Hello everyone, its time for another progress update.
This week I fixed the visual bug, which turned out to be an issue with the shadows. Added some new items - chests, some benches and tables, etc.
Expanded the village shack toolkit a bit too, here most of the work was dedicated to making it easy to assemble the parts into a building.
And this is all for the update. I think I will need one, maybe two more weeks on this part of the project before moving on.
With all that said, cheers!
Hello everyone, this week's update will be very brief.
I ran into some real life complications and as a result only managed to add some more parts for the shack toolkit, and changed up the visual a bit. So here is a picture of a new visual, let me know in the comments if you like it or if you prefer the old look.
With that said, cheers! Next week's update will be much more eventful!
Hello everyone, in this update I will have a small announcement along with some new models to show.
I have decided to switch back to a two-week update scedule, maybe even make it a three-week or monthly. Two reasons:
So, in the next updates I will focus on making scenic pictures that will aim towards showing you the atmosphere and a general feel of the game. With that and a reminder that everything you see here is still work in progress, behold the screenshots.
Here, (left to right) in the top row you can see a cupboard and a simple shelf. On the second row there are: an oil drum, a milk drum, a flat barrel with some trash in it along with a similar barrel with a closed lid. On the bottom row there is a lamp post along with two lanterns, one with a wall mount and one on the floor followed by a candle, a stew pot and two excavation buckets.
And here is a toolkit for making a simple fence, around a hunting shack perhaps?
And last but not least, a tent with two types of campfires. Left one has a tripod with a pot for making food, while the right one is pretty simple. Also, a sleeping bag, gotta have to work a bit more on that one.
With all that said, cheers! See you in the next update!
Hello everyone, a long time have passed and its time for another update.
First things first - a new forest map. This is going to be a specific location, called "Ranger's shack", a place where Rangers of the kingdom can rest and recover from their endless task of keeping the land clean from poachers and bandits.
"Ranger" is going to be a ranged class for a player, as well as some NPCs. You will be able to meet other Rangers in a place like this, trade with them, and maybe even learn a new skill or two. There will be multiple shacks like this across the forest, to give the player more freedom in where they want to go.
This leads us to a feature that I have been preparing most of my time - interiors. The interiors in buildings like this shack will be accessible without any loading screens - just come and go as you please. This is how interiors are going to look like :
The interiors feature is fully finished, along with the shack toolkit. As you can see there are a few new models complete, with more on the way. The door is functional too, opening and closing as you pass and staying closed if its locked and you dont have a key.
With all that said, cheers! Next update wont take as long as this one, and that is a promise.
Hello everyone, for this update I have two things prepared:
First is flames. Remember the Ranger's shack from the previous update? Here how it looks now - nice and cozy with a proper fireplace. The flame dances around inside, lighting up the room.
Second is waves. From now on there will be a wide river flowing through the forest.
I'm planning on adding campsites throughout the forest, some will have friendly and neutral NPCs, like rangers and hunters, and some - hostile, like poachers and bandits. I've also had to start working on improving my workflow regarding the map-making process, I think I will have some results to show you in the next update.
With that said, cheers! Don't hesitate to leave a comment on what you think about this update, I'm looking forward to read it.
Hey!
I'm actually quite impressed by your work so far, at least by your main focus for now, those 3d models.
But I've been thinking, even though it looks good and has certainly its style, there's nothing that really makes the world of Ferrum stand out, everything is..."too generic", not interesting to look at, even though the models themselves are really good.
Do you plan to have some sort of lore (basically background information about the world) scattered around the various maps? Even if you are not interested in implementing a main narrative in your game, I think optional information is always a good plus
Maybe some notes will be able to make you aware of the location of a secret chest hidden by another survivor? a sort of secret unmarked quest, if you will. Others will tell you about certain rituals? What about pure "side-stories" notes?
The potential is there but players need an incentive to keep exploring, a reason to choose your game over someone else's, I think those little tweaks can be a good starting point to begin to acquire the right mindset to keep working on your game.
I'd love to continue this conversation on Discord If it's not a bother.
Keep up your work anyway ^^
Ah yes, I understand you perfectly. You see, the reason why it looks generic is that it's supposed to be one of the very first biomes the player will set his foot in. I wanted to make it more familiar to a person, so that the dive into the game will be smooth and easy. I plan on expanding the game lore through the flavour text in item descriptions, npc dialogue and different enemies. You probably saw screenshots of crystals models in one of my earlier posts, along with a bit of lore about them - they will play a huge role in world building later on. Other than that, there will be multiple different races, each with their unique cultures, and the classes a player will be able to play will tell the story of the world too.
The look of a Diablo era is what I generally go for, thank you! I'm not so shure about the combat part though. I want to make the game about a player as a single character, but I'm not really shure if I want the same gameplay the Diablo had - you faced hordes of enemies there, which you had to defeat on your own. It gave the game a very heroic feel, something I want to avoid in my game. Not that I'm against the hack and slash gameplay, its just that I feel like a more methodical approach, like turn-based combat, might be able to convey the tension in the game better.
Hello everyone, in this update you will see the result of my workflow overhaul.
Before the overhaul, thanks to the unique way I handled my assets, I had to place every object on the map individually. Before, it took a lot of time, up to a week, and effort to make a single map. And, the maps themselves didnt actually fit in a videogame - they were more like vistas, pretty to look at, but absolutely impossible to place any type of gameplay on them. With a few tweaks - and thanks to the prefab feature of the unity engine - I managed to reduce the time required to make a map to two days tops. Thanks to that, I managed to overhaul my old maps, not only changing how they look, but also making room for the gameplay.
This was one of my worst maps - the plain from the 2022-10-08 update, now much less boring.
And here is a more recent Ranger Shack map.
Overall, now there are more places on the map where gameplay can take place - be it a fight or just some resources appearing. I may have to work a bit more on the balance of places to look at and places fit for gameplay, but overall I feel like this is a right direction to take.
With all that said, cheers and see you in the next update!
Hello everyone, this update will be a bit on a shorter side.
You see, what I've managed to complete during the last three weeks was a complete and total overhaul of all maps that I made so far. They all have been viewed, reviewed and remade to fit better for the gameplay that I have in mind.
Also I have added a new model - or rather, a set of models, cliffsides, that I will use to separate different parts of the map. As you can see, this is somewhat a modular set of models (can this be considered a pun? if yes, then sorry) that I can fit together however I want to create an interesting and varied landscape.
With all that, cheers! Next update - river maps! Dont forget to leave a comment, i'll make shure to answer them all!
Hello everyone, in this update, as promised, I will show you some of the river maps that I made.
In the beginning, there will be only one river running along the border of the map, conveniently blocking off the map from the eastern side.
I'm also planning on adding a mechanic where you will be able to set up a camp in some predetermined places to rest and craft consumables for the journey ahead.
I've made a few maps to represent the river bank already, but I feel that I have to spend a bit more time on them, to polish them a bit, both in visual and gameplay sense.
With all that said, cheers! Dont forget to leave a comment if you feel like it!
Hello everyone, quite some time have passed and its time for another update.
Things are coming along swimmingly, however making a distinct and convincing shoreline have proven to be trickier than I thought. I've made some progress in fleshing it out of course, but it still feels like something is missing here...
On the bright side, I've added a few more maps to the game world, like this second version of a river camp.
Or this version of a Ranger's shack. I've also tweaked the color palette for the treated wood, which you can see on the roof here. Let me know what you think about it!
Overall, it feels like I need some sort of new inspiration to make more substantial progress (the shoreline particularily), so the next update might come out delayed. With all that said - cheers, and see you next update!
Thank you! Yes, this is Unity, coupled with Blender to create the models. Before I got burned out I was working on it Monday to Saturday all day till I ran out of ideas, I never counted the hours. Now I see that this was the wrong way to do it, so I'll try to moderate it to 8 hours a day tops, Monday to Friday.
Hello everyone, its been quite a while wasnt it? In this update I'm going to talk about some basics in map making.
You see, previously I was making the map while looking at it from quite a distance - you can notice it in previous updates by how many trees there are in the picture.
However, what I completely forgot is that the player wont be looking at the map the same way I do - in fact, the camera distance is going to be much shorter, and the player will have a completely different perspective. And so, I realised that I will have to make the map from the player's view, something that I have neglected so far. It's going to look like this:
The camera is much closer compared to what I previously had. I've made a few maps with this new paradyme, if you may, in mind:
It takes a bit longer to make a full map now, but the result is far more pleasant to the eye and much closer(no pun intended) to what I consider a perfect result. So, for now I'll have to go back to the older maps to remake them (again, but I think its totally worth it) in order for them to fit this new paradyme. Feels like every time I find a new and better way to make a location I just have to update older maps, a good feeling actually.
With all that said, cheers! And see you in the next update.
Hello everyone, its time for a progress update.
The work is coming along swimmingly, I'm updating the old maps with my new ideas, and I'd love to say that I'm satisfied with the results. The river looks so much better now:
And the campsites got a refreshing new look:
Overall, the work is still in progress, since there is quite a lot of new stuff that I have to add on each old map. Sometimes it feels like I'm making an entirely new map on the bones of the old one.
I'm not shure about the roads though - whether should I keep the old look or this one:
With all that said, cheers! Next time I might show something completely new, not just reworks of old stuff.
Hello everyone, today is the day I show you something entirely new.
With the maps rework done, I have begun developing a new set of models with a certain theme. Can you guess what it is?
Why Its castle ruins of course! I'm planning on creating a whole lot of assets for this - all kinds of walls, intact and not, piles of rubble, wall torches, you name it.
And, of course, towers. Towers seem to pose the biggest challenge for me now - not only I have to make assets for all kinds of variations for them, which is a lot, I also need to extend the interior system to accomodate the multiple floors inside. I'm also going to add a round tower type in the game - so that doubles the amount of work I have to do.
Not all ruins are going to be completely abandoned - after all, even a single wall can provide adequate protection to some. You will be able to meet just about anyone in there - wild animals, poachers, rangers, maybe even a friendly expedition working on revealing the history of the place.
On a side note, I'm working on the world map - I have decided that its going to be node based map.
With all that said, cheers! And see you in the next update.
