Quietude - Devlog 4

Hi fellow Quietude Followers!

It's Rahad writing once again, and for the final time.

Our post production phase has finished and our game is ready to go!

Lets get you updated on what went down during our post production and how our game has developed so far:

Artists

We managed to get their assets into the game, textured well and true to the software they were using to create the assets. Assets were optimised by deleting hidden faces and the collisions were set to enable players to interact with the objects. A few of the assets that were imported are: 

• A Camping stool
• A range of living huts and storage sheds.
• A number of small peripheral items, like cameras, lanterns, signs and many more!

The assets were scattered around the our current level, to make it feel more lively and really send home the environmental story telling, as you progress things will get darker and more mysterious. 

The artists also created some notes, these are used to tell the story and increase the level of false sense of security the player develops as they progress through the level, there are some screenshots attached to this devlog that showcase these. Please do take a look!

Onto the Programmer

During post production, I used the notes that the artists created and created a modular system, which allowed me to drag in a blueprint actor and change the widget I would like to display once the player has interacted with the level element. I scattered these actor blueprints around the level and assign notes to all of them. Of course, since the level is gatekeeping the player within the critical path at 2 stages of the game, this gave me a guide line as to choose which notes to display to the player at which areas to follow the gradual buildup of psychological horror we initially intended to achieve when pitching Quietude. The notes are scattered in the form of interactable wisps in the level, go up to these wisps and find out what happened in Camp Wood. 

I also changed some of the lighting and fog system to be more friendly to the taxonomy of the game towards the hardware, and also improve player immersion. The level is now slightly more foggy, however the fog has a start radius around the player, to avoid unnecessary rendering of fog and improve vision without the players trusty flashlight enabled. 

I also added some ambient sounds and focused heavily on 'Juicing' the project up, by adding cool animations to widgets and plenty of other audio cues to boost the user feedback toward the game.

That wraps up the final dev log, we hope to see you all in Camp Wood!