DEVLOG 05 – A Journey Continues
Hello again early supporters,
This is our 5th development post for 2021 for Ex world Online: Obsidian. Last month's highlight was about the backend and programming of things, which this month’s update will continue with along with some art updates and resource changes within the studio.
As per usual lets jump right into it, starting with the least interesting bits and build our way up from there.
Ex World Online Obsidian Lighting and shading update 2.0
There is an update over what we have been able to achieve in terms of our own cel shading. Keep in mind this is still a first pass, but a lot of extra work has to be done with the material (eg. eye specular, clothes color, hair shine, skin and mostly hair halftone), which implies a lot of further tweaks that need to be done such as hard shadows or not, specular size, offset, colors, the roughness, half tone with texture/tilling/offset set up and even some possible sub surface scattering, as well as some dark edges around the characters that vary by distance.
Below, you can view a screenshot of how the models look with the new shading vs without.
If you would like a more technical view of the process, you can click on the link below to follow the practices and methods we are using
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/wip-a ... del/135956
Backend development updates REVAMP
Throughout our previous month’s devlog, we mentioned that we were pushing through with PlayFab, but the limitations and the amount of work arounds was something that was beginning to be more trouble than it was worth. PlayFab is mostly meant for runtime data (aka data that is transferred fast back and forth) such as the position of the players in the world that you may want to access and store.
In our case, however, UE4’s server that is hosted on SpatialOS already handles the runtime data and we do not need to store that kind of data, only when logging in or logging out. In our research, we have discovered that the majority of larger MMOs use SQL orientated data bases to store their persistent data (not runtime) while the runtime data is managed by the game server.
The reason behind us switching from PlayFab to MySQL is when we do reach (hopefully) a larger player base, PlayFab would not be able to keep up with the parse data compared SQL which it is built for.
For a more detailed reference please read the below link
https://www.codementor.io/@cultofmetatr ... -f62bo3gxv
2D & 3D Models
I know some of you had some concerns about the current 3D character models not looking enough anime orientated. I just wanted to clarify that we are aware of this issue and have already begun producing higher fidelity characters that are more aligned with our vision. The current models would be used throughout the development cycle as our low fidelity models.
On that note, we have begun churring out more concept art for our monsters and raid bosses and other biomes. We recently hired a very talented 2D artist who has been fast at work with producing breath taking, scary creatures.
Nile Island (Alpha Island)
There has been much progress done on our starter island, from minor details such as props and terrain adjustments to foliage. Our environment artists are amazing and have been hard at work finishing up our first Human city, Vampire village set, Werewolf village set and Human village set. These have been added to the scene already which has made a huge impact on Nile Island in terms of breathing life into it.
Combat and Animation Update
Unfortunately progress in this department has slowed down due to the fact we had to go through some resource changes within the studio and are now out of an animator, but the search for a replacement is already underway and we have interviews already lined up for the rest of the month to find the perfect match that could help create fluid animations to go with our action combat.
I wanted to keep this month’s dev update shorter than the rest because most of it is extensions of our previous updates.
Furthermore, we have decided to stop with the monthly devlogs so that we can dedicate 100% of our time to working on Ex World. We will still do our biweekly posts on discord and other social medias as per usual. We will return with our monthly devlogs as soon as we can.
Best regards,
Geneva
Community Manager
