Time for a blogpost!

It's definitely been a while. We've been very hard at work on every level of the game, making sure we had a good critical look at the game's biggest needs and to improve existing areas.

All the villages are nicely improving, as we are thinking more explicitly about what 'cornerstone' they should be built on. These are ideas, hooks and unique 'selling points' that make villages memorable and define their story. By doing so, you get a richer tapestry of different villages and it makes it more meaningful to visit them.

Another action for the villages is adding more sophisticated sockets and architecture, such as sleeping and eating areas! We had these blocked out and they worked really well, so now they're more specifically tailored towards the species at hand.

Some beds for the Cariblin, for example:



Or a nice place to eat for each species!



The Gobbledew totem was also finally finished and put in the game last week, heroically towering over the forests here (tier A):



We've been doing a lot of work on critters too: all of them have new animations and behaviors, and we're working on nests to show what their origin is on the island.







Species are getting more advanced reactions left and right, among which is a new full-body greet for when a species calls you over. Here's the Krocker's "hello":



We're doing a lot of world design in general, focusing on landmarks, backstories and locations, such as this one ("the Creator's Presence").



One of the most important updates we've been working on is something we haven't shown yet: the worldmap! It has become a pivotal mechanic in Pine. With the map, you can freely move around while checking your whereabouts, and it's fully dynamic. One of the Outfindings enhances it even more, but we won't spoil that for now...



We're excited to share some more gameplay soon. We still have a big update looming, but we want to make sure we have all the details in order before sharing that, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Hello everyone!

We've been a bit quiet while finishing an important milestone, and immediately after we jumped back to the next things on the list. We're making good and important progress, and while we are holding back some important announcements for a while still, we're excited to tell you about some of what we did in the meantime.

A big update for villages: we're objectifying the places where they take roles, eat, sleep and more, making the villages more wholesome and adding a lot of nice assets to the areas they're in. For example, check out the Gobbledew role place, where they take their outfits to go and do things outside:



As a bonus, check out the cloth waving in the wind - also new!

The role outfits will be positioned on coat racks of sorts.



More role work was done for specific species too. We're working on generic trader assets, and, for example, the Gobbledew's attire when gathering/trading:



More village work was done too - we're getting to dressing the fences etc with non-generic, but species-specific styling!







We're also working on a new critter, a really important one - an aggressive creature that will attack you on sight. These are not to be messed with and do a lot with Albamare's ecology. It's called the Bleeker!



In general, we're reshaping our critter plan a bit. We're making a few less than originally planned, but all because we want to focus on the existing ones better and give them more meaning.



Also, we don't think we ever showed you our new vegetation system, on top of our brand new terrain - we all put that in for the previous milestone build and it's all looking a lot better already. Also, here's some of those night lights we mentioned - they will turn on at nightfall and add a lot of atmosphere.



Until next time!

Another very productive week! With the team currently operating at a capacity of 10, we're making awesome progress on big and small things alike.

We're building editors for features, effects and polish, which greatly speeds up the way we work in the project.

One of those is a brand new surface editor, which allows us to select all prefabs and tag it with a certain surface. This is important for footstep sounds, ranged sounds and VFX to appear/sound correctly.



We now have an extended weather editor, as well as a brand new "Night Visuals" editor that allows us to enable/disable objects or turn on lights at a certain time of day. This includes fireflies, lanterns and more.



Our terrain improvements are also getting further. A new angle-selector brush makes painting splatmaps (textures) on our terrain a million times easier, and it makes it look a LOT better because of perfect and objective blending.



On the content side we made awesome progress too. Here's a look at one of the Outfindings, the Conducting Lantern:



The role outfits for species are coming along nicely too. Here's the gatherer basket for the Cariblin, for example:



We've also continued dressing the biomes, and the smaller snow biome (top of Mount Telkin) was the last one to be done. New snow textures and snow vegetation!



Until next time!

Time for another short devblog! We've made some good visual progress and are excited to share what we're working on.

The terrain is getting a huge revamp. Both tech (splatmaps and the groundcover drawing), design and art are currently passing over it to make everything look more natural, have a better structure and run way better.



We're also working on new ground textures to better match the improved quality and style of the game:



We're blocking out more Vaults too... without giving too much away, this one in the swamps begs to be explored, no?



We're also working on finalizing the outfits for species roles - the guard is done now for species, which is a tabard that shows what they're up to.





We have more cool stuff in the pipeline - putting a lot of sounds in, working on our material detection system to diversify them, working on the weather editor... good stuff!

Also, something cool to show you soon... (WIP)



Until next time!