Hello!

Development has been slow once again so I can only leave you with a few changes to level 1. (previously on page 4 or 5.)
Basically, in the first draft the complex was on an island and I changed that to a lush forest. I also changed the amount of decay the player will encounter in the complex.

















All of this still being work in progress but so far it runs at an acceptable framerate for me. Testing on actual gaming rigs will also be done before this goes into beta.

Completely removed are a lot of the interiors. They looked subpar without dynamic shadows but they did not fit the narrative. However, you can see what they would have been here and here



-Wolf

Lovely visuals - really makes you want to explore the environment.

Sorry, double post.

Thank you!

I intended to design the level this way. I'm glad to hear its working. The only primary objective the player has is to enter that compound. He can finish the level in a breeze if he wants to but he can also scavenge for valuable items and purchase better equipment before entering. (The game is balanced for this to be the recommendable thing to do.) I'll simplify this process by having valuables (batteries, copper wiring, tech-junk) immediately converted into "currency". There won't be a store system, I just want the player to be able to buy things in some dialogues, a similar system they had in the first deus ex.



-Wolf

one word


WOW

Thanks science boy! (assuming the wow was meant in a positive way )

Updates are looking great.

cool.

baie mooi.


pcs

Thanks you 2!

I have updated the first post to represent the progress this project made so far.

Just going through the W.I.P's and just revisited yours Wolf always amazes me m8 how you get your levels to look so blooming cool seriously nice visuals

Excellent visuals !!
Probably the best so far ..

Incredible stuff! Near broke my jaw with it hitting the floor and all that

The picture with the city wall (nr.3 in the first post) is very impressive. Pure sunset mood. Somewhat hazy, expectant. I really like that best.

sorry for my bad words but i must say the work above is
[explicit] AWESOME

Congrats Man

Mod Edit: I appreciate the sentiment but can't let you do that.

Howdy!

Thank you all for the immensly positive feedback!



I really appreciate it! Its not easy to be honest because I always have to keep the framerate and gameplay in mind. That last scene for example has a lot of billboard trees instead of fully modeled ones. It would of course look way better if I replaced those with actual 3d trees but it would not run for most players. Then I have to factor in loot, interactive elements, interactive elements that are connected (using switch opnes a door, that door being opened changes a text based dialogue option.) It can be a bit like work from time to time but I always enjoy walking around my own little world at the end of the day
I can't produce anything akin to what the studios produce but I try to give the players an immersive experience...as good as I can.



Not sure about that but I really appreciate it!



Thank you! I hope it'll have the same effect when seen in motion later when the game is ready.



Thank you! I took a bit of artistic freedom with the design of these levels. I mean, a real sunset is not THAT orange/brown in tint but hey, its a fantasy/scifi game. I'm glad the mood translates well on screen. If I happen to add an extra level later on where the player exits the compound again, it would be nighttime.



-Wolf

ok ... let's agree on a 3.September, 19:12 o'clock
The picture still stay cool

Hi!

I managed to find the time to finalize this level at least visually. It still requires the animated fauna I want to have here and there and the gameplay elements. All in good time I hope.

But first, I am also remaking a lot of the media I have to work with this game. For example, I have retextured and edited the female peasant character from the "classics" media pack to go with the title. Sadly, the result is kind of awkward which is why I made here a sniper character. You know, you only see her from a distance
I also didn't manage to get that blank facial expression out of the model so strapped on a gasmask.



Here you'll see what the first level will look like in the final game (unless there are major changes in the rendering pipeline along the way.)

























Thanks for checking in!



-Wolf

Nice pics Wolf,nice to see you back at it.
Voted for you game

Dave

Oh right and thank you!!

I forgot to post this here, but those of you who want to can vote for this game on indiedb. I appreciate it!



-Wolf

My god Wolf these look amazing!

Damn it wolf, when can I play ?

Thank you HellreaperX!

@Duchenkuke: Oh! Good question. Given the state of things and how rarely I get to work on it, probably not in the near future.



-Wolf

Hey all!

Some of you might have been on my website before and you probably noticed how empty and outdated it was. Well I changed that and this game has, of course, its own feature tab. Other than that, there is an archive of all my previous work on the website too.

---

Visit Acythian's Website

Visit IndieDB profile

---

Thanks!



-Wolf

Didn't even realise you had a website, something to read over the weekend for me

Thank you!

Well, its really more of a blog but its a nice place to keep a web presence for all my projects.

Hello!

I have yet again updated page 1 to better represent the project at its current stage. The last time I did that was in February of 2017. Its true that this project has evolved along side the engine which is also why there has never even been a beta demo release (there have been 2 test releases which are the Redacted games. If you read this and never saw those, you can grab both here.)

You can clearly see, even if you only casually flip through the pages of this thread, that the game took a long time to find its tone and even genre. At this point I have written a lengthy design document and have everything pretty much thought out allowing me to work on small, episodic games and other pieces of artwork set in my own little fictional universe. This is nothing unfamiliar to any creative person and my other game projects went through a similar process but I really made that commitment to myself to stick to this project and its lore. I understand that so far, this might look like a generic shooter to any casual browser and its way less popular outside of the GG community than Shavra or other projects where. (relatively) However, people who saw my GDD liked it so far and I believe the world it builds has a lot of unique characteristics, including the characters it represents. It dawned on me that a lot of ideas in it are better suited, or at least better achievable for a person with a limited skillset such as myself in a novel.
Its a little life goal of mine to have one or 2 novels published. Nothing popular, just something that sits on the shelve in the SF section one day. As for the game, I still want to craft a few, no doubt obviously amateurish, yet hopefully entertaining, episodic titles with rather simple story lines and gameplay, yet set in a more complex and hopefully captivating world.

Originally, all I had in mind with this project was a dumb little shooter, using GG's early extremely limited and broken features. The name of the project, not necessarily catchy or aesthetic was a result of me simply throwing letters together until something clicked. I did however add a little description of what it means and how to pronounce it to page 1. Then it evolved into a corridor based horror shooter, then a third person action game (when that was supposed to be implemented) and eventually it settled on first person action adventure.

Where am I going with this?

Good question. The reason for this rambling post so few of you will read is that I wanted to send out a little life-bleep as I have posted so little about the game lately and have been somewhat absent from the game guru community as a whole and that I decided to kill off all my more lofty and ambitious game ideas.
I was learning the ropes of other engines lately, "engine shopping" as some call it and decided that all that was simply no longer for me. I am not too old but just not at a stage of my life to be able to invest that kind of energy, to learn a complex tool for what is, lets be honest here, essentially a hobby activity. It all just feels like such a chore and is really not worth it for me. Most would require me to either form or join a team and I greatly prefer the helpful nature of this community over an all out collaboration.

Personally, the last real stride to go all out on a project, put in regular work hours and set milestones for myself was Skrye.

While it was hard for me to kill of "Shavra" as I tried to make it work in one iteration or another (Previous titles where Spyra and Relict) it was the right choice. I'm now experienced enought to just know what I can't do and that game was something I was uttely incapable of ever pulling of. Acythian on the other hand allows me to make cool little things. Small fun games.

Some people on here are far more disciplined and diligent than I am. The truth is that while I enjoy my creative hobbies sometimes I don't get around actually working on them for weeks in a row and therefore my projects can stagnate. I truely appreciate those of you who maintain an interest and keep checking back therefore all the more.

And thats really what I wanted to reduce my 3D hobby to given the little time I have for it : Fun. You'll find that a lot of the things I do on here might seem less ambitious but therefore I hope they will somewhat soon be actually playable.

Thank you for reading even though it certainly took me a while to get to the point.



-Wolf

The assets you create and then use to build your worlds always invoke in me a strong sense of other worldliness that I’m very strongly drawn to want to visit.

If you can achieve 10% of that feeling in a novel or three you’ll have a sure fire hit.

Hope you still get time to pursue the hobby as I think there is still a lot more you will get out of the creative side despite being somewhat tired of the technical perhaps.

Cheers.

i there a demo for download or its full comercial?

It's a tough one; most of us have these entire universes in our heads, but only a fraction of that can ever be conveyed in a one-man-band indie game, perhaps even less than usual given Game Guru's limited feature set. I concur with cybernescence though, your work always evokes a strong of place that begs me to play it and explore it. There is a danger though of getting in too deep with the world-building and never being able to fully realise our creations. Either that or we start to second guess ourselves and lose confidence in our approaches and scrap our projects. Or we simply run out of steam, perhaps getting beaten into submission by Game Guru along the way.

This is the realisation I had with FPS Creator, which I carried with me into Game Guru; sometimes it's better the create something smaller and more simplistic, and be prepared to accept compromises, in order to actually release something. This is the approach I took with Extraction Point and the end result was arguably greater than the sum of its parts.

You should definitely experiment with literature though. As with all creative endeavours, maybe start small and do a short story, then build up to the fully-fledged novel.



If you still want to create games set in the same universe as Acythian, I'm sure we'd all be anxious to play them! There's nothing amateurish about your projects, aside from the fact you are technically a hobbyist and not a 'professional', your passion for world-building shines through in all your work. Game Guru itself seems to lend itself to shorter games, so perhaps you could adopt a more episodic approach for Acythian, a bit like Bugsy has done for his Kshatriya series.

I totally agree with you on the engine shopping point as well. People ask me why I don't learn Unity or Unreal, why I haven't mastered Blender or 3DS MAX. The answer is time. I literally don't have the time to start from the ground up and learn an entirely new software and develop a brand new workflow. Hell, I found it hard enough forcing myself to learn a new video editing software for my job and I am literally paid to do that. So long as you work in the software that allows you to be the most creative and productive you can be, stick with that. When it comes to game engines, Game Guru is - for all its flaws - very good for testing and prototyping. And like you also said, so long as you're having fun, that's all that really matters.

Basically I just wanted to say good luck with whatever you do next, be that more 3D work, short Game Guru games, or turning your hand to writing!

AE

Hey!
@cybernescence


Thank you! Thats a huge compliment as its also precisely what I try to invoke.



At least for now but I expect that to shift a lot later this year. And yes, the technical aspect of learning a new engine has been so tedious that I just couldn't bring myself to it. Paradoxically enough (I hope thats the correct term), I really enjoy that part in Game Guru. Its more statisfying to me to get a character working in GG than it is in UE for example, despite the result in UE being superior.

Speaking of characters, that has been an ongoing issue with my game that I finally solved. I can't show anything yet but I finally settled on what characters I will use. Here I was wondering if you ever worked on something like that: Head tracking, as in characters turning their head towards the player independantly from their body once the player is close enough. If you have and if its not too much to ask, could you give me a brief description of how you pulled that off and if its doable on regular animated entities?

Cheers!

@osiem80

There is no demo for this game, only older test games which are rather basic gameplay wise. LINK
This is also not a commercial project. If it happens to be really good, run stable and last at least 2 hours in game time I will reconsider this but at its current state my work is not good enough to be sold.

@Avenging Eagle:



Oh absolutely, I have a whole graveyard of games that died because of this.



I find that admirable as you are the only user on here who took a good hard look at GG and what it came with and designed your game around that. You also did it in a manner where you could rely on some GG stock content without it ever feeling like that.



I've written a few short stories and then sent them to my girlfriend, who is a book seller and reads a lot, and she absolutely demolished it. It felt like back in school where you'd get a paper returned that was just full of red ink. But yes, I'd have a lot to learn if I where to pick up creative writing but at least its less jarring than picking up another game engine.



I'm always glad when I am not alone with this sentiment as so many other devs simply don't understand why I willingly use GG or MS3D rather than the oh so superior, modern, fantastic and glamorous alternatives. Time and joy are strong factors and given that you work long hours on a computer for a living, the last thing you probably want to do is come home to work some more long hours on a computer.



Thank you and to you too! I slightly envy you for having a creative job, thats so hard to get and I wish you best luck with your film making career as well.



-Wolf

Somewhat spookily, I am working on a sideline facet that does something similar but not perfected yet - however the head tracking is to allow most of an NPC to be a static model, with only the head rotating (via script rather than animation) to face the player when needed. This is really an optimization technique, so not all NPCs have to have a lot of (or any) animations and huge scripts. Clearly it has limitations, in that these NPCs are forever sitting or standing in same position (well can be hidden when needed - after player moves away perhaps) . Expecting to use this in the bar area (where your lovely shelf system has gone too)

I've not attempted it via animation, sorry.

Cheers.

I'm looking forward to visit the elektrik wizard bar then.
Interesting approach! I never thought of that. Personally I settled to important characters and shop keepers rotating towards the player (if they are behind a counter it even looks natural) and having random street NPC's loop their idle animations as simple entities. Its also not the most elegant solution but should do the job.

I'd also like to share some early screenshots from a city area. I've shown these around a bit before and mostly gotten good responses, albeit that there are a few things that need changing or adjusting. However, now that I have the general architecture of the level "carved out" I can start detailing it, which is the more enjoyable part.

Synchromesh had the really interesting idea that I might create some light aerial traffic with an animated skybox.

You'll also see that its using dynamic lighting now...I'm still holding out for someone like Lee or Preben to implement something decent in the future. Here's to optimism

If you are on the discord, you may have seen these before.



Light and visibility will likely change in this area in the future.



A screenshot from higher up. Several of these buildings have already been replaced and the whole scene is a lot less blue now.



The small market will have a few NPC's later on.










C&C is always welcome. Up next will also be a few soundbytes from the soundtrack for those interested. I'll upload those as a YT video.



-Wolf

The city pictures look impressive. Reminds me a bit ... Blade runner
As an NPC prototype you can try the phoner. It still needs to be improved, but the animations are already there for NPC

WOW!Cant wait to see a video gameplay

@Lafette: thanks! Thats a big compliment! Also thank you so much for the character! The animations set surprised me, its fantastic.

@Osiem80: I don't have the necessary hardware to record gameplay , so I'll have to rely to the community once this game is at least in beta. IF that happens, you will be able to find it on my youtube channel.



-Wolf

Lovely screenshots, very much channelling Bugsy's work here



Are you running Windows 10? It has a little-known screen recorder built in. Go to the search bar and type in 'x-box', run the app, launch Game Guru then hit Windows+G (I think) to bring up a record window. Tell it, yes, this is a game. Now in test game, hit Windows+Alt+R to start and then stop recording.



You and me both!

AE

Hehe! Thanks a lot! If Bugsy keeps it up in the source engine, he'll be surpassing this way beyond what I can produce! I'm looking forward to playing that too.

Also: I meant that my hardware is not good enough to run my game at full settings. Recording it would be a slide show as I still run an older office laptop.



-Wolf

Damn thats harsh mate. Shame you don't live in the UK, my secondary desktop is gathering dust, I'd have let you have it, but it would be too much hassle to ship it over to you.

Thats a mighty fine gesture from you but I couldn't impose. Thank you!



-Wolf

Hello!

I've been experimenting with characters and have a bit to say about that but first I'd like to show you the progress I have made on that city map.
For all the artifacty GG rendering and the faults it has, its really starting to feel like an urban are playing through it. I'm a bit proud for how the player can traverse it and all the alcoves, nooks and crannies it has.

So far I have not done anything major to the colour tinting and overall feel of the level but just detailed it more. Also note that some shots have differences in brightness, as that too is something I'll settle once and for all later on.

Take a look:



































Comments are welcome as always and thank you for viewing!



-Wolf

Great pics Wolf,I like your style. Hoping to be able to play this later on

Dave

Inspiring work Wolf! That's fuel for me (and other's I think)

@Granada: Thank you! Haha, I wanted it in alpha stage this mars and send it to testers. I'm a long way from there though.

@Medmatheus : Oh thank you! Thats very motivating to read!

Wolf, ........ I was amazed while looking at the new pics.
It gives me the urge to carry on again with my project , i was just playing around with ideas lately, got to much going on right now and work to long hours , its like i cant get over the tiredness and inspiration edge.

But looking at your stuff, makes me want to carry on again, thanks for the inspiration and awesome pics.

Pcs

Absolutely awesome Wolf. That lighting is outstanding, and as we GG's lighting is a bit lacking. It really does look "Post-Apocalyptic" with that orange tint and the fogging, great stuff.

@PCS: Hey thanks! But if you gotta work long hours, don't swamp yourself with too much creative work on the side. I did that in the past and I found it to be needlessly stressful. Get back into it when you got a bit more time on your hands instead

@Tarkus1971: Thanks! Well, I used what I had as lightmapping does not work for me in GG's current state (Bugsy has another idea to try) All you see in the latest shots is real time lighting. I kinda hide how semi-functional it is with coloring and fog but you still see that objects don't cast actual shadows from dynamic lights in many places.



Thanks!! I hope to do a few more swamp areas for this title later this year.



-Wolf

UPDATE

If you followed this project since its inception you might have noticed that it went through several iterations of character designs.
Initially I was working with Errant AI's character collection. However, despite being very versatile they are barely usable as civilians and entirely geared towards military type games. Modifying them to look the part for anything else would look extraordinarily cheesy. I'll still use them as armed enemies as their animation pool is just perfect and there are enough masked variants to hide the difference in style with all the other characters.

Secondly I just used retextured versions of the stock Game Guru characters. These came with pretty neat scifi versions and with a few edits to the fantasy pack types I had neat cyberpunk characters. However, I did not want the characters in my game to be instantly recognizable as GG chars. I also found a lot of the civilian and military types to be very generic in style. I understand that this was made on purpose as GG should allow the user to have the ability to make a videogame in any genre he likes but it was rubbing me the wrong way. The androgynous looking female character variants did not strike my fancy either.

Apart from some testing with high poly variants that where all not for my skill level I finally came to a decision.

I own a lot of chars from arteria 3d. Especially the FPSC versions (generally perceived as low quality as it seems they have been made FPSC ready by brute force, quality be damned) have a pretty low polygon count. The retail versions from their store have LOD versions and look genuinely decent. They have an impressive animation pool and can reach quite decent quality. And with owning so many of them I can easily have enough variation going on in my levels without being too taxing on the engine.

Now, there is one extra point to using these. I enjoy salvaging and retexturing old media to my liking. These chars are perfect as they have barely seen any use in FPSC projects. Feel free to guess what pack they are from if you own them

And here are those I have ready so far:


She was pretty much ready to go out of the box and is one of the higher quality characters in acythians collection so far. Same level of detail as Shavra characters later in production.


Talking with Pirate Myke he suggested that I make a smoother version for an up close LOD level of this one. But alas, I came to the conclusion that I sacrifice a lot of quality on other chars and that no matter what I do, I don't have the necessary skills to significantly improve this one. SO this is what he looks like



A military type char I converted to look more like a street crook.



He looks more like a leather gimp than a char to be taken all too serious but I think he turned out neat, despite having some of the worst UV mapping I ever made. Ha!



The outfit turned out alright. I deal with the unfortunate face texture stretching later

LODS, POLYGONS AND ILLUSIONS

Even if I use Lowpoly characters. There are a lot of performance and stability related factors I have to keep in mind.
Naturally, no chars are active once a level starts. This goes without saying. But I have looked for more solutions to keeping those FPS high even with a lot of characters active. Here goes:

*Spawning (of course).
*LOD levels. Specifically a LOD stage that has no mesh (if this does not load properly I just make it a single polygon. I have to test this)
The idea is to completely remove the character mesh once the player is far away enough that he would not see the character anyway. This can be set very close for indoor levels but I need to avoid model popping.
* NPCs just standing or sitting around can be entities rather than characters that loop a single animation track. This alone should have a positive impact on overall framerate.
* Lower texture resolution.

A few more impressions from the city level.

Now that the character issue is solved, I need to figure what kind of vehicles are being used in this games universe. Cars are more or less obsolete in general but I also don't want to just copy something as iconic as blade runners flying vehicles. In the background of this screenshots you can see someone dealing in "vintage vehicle and machine parts".







Yeah, the lack of real time shadows is very rough but I hope the urban decay translates well anyway in these tunnels.







I am also working on a better fire effect to replace these stock decals.



And that is all I got for now. C&C welcome as always



-Wolf

That’s quite a character base you are building there ,nice scenes to.i think I will enjoy playing this one when the time comes ,happy to see you getting back into it again

Dave

Gobsmacked. That's it Wolf just gobsmacked.

@Dave: thank you! You're on the list for the alpha version anyway. I just hope it won't end up being a giant lagging disappointment.

@Grobyken: Thank you! I rarely see you comment in w.i.p., welcome



-Wolf