By admin, on November 11th, 2009
 Well it’s been a while since my last update, but be reassured I have not been idling during my absence! Today I can finally show you what I have been toiling over this past month, starting with Dear Esther. During the past month or so I’ve been hard at work striving to hit my first milestone, to bring the first level up to a high standard that will be ready for polishing later on, and which will also serve as a visual benchmark for the remaining levels. Basically what this means is that now I have established the style of ... More »
By admin, on September 25th, 2009
 Time for another update I think, been a while actually (or at least it feels like that!). So over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on various bits and pieces for the environment, firstly making rock clusters which are scattered around the bay, such as the path from the lighthouse to the beach and the hermit’s cave. I’m still in two minds about using models for rocks like this however as I’m not a big fan of the vertex lighting, even with all the advances of the OB’s per-vertex lighting and self shadowing. I find that the lighting ... More »
By admin, on September 1st, 2009
 Been another slow week this week; however I have managed to finish sculpting and painting the terrain for the first level and am now looking forward to getting some props made in the coming weeks to continue to flesh out the environment.
Here are some WIP screenshots of the section I have been working on this week, mainly the valley down to the Hermit’s cave and the route back up again:
Upper route down to the hermit’s cave
Hermit’s Cave
To make the walk back up the Valley to the next level a bit more visually interesting, I added a small brook which flows ... More »
By admin, on August 21st, 2009
 Hello again! So the past couple of weeks have been rather chaotic with various things going on taking trips out for reference photos, family visiting and advancing another year closer to old age, hence the lack of an update last week. However this means I now have a lot more progress to show off this time around!
Since my last update I have been focusing on getting three things done; firstly creating and applying basic textures for the terrain e.g. rock, sand grass etc, and lastly, painting and sculpting the terrain. In this pass my goal was to create the most ... More »
By admin, on August 2nd, 2009
![__Dear_Esther___Lighthouse_by_Ben_Andrews[1]](http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/devblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Dear_Esther___Lighthouse_by_Ben_Andrews1-75x75.jpg "__Dear_Esther___Lighthouse_by_Ben_Andrews[1]") After a month of pure chaos I’m happy to say I’m now finally settled and sorted over here back in the UK and over the past week have been getting stuck into Dear Esther’s development once again.
Been a pretty slow week just finding my feet again and most of all finding a good place to start on the huge task ahead. I initially started doing some rough texture work for the terrain but quickly realised that it was more important to have a nicely sculpted landscape on which to base the artwork. The video below is a time-lapse video of ... More »
By admin, on June 3rd, 2009
 So my stay in the Land of Swede is nearly over and soon I’ll be departing back to my glorious hometown of Newton Abbot in the UK (-OH GOD!). This means that I may be inactive for a few weeks while I get myself sorted with an apartment, internets, time to chill out etc. I’m hoping for things to start picking up again around mid July so at which time I’ll be able to dedicate my full attention to the mod, and am really looking forward to it!
It’s been a real blast here in Sweden, I’ve made a lot of ... More »
By admin, on May 24th, 2009
 This week I want to show off some of the excellent artwork Ben Andrews has been creating for me. He has been creating inspirational sketches to help me to visualise how I can improve the various environments in Dear Esther. Here are some examples of his work on the mod so far:
(Note – Some of these are work-in-progress )
By admin, on May 17th, 2009
 So, one of the biggest hurdles with making a mod like Dear Esther in Source is the rather clumsy displacement system which is used to create terrain and smooth surfaces. To have pixel-perfect seamless and smooth terrain in Source I had to build my maps in a very unique, complicated and time-consuming manner. Everything has to align with each other and be built from adjoining quad faced brushes, if that doesn’t make any sense then maybe this image will:
By building the map in this way (previously mentioned here) it will allow me to have one large smoothly subdivided displacement which ... More »
By admin, on May 10th, 2009
 So one of the first things I wanted to do before rebuilding Dear Esther’s levels from the ground-up was to first analyse the existing areas of the game which needed improvement the most and analysing how they could be improved upon.
I looked over a number of comments found on Dear Esther’s ModDB site and also from my personal experience playing the game and here are some brief bullet points that show a couple of the most common issues I found:
Design
A common issue I found with the original level design, and something I experienced myself, was that it was easy to get lost ... More »
By admin, on May 3rd, 2009
 Well it’s been a while since I was here last, a lot has happened since and so before I talk about my upcoming plans I think it only right that I should give you an update on The Willows.
The Willows is certainly not dead! However, I have put it on hold for now mainly due to a lack of free time as well as feeling that the zombie genre is a little oversaturated at the moment and don’t feel the time is right for another zombie mod. My plans for it have also grown beyond my current capability (code-wise) but I’m hoping ... More »
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