Game Dev Log 2020

Hi and welcome to the O.S.A.A.T. Dev Team Log. Here we will be posting monthly game production updates and a short summary of the news surrounding our current projects and the team.

Dev Log #12 – Kick Starter on the way!

Hello all! We hope you are all doing great !:D Big news coming your way: we are very close to bring you Soul Cipher on Kickstarter! We are gathering all the material we need to give you guys a great showcase of what the game will be all about. If everything goes according to plan, we expect to launch within the next month. See you there :D!

Dev Log #11 – First Look at SoulCipher Gameplay

Hello all! Hope all is well with everyone! We are still very active and on the watch. Today we finally have a first look at some gameplay from our project in progress: Soul Cipher. In this short demo reel we demonstrate E.x.o (your hero) and some of his advanced platforming mechanics/abilities that will be acquired in the game. No music or sound fx in here yet since those elements are still under construction. Enjoy and stay safe out there!

Dev Log #10 – The Core

Hello all! I hope you are doing well! We are still active and up working hard on our world with many many advancements. Slowly making our way towards a kick starter. We hope to see you all in numbers to help our cause when the time comes to bring this story to life :D. That being said, here is a sneak peak at a new area in development. In here fire and hot magma meets cold steel to hold a strong source of energy that holds the balance of our world. Cheers all and catch you in the next one. Stay safe out there !

Dev Log #9: Location Demo -1

We are very happy to be able to start showing in game footage and we hope to see this project to life as soon as possible . Cheers! These environments might change since the game is still in development.

Soul Cipher will be a 3d side scroller metroidvania type game that takes place in a future world called Defteros. Previously controlled by humans but abandoned due to recent X event. Some remained but are forced to hide in the shadow since a new threat awakened and is now roaming the world and hunting survivors. We are aiming to create a world that clashes a cold, hollow metal world with a sci-fi modern life.

Dev Log #8: Bosses and enemies

That being said we are still on the watch and making progress with Soul Cipher. Not much to show for this month since we want to keep the mystery alive for the players. First area is coming to a close and we were thinking of making a environmental little showcase when that area-1 will be polished.

So bosses and enemies, here are the recent work on the coming villains in the SC world:

Dev Log #7: First Look at game play mechanics

So this month we started adding all the animations in the game engine and did the first few movement mechanics for E.X.O (our main protagonists). We are happy that the fluidity so far is exactly what we are looking for:). Cheers!

Furthermore we wanted to let a little info out! :D. This is a sneak peak at a possible female character that will be in our game to…. maybe we will control her who knows 😛 ? Colours so far are just a placeholder for her character but I felt the contrast for the picture would work best like so. Cheers!

Dev Log #6: Armor and Meshes

So this month we were back well rested and ready to kick it back in gear! We wanted to start building more assets for the game and also for our character. What best way to start it up by making some cool armor testing for our little E.X.O (Main character). The colors customization are on the list to do eventually in the game. So I wanted to give a glance of what they could look like before making the actual mechanic in game . Cheers!

So the last image shows a test I did with the character having the armor and helmet equipped (Hopefully one of many equips that will be in the game). High resolution photos available on our Facebook page. See you in our next one!

Dev Log #5: Tricks and 3D Artiste

We finally have our first tune sample for you guys to listen to! If you got comments on it don’t be shy to drop them on our Facebook page :).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/alntts21myqoy5f/D%C3%A9mo.mp4?dl=0

Alright so this month was different as we took some time off to enjoy our summer a bit. Nevertheless we had a friend 3D artiste ( Pierre-Alexandre Lafrance ) from our last school year program make an asset for our game and he got it finished. Here is the final look that you may recognize from its concept art.

Two more enemies are in development and many more features also. We concluded the animation BP of the main character and started doing some test in game for mobility. Learning how to use the root motion from Blender to Ue4 was a fun challenge and now is history of past since we got it to work. It’s basically a way to have an animation happen that the players capsule will follow along with instead of staying static. That’s it for this month, we leave you with this image to show a new area in progress ;). See you next time!

Dev Log #4: Glance on level workflow

Alright so this month we were working a lot on the player animation Blueprint (Code) and also all the basic mechanics to be able to move in the world we are creating for you guys. It’s a long process that doesn’t really have many image feedback so I decided to show a little glance at how we have been working hard to adapt new techniques for our environments. So here below you will find this one scene we were working on and how we changed over the time and come back to get it better each time. There is still a little bit more polishing that can and will probably be done but with this you can see the evolution before your eyes! :).

Dev Log #3 : E.x.o Rig and Concept art

It was time to make the rig/skeleton for our character to be able to make him move and fight . It was a great challenge to have to relearn how to make it all with Blender software instead of Maya and 3ds Max. But we are really glad with the result so far and blender is a great tool for 3d. Here is the rig with all its controllers, custom properties and bones made by our lead animator (Guillaume).

On the other side, I (Jeremie) was off making more atmosphere and started making concept art for the game. I am not the best at making drawing but safe to say I am a lot better then when I started doing any :). Most of the first area is done but I’ll keep it so that you can discover it for yourself the day you enter our world. Here is a glimpse at some concept that will be in the making soon:

So this is it for this month, we also have Gabriel that has been hard at work on our original soundtrack and we hope to have something like a sample to show you guys in the next dev log :).
See ya next time and stay safe out there!

Dev Log #2 : Character and short glance at the Atmosphere

Hello all, we are still hard at work and we are bringing you the latest updates of what has been happening with our game development recently.

We had a little set back (like everybody I presume) with the current world state and confinement in place but we never gave up on our common goals. So now we are well off in development and here are the updates for this month.

Presenting E.X.O., our protagonist for your journey in Soul Cipher (SC). As you can notice, we wanted to keep the main character simple to leave room for upgrades. You can see all the insert points on his armor where we want to implement adds-on later on, that will not only give new abilities to the players, but also change E.X.O.’s look. We are really happy to have him done and we’re in the process of making our skeletal rig and animating him at the moment.

High resolution picture of the scene and character will be added to our Facebook page.

Dev Log #1 : Initialization process

Alright since this is the first post and we have been roughly working on this project already for 4 to 6 months. We have a lot to talk about. 🙂

So the first few months were very hectic as we had all kinds of new tech to acquire just to get ready and going since most of our licenses were school licenses at the moment. Like you may already know, we all met each other during our one year intensive class for Video Game Production. In that course we managed to create a playable game called “Overclocked”, a non-commercial project, even though it wasn’t the main course goal and had very little time to make it. Since we managed through our struggle to make the game beginning to end, playable, and enjoyable, the team spirit was very high. I had an idea to make something out of this amazing opportunity and brought it to the group.

“What if we make our very own game when we get out!?”

So here we are about 5 months later and here is what we’ve got so far.

Growing up I always loved playing games like Super Metroid, Castlevania, Mega-man, Power blade and so on. Since the Metroidvania genre style is still alive and kicking we thought of making our own title that hopefully can be a nice addition to the genre.

So first off, to get started, we had to learn all the new software, acquire licenses and set up our project direction.

The game is called Soul Cipher, it will be a 2.5d sidescroller set in a dark sci-fi, fantasy future where humans populated a new planet called Defteros. You are part of an android robot series called the E.X.O. series. This world, consumed by war and pollution is now silent, cold and most of its residents now left the planet. A new threat now controls this world. You are activated in this forgotten facility by two shadow individuals who leave the room before you wake up. As you make your way around the dark frozen facility, you meet up with a fellow of the same series as you. What happens then is for you to find out.

We want to be able to bring back classic feelings like old school games used to have. A game where the narrative is very limited to keep the imagination rolling for new players. As the lore of this world opens up to you, we hope that you will fall in love with it just has we are falling in love with it now.