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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsThe Wayward Isles
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crusty
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« Reply #20 on: November 16, 2016, 03:35:52 PM »

woa
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CrayderStudios
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« Reply #21 on: November 16, 2016, 11:43:08 PM »

Wow, the artwork and art direction of this game is phenomenal. This look really promising.

I'm going to have to follow this.
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Panurge
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« Reply #22 on: December 30, 2016, 08:16:44 AM »

Thanks for the encouragement all!

We haven't had much to show just recently because we've been preparing a teaser trailer ready for our first proper announcement of the game outside of these forums. Hopefully it will be ready to show very soon!

In the meantime, Peter has produced a great new piece of concept art showing a couple of the Odd Folk living up to their name...

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Panurge
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« Reply #23 on: February 08, 2017, 07:25:14 AM »

We've made lots of progress over the past month and we're getting very close to having a trailer ready. It's been especially satisfying to see our main character, Scyld, actually present in the game for the first time:




His hair colour isn't meant to be that dark - the dyed Ozzy Osbourne look will be replaced by a greyer shade when we can get the lighting to play nicely with it. Smiley
« Last Edit: February 08, 2017, 12:27:29 PM by Panurge » Logged

Panurge
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« Reply #24 on: February 12, 2017, 08:15:12 AM »


Another nice shot of Scyld pootling around in the game world. The more eagle-eyed among you will notice some clipping over his left buttock which we'll be dealing with as a matter of urgency. Players will be spending a lot of time looking at those buttocks so we want to make sure they are just right.
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Panurge
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« Reply #25 on: February 15, 2017, 11:50:16 AM »

Here are a few early shots of the game's main town under construction. Lots of work still to do but the environment is slowly coming to life, which is very exciting!



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Panurge
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« Reply #26 on: February 23, 2017, 08:35:46 AM »



'Across the Horned Gate, the bodies hang in braces like birds, their feet weighted and their mouths propped open for their souls to leave.'
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Panurge
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« Reply #27 on: March 07, 2017, 06:44:20 AM »



'Some memories taint all the others around them, like rotten apples in a basket.'
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Panurge
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« Reply #28 on: March 12, 2017, 09:10:31 AM »

New video (all content is ours, including music!):





There's nothing quite like a moonlit stroll to work up an appetite for slaying unspeakable creatures and unriddling ancient mysteries...
« Last Edit: March 12, 2017, 11:22:44 AM by Panurge » Logged

BeardLogic
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« Reply #29 on: March 12, 2017, 09:57:19 AM »

CovertEngine is very impressive.  Threads look well balanced, animation is smooth, content loading is seamless.  That's awesome!  Seems like a solid pick for this game.  Out of curiosity, how are you handling float precision issues?  Seeing as it's your own engine you can handle the math any way you see fit.  Are you using a world space at all?  I guess what I'm asking is, is the world designed around an open world game?

The game is looking great as well.  What kind of controls are you looking to use, how free is the character going to be to move about?  What sort of combat system?  Is this more of a hack and slash like GOW, or more technical fighting like say The Witcher?
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Panurge
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« Reply #30 on: March 12, 2017, 12:08:55 PM »

Thanks! The player will be able to explore the island with complete freedom. Although it will be fairly large, it will also be sparsely populated and the focus will be on one strong narrative rather than a host of sub-quests and sidelines. We're aware that as a small team we can't hope to compete with games like The Witcher and Skyrim on their own terms!

We've yet to finalise the combat system but it will probably be a mix of the two you mention with a hack and slash approach for the shambling Odd Folk and a far more tactical and brutal kind of fight for the rare human opponents. We want to focus on story and immersion so probably will only have a minimal inventory system if any.

I'm afraid your other, more technical, questions fly blithely over my head but thankfully I have been able to summon Gerhard to address them:

"The world space is reconstructed from the depth buffer where the depth is converted to linear depth (in view space) and the world space is then in turn reconstructed from the linear depth in order to do world space based deferred shading and lighting. This ensures it stays invariant to precision errors which would occur if raw world space data buffers were to be used."

Hope that helps!
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Pseudavid
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« Reply #31 on: March 12, 2017, 12:46:14 PM »

This gives me a Pathologic vibe.

Pathologic vibe is good vibe.

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My interactive fiction is at pseudavid.itch.io

The Master of the Land, 6th in IFcomp 2018. It creates a seemingly dynamic world, gives the player complete agency within that world and then says ‘go
Panurge
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« Reply #32 on: March 12, 2017, 01:35:17 PM »

I love Pathologic and hope we can live up to that comparison! Although this game will be very different in some regards, the story will be similarly non-linear and concerned more with shades of grey than simple good and evil. We also want to take a big risk by refusing to hold the player's hand or offer one 'true' route through the game.
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BeardLogic
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« Reply #33 on: March 14, 2017, 08:14:58 AM »

Thanks! The player will be able to explore the island with complete freedom...

That's understandable, hard to compete with larger scale projects.  Very cool, I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 

Seeing as you want to make the game with a strong narrative, have you considered doing voice over or is this still something that hasn't been discussed?

"The world space is reconstructed from the depth buffer where the depth is converted to linear depth...

I would never have thought of handling the visualization this way; that's very clever.  So if I'm reading this right the worldspace (with respect to objects within the world) never really changes?  Are you then using double floating point precision for collisions?  I could be misunderstanding entirely, please forgive me if this is the case.
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gerbotha
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« Reply #34 on: March 16, 2017, 03:58:21 AM »

I would never have thought of handling the visualization this way; that's very clever.  So if I'm reading this right the worldspace (with respect to objects within the world) never really changes?  Are you then using double floating point precision for collisions?  I could be misunderstanding entirely, please forgive me if this is the case.

Indeed, this is true for the rendering and shading. For collision detection, single precision is used, utilising information stored in quantised tree structures which protects against large absolute world space coordinates and accompanying precision issues.
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Schrompf
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« Reply #35 on: March 16, 2017, 04:06:49 AM »

Amazing work and style! Keep going!
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Panurge
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« Reply #36 on: March 16, 2017, 09:37:56 AM »

Amazing work and style! Keep going!

Thank you!

Seeing as you want to make the game with a strong narrative, have you considered doing voice over or is this still something that hasn't been discussed?

We'd love to have everything voiced if possible. We're going to look to crowdfunding to fully develop the project later in the year and this will definitely be on our list of stretch goals. It will be a pretty big undertaking if we do, as the game is heavy on story and the dialogue itself is very dynamic, altering according to the player's relations with all NPCs. However, voice-overs would add a lot to the immersion and we'd like to have them even if only for the cut-scenes.
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BeardLogic
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« Reply #37 on: March 16, 2017, 11:19:49 AM »

Indeed, this is true for the rendering and shading. For collision detection, single precision is used, utilising information stored in quantised tree structures which protects against large absolute world space coordinates and accompanying precision issues.

Ahh, that makes sense.  You have built a very impressive engine!  Well done.  Thank you for answering my questions, I appreciate the clarifications. 

We'd love to have everything voiced if possible. We're going to look to crowdfunding to fully develop the project later in the year and this will definitely be on our list of stretch goals. It will be a pretty big undertaking if we do, as the game is heavy on story and the dialogue itself is very dynamic, altering according to the player's relations with all NPCs. However, voice-overs would add a lot to the immersion and we'd like to have them even if only for the cut-scenes.

Yeah, I have to wonder myself, it's one of the features that I really like in games but as an indie I find it hard to justify spending the money on such.  I suspect (if I'm reading into your collective vision correctly) in the case of The Wayward Isle it would add a great deal to the overall experience. I hope you manage to get there!

Thanks for answering my questions, sounds like you have a great game on the way!
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Panurge
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« Reply #38 on: April 30, 2017, 09:42:27 AM »



A couple more memories from Scyld's long and varied career... These will accompany some short pieces of interactive fiction designed to flesh out his backstory. We're aiming to release them at the same time as the game's first trailer, hopefully within the next couple of days!
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Panurge
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« Reply #39 on: May 01, 2017, 10:45:26 PM »

As the game is to be heavily narrative-focused, I thought it would be nice to say a bit about how the branching story and dialogue is being handled.

I'm really keen to make The Wayward Isles as flexible as possible in terms of how players approach its story and I'd like this story to be as open as the environment, capable of being tackled in any order and leading to a range of different endings. But the big question is how to keep this feasible, especially given the small size of our team? Here are some of the ways we're currently managing this:

  • Bottlenecks. The plot is broken into three major 'acts'. During each act there is complete freedom to approach NPCs in any order and achieve that act's goals in a variety of ways. This inevitably leads to a good deal of branching and most players will have very different experiences, but these branches are pulled back together at the end of each act for a key event, thereby ensuring the branching doesn't get too out of hand. Certain choices still have consequences which carry over between acts, however.

  • Scyld. As mentioned before, Scyld himself is not a blank slate onto which the player can project their own personality. He is a very strong character with clear motivations, a colourful way of talking and a detailed backstory. This means there are certain things he just won't do or say and the player's role is more to guide his interactions rather than control them completely. In this way, the number of possible interactions is naturally curtailed. An example of this is the system of ritual feuding used both as a story and a gameplay device - Scyld will not be able to simply attack anyone he likes but will rather follow the old code of the Isles, needing first a clear grievance and then issuing a challenge to fight.

  • Limited NPCs. Although The Wayward Isles is technically an open-world game, we're well aware of our limits as a small team and are going for quality over quantity throughout. Rather than have hundreds of NPCs with one or two lines of speech each, the island is home to only a small handful of family groups whose relationships with Scyld and with one another can be tracked more closely and in greater detail. My background in IF means I'm used to juggling very complex branching stories and I want to bring this to bear on the dialogue, making it as reactive and rich in personality as possible.


« Last Edit: May 02, 2017, 08:57:02 AM by Panurge » Logged

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