Dev Diary 1

Hello everyone!

When working on 0.1.3 I realized some new ways to increase post-apocalyptic atmosphere in the game. Then I thought I should share it with you. All of you that check my Patreon are interested in the Astral Lust, so why don't show you how it's created? And so dev diary come to be.

So I was working on chimera scene from 0.1.3, I placed abandoned cars, looked at the effect and I knew something was lacking.. it didn't look as apocalyptic as it could. Then one word appeared in my mind: overgrown. Yeah, that was it, the plants, the street overgrown with moss, grass, bushes, etc.

When I finally placed enough green to be satisfied I thought of something else - corpses. Most of humans are dead, right? And so the corpses, or rather their skeletons appeared on the screen.

Abandoned house, the scene with chimera was corrupted and can't be loaded. You'll see it while playing 0.1.3.

To show more of a comparison here's a scene with and without greenery.

Not a lot of changes but the difference is obvious, right?

The atmosphere in the Astral Lust is builded by many other things, background music, lore, etc. One of the most important thing, adding to the atmosphere of mystery and horror, is the everpresent fog. But is fog a simple thing? Of course not. I actually use three different kinds of fog at the same time, to achieve the effect you see in the end product. 

So, I was doing another exploration event, the thing is that I wanted to add more darkness to it. It was like this at the beginning:

It looks nice, the shadows work nice there, orcs are visible, but the concrete at the end is too bright. So what to do? Make the fog drown it all!

Don't you agree, it looks much better? Apocalyptic, dark, mysterious. Yet there is a problem there, the orcs aren't visible, that might be okay, too bad there is a campfire between them. They need to be visible, there is a fire illuminating them after all. So the fog needs to be tweaked, less than now, but more than at the beginning. So after tweaking for a few minutes. I achieved effect I found satisfactory. There it is:

Problems of both versions were dealt with. And it's ready! Now I can render the event.

That would be all for the first dev diary.

Have a good day!