Hello again Unrealites,
I’m building the exploration game Shape of the World, and since today marks the launch of my game’s Kickstarter campaign](Shape of the World by Hollow Tree Games — Kickstarter), I wanted to talk a little about my progress since my last post.
New Trailer
[video]Shape of the World - KickStarter Trailer (HD) - YouTube
First off, I’m honing in on the core design. In terms of open vs linear, or free vs guided, I’m trying to discover that sweet spot between Proteus, where you explore an island with complete freedom but without clear motivation, and Journey, where your path is fairly straight but you’re compelled to move forward through a beautiful world. In the AAA space, Skyrim has a nice flow where you can wrap yourself up in a quest or just go for a walk to see what you can find. In the Shape of the World trailer, which is basically a walkthrough of a compressed level, you see your end goal right away - the distant triangle gate. As you choose a path to get there, you’ll occasionally discover seed pickups which act as a little reward and guidance through the densely forming forest. Certain strings of pickups are secretly special - they will spawn a gate which erects permanent monuments (the rest of the forest eventually withers and, when you return, it regrows in a different way) as well as changes your whole biome and color palette and occasionally launches you into flight.
With the help of my team member Athomas Goldberg, I’ve added a few types of flying creatures. They use flocking code which gives each creature steering and avoidance as they try to go to a chosen location. It’s a good system for a dynamic environment. For behavior, their general path is scripted but their specific paths are procedural. The small “fish” are meshes but the ribbony “worms” are ribbon particles. There is a creature I’m working on that wanders on it’s own but sometimes tries to move toward the player so it doesn’t just wander off completely. After the kickstarter, we’ll be working on more intelligent-seeming creature behavior, so you can kind of play with the creatures.
To control the environment (which trees and ground cover should spawn, how many of each, the colors and weather), I’ve developed a new “recipe system”. I have a base recipe blueprint which is empty except for a ton of variables for colors, tree classes, densities of trees, weather fx, etc. Each child of this blueprint, with tuned variables, is a “recipe” which I can reference in a list in the RecipeSystem actor. It is this RecipeSystem which fades from one recipe to the next one in the sequence. All the materials use Material Collection Parameters for their colors and fog, so I can set animate those in the RecipeSystem.
Other little things include:
- Build a blueprint that snaps groups of objects to the ground in the construction script. Great for placing arrangements of rocks or plants.
- Built an object that unfolds along a spline.
- Utilized painting physical materials onto the landscape to control what grows where.
- Added input smoothing for smooth camera movement (Athomas Goldberg)
- A ton of sfx design and more music exploration (Brent Silk)
- And lots of boring stuff I won’t bother with for this post!
If any of this gets you curious, I’d love to answer questions. And if you’re intrigued, considering contributing to or sharing the Kickstarter campaign](Shape of the World by Hollow Tree Games — Kickstarter). I could really use the leg up!
Thanks a ton for your support!
Stu
@shapeoftheworld
I love how the world is reactively built around you, almost as if you’re a child imagining this place and it’s coming to life as you think it…