Dev Update #30: The Art of The Alpha

Every week, we tell you about our latest developments or plans or things we’re struggling against … or any number of other development-related topics that we think you might want to know about. Hopefully, these topics are fun and engaging for you.  Obviously, that’s the purpose of it.  It’s even more fun, however, for us.  If you’ve ever worked on a creative project, you know that little, intsy, tinsy, tiny voice in the back of your head that wants to shout from the roof tops, at the top of its lungs, about how cool your project is!  Again, we hope that these posts are as fun for you as they are for us, but that’s asking a lot!  It’s mostly just words, isn’t it?  Well, we thought it’d be fun to structure this week’s Dev Update as an art gallery!  All of this is still classified as “placeholder” in our minds, but it helps us–and now you–have an idea of how we want things to feel. If you want a closer look, just click on the images!

Now, I could talk all day about these pictures and how cool it is to watch something go from concept art, to a model, and then a fully textured object within the world, but I really want to focus on the third image; the one with the rover we’ve all seen so many times next to that floating little drone buddy.  I love this because we’ve been staring at the same rover for so long, and it’s not even the one we’ll be using!  It is, in fact, distinctly unrepresentative of the visual aesthetic that we’re hoping for.  We’ve used it for so long as we have though because it works for development, right?  Well that little drone right there?  It isn’t perfect, but it actually looks like it belongs in the game we want to make.

Below, we have a couple little clips showing off some things we’re pretty excited about!  The first, you’ve probably heard us talk about either here or on social media: the new spectrometer!  Well now it’s fully implemented into our primary build of the game, which is so exciting.  Goodbye, bubble!  In the second video, notice that rear light is how our rover’s lights used to shine out, a perfect cone far more suited for a spotlight than a space explorer.  That front light, however, actually reflects the model of the rover, which has two small light sources on both ends!  This was done by creating an invisible texture that blocks the light in a way gives a desired visual effect.  In film and photography, this effect is created by using something called a Cucocoloris (or “cookie” for short).

This Dev Update has been in the works for a few weeks, and we really hope you enjoyed getting an actual peek at Gears of Eden.  Just like with our Dev Updates and Fan Feedback articles, the best way to see the art of GoE as soon as possible is by following us on Twitter and Facebook, so definitely follow us if you haven’t already (and let us know what you think).  We also put together a newsletter with bits of secret content just for subscribers, so consider signing up for that as well!  That’s all for this week’s Dev Update, but I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week!