I am 3 weeks out from participating in Steam NextFest and 4 weeks from going into Early Access with my first Unreal Engine (5) title, Paladin’s Passage.
Paladin’s Passage is a 2.5D single-screen puzzle platformer. Players explore the deformed depths of the Delphic dungeons and brave encounters with fantastic beasts. If they’re lucky, perhaps they’ll find an ancient artifact.
Available on Steam initially, then coming to other platforms and stores after it exits Early Access: Paladin's Passage on Steam.
With 2-1/2 weeks left until Steam NextFest the Paladin’s Passage demo is looking pretty good. A new tutorial with a more hands-on, kinesthetic approach has been added and special preparations for the demo build (levels unlocked, upgrade to full version tested, etc.) are nearly done. I’m putting the final polish onto the level editor now, including getting it hooked up to the Steam Workshop for level sharing.
I’ve always found that making the ‘game’ - the part where the player spends 95% of their time - i.e. the levels, maps, characters, etc. takes about 50% of my time, another 50% is spent on menus/UI, DevOps, non-core artwork, OS-specific code, testing, etc. and the other 50% on marketing, press, conferences, publishing, financial, etc. (Yes, I know my math doesn’t work).
Anyway, after about 8 iterations,I think I now have final artwork for Paladin’s Passage’s hero images and logo! Here it is:
I made a new trailer today using the new artwork and the demo build I’m putting together for Steam NextFest. Had some fun with Final Cut Pro; decided to use the circle wipes with off-entered focal points to help highlight where the player is when the scene changes.
Ten days left until Steam NextFest, but our demo is already up and available for free on Steam. It says Windows only right now, but both MacOS and Windows builds are available with Linux coming this weekend (hopefully!). The demo includes 10 levels and the ability to create and play up to 3 custom levels using the level editor. I’d love some feedback if anybody has time to download and play the demo.
The level editor is still a bit rough, but works well enough that I’m doing all of my design work in it. It still needs basic validation (e.g. each level requires a player start, key and door), and it requires a keyboard and mouse to use, while the rest of the game is controller-friendly. Making this controller friendly will be a challenge, since it uses UE’s mouse drag’n’drop events, which will need to be completely re-written.
Focus for the next few weeks will be on finishing up Steam Workshop integration for level sharing along with Achievements and Leaderboards for the final release later this year.
I spent the long weekend (Canadian edition, so Friday off, not Monday!) making my first cinematic trailer for Paladin’s Passage. No in-game footage here. This scene was completely made just for the cinematic.
Most of the terrain is made from Quixel assets and I used the trees and some of the blacksmith assets from their Medieval Village project. The dwarf uses a fully animated Metahuman face with body assets from Denis Daraban’s Dwarf Paladin from the Unreal marketplace. Base animations are from Mixamo. Soundtrack was created by Alexander Nakarada of https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com.
This was a major learning process, figuring out out to do cinematic work is really quite different from in-game stuff. I kept it simple for now, but hope to build on this over the next couple of weeks or so.
Would love a few critiques, if you have them! Is the camera movement OK? Animations? Sounds? Lighting? Etc.?
I spend the last week working a couple of hours each evening on my first cut scene video (intro for the game). Mostly, I’ve been learning a few things from YouTube and other sources (like these forums) and trying them out to see what kind of result I can get. As such, the video has evolved quite a bit since the previous posting. I think it is better in some ways, but still needs work. Here’s a summary of the evolution of the video. The major numbers correspond to those in the image. Sorry, the image is quite large, but I wanted anybody who’s curious to be able to see each frame.
Standard UE4.26 era dwarf model from marketplace with no facial animation and legacy card hair elements. Camera is using short focal length (22mm). Sparks are standard particles.
First attempt to add meta human face. I had major issue with grooms going crazy, flying all over when attached to the skeleton, so I only used the beard and moustache, but even so they didn’t work out.
Created new spark particles in Niagara using direction burst and elongation in direction they are moving.
Tried to put card-based hair on meta-human head but it either didn’t fit properly (like this shot) or parts of it went inside the head. I also changed camera to a focal length of 85 and changed the animation path of the camera to suite the new focal length. Disabled sparks on the fire pit to get rid of bloom and lens flares from them.
Attempting to fix metahuman hair grooms. Removed physics from head and shoulders, which helped, but still not very good. Changed camera focal length from 85 to 60 to get a bit further away. Re-enabled bloom and lens flares with reduced values.
Finally did a deep dive into grooms and figured out how to change the solvers to get a decent effect. I wound up disabling some of the solvers and thickening each hair. I suspect there’s much more I could do to make it better…
Added some facial animations using the pre-created templates from metahuman.
Manually added some eye position changes and blinking so he’s not just staring the whole time.
This was a bad render which happened frequently - probably once a day. I think it is due to running out of video memory, but looks like a bad bug, if so! This was the first render with a totally new player animation (look at the arms compared to version 8). Neither the mannequin nor the metahuman Control Rigs worked on this model. I suspect it has something to do with the upper/lower arm ratios and/or twists. I need up creating a new Control Rig from scratch to allow full IK and FK manipulation but still couldn’t use Basic IK. I wound up using the FABRIK model instead, which works fine as long as I’m careful with the angles. I also combined the hammer and breathing animations into a single long montage sequence with some slight variations to make him look more realistic and avoid any transition issues between the two animations (without having to create an animation blueprint). Finally, I fixed some issues with the arm position, moved the anvil higher to accommodate the new animation, closed the right hand around the hammer, added some hip and foot movement when swinging, etc. Took most of 2 days to complete.
Final render after re-starting UE 5.0.2 fixed the bad render. It still isn’t great, but good enough for my first cut-scene. Things I might go back and change later on:
Too much lens flare in the last few seconds.
Hand needs to be slightly more closed around hammer.
Still not happy with the hair grooms (beard and ‘stache look good, though!), so tweak them some more.
Lighting on anvil is too much now due to raising it up.
Have the left hand hold the sword on the anvil while being hit.
Finish the scene with him dunking the sword into a barrel of water with steam coming off!
Do the final corrections in DaVinci Resolve rather than in UE5, including color adjustments, lens flare and bloom
Greetings, @Bent_Vector; I hope you’re doing well! I apologize for not finding your thread sooner. How did your participation in Steam’s NextFest turn out? How do you feel about your creation? I admit I am not a big fan of platformers, primarily because I am terrible at them. But that doesn’t take away from the uniquely incredible game you’ve made here! Paladin’s Passage looks fun and challenging. I wish I had seen this thread in time to test out your demo, but I’m looking forward to trying it eventually!
P.S. Your cinematic trailer for Paladin’s Passage is perfect! I do not have any complaints. The camera movement, animation, lighting, and sound are all excellent. Well done!
Hi @Zezkaii and thanks for your reply. I was beginning to feel like the last human in World War Z here.
Steam NextFest was good (but not great). There were a LOT of games participating, including a whole bunch of noise, so it was difficult to get visibility. About 45000 people visited my game page on Steam during the week, my Wishlist increased by 10x, the demo was downloaded a few thousand times and I actually got some feedback from players on their experience.
In addition of course the ‘sharks’ came out and my inbox filled up with people looking to cash in on the game. This included contractors (development, art, music), marketing teams, funding teams, etc. I actually followed up with some of the marketing folks (since that’s not my strength) and set up a couple of meetings so I could pick their brains. They wanted a LOT of money ($20k up front, plus expenses), so I definitely wasn’t signing on for that, but I was able to get some good insights into strategies, marketing plans, etc. As a result of this, I delayed my launch in order to help improve my chances of success. The main takeaway for me was: get the game and marketing materials (images, videos, etc.) to the point where you’re no longer embarrassed, then spend a minimum of 6 months doing marketing BEFORE launch. You probably need > 10000 Wishlisters before launch to get any traction on Steam or you run the risk of quickly disappearing. Of course, this could be hyperbole to get me to sign up for their marketing plan, but it seems reasonable given that < 10% of games on Steam sell more than 5000 copies.
I’ll be posting a new cinematic tomorrow (Wishlist Wednesday) on YouTube. It is basically the same as the one shared above but aligns with option 10 from my previous post. Mostly I focused on fixing the dwarf animations using Control Rig IK. I’m putting that one on the back burner for now and working on a second one. These are in-game cut-scenes, but also make decent marketing materials, I think.
The pleasure is all mine! I’m sorry to hear Steam’s NextFest didn’t turn out exactly how you wanted it to, but it seems like it wasn’t all terrible. A 10x increase in your game being wish-listed and a few thousand demo downloads are incredible! You definitely have everything in order and are on your way to a successful launch; congrats!
P.S. Option ten would’ve been the choice I would’ve chosen too.
Loads of updates since my last post, mostly around finishing up the in-game menus/UI and level backgrounds. Here’s a quick peek of a new level background.
This screenshot looks fantastic; I’m digging this level’s design! I imagine the rest of Paladin’s Passage has also been updated quite a bit from nine months ago! Are you excited about your summer release?
Thanks @Zezkaii, yes we’ve updated all 100+ levels with new artwork, added new menus and are now working on the first release candidate. Excited, yes, also exhausted and slightly anxious. My hope is that the game is received well enough to do this full-time going forward!
Playtest 4 goes live today supporting all Steam platforms.
With this 4th playtest, support for SteamDeck and MacOS is available in addition to Windows.
We are still looking for your feedback on level design, difficulty, graphics, performance and overall gameplay. This 4th playtest release features support for SteamDeck (fully native) and MacOS with Windows support available, too, of course.
This release fixes or updates 47 issues from Playtest 3. First and foremost, we’ve migrated to Unreal Engine 5.2.1 and have full support for DLSS 3 and FSR 2.2 now! We’ve put a lot of work into the level designs, graphics and special effects AND made some tweaks to the player movement to make it feel a little more responsive when moving, jumping and falling. The themes for Chapters 1-3 are fully implemented with unique enemies, backgrounds, blocks, weather and FX in each.
There is a known issue with MacOS: if you are on a newer M1 or M2 (Apple Silicon) Mac, you’ll need to run with Rosetta enabled. We are shipping a Universal MacOs build with this playtest, but due to a bug in the communication between Valve’s SteamWorks APIs and Epic’s Unreal Engine OnlineSubsystemSteam APIs which causes an immediate crash, only the Intel x64 version works correctly Hopefully this gets sorted out between now and our go-live next month.
As usual, if you have any problems or feedback, you can reach us on Discord, drop a comment here or on the Steam community page or even shoot an email.
We’re counting down to our go-live on Steam. Right now, we’re 5 days out, but here are the countdown videos from 7 and 6 days, plus the launch trailer, too…
We believe Paladin’s Passage is the most challenging single-screen precision, puzzle platformer game you’ll ever play. As a solo dwarf Paladin, you must make and break blocks, jump, drop and dodge endless waves of enemies to collect the hidden items and key on each level to exit before time runs out. Rest up now, because 120 levels of Unreal Engine 5 realistic fantasy environments are coming to take you down!
With full support for Windows, Mac and Linux/Steam Deck (native), Steam Input, Achievements, and Leaderboards, built-in level editor (beta) with Steam Workshop sharing/downloading integration, Paladin’s Passage provides endless hours of frenetic gameplay.
