Greetings from the Isle of Nex!

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It is the thirtyeighth day of my journey. The sea has been strangely calm for weeks with nought but a slight breeze and no drops of water from the heavens. The Ratling captain says that this is an ill omen, for in this season rains should be plentiful.

The reports of strange structures on the Island are perplexing to my mind. Surely some of them were made by the natives now long lost to the mists of time. But the tales of seafarers also tell about more recent, grander constructions towering above the trees. The natives and the priestesses long gone, who are building these structures and why?

The seamen believe that the Island is cursed — I say guarded by strong Magicks — since no ship sailing close to the Island has ever returned. Perhaps the ancient statues reported by the few survivors of shipwrecks are there to guards the secrets of the Island until the constructionwork is complete? Perhaps with the careful usage of the Art we are able to dispell the shields and grant us entrance to the Island? Perhaps the King’s endless thrist for knowledge shall be finally quenched? Perhaps.

There are black clouds billowing in the horizon. The storm is rising.

— Alarast the Sage of Royal Library

Hello all! We have been pushing hard on the development of Legend of Grimrock 2 and now we are going to have a brief but sweet summer break. But before we go a recap of what has been happening is in order!

The focus of work recently has been on the building blocks of the game, the monsters, puzzles, and environment assets. After the holiday break we are going to start putting the pieces together and building the (final) game world. (I put “final” in parenthesis because I know we are going to polish and tweak the levels to the very last moment before the game ships.)

With the added musclepower of Jyri and Jyri, we have been able to push an impossibly large amount of 3D models, animations and textures out of the oven in a very short time. For example, we have 16 complete new monsters and more is coming. Combined with the monsters from Grimrock 1 we have something like 40 unique monsters, although many of the old monsters won’t make a come back in the new game. The monsters of Grimrock 2 are also much more complex, many with multiple types of special attacks and unique AI behavior.

On the wallset side, we have seven completely new environments, more than double what we had in Grimrock 1. The amount of model files, material definitions and scripts is getting really tough to handle! 🙂

On the tech side, we have implemented water rendering and integrated a video player. After carefully evaluating our options we chose to use an open source WebM/VP8 video format. Being open source means that mods can also contain cinematic videos without licensing limitations. This was very important to us. The cinematics can also be played whenever needed, no longer just at the start and end of the game.

That’s it! Have a great summer!