GDC, VR and WiiU!
We’re back!
Wow it’s been a crazy and turbulent month after GDC. We’re at a point where we need to get funding sorted which means presenting, negotiating, talking and waiting a lot. It’s tiring as hell, but we’re positive we’ll get there eventually. So because of the slightly draining circumstances we’ve completely neglected our public presence and the forum.
In case you haven’t seen our GDC trailer already:
So here’s a quick update for all of ya’ll.
Our week in San Francisco started with Game Connection where we had an insane amount of continuous meetings. Here’s a shot of Bendik and Erik at our table.
It was a great event and since we were part of the Selected Projects we had the chance to present our game.
Here’s Erik talking about FoM.
GDC was massive! Located in the entire Moscone Center there was a lot of walking involved and zillion things to see and experience. We were part of the Nordic Pavilion stuck in the middle of giants such as Intel, Nintendo and Sony. It was quite exciting standing there with our little indie game and we we’re lucky enough to get our own monitor and table!
Our composer Eiko Ishiwata came “all the way” from Vancouver to join us at GDC.
Eiko and I went to the Cartoon Art Museum where Double Fine had a book signing event with free booze and lots of fans – me included.
Where I met the one and only Tim Schafer.
Back at GDC we had a go with Oculus Rift. We were even featured in this Road to VR article!
Eiko is playing the VR version of Hawken.
Oculus Rift VR reactions featuring me and Eiko.
So that’s it! We’ll get more into specific outcomes of the conference in later news.
In other news – FoM is coming to WiiU!
Since GDC we have been getting in touch with all our new contacts – including Nintendo!
We recently announced that FoM is coming to WiiU and that SnowCastle is finally a Nintendo developer so there’s lots of stuff happening with that.
Here’s a few articles about our Wii U announcement.
Zenit Desert – concept art post
Hey everyone! Hope you all had a good holiday and a great New Year celebration!
We figured it was about time to get back into posting stuff again, so I’m going to show you guys some concept art for an area we’re calling “Zenit”. We’ve got people working on the gameplay and content design for this area as well, but I’ll kick it off with some concept art and visual development sketches!
Without revealing any story around it, Amon and Gnart find themselves facing an unforgiving desert, the habitat of the Rock Crabler, Fire Beetle and Fire Djinn from previous posts.
As you guys are getting used to seeing from me, I start off by doing some rapid, rough sketches just to start generating some idea of what I’m doing. We wanted a crumbled entrance in an old temple partially hidden by the sand as a starting point, so that’s what I focused on when I did these first sketches.
After some pointing and discussing with Frits I colored and refined this one:
From there we wanted to get a better feel for the environment as a whole, and I started out doing a color sketch of Amon and Gnart right after they’ve been dumped into the desert:
We originally thought a camera above the player and pretty far out would do it, but after some discussion and prototyping the camera in engine we felt it would be better to position the camera more behind the player considering the gameplay we want in this area.
There will of course be combat encounters in the desert as well, so I did a quick mockup of how that might look when Amon and Gnart face off against a Fire Djinn.
And another following the same camera rules as the start of the desert, showcasing ancient architecture of a city buried in sand.
That’s it from me for this post! Hope you enjoyed the pictures!
Another screenshot!
Hey guys!
In the last post I showed the production art for the second part of the room, and now we have a screenshot showing some of that room as well! Yay!
Have a look!
Thanks for looking!
Visual update with concept art, 3D environment and light tests!
Hey guys!
We wanted to share some visual progress with you guys. We’re hard at work on our vertical slice, and as Mattis showcased in the last post, we’re greyboxing the levels to prototype functionality early on. Parallell to that we’re working on assets, textures and all that good stuff to replace the grey boxes as we get them done.
I have a couple of steps along the way to show you.
After game design have made their decisions we paint up an environment to inform how we want the 3D assets to be made, as well as guide lighting and textures down the line. Here’s a concept I did for the very first room the player gets to see:
This is a typical environment concept art sheet we give to the environment artist. Separate elements, whether they’re tileable, units width and height and so on so there is as little guesswork as possible down the pipeline.
Below is the scene after we’ve gotten it back from our awesome 3D environment guy, Thomas Pasieka, with textures and wireframe and a uniform light .
This is after we’ve gotten all the 3D bits and pieces back and have reassembled them in Unity. For me, this is an awesome step to see my concept art come back as building blocks and then assemble it into something dimensional where the player can move!
And finally I have a screenshot from one of our designers playing around with lights and post processing effects. This is work in progress of course. We’re hoping to have some gameplay videos up before long as well, where we’ll have gotten further on the lighting too.
I’ll end this post with the concept art for the next part of the first environment, which is almost complete as well.
Thanks for looking! Hope you guys enjoy the updates!
Crystal Ruin Sketches!
The design for the first interior in the prototype is getting interesting. The Crystal Ruin used to be a busy station connected to one of the greatest crystal mines in the region. The giant crystal located in the centre of the room was probably placed there to channel and spread sun light inside the cave. In the current condition of the building this crystal mechanism is in ruin, only to light the entrance hall. Because of the channeled sunlight plants have grown out of the crumbled walls and floor creating an interesting microcosmos.
Next step will be adding some color and detail to the environment. I will probably use Sketchup to find the right size and angle for the composition. I also need to inhabit it with props and interactive elements. In the station Amon will encounter the first critter in the game, talk to a wounded miner, solve a puzzle and explore the room for treasure – a lot of gameplay in such a small space!
Project FoM Canvas
The updated Project FoM poster picturing the original main characters and the two opposing worlds. Although a lot of things will change and evolve as we get into production, this illustration was the starting point for our little universe.
Character concept art
Here’s a character concept I designed for ProjectFoM. He’s the first (I think) NPC that’s been designed for the game. I’ll get back to you later on with where he fits in the world. We think it’s pretty cool! Can’t wait to show you guys! Anyways, here’s the mine worker NPC for now.
[UPDATE] I did the back view and refined his face. Here is the new version!
Thanks for taking a look!
Another spudgun!
Hey guys! Couldn’t call it quits on a Friday without posting some more concept art!
Here is another of the spudgun weapon designs:
Have a great weekend everyone!
Project FoM – The very beginning
Some sturdy armor for the brutal arena fights!
Since this is a development blog we will try to share as much as we can without spoiling too much of the story and setting. So I think it’s fitting to start off with some early sketches from the FoM’s very infancy.
We are currently getting our hands dirty with what we decided to call an art prototype; basically putting together specific scenes and characters and experimenting with effects, lighting, animations etc. in Unity 3D. This is a great way for us to find the perfect pipeline, workflow and tools, while the design team is hard at work figuring out the technical stuff.
Hopefully we have something goosebumpingly cool to showcase this summer. Stay tuned!
More Project FoM concept art!
Hey guys! I’m working on concept art for the main battle area in Project FoM these days, so Frits and me figured I should share some stuff so you guys can get in on the process early on!
I wanted to share some sketches and paintings I did a while ago for the arena area:
Some sketches for balconies and such for the arena interior:
A worksheet for the arena exterior:
And this piece that gave us the first idea about the battle scenario:
We decided against this look however, and wanted to go in a more organic direction for the general look of the arena, with like houses mounted on walls and weird nooks and balconies and such for the spectators to look out from, so here’s the new direction I did:
And the promo piece I based on the concept art above:
As of today I’m working, among other things, on separate modules which we will produce in 3D and build the area wall from. I’ll be posting some production concept art when I get them done!
Hope you guys dig, and I’ll check back in soon!
- Fredrik
