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[MereMonkey]

My gawd that new environment artwork!! 

[cepnox]

Hi everybody,
recently we have started to work on our editor, that is going to be integral part of Tendril: Echo Received.
The following image is showing some of the goodies that we currently have, like: multi selection/transformation, snapping and undo/redo.
Stay tuned for more.

[Danton]

Really like the look of this. Lots of personality, love the attention to detail all around.

All the best with it!

[irn]

Really like the look of this. Lots of personality, love the attention to detail all around.

All the best with it!

Thank you! Details are exactly the thing that most people don`t see at first but they can definitely feel it

[irn]

While we are assembling technical building blocks for Dragon`s playground I managed to find some time to have fun with some tiny animations. Enjoy!

[sidbarnhoorn]

This looks interesting! Will keep an eye on it.

[irn]

This looks interesting! Will keep an eye on it.

Great! Thanks

[irn]

Hi,
we know, dynamic lights are not as fancy as they used to be but they are still pretty useful! Although Tendril: ER is a stealth game (well if being stealth means spreading terror without being directly noticed), we use dynamic lights only for aesthetic reasons. Hiding in shadows is far from original nowadays so we decided not to venture that path. This also gives us freedom to play with the visual side of our lights more, because they do not have to follow all those gameplay restrictions like being clear or strong enough.

Sooo how our lights work? We apply stencil shadows onto upscaled sprites to achieve pixelated effect while having custom texture. So we can turn any sprite into a light.

Walls (shadow casters) create their own shapes of pure evil darkness to cut the light. We experimented with downscaling and upscaling also of these shadow shapes to achieve pixelated look on their edges but we were not satisfied with the result. So we ended up with high resolution shadow edges.

We are planing to use dynamic lights mostly for preventing light to pass through walls and doors anyway so we do no care about shadow edges so much.

We are happy how it turned out and we can go do other super important stuff!

[Husenica]

Awesome atmosphere, keep up the good work 

[Sundrop]

Just to let you know, we are currently spending most of our time working on guards!

These will be the ones foolish enough to raise weapons against you! How silly of them! They don`t realize that they only make you more vengeful thus making their petty lives even more pettier

Love the nuances in the animations!

[irn]

Thanks guys!

[io3 creations]

Hi,
we know, dynamic lights are not as fancy as they used to be but they are still pretty useful! Although Tendril: ER is a stealth game (well if being stealth means spreading terror without being directly noticed), we use dynamic lights only for aesthetic reasons. Hiding in shadows is far from original nowadays so we decided not to venture that path. This also gives us freedom to play with the visual side of our lights more, because they do not have to follow all those gameplay restrictions like being clear or strong enough.

Sooo how our lights work? We apply stencil shadows onto upscaled sprites to achieve pixelated effect while having custom texture. So we can turn any sprite into a light.

Walls (shadow casters) create their own shapes of pure evil darkness to cut the light. We experimented with downscaling and upscaling also of these shadow shapes to achieve pixelated look on their edges but we were not satisfied with the result. So we ended up with high resolution shadow edges.

We are planing to use dynamic lights mostly for preventing light to pass through walls and doors anyway so we do no care about shadow edges so much.

We are happy how it turned out and we can go do other super important stuff!

Is that the final version?  If the lights are moving, shouldn't the "fog/smoke" remain stationary (or slightly drifting)?

[cepnox]

Is that the final version?  If the lights are moving, shouldn't the "fog/smoke" remain stationary (or slightly drifting)?

Hi, no the texture/shader is not yet final. We will of course keep the smoke stationary in case of light movement (which is most probably not going to happen during the gameplay ). And as you said, smoke in light will be animated. Also those little dots are flies and they will happily fly around their little sun

[io3 creations]

I see.  I didn't notice the bugs around the light, I guess I was looking at the "big picture".  Though, if the bugs are so close, I'd expect them to be more flickering than being dark (depending on light color and intensity).
 

Hi,
we know, dynamic lights are not as fancy as they used to be but they are still pretty useful! Although Tendril: ER is a stealth game (well if being stealth means spreading terror without being directly noticed), we use dynamic lights only for aesthetic reasons. Hiding in shadows is far from original nowadays so we decided not to venture that path. This also gives us freedom to play with the visual side of our lights more, because they do not have to follow all those gameplay restrictions like being clear or strong enough.

I was thinking about it, and I since your game is stealth game, I wonder if there will be people who assume that shadow does mean cover.  Especially, since you also put a lot of work into making light/shadows look good, the expectation might be there. 

[irn]

Though, if the bugs are so close, I'd expect them to be more flickering than being dark (depending on light color and intensity).

We want the bugs to be quite dark because they are on a layer that is closer to the camera than Dragon. Everything on that layer is dark - lamps, cables... It is a part of our visual language. See here:

I was thinking about it, and I since your game is stealth game, I wonder if there will be people who assume that shadow does mean cover.  Especially, since you also put a lot of work into making light/shadows look good, the expectation might be there.

Yes you are absolutely right that in stealth games shadows usually mean cover and people are used to it nowadays. We have been and still are experimenting with lights so they will not catch the player`s attention as much. You can see that their intensity is not so high and their color is similar to that of the background. The background is not very dark so there is nothing that looks like a real shadow. The fog will also connect lights with the background more. Apart from that we will not put our light where you would expect in a shadow hunting stealth game - usually they are rather obvious.

In early stages of the development we opened this question a couple of times - whether we want the player to hide in shadows. We had a working prototype of this kind of lights. In fact our current lights still have the ability to detect whether something intersects them. But very soon it was clear for us that it will not bring anything unique to the gameplay so we threw that idea out of the window and it has stayed there ever since

[Mochnant]

Very interesting looking gameplay.  The art style is, dare I say with the subject matter, charming?  I'm looking forward to keeping up with development.

[irn]

Very interesting looking gameplay.  The art style is, dare I say with the subject matter, charming?  I'm looking forward to keeping up with development.

Thank thee good sir!

[faborro]

I'm in love. Can't wait to see more!

[io3 creations]

Though, if the bugs are so close, I'd expect them to be more flickering than being dark (depending on light color and intensity).

We want the bugs to be quite dark because they are on a layer that is closer to the camera than Dragon. Everything on that layer is dark - lamps, cables... It is a part of our visual language. See here:

Yeah, as you mentioned, if you don't have anything else lit then it could work.  I was mainly imagining it based on may past experience.

[HiddenNatureDsn]

This is looking great so far.  You're doing a lot with a little when it comes to the minimalist pixel art, and I'm enjoying the technical aspects of your posts as well.  Look forward to seeing more.