Two gifs for #screenshotsaturday. As stated before, it's kind of supposed to be Shadow of the Colossus in a dark, cyberpunk-ish environment. Everything is work in progress obviously, though it somewhat conveys the general look of the game.

It's been some time since I've posted any updates. That's mostly due to a lot of work going on behind the scenes and not being very visible or not in a state that I wanted to show it yet. Plus, being busy with fulltime job.

Anyway, the past weeks I've been working mostly on building the city of The Godbeast. Here are two snapshots from a work in progress area in Google SketchUp:




The level of detail is rather low so far. It's more greyboxing the playable area than anything. But a key visual aspect is already clear, namely the use of statues. I plan to have a lot of statues of the various animal-based gods and deities in the city. The areas will also have a mixture of classical architecture and more modern skyscraper aspects.

The fur shader looks really great and I'm wondering if you could go into anymore detail about the mechanics behind it? Is it physics based or related to the characters position or some other method?

It's a vertex shader for quads that deforms them based on the player's position. Here's where I sourced the code: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/rolling-my-own-quality-physics-grass-system.134153/

For the implementation in-game, I made a fur-patch prefab in Unity, painted it over the model and then merged the quads all into one object to cut down drawcalls. The result is what you see, with only a tiny impact on the framerate.

Continuing work, this time with a motorcycle and a jacket on the player. Difficult to see in the gif, but the jacket has some seams and doesn't look that great. I will need to adjust it and also look into giving it cloth physics.

Another major challenge is the implementation of the motorcycle. This means:
- Designing the world and levels to take into account this method of movement. The levels need to be open enough to accommodate the fast speed and size of the bike.
- Having the enemy AI react to the motorcycle, such as taking damage from an impact, trying to run away from the bike or attacking it and knocking the player off.
- On that last part, how to deal with the bike taking damage, bumping into walls/obstacles and avoiding it getting stuck in the geometry and blocking your path. I'm actually considering the option that you (or enemies) can destroy the bike, in which case it's gone for a period of time.

Oh, and there's a ribbon on the harpoon that will need some extra work to look right...

See here the player crouch-walking through fur. This is on top of one of the "colossus" enemies that I am designing. It's been quite a challenge to get the fur working and took up most of my dev time this week. I've found a good way to pull it off, with a special shader that adjusts the fur to the player's movement, while not having any substantial impact on the framerate.

I personally feel you should stick with the style as in your first post. The black and white monochromatic look has been done before. The dream-like cloudscape looks more interesting.

Yes bird monsters yes

A miss...


...and a hit.


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Majority of work this week has actually been in designing one of the giant beasts, a gargantuan boar. I've been working on the mechanics to attack and damage the different bodyparts, his path-tracking AI and being able to jump on his back. No screens of that for now though!

Cool stuff in here.

Here's a new enemy I'm working on today, a big crow with a scythe.

Oh wow, now I feel silly for not realizing you're the same dev who made Malebolgia...

I'm More_Badass over on GAF. Nice to see a devlog here.

The animations already look a lot more responsive and faster than Malebolgia's

Hi.

I definitely want to have better controls and a good flow in combat. Malebolgia was rather slow and clunky in that regard. I hope to learn from that experience.

Thanks for the comments! The visuals are definitely way too dark right now. To work on this, other than adding more light sources and increasing the ambient light, the main character will have a different colour palette (and clothes), there will be more objects in the background to distinguish it with foreground and I may look into adding some sort of subtle rim-lighting.

Hannibal, is that you?


:p

Looks really cool, I like the monster design

Not an express reference, but I do love the show and its nightmarish stag imagery.

i hope that isnt a final look.
character and enemies should be instant readable, souls games always put a strong, sometimes pure white highlight on player and enemies.

Oh, definitely not the final look. It's all a bit too dark. The character too will be much more detailed and coloured, instead of his current monochromatic form.

[The Godbeast]

Update: The Godbeast is... OUT NOW: https://store.steampowered.com/app/736470/The_Godbeast/

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The Godbeast is an action/adventure game, set in a nightmarish modern city. I'm taking tons of inspiration from games such as Killer7, Shadow of the Colossus and the Souls-franchise. I'm also basing the general look and feel on the kind of dark cityscapes evoked in the cyberpunk genre and synthwave style. That means Akira's Neo Tokyo, Kavinsky's Nightcall, Carpenter's Escape from New York. I gather sources here.

The story is still in flux, but the gist of it would be that the city is trapped in perpetual night. Most of the other inhabitants in the city are mindless ghouls, in a dream-state, but there are some other characters who are conscious and aware inside the nightmare. Not necessarily sane though. You will have to find, hunt and kill the old gods, in the shape of gigantic beasts, to escape.

I have only just started on this project, though it's something I've been meaning to make for years. It predates Malebolgia, and with that finished, I can now finally get to work on this. Development in Unity3D for PC.

Here are some first, messy .gifs:

[Malebolgia]

For those unaware, Malebolgia was released last week on Steam! Full release, out of Early Access. 

That aside, to actually have something game-dev related to say here, I've written down some reflections on the Early Access period.

I had three goals in mind with putting Malebolgia on Early Access. The first is the standard objective of EA, namely to get feedback on gameplay mechanics and to engage with the players on a regular basis. I was however very disappointed in this respect. I only got limited feedback on the Steam forums. That is partly because not that many people bought and played the game. But I think even more than that, it didn't make a great deal of sense to put a single-player and story-focused horror game on EA. A lot of people were apprehensive to buy the game in the first place, because it makes far more sense to wait until it's finished and you can experience the entire story from start to end. Buying it in December to play the final version in May is a bit foolish. There was also no incentive to keep playing it. I had a lot of people buy it at launch, play until the EA limit (which is about halfway through the game), and then not touch it again until the final release. The result is that I did not get any new feedback from those players even when I uploaded new builds. I had no one to tell me whether the update was an improvement or not.

The second objective of EA was to gain visibility and test the waters. In that regard, it was moderately successful. It really helped to create some awareness (though overall still very little), by way of some EA previews and YouTube playthroughs. Most of these were also positive, with players appreciating the atmosphere while giving some of the flaws (like animations or stiff combat) a pass since it the game was unfinished. It helped me identify the strengths and weaknesses of the game. Though, and this refers back to the previous paragraph, I don't think I ever quite managed to polish the weak spots as well as I should have. Largely to my own lack of skill, time and also due to the vague nature of feedback. The EA period further brought in some initial cashflow which helped to fund licenses and other costs, while at the same time tempering my expectations.

Third, EA helped me prepare. Next to giving me some much-needed boosts of confidence with a positive preview, it took some pressure off my shoulders by not making the release a one-shot game. It allowed me to put my project out there without the need to have everything "finished". I could take care of bugs at a less demanding tempo and it gave me time to become familiar with Steam(works), publishing and community engagement. Since this was my first full game release, I found EA invaluable in that regard.

In summary:
- Community feedback and interaction to polish game design was lacking, due to nature of game and small market reach.
- Somewhat reasonable indicator of potential for success.
- EA worked great as prep-time for a novice in game development and publishing.

In the future, I don't think I would go back to Early Access unless the product is more fit for that purpose. I.e. Less focus on story and more something that supports continuous updates without seeing player drop-off. For the type of game Malebolgia is, testing and gameplay iteration should (have been/) be more targeted to a small and dedicated group of testers.

I also want to add that the full release revenue from the first 24hrs was almost twice as much as the combined revenue of six months of EA. Sales are dropping off again now though. The income is incredibly modest in the grand scheme of things. Luckily this has been a hobby project in my spare time. However, the sales have covered all of my past and near-future costs in terms of licenses, devkits, etc. I'm keen to find out how things like the upcoming Summer Sale or (later on) participation in bundles will help.

The outline for the future of Malebolgia is:
- Continuous minor updates to fix bugs or do little tweaks based on feedback from the Steam community forums.
- A more large-scale update is planned to update sound effects and, to the extent feasible, improve animations and combat.
- Mac/Linux versions, possibly combined with that large-scale update.
- Ahead of Summer Sale, I want to introduce Steam trading cards.
- Development of WiiU version for eShop release, probably late Summer or early Fall.

#screenshotsaturday

Full release is around the corner. Getting nervous.

Social media 101: Use trending hashtags

E.g. MALEBOLGIA - #whiteandgold #TheDress #screenshotsaturday #horror #indiedev http://store.steampowered.com/app/318860 

I've released a big update on Steam last week, adding a good bit of content and story, NPCs, AI improvements, etc. So please have a look if you're interested.

That aside, here's two screenshots:

#screenshotsaturday

#screenshotsaturday

[Malebolgia]

Here's one for Malebolgia: