Weekly Journal - March Hare

Hey everyone,

Things are very busy in the studio right now. We are continuing polishing and wrapping up the final content. We received some very interesting results from the playtests and have decided to do some last minute changes. We cannot wait for you to see it all!

Narrative Team - Alex and Lisa

Lisa

You know how, when you take a trip, no matter how many lists you’ve made, you always remember something you SHOULD have packed after you’ve arrived at your destination? This week has been sort of like that. I’ve been going back through my “suitcase” of environmental narrative and adding signs and small details for clarity. I’ve also gone through the last bits and bobs of certain characters’ dialog, because we’re approaching the last recording sessions. Hopefully I will have packed everything you need for your journey to Wellington Wells!

Design Team - David, Hayden, Antoine, Adam, Ben, Eric, And Benji

Adam

We are 1 week away from complete content lock on the Mad Scotsman. It has been a bit hectic, considering the many many ideas flying back and forth right now to fix or tweak situations. Ultimately, “time” has the final say, so simple is best. That said! I’m super proud of having lead the entire Mad Scotsman playthrough, and I’m pretty damn sure you’re all going to think of him as your favorite ;p

Eric

This week has been a very productive week I think. First half of the week was polishing off levels, but about mid week we got some great feedback from a playtest we held a little while back so I went straight onto fixing that. Smoothing out the intro of the game and making sure our crazy world is understood and as clear as it can be.

Engineering Team - Matt, Serge, Michael, Lionel, Rob, Evan, Maarten, Céline, Neil And Guillaume (Sometimes)

Lionel

This week, I worked on making the roads less straight. Breaking the sightline is one of the ways to make the Village and the hamlet more organic. So our city/village/hamlet generator had to be extended. It looks simple in theory but as they get packed with content, it is as you can imagine, harder in practice. Only the parts of the roads that are connected to non static houses can move. It is not finished yet but it looks promising.

Serge

This week for me was all about support and bug fixing tasks related to a paradigm that we use for performance. What I mean by that is there's non-playable characters whose brain is reduced to the bare minimum until the player interacts with him. The challenge was to fix conflict between the different piece of code that call for animations on these characters. Reusing code allows us to prototype the feature faster but once the data has been created we discover edge cases that need to be supported (like a paired animation of lovers on a bench for example). That's it, polish and bug fixing until we release the game!

Art Team - Whitney, Emmanuel, Tito, Marc-André, Sarah, Guillaume, Cary And PH

PH

This week was full of little tasks for me, but I worked mainly on the different suits that you can craft. I refined the textures, reworked fabrics and patterns and added some details (stitches, buttons, seams,etc..).

Carilitz

Had a break from small stuff and got into some level art for some days! It was a rollercoaster of changes, trying to achieve the perfect feel for one of the last levels. I can't show it but, if you ever get to the end of the game you’re gonna be able to see it :D. Beside that, I have been also doing small fixes here and there like the past weeks.

Marc-André

Optimisation, optimisation, optimisation. Been grating away polygons of the buildings of the last biome. Saved a good 5 million triangles… out of 91 500 000. Also been helping Emmanuel with the refactoring of the wilderness area. We are moving the encounters closer to the streets which helps reduce the size of the islands and make them less hidden so they scream “look at me” to the player.

Animation Team - JR, Rémi, Vincent, Mike P, Jules, and Raph

Vincent

This week has been mainly filled by reviews! Lots of meetings with people from all the departments, looking at whole playthroughs (with some cheating in the middle, that game has got quite big!) and taking notes of what’s left to tackle… There’s still quite a bunch of stuff. Panic! Erm. I mean, everything is 100% under control, nothing to see here, move along! In between reviews are the usual feedback, and sometimes even a bit of animation! I started work on a funny animation for our beloved Bobbies!

Also, I went back a bit on the giant Mother TVs, as we now need them to track your altitude, which I didn’t plan for back when I scripted/animated it! If some of you are interested, it now uses a 2D Blendspace, which blends 4 different ‘idle’ animations depending on the relative position of the player!

MikeP (AKA: lesser danger Mike)

Sup folks! This week in the thrilling life of an animator, I made a bunch of little cutscenes for the game. One of which you can see in the gif. Dropped those rocks like it was no one’s business! Plus got some cool VFX from our VFX guy Weili to finish it up and voila! Some rock falling goodness! Sweet falling rock, eh! Also did a few little animation chains to round up the week. Nothing terribly exciting, but productive nonetheless! Well that’s it for me this week, tune in next week, Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!

Jules

Hi everybody! So for me this week I started on the soldier’s animations and in particular their search animation. Here is a gif of it.

During the rest of the week, I switched to a super exciting task, Sally’s stealth takedowns! But it is still a work in progress. I might be able to show you a gif of it next week, if the censors allow it. See you next then!

Thanks for tuning in!

Compulsion Team

Discuss this post here