When the rocks breathe
What happened today
We pulled an all-nighter because it was so much fun. By morning the rocks of Veyl looked different from the night before: the stone stays still and heavy, but the blue veins and crystals inside now glow slowly up and down, as if the mountain were breathing. The first time we saw it move, we knew it gave the world a mood it hadn't had before. Marko's verdict: "epic".
Every rock breathes at its own pace. That's why a group of them doesn't look like a string of lights but like something alive, something you notice out of the corner of your eye as you walk past. When you walk through Veyl, you will spot these rocks from far away. They're a good reason to leave the path and see what's hiding between the crystals.
Not every rock is stone in the usual sense. Some grow out of the sand as enormous pale ribs, and the crystals there sparkle in their own rhythm, too.
What we got done
Swimming and climbing in armor. Your hero can swim and climb walls, even with a helmet and armor on. Before, every piece looked a little different. Now everything sits where it should, and while climbing, the hands grab one after the other.
The back finally looks right. If you look at the hero from behind, the skin tone now matches the front. It sounds small, but once you notice it, you can't unsee it.
Messages where you need them. Hints and radio calls from your companion get a fixed spot at the bottom of the screen. Nothing jumps around anymore, and you won't miss anything while something is happening.
Embers and glittering water. The ground is alive now, too. Embers pulse softly like a heartbeat, and light shimmers on the water. A small effect, but it turns a patch of floor into a place where you want to stop and look.
Stairs that turn the corner. Hills and plateaus shouldn't only have straight walls. We built several kinds of stairs, including diagonal ones that sit at the corners of a plateau. That lets us shape slopes you actually climb, instead of standing at an edge wondering how to get up.
What we're working on right now
Fighting with bare fists. Your hero will soon be able to throw a punch without a sword. We liked the test. Now we're repainting all the punch animations so that nothing of the sword is left in the picture. That will take a while.
A new inventory tab. The backpack starts small, with 15 slots, and will later grow row by row up to 35. We're building it right now. It's not in the game yet.
Even livelier lava. We want the lava to look less like a pattern sliding across the floor and more like something that bubbles, throws up blisters, and carries dark crusts along. That's in progress.
A cape that sits right everywhere. Whether your hero runs, swims or lies on the ground, the cape should fall the right way in every pose. Our first attempts haven't convinced us yet, so we're going through every frame one by one.
What's next
Next we'll see how the fist fight feels in the hand, and get the lava into the game. We'll tell you how it feels once we've played it ourselves.
See you tomorrow,