer below, as well as some more-polished screens and concepts:

[nathy after dark]

Looking incredible. Your GIF in Screenshot Saturday made it impossible not to click the link and follow. Disturbing and unique.

[JustRadek]

Thanks! We've been keeping up with screenshot saturday, but have mostly focused on dev work in recent months so the devlog hasn't gotten as many updates. Hopefully we'll have some time to post for stuff on our end soon!

[oleomingus]

Hello, I have been following your game on the makega.me forum for a while.
Glad to see a devblog here as well.

The art is spectacular! Especially the painted concept art with it's Victorian steampunk and strange characters.
And following your progress with the level editor and the details of your process is a real treat!

Good luck with further development.