Lacuna Passage - Devlog #61 - Terrain Updates, Inventory, and More

The holidays have been a busy time for us and our families, but we've still made a good deal of progress this last month. As we move closer and closer to an eventual Early Access release for our survival sandbox mode we have been evaluating every aspect of the game that we think is necessary to make a good first impression.

Terrain Updates

Even with Early Access we will really only get one chance to show the potential of the full game, so we decided that the terrain was such a large part of what we are trying to do that it needed to be at a higher level of quality. To do that we have officially transitioned to using the new terrain shader that we mentioned last month. And as an added bonus, the new terrain shader has allowed us to increase the fog distance so that there is even more visible terrain while exploring.

We still need to randomly place our new rock models and modular cliffs, but the setup of the textures and shaders was more than half the battle. We can now quickly iterate on the general topography of the map and all of our settings for texture coverage can be regenerated based on our complicated ruleset in World Machine which you can see below.

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It's not a simple process, but it is streamlined and optimized to allow us the most flexibility when prototyping new terrain features. We will be shooting for a terrain equal in size to what will comprise the final game map for the story mode (roughly 20 square miles of explorable terrain), but this will be a distinct and separate map with the potential for multiple maps after release.

Inventory Additions

Over the holidays we also worked on expanding our internal inventory database that will dictate what kinds of items you can expect to collect, craft, and consume during the course of the game. That list is now well over 100 items long with many more additions yet to come. Some mechanical changes have also been prototyped, including nutritional differences between ingesting raw food packets versus prepared food packets. Here is a tease of our spreadsheet for managing these items and the impact they will have on your gameplay.

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New Unity Asset Packs

Last month we posted about how we began selling our own cliff and rock models on the Unity Asset Store. This month we started posting some supplemental music content to the Asset Store that will eventually be promoted as part of our Song Seed music plugin for Unity. Our composer, Clark Aboud, has been working on some amazing music unrelated to Lacuna Passage and we thought we would try to sell some of that music to help support him and our continued development. We have now released two dynamic loop packs that can be used with any game, but will work particularly well with Song Seed when it is eventually released. As a demonstration of how these loop packs can be used, you can play the tracks below which are complete songs composed entirely of these perfectly looping clips.

A preview of the loops that can be found in the Action Loop Pack designed for use with the Song Seed Unity Plugin

A preview of the loops that can be found in the Epic Fantasy Loop Pack designed for use with the Song Seed Unity Plugin

If you are a game developer, or know someone who might be interested in these loop packs, you can visit our Unity Asset Store publisher page which has links to purchase either pack.

TIMEframe Holiday Sale

As the holiday season comes to a close we did want to remind you all that our other game TIMEframe is still currently on sale for our lowest price since launch. Of course, if you were a Lacuna Passage Kickstarter backer you should already have your free copy, but perhaps you would like to buy another copy for a friend or just to support us as we continue to work on Lacuna Passage. We are quite proud of our 86% positive review average on Steam. If you have already played the game we would love to hear what you think. Visit our store page and leave your own review. Every little thing you can do to spread the word about our projects helps immensely. And for those of you who have already left a review, thank you!

Game with the Devs - Play Heroes of the Storm with us!

Spencer and I are working very hard to bring you Lacuna Passage, but we still take time here and there to relax and unwind a little. Over the last few months we have been enjoying Blizzard's MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, during our lunch breaks. We are big fans of the game now and we thought it might be fun to bring fans of TIMEframe and Lacuna Passage into the mix. It doesn't matter if you are a DOTA2 or LoL grizzled veteran, or if you don't even know what a MOBA game is. We would love to have you join us for an occasional match and if you are new we can help show you the ropes. We are by no means professionals, but when you work from home with a very small dev team it helps to be reminded of the people you are making games for and interact with them on a more regular basis. I just recently upgraded my internet connection (I live in the middle of a nature preserve) so hopefully we can even stream the games and participate with Twitch chat too. Come play with us! You can use our referral links below to get started with the game and we will announce our play sessions over Twitter with info on how to join us.

Spencer's Heroes of the Storm Referral Link

Tyler's Heroes of the Storm Referral Link

That's it for this devlog. Thanks for reading. We've got lots to do!

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #18 - More Concept Art, a New Shader, and Terrain

While we toil away on development of Lacuna Passage we thought we might give you a peek at some more concept art. We have really hit our stride with our art style, due in large part to our concept artist, Brandon Kern. Check out some of his work below.

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As we worked on bringing these concepts to life in 3D we realized that our equipment shader just wasn't up to the task. The normal maps were not as pronounced as we would have liked, and it was difficult to define strongly contrasting materials. Our models looked somewhat desaturated and ubiquitous across what should have been different surfaces. We set about creating a shader that would give us greater control over contrast and material definition (things like fresnel lighting, reflectivity, edge highlighting, and specularity). Below you can see the result of our efforts. It is now much easier to see the difference between surfaces like shiny plastic, dull metal, and rough rubber. This improved shader is still in testing since it was created using an alpha version of the upcoming Unity add-on "Shader Forge", but we are excited with the results and hope to utilize the eventual commercial release of Shader Forge.

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We've also been hard at work detailing the full-scale terrain that will be featured in the final game. Proper textures will be applied much later, but the massive heightmap is coming together quite nicely and should present the player with a wide variety of real Mars geographic features to explore. Check out a little preview below.

Time-lapse of the (still unfinished) terrain

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Untextured 3D preview of terrain in its current state

Find out more about how we are creating our terrain in our previous devlog.

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #3 - What the heck is Lacuna Passage?

Over the last couple of weeks I went into some detailed breakdowns of the terrain in my upcoming game Lacuna Passage. But I realized that I only briefly touched on what Lacuna Passage as a game will actually be. So, this week I’m going to take some time to do a breakdown what the game is really all about.

Here's an excerpt from our first devlog that explains what we hope to accomplish with the game:

I’ve always been a huge fan of space exploration and the recent success of the Mars Curiosity Rover inspired me to make a game that embodies the nature of exploration and discovery. Lacuna Passage is that game. I wanted to create an experience that might fulfill my own desire to set foot on another world, and for the last 6 months I’ve been researching and prototyping exactly how I might do that.

When I started the project I tried to get a sense for the types of games that have attempted this in the past. From what I noticed it seemed that many space exploration games focus on some kind of tension mechanic. You have limited oxygen, you are being hunted by mutant aliens, you are trying to survive or fight… Games like Dead Space, Metroid Prime, or Mass Effect, and many of these take place far in the future where we lose some context for the difficulty and high risks associated with space exploration. Everyone has a spaceship, and things like gravity, physics, and engineering are trivial matters. On the other end of the spectrum are the space simulators (Kerbal Space Program, Universe Sandbox) that don’t have a story to tell, they simple try to replicate the nature of space or space travel. There are very few games that sit in between those styles. I wanted to create something contemplative and awe-inspiring, not fear-inducing or pedantically accurate. I wanted to create an impressionist representation of modern space exploration. Think Dear Esther in space.

A potential design for the Mars space suits

Story

You are Jessica Rainer, the only survivor of the crashed Heracles Mars expedition, sent to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the very first Mars expedition, Hermes.

Gameplay

Exploration. Lacuna Passage is an open-world adventure. 25 square miles of treacherous Martian terrain littered with clues about the disappearance of the Hermes Mars Expedition.

Investigation. Photograph and document your journey. Follow the clues and piece together your own explanation to the events that unfolded on the red planet. Perhaps you can even find a way home. Share your discoveries, photo journals, and theories with other players online.

Navigation. Pay close attention to your instruments and keep track of your surroundings. The game will not hold your hand with arbitrary objective markers and many key locations will need to be manually recorded for reference. Careless explorers are sure to get themselves lost.

Survival. Food, water, and oxygen are in short supply on the planet’s surface. Even sleep is important in maintaining your stamina (and your sanity). Depicting a realistic passing of time is also important to the general theme of survival. Essentially the player is faced with defining their own goals. You can try to see how many days you can survive alone on Mars or you can try to see how fast you can solve the mysteries of the planet. Death in itself is not necessarily a fail condition in the game. Depending on your experience it may be a perfectly suitable ending to the story you have crafted for Jessica Rainer.

From Concept to Prototype

Of course, all of this conceptual content would be nothing without some substantial prototyping. Over the last few months I have been working hard on some crucial systems that will stand as the foundation for the experience inherent to Lacuna Passage.

Concept art of one of the habitat modules

Time of Day and atmospheric effects

There is a full day/night cycle with some beautiful atmospheric effects that emphasize the scale and the emptiness of the planet. We started with the base Unistorm Unity package and heavily modified it to fit the atmosphere of Mars.

Realistic first-person camera

Those space suits are heavy, and the goal of the camera is to help the player feel some of that weight. Especially as your stamina begins to fade and movement becomes more labored. We already have some great camera movement in the prototype courtesy of a modified Ultimate FPS Camera Unity package.

Terrain generated from real-world (Mars) geologic features

Every inch of the environment is lifted directly from real Mars terrain data provided by NASA satellites. Some of the features are composited together and scaled down to provide the player with more varied landscapes to explore. Find about more about the methods used for the terrain in our first two devlog posts.

In-game photography

Taking “screenshots” is directly incorporated into the story via the main character’s desire to investigate the disappearance of the Hermes crew with photography. Sometimes you will need to examine your photographs to gain clues about where to explore next. The goal here is to also encourage sharing stories online and collaborating on theories to some of the game’s more obtuse clues by having all in-game photos also saved out to the player’s harddrive.

Continued Progress

I'm excited with how far the game has come, but we also have a long ways to go. If Lacuna Passage is a game that interests you then I hope you continue to follow our progress on this blog or on Twitter. Cheers!