Hello everyone!
This post marks the new beginning of Gumlin Games’s development on The Machine, our first title. Well, that’s not really true. This is the third sprint of development, but only now have we gotten around to fixing our website.
A lot has changed since last time we posted a dev log. So much, in fact, that we saw fit to overhaul the site and purge all the old dev logs.
New beginnings! And we have a lot of exciting news to share with you.
Gumlin Games + Mind Detonator
After a while of being in talks, we’re finally ready to announce that we’ve officially been accepted into the Mind Detonator games accelerator program. As a result, our offices (and indeed most staff) have moved to Jörn, a small village in northern Sweden, a couple of clicks outside Skellefteå.
In connection with this we’ve also launched our company as an actual, bona fide registered trademark and company.
We’re incredibly excited about this partnership, which will allow us to refine The Machine into an even more polished product.
A New Direction
Both story, lore, and gameplay has seen major changes since last. The game has seen a transition in location, now taking place in The Walking City of Machines, or The Carapace. This is a place where the mechanical rules, and where even the denizens are made of steel. The Carapace wanders tirelessly across the snow dunes on an eternal chase of The Optimum: the last embers of nominal time flow left on earth. As The Optimum moves, so must the Machine.
We’re not prepared to tell you too much about the story yet, but we hope the glimpses we can give you in the coming weeks will make you as excited for the game as we are!
Devlog 3
Lukas “Gås” Rabhi Hallner
Pipe Lord, Bird Watcher, Catwalk Model
Hello people! During the two most recent weeks I’ve spent my time creating some hero props & assets, creating tools for catwalks & cables and walking around taking screenshots.
Props
Two props have been the focus this sprint, a mechanical rotating drawbridge, which after starting up will let the player progress in our into level. And a rework of our fuse box, the fuse box will be used in many areas and puzzles where electricity plays a part!
Tools
By the use of modular assets and UE4s blueprint construction script I made tools for placing walls and catwalks a bit quicker.
During the last days of the sprint I also looked into Houdini for procedural tools. After getting inspired from SideFX recent in-house tool demo “Project Titan”, we decided to implement Houdini into our workflow, and after following a great guide we now have a cable simulation tool!
Other stuff
We also bought some birds which now can inhabit our mechanical depths!
Fredrik “Smörgås” Lind
Trainspotter, Button Pusher, WEB MASTER
I’ve worked on a few iterations of whiteboxing / level design these two weeks. The idea has been to extend the current level backwards slightly, introducing a new introductory sequence before the level as it was previously.
Aided by a few practical tools for catwalks/instanced walls from Gås, I made fairly rapid progress! With these tools I’ve been able to move away from whiteboxing using BSP brushes in Unreal, which have hindered me in the past.
I’ve also spent some time touching up our website, as well as migrating to a domestic web host. Not finished by far, but check it out at gumlin.com if you feel like it! No, wait..?
Pontus “Sparkles” Andersson
Controller of the Sound
For me these last two weeks has involved creating sound effects for a huge piston, as well as environmental sounds for an exterior scene set high up in the machine city.
I have also put some time into improving the sound controller responsible for managing how sounds behave within an audio volume. For example, a sound should be occluded because it’s behind a wall, or it should follow a certain shape or path in a room as the player moves around. The controller connects these sounds with appropriate events so they can behave as intended during gameplay.
Simon “Vito” Gustavsson
Man of the Motions
This week I have been working on animations and animation transitions for the character as well as some functionality for the NPC and player.
Has been fun learning about animation as I haven’t really touched it before! I got some decent results but I am greatly satisfied with how some of the animations turned out.
Still lots of small bugs to fix, but I’ll get there eventually!
Simon “Boonga” Öhlund
Architect of Big Things
During these two weeks I’ve primarily worked on rigging the machine city’s legs, but I have also been working on other aspects of the legs, such as the UV-mapping and texturing.
I’ve started to animate the machine city’s wheels and treads!
That’s all she wrote! From all of us at Gumlin Games, see you in two weeks. Be sure to join our Discord if you want more frequent updates!
Add a twig of dill to your bath, and soon you’ll soak yourself calm!
~ The Gumlin