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[Dascu]

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:

[Cobralad]

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.

[Dascu]

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.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

so hyped. I loved the aesthetics of Malebolgia and enjoying the game (have yet to finish it).
good luck on this one, followin.

[Panurge]

I'm very excited to see this too. Love the influences you cite and loved Malebolgia too. God speed!

[Christian]

Hannibal, is that you?


:p

Looks really cool, I like the monster design

[Alex Higgins]

Oooh, an urban souls/colossus style game sounds wonderful! Obviously a bit dark as already stated, but it's otherwise already looking good! Good luck with this!

[Dascu]

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.

[Christian]

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

[plump]

woowie, this looks really good.
i'll be watching.

[Dascu]

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.

[Alex Higgins]

Yes bird monsters yes

[charliecarlo]

This is very very dark;
I can barely see anything on my main monitor, but I can see them better on my secondary monitor.
This game better have a brightness setting so I can enjoy hitting demons with a spear.

[Dascu]

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!

[troyduguid]

It's lookin great! Really digging the aesthetics so far, particularly that ominous stag man. I'll be following your progress   

[Dascu]

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.

[QOG]

Very nice effect, really enjoying the look of this game.

[Dascu]

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...

[archgame]

I really like the look of the "colossus" enemies and I hope it stays this ambiguous. By keeping the extents of the character darkened, it creates this sublime sense of the unknown which can be terrifying; don't be like all the horror movies and reveal the monster, they are never as scary afterwards.

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?

[FreakOrama]

Maan, you're making action mixing it with awesomeness badassness after I saw that latest moto gif. Keep going in this track! =3