We have lift-off!

After some weeks of research and with our art bible, tech document and game design model in place
our team got the go ahead to take our idea into production.

We've got a pretty clear heading for the following three weeks, at which point we'll reevaluate priotities and adjust trajectory where needed!

The priorities for our coders in the coming weeks:

• Get local multiplayer working flawlessly
• Nail down the way characters handle
• Get a solid framework down for managing velocity, momentum and gravitation in multiple contexts
• Implement an arsenal system where weapons and gadget can be picked up in the arena

Our art team is pretty perfectly split between a character/asset artist an environment/tech artist,
for now this allows a nice division of labour:

• Witse will get started with creating the player character model, since this is the most important asset in the game,
  and this asset will define the look for all other elements
• Gert will work on creating parametrized systems for the environments and backgrounds that allow plenty of art directability,
  within a set framework.

Houston, we've got a problem

For various reasons, our entire developer squad has been out of commision for the past week.
Fortunately the art team was able to keep trucking on, here are a couple of new developments!

Sumonaut Model

Work on the character model is well underway, here's what Witse has cooked up so far.

Environments

Gert's primary concern so far has been figuring out how to handle lighting, background elements and ensuring there is enough visual separation between the scenery and the gameplay elements on screen.
He's been working on a couple of things in tandem, trying his best to balance everything out.



In these images a couple of elements are coming together:

• Separate lighting channels implemented for both the gameplay objects and for the background elements
• A shader which handles the background color and two parallax layers of nebulae,
  custom noises generated in Substance Designer
• A particle system for the stars moving past
• A particle system for the asteroid belt, using meshes generated by our own Asteroid Generator made in Houdini

New Logo

To wind down and do something relaxing after figuring out the harder stuff, we've put together a new logo to match the style we've envisioned for our player HUDs. (You can spot it at the top of this log!)

End of log, over.