So it’s been a while, in fact it’s been almost 4 months since my last update, however, during this time I have been tirelessly working on the third level of Dear Esther and have finally reached the point where I think it is good enough to show some of what I have been up to during my absence.

The third level of Dear Esther takes place at the heart of the island, through its many sprawling caves and tunnels. I have to admit, this was one of the levels I was most excited about working on as I’d never attempted this kind of environment before, and it allowed me a much greater freedom and creativity that is sometimes restricted when creating large outdoor environments and so I was able to add in much more detail and complex shaders to really help bring the caves to life without sacrificing performance.

I think the caves in the original were the one area that was most lacking and so I made a real effort to make sure they raise the bar both visually and atmospherically. (Note: As always these shots are pre-alpha and lack proper polish):

It’s been a tough journey on this one, both technically and creatively, with so many unique assets being made and pushing the 2007 Source Engine to its limits to meet my high standards, it took me a lot longer than I predicted to finish the level (hence the abnormally long absence), however I’m so close to finishing now I can almost taste it and I can’t wait to get started on the next (and FINAL) level!

Anyway as an added bonus for waiting so long, I’ve compiled a quick montage of the third level, and also showcasing some of the many effects that has been added/hacked in such as realistic flowing water and caustic effects.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3bPjEbenew

Finally some high res screenshots for wallpaper! (right-click>save as):

One final thought I’d like to leave with you and would love to hear your feedback on; What would you think of Dear Esther breaking away from being a mod and becoming a proper indie game? (On the Source Engine of course!)

And as a bonus some 1900×1080 high res wallpapers: (right-click > save picture)

Overall I’m very pleased with the results, although technically it has been quite a struggle, in comparison to the first level this one is utterly huge, I broke the Source engine quite a few times in the process of building it to the level of detail you see here. Performance is also looking great, currently on par with the first level, and for those of you who are wondering, if you can run any OB/L4D game then you will most certainly be able to run this. Right now I can run it at 30-40fps, 1900×1080 on my humble laptop with only a 9600M GPU with everything maxed out.

Anyway I’m already looking forward to starting the next level, the caves under the island, I think it will be a truly unique setting where I can really break out the eye candy and play with some interesting art styles, which will be a refreshing change compared to the wide open environments I have been working on previously!

Anyway hope you enjoyed the update!

Please note this area is still an early WIP.

This was a particularly tough area to create. Most of my time was spent researching and developing the look of the sand dunes before I came up with something I was satisfied with. The ship was also a big challenge and something I think still needs work. However overall I’m pleased enough with how the area looks right now and will be moving on to the second half of the map.

That’s all for now, I will post an update when I have more to show!

Anyways! So now the first level is at an alpha stage and ready for polish I think it’s time to let you see the fruits of my labour:
 

And as a special treat, some high res shots for your desktop! (click to view larger, or rightclick>save as)

It’s been quite taxing this month to be honest, I reached a point recently after 4 months of non-stop DE and started to feel a bit burned out, luckily I recognised the warning signs and took some time away from DE to work on something completely different…

This is a WIP image for Game Artisan’s and Polycount’s “Unearthly 2009” competition. The objective is to create a real-time environment that portrays the words “End Game”. I chose a Viking funeral as my subject using the Unreal 3 Engine to create it in. Let me know your thoughts and feedback as I’m going to continue to improve it up until the deadline of the 17th so it would be most welcomed! Click here to follow my progress.

Other than that I’ve also been faced with a dilemma over my choice of Engine in the past couple of weeks. Initially Source seemed like the ideal choice, it would be free for anyone owning a valve game to d/l and play DE (using OB sdk base), free for myself to use the editing tools, and also have an engine which caters to my most basic requirements out of the box (FPS movement). However on the other hand I knew creating a highly detailed outdoor environment in Source would be a never ending battle with visuals vs performance using Source’s outdated rendering engine, but at the time there’s wasn’t much choice so I bit the bullet and got stuck in. Flash forward to three weeks ago: Firstly with the announcement of the awesome Unity engine becoming free for all PC developers, and then Epic’s announcement of the Unreal Developers Kit. I deeply wish this had happened months ago as either of these would much more suitable for me to develop DE on, however at this point in the project I think I have crossed the point of no return, mainly due to having limited finances to fund the project full time, and partly the motivation to start again in a new engine. Anyway so at this point I think I’m going to have to press on with source and hope for the best! Just please don’t announce any more free new awesome engines before I’m finished Mr Games Industry thank you!

Another thing I worked on, and something that had been bugging me since the project started, was the problem of creating a realistic ocean with Valves pond water. After unsuccessfully trying various complex solutions I finally decided to go back to basics and tried a simple scrolling TwoTexture, with some carefully crafted textures, applied on a brush 1 unit above the water. Initial results were very promising but one of the major problems I had over such a large area was inevitable tilling. I countered this by converting the brush into a displacement where I could skew and shape the texture to avoid any ugly tilling and better match the contours of the shoreline. The result was quite satisfying and overall not too expensive, and I can optimise it further later on if necessary:

 Something may also notice in these shots is the new lighting and sky. I saw some concerned comments that it was previously too bright, and although it was only placeholder in previous shots, I had to agree it was not in fitting with DE’s atmosphere at all. As you can see I darkened the sky and lighting considerably and tried to select a palette which better suited a darker and mysterious atmosphere.

Finally I got some help from coder, Jack Morgan, who helped fix a few annoyances such as footstep sounds and crouch speed as well as one other feature allowing me to have more control over what can be done with detail sprites; Basically I’ve been hoping Valve would fix the problem detail models (instead of sprites) killing fps in the engine since I first started mapping but unfortunately it seems like the engine is just not built to handle it. Detail models offer a very simple way of adding variation to large surfaces such as the beaches in DE without having to place hundreds of models or decals individually and only need to be seen when the player is in close proximity. The solution Jack and I came up with was to instead use sprites that are parallel to the ground which then create the effect of texture variation and detail. There results were surprisingly good and best of all cheap as chips!

After all the small bits and pieces were sorted I decided it was time to get focused. My plan is to focus on one area’s art every week and try to get them at a level where all they need is polish. This week I have been focusing on the Lighthouse area at the beginning of the first level. Originally it was just a small stone house that didn’t make much sense in that location. I decided a lighthouse would be more fitting, and with the inspiration of Ben Andrew’s concept art I built what you can see below:

This was pretty taxing to be honest, with lots of small props being required for the interior which can be very time consuming in Source. Although it still needs a lot of polish, overall I’m pleased with the results and next week I shall start on another area.

Finally I made up a short video showcasing the sea and sky in action so that you can more clearly see it to full affect, Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Fzj7-0vNQ

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 through the lower valley from a small underground cave.

I will be also adding the ruins of an old church here.

So basically as far as the terrain is concerned it’s pretty much done, however I will probably keep tweaking it here and there up until the end, but for now im happy with it. I’ve had a few comments about the bareness of the landscape in some areas, this is purely because there are no models in the level yet, and you will see that change drastically over the coming weeks!

Finally, in the free time I managed to find, I also implemented some subtle moving clouds into the skybox and created a nice water effect for the river using a scrolling “$Refract” shader. If that doesnt make much sense, i’ve made a video to better demonstrate these effects:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pNeooyDZ2M

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 convincing landscape possible without the use of any models or additional assets. This was mainly to push myself to make use of the crazy amount of displacements in the map and also to ensure the textures I was producing were of a good enough quality to stand on their own, the results of which can be seen below:

 
After a slow start, mainly just finding a style and palette which I was comfortable with, I’ve found progress has been pretty smooth and I’m almost complete with the terrain on the first level, I think another couple of days and it should be all up to the same standard as you see here. Most of the lighting and sky is placeholder and I plan on spending more time on this a bit further down the road.

One other thing I think worth mentioning is that I’m experimenting with using a sky dome instead of a skybox. Two reasons for this are that 1.) It’s a hell of a lot easier to make a hemispherical texture and 2.) It’s super easy to update it (no having to edit and re-save 6 individual textures and hope for the best) Only downside to this is that for some reason models in the skybox don’t get rendered in cube maps or water so for now I’ve had to hack in a basic colour skybox behind the sky dome so that reflections look relatively ok. If anyone knows a way around this please let me know!

Finally Ben Andrews has been plugging away as always on the concept art, this time refining the lighthouse painting so that it is more consistant with the more recent style of paintings he has done lately.

 … and also helping me brainstorm some extra eyecandy for the Valley on the first level

His lighthouse piece will also be on display at IndieCade where Dan Pinchbeck will be entering Dear Esther in the independant games competition – Good luck guys!

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 just some of the sculpting that’s been going on this week. This has mainly been quite effortless due to the preparations I undertook early on and am hoping over the next week to have the first level fully sculpted out ready for a texture pass later on:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI9cVDVGBL8

Once the texture pass is complete I plan to start detailing the landscape with more models and working on some of the larger structures such as the lighthouse at the beginning of the map. Speaking of which Ben Andrews redesigned the lighthouse a little to help it fit more suitably within the environment, with the following result:

So far things have come off to a good start and I hope to also do a bit of research visiting some of the coastal areas near to me to get some quality photo refs to the development along (depending on how crap the weather is!).

It’s been a real blast here in Sweden, I’ve made a lot of really good friends and Im really gonna miss everyone, and of course the amazingly beautiful women, especially when this is what awaits me back home…

Finally I’ll leave you on a positive note with some of the latest concepts made by Ben Andrews to hopefully spark your imagination of what’s to come:

Fairwell Stockholm!