Hi Folks,

A new update of my fan project Star Wars - Redemption is here, and this 2.7 brings new cool things to the demo.

Improved lighting on Mevenn, this goes from a very simple thing (to the point I don't get why I didn't make it earlier). Simply put a spotlight dedicated only to light Mevenn in her blueprint. Without specular intensity from that spot, it acts as a skylight, but only affects a desired area so you can bring the player attention to the torso/head, more than the heels (even if Mevenn's heels are badass ^^"). The cool point is it still adds a little specular reflection only in Mevenn's eyes, that was definitely missing :

I've also added more starfighters to pilot, and made them playable in every flying-levels (so you can fly in N-1 over Coruscant or save Naboo's blockade into a Tie-Fighter...makes no sense but it's fun ^^")

To build these, I opted for a pretty optimized texturing/UVing. First of all, they both use the same following texture set :

Lots of stacking, but also meticulous use of triangle direction. When going low poly that's something to take care of, else you might have some distortion (as seen above on some parts of the wings. I fixed that right after this screenshot x)). Also, at first I just made them as enemies to fight for a new spaceship you can pilot (see next images), so the super low-poly cockpit was legit. But well. I couldn't resist to make it also a playable version and in player's view it was a bit too low-poly compared to other ships. A little subdiv on the sphere & cylinders and we're good to go !

Also new here, the XT-3400. It's a big cargo I wanted to make playable for a dear friend of mine, Aurélien Baarsch. He designed/modeled the ship, I then put textures and joints on it and integrated the whole thing into the demo. It's part of a cool side-project he craft and this is kind of a link between it and SWR. Aurélien was my art mentor 11 years ago and I still discuss with him, to get valuable feedback on both art and star wars universe mistake I could make when creating the story of my fan-project. This ship was a way to collaborate once more together and see if the alchemy still works after a decade. And hell yeah, it certainly does ;)

Here's a quick breakdown on the texturing/level art process (I skip all the UV part, not super fun to watch, trust me ^^")
The idea was to remain as close as possible to the colorscheme designed by Aurélien, I baked all colors into a first pass texture, then I applied manually dirt over all the surface as I do with all SWR assets. The idea is to fill a layer with a dark/muddy color, roughness at 100% & metalness at 0%, then create a mask layer (in 3DCoat, any layer can serve as a mask without necessary having to be near the controled layer. Bonus thing : it can affect several layers at once. In case you didn't already knew it : I love texturing in 3DCoat ^^) 

Lots of pieces. Yup. But the result speaks for itself ! (I also like to place lights everywhere, in Marmoset Toolbag I feel like I'm painting with spotlight colors, that light gizmo is really a thing every software should have, it's so practical !)

Then I wanted to add a dedicated level. I thought a sort of space-station that "repairs" Venators under the early Empire era would be interesting. So I started to design this big station :

At first I wanted to have like big bridges all around the docking area of each destroyer, but I ended up thinking it was a bit too much noise, plus I wanted to mess with the circular hole formed by several piles of these buildings. Just to fly inside. I do a lot of things in this project just because "it's cool, why not ?" A simple yet very motivational philosophy :)

In order to texture all this bloc, I made a tileable texture (all done in 3DCoat, I should make a tutorial one day to achieve this, 3DCoat has really efficient tools to craft such assets). Idea was to have lots of panels of course, but at various density. Also you can see that some parts are kinda "scorched shells", this is cool to make the structure look not perfect, unfinished like if the empire had rushed those (of course I could have made these uncomplete parts in solid meshes, but this might be for another round ^^")

And there, once in engine :) My Venator fits perfectly in it !

(I really like this bottom view !)

I also added a new "piled shroom" into the blue cave on Lumberia Temple :

And last but not least, clone troopers now have "Dark Forces" troopers. They're same as elites, but more robust & painful. If you encounter one and kill him, he will inevitably respawn a few minutes later as a Dark Forces trooper. This means levels gradually tends to spawn only these troops the more you survive in them ^^

Please find below a list of all the updated/fixed/added features :

Star Wars - Redemption | Update Log v2.7

[General]

- Adjusted texture/shader of stellar systems (space background) to get closer than what we see in films (less "dots" and more "stars")

- Optimized UVSets (Max. 2 per asset instead of 3) and removed all auto-generated lightmap UVs, this improves perfs mostly on : Lucrehulk/Geonosis/Lumberia/Archives/JediPurge levels

- Optimized lights in general (now limited by distance to the camera)

- Enhanced shadows on space fighting levels

- Added a new batallion, the "DarkForces". You'll recognize them by several points : they have much more life, more bullets, faster shot and faster projectiles, as an easter egg to the old Battlefront 2 from 2005 they shot purple-ish blasts, they also have a unique armor designed exclusively for ARC troopers, they are dark deep blue with strong red yet subtle warpaints, and their visor is alike Clone Commando and in fact quite close to those of Crossair new team members in the badbatch. They won't appear often, but if you find one, prepare your best moves as they won't be easy to take down

- Removed the need of captured Forceghosts to unlock bonus levels and reinforcements sliders. This allows to feel a little better difficulty at the beginning, and makes Forceghosts a more important thing to collect as they'll be the only way to increase Mevenn's stats

- Improved glowing Mushrooms on Lumberia environments so they look a bit more magical and carry their own dynamic lighting (it now follows them when they jump near you)

- Fixed a bug where Ennemy/ally units could still spawn from a certain type of spawners if their factor was put down to zero

- Fixed a bug where unit spawn limit could be overriden, leading to potential performance issue

- Added enemies to KillZVolume allowed victims, so when you throw a clone into space he dies

- Adjusted little mushrooms models so they appear less sharp and more smooth and cute

- Fixed all "boxes" issues (collisions were broken/not working, it's a compromise, you can't slash them like in the 1st public release of the demo, but you no longer "enters" in them so they clearly acts as covers)

- Fixed a bug where difficulty was going down to Padawan each time you restart/launch a level, ignoring the desired difficulty mode

- Added sounds to StarDestroyer's reactors, so it's more immersive when you fly by

- Added lights to muzzle flash emitters so you see better when someone is actually shooting

- Refined bridge grids models on Geonosis Canyons, Jedi Temple (servers room) and Venator 66/Hangars

- Added new wallpapers

- Adjusted planet shaders, so now the emissive has some life in it (glowing city lights)

- Added HDR support, if you have an HDR compatible screen the game colors should look a bit better =)

- Adjusted stars in flying backgrounds, less dense, but brighter ones

- Reduced turret's life to give a better feedback when shooting at them

[UI/UX]

- Changed UI title "Star Wars - Redemption" for a phoenix logo to better suit art direction (notably on Mevenn/414th clone troopers phase II armor warpaint patterns)

- Updated game credits with Aurélien Baarsch (XT-3400 LightFreighter designer/modeler)

- Added gamepad Support in all menus, use left stick to move mouse cursor, press A to validate a button

- Added "Back to Menu" and "Exit" buttons to the GameOver Menu

- Added difficulty modes and reinforcements sliders to the GameOver menu, now you can directly adjust your next session from there instead of having to go back to main menu or options, tweak and relaunch current level

- Added a new "Starfighter" entry in both Main menu/Pause menu (flying only), in order to let the player opt for the favourite starfighter to pilot everywhere, once picked, you can decide to either go in bonus levels and play levels at will or restart to apply changes (last option only available in play mode of course)

- Reworked some level preview images to better reflect what level actually offers, i.e since space flight is now accessible with any starfighter, having them in the preview is no longer relevant

- Unified options/Levels/Bonus Levels panels of the UI so everything is adjustable at anytime, independently from the current game mode

- Added a UI to flying mode so you can see your life and shields state and better estimate your starfighter damages (shields are not in use at the moment, but in case of future implementation the UI is there)

- Added Bloom slider to modulate how much you want it into the renderer (can save performances)

- Added a "Depth Blur" check-box in case you want to cut it from renderer (can save performances)

- Added a "Motion Blur" check-box so you can remove it from render pass (can save performances)

- Reduced delay to navigate through menu panels (was at 0.5s, although I liked the effect it wasn't subtle at all, I changed it to 0.1s, so you still "feel" it, but don't be frustrated to wait half a second. After all : devil is in the details, right ?)

- Added a "Back" button in pause menu to facilitate the switch back to game, especially with a gamepad

- Added UI icons over enemies in flight mode to better identify them. More specifically, when you fire missiles at them, the locked enemy will be briefly emphasized. You can turn it off if you turn off the UI (Numpad *)

- Added visual feedback on selected difficulty, selected starfighter, and selected language.

- Added version number in the options menu ( green text, bottom right near langage settings)

- Added a slider to adjust the delay after which the camera will start rotating on its own

- Internally reworked level names to reflect those used in the UI

- Added new saved settings accross sessions/levels : Camera offset, Camera Zoom amount, Camera FOV (can be activated if you need it, off by default). 

- Added lightsaber's intensity/color as a persistent tweak through games, should you love to look as a Sith, you'll now keep that red blade ;) You can revert to default color at anytime using Left Ctrl + Numpad 0 (command list has been updated)

- Regrouped check-boxes in the option pannel

- Added an "Auto-Thirds" option, this will place the camera on left or right of the character, so you can forsee what's ahead of you. This also gives a better look to the game

- Added a "Force Motion Blur" option for flying levels, so you can decide to have it on or off independently from the global motion blur checkbox

- Added tooltips for options, simply hover a text to see an enriched description of what it does. Not every text has it of course, like for example the button "French" which obviously turns the game in french

- Added a "Master" slider in audio settings so you can quickly turn on/off/adjust the volume of the game without switching back to windows soundmix settings

[Mevenn]

- Added a light specifically for Mevenn so she looks better in dark places and always has a little specular point in her eyes

- Adjusted min/max camera FOV (min=10 (was 15) ; max=120 (was 100))

- Adjusted max camera dezoom (1500 (was 1000))

- Increased footstep sound volume

- Added an auto-follow feature to the camera and a reset camera button (right thumbstick button/middle-mouse button), this eases the control especially for gamepad players. You can disable it in the options

- Fixed a bug where after a dash the parry was no longer working if player was parrying before dashing

- Changed the dash-to-ground vector for a clean 90° down so player no longer accidentaly falls down into the void

- Fixed a bug where the dash-to-ground could appear after a quick jump if triggered shortly before landing

- Fixed a bug where Mevenn could be partially hidden on every respawn if you activated the "ghost player" mode (Ctrl+Alt+G)

- Fixed the rule of thirds overlay so it displays an equally 9-splited screen

- Added VFX "puffs" & sounds on jump start to bring a better jump feel

- Adjusted the eyelid makeup accross all 3 different faces

- Added a passive camera rotate after 15s (default value), so you can see the environment around. Only moving/look around can exit it. Default value can be edited in options

- Added SFX, VFX, and footsteps triggers to some idles that were missing it

- Added a boost to the emissive of the blades if you increase their lights (Numpad + ; Numpad -)

- Added max jump-hold time to capabilities that can increase depending on ForceGhosts you have captured (was at 0.3s, now you start at 0.3s and reach 0.4s at max)

- Boosted the blade emissive default power

- Fixed LOD of the helmet that was still popping too early

- Changed the way the auto-focus is computed, now it will always keep Mevenn's face neat no matter the zoom distance. Since it's not called every frame, you may nottice some jaggy/blurry pixels artifacts when changing the camera view distance, but only when this occurs and that's quite subtle

- Changed the way the camera offset works, now taking account of collisions. You can also add an offset to the camera target, which is the Mevenn by default, using the same "I,J,K,L" shortcuts but with "Ctrl" (so to offset the camera target up, use "Ctrl+I" and so on)

- Added an option to get an automated camera offset based on player movement, placing Mevenn near thirds to achieve a better image composing without the need to play with I,J,K,L while playing. Please note that these shortcuts still works and that this "Auto-Thirds" option can be tunred off at any time in the Options pannel

[Clone Troopers - Phase II]

- Adjusted Jedpack roughness/Specular textures

[ForceGhosts]

- Boosted emissive

- Boosted collect sound

- Added a chance to also heal the player when spawned, you can see that some has a more powerful halo than the others, they'll heal you the same way a heal orb do but they'll be there only once, when captured, these "healing" sources will no longer be available (this helps you sustain in some cases when you start a fresh savegame ;))

- excluded the mesh from the lighting render pass, as it uses only additive shaders. Also disabled their shadow-cast parameter

[Starfighters]

- Added XT-3400 LightFreighter, designed & modeled by Aurélien Baarsch (a good friend of mine). This one stands as a driveable ship over the new space Level called "Space Station". You can also walk around it in Lumberia Temple level (somewhere deep in the forest)

- Added TIE fighter, TIE interceptor, and Vulture droid as driveable spacecrafts

- Changed the logic of surrounding starfighter spawn, now they're dependent to levels instead of game modes

- Extended the firing projectiles logic (Blasters & Rockets), so starfighters can be set internally to fire up to 4 each (Try the vulture or the TIE-Interceptor ;))

- Changed where starfighters spawns to a much further position so you should see lots of them more rapidly and dive always towards dogfight places

- Fixed a bug where starfighters could go back in non-deployed mode while using a loop blast attack (space bar)

- Changed input to bank starfighter to R/L shoulder (R1/L1 for PS controler or RB/LB for XBox Gamepad), having them on the right thumbstick was problematic to access blaster shots/missiles while adjusting flight trajectory

- Added a new SFX to Delta-E principal blaster shots and changed lasers from green to blue

- Changed the way you fire missiles. Now, you fire them when you release the input. You can increase the distance before homing target as well as its life span by holding down the input, this way you can adjust your combat tactics depending on the target distance

- Removed delay on fire missile so it better responds your commands (delay between shots are still there, else it would be overpowered)

- Fixed letterbox cinematic mode (Numpad /)

[Jedi Knights]

- Added more details to the texture of Twi'Lek Lekkus

- Added a Green variant for the Twi'Lek

[Space Station]

- Added new flying level

- Added "Imperial" version of Venators in this Level

- Added TIE Fighters & TIE-Interceptors to stand as enemies

[Space Naboo]

- Fixed a missing collider on a Lucrehulk, preventing player from crashing on it

[Jedi Purge] 

- Changed level entry to a regular bonus one (no longer hidden after the death menu)

[Geonosis Canyons]

- Fixed a camera collision with clones shooting near the beginning of the level

- Fixed a bug where you could jump in the sky

- Fixed a bug where player could escape out of bounds near the 414th clone squad

- Boosted BattleDroids B1 you face at the default start of the level (arena outpath)

- Fixed Bloom scale and exposure compensation to calm down the overshiny look of lasers

[Geonosian Caves]

- Adjusted lights fading distance

[Lucrehulk]

- Adjusted lights fading distance

[Venator Hangars]

- Added a few turret shot VFX/SFX to feel the battle of Coruscant from the interior

- Fixed a collision bug on the ARC-170

- Fixed Bloom scale and exposure compensation to calm down the overshiny look of lasers

[Venator 66]

- Reworked the transparent glass shader (more refraction/dirt)

- Fixed Bloom scale and exposure compensation to calm down the overshiny look of lasers

[Lumberia Temple]

- Fixed a triangle hole in the big cave 3D model

- Improved Oak Trees (more organic, more logical breaks in branch directions)

- Raised lighting during darkest moods/nights

- Added another kind of cute jumpy mushroom that can only be found in the hidden blue cave

- Added a new path to reach high caveats in the "two-lakes" cave

- Redistributed parts of the existing ForceGhosts to new areas

- Added more furniture in the hidden cave with the ForceTree, to make it looke like an old abandonned place

- Added a "permanent" healing potion in the hidden cave. Drink and be refreshed ;)

- Adjusted color grading

- Adjusted the lighting of mushrooms on cliff/candles/chandeliers so they can cast more or less shadows and/or emit more or less light in some case

[Lumberia Dungeon]

- Adjusted the lighting of candles/chandeliers, so they can cast shadows and bring a more mysterious mood to the rooms

- Adjusted the ligthing of the force tree chamber, now having more subtle shadows and shadowcast only if necessary.

[Main Menu]

- Added a random start time of day (not evolving, just a random one) set between 6:00 AM & 7:00 AM (where the lighting still looks fine and scene reads well with it)

- Adjusted color grading

May the Force be with you, des Bisous ♥

I have to say I'm a lot more in blueprint than before and it's freakin' cool how much this expands the vision one can have when crafting an asset. I'm also more relieved on this project, I rush less, and I appreciate more what I do (not sure if these are the best word to express how I feel about the project, it's simply better for my health in general haha ^^)

The "Clean armor", needed some dirt, to fit the art direction I established for this project. Objects needs to look like they've endured combats, they should look worn, used, scratched, and all of this by hand (don't use a smartmaterial for that, you'll always make a better job yourself ;) These usage marks can tell stories themselves if you place them well =))

Mevenn in all her glory ! =) I really like this idle Thomas did, he made an hommage to Ahsoka and another one to Obi-Wan iconic stances, Mevenn looks terrific like this =)

New Haircut for the Phoenix armor skin (first image is a quick render of the sculpt version in marmoset, second on is the finished asset with textures)

I've also used various posing from idles, some of them makes Mevenn shine more than others =) With this new haircut, the goal was to shift out of the really blocky look of the existing haircuts, ideally, I'd like to rework them all this way. We'll see if I find the time (and motivation ^^), but in the same time keep the stylized look of it. I don't want Mevenn to look like anything realistic, I'm not comfortable with that and I prefer these shapes languages =) I've added two tiny elements (blue metal objects near the shaved part), at first these were there mostly to play with the shape of the shaved part, and the Lumberian Tatoos, but I'm thinking these would perhaps prove useful later for gameplay, or maybe some important parts of the story. Like a lot of things I do, I create the visuals first, then I find what would be cool to do with it (that's probably why I rarely throw or redo an asset, I hate wasting things even in 3D ^^) 

The UI has been refined to be clearer to read, it was notably issued when displayed over bright areas. Internally, the code has been slightly optimized and how UI is managed is better organized. 

Main Menu (I've adjusted the lighting of the main menu and Mevenn's posing. She looks cooler holding her helmet) : 

Audio Settings :
Now you can mute any channel at a single click. Settings saved at any modification, so when you restart, if there's no music, then there's no music ;)

Options (during pause in a level) : 
There you can see 2 new settings : the "Renforts" (stands for "Reinforcements" in French). First one allows you to modulate the number of allies, second is for enemies. Allies stands only for Jedi Knights, and they are actually more performance hungry than enemies AI, so use it carefully. It's affecting the game once you've collected 250 ForceGhosts. On most cases, you'll need to restart level to apply new settings

And this, paired with spawn dales, can makes a really solid training for our Jedi (spoiler : I did not pass this trial, too hard for me, but maybe you'll succeed !). As always, please be reasonable, if your PC starts lagging at a certain point, don't generate more units and make a good use of these sliders, as it saves performance to have less units to manage

Oh and of course you can decide to remove enemies if you just want to explore the levels peaceuly =)

New clone ARC troopers units are coming up ! Please welcome the "Z-6" troopers =D (Well, sorry for that name. I didn't find a better one ^^")

The dash has been improved with a subtle FOV modulation through distance. This gives a smoother feeling on it. Also, depending on how many ForceGhosts you captured, the dash goes more or less further, once you've got them all, Mevenn is almost like a death eater =D

And you can also choose to remove the jetpack or not, giving Mevenn a thinner silhouette. Please note that you no longer need to remove the helm if you change outfit, the choice is now kept across changes =)

New areas to visit on Lumberia - Temple :

Near the edge of the map, after the circle of stones, lies an old tomb...and more Clones Troopers to kill ;)

Then, if you observe the temple from the outside, you may notice that a new path has been added for you to reach a new floor

TorchFlames now have a more stylized look :

Also new to explore in Geonosian Caves :

There's new corridors, a small arena, Jedi knights that can support your efforts against more BattleDroids ! These corridors were a great way to try and mix up different areas, the cold corridors of the Lucrehulk with the warm sand of Geonosis. This idea is not new of course, and is a little tribute to the great Republic Commando oppening level where you get to dive inside Geonosis canyons, so much you barely see any sunlight. I loved the experience back then, so, yeah, another tribute to other great projects ! 




Please find below a list of all the updated/fixed/added features of the 2.6

[Level - Main Menu] :

- Restored TwiLek (disappeared in latest 2.5 update for some reason)

- Adjusted animation (Mevenn)

- Adjusted composition & lighting

[Level - Training Room] :

- Changed how spawner works : now you can chose between 1, 2, 3, or 4 enemies to spawn, depending on the glowing dale you walk (please keep being aware of your PC capabilities : don't spawn a lot of droïds if your PC can't handle it, you should gradually see this of course, just keep an eye on your framerate ;))

- Added visual feedback on spawn dale and where a Battledroid gets spawned, also they now appear folded, then deploy to get into their previous animation logic, like in the Phantom Menace. 

- Internally optimized the code logic so we can quickly decide how many units to spawn per dale

- Adjusted spawn positions on training room spawn in order to reduce crowd clusters and let units find their path more easily

[Level - Geonosis Canyon] :

- Adjusted default outfit to Clean armor

- Doubled up Jedi & B1 BattleDroids on start area

- Added an elevator just after the BattleDroids vs Jedi intense fighting place, so you can now traverse back and forth the whole level

[Level - Lucrehulk] :

- Adjusted default outfit to 414th armor

[Level - Lumberia Temple] :

- Added new spawn points in the Temple's first floor, some in the forest around too, near new areas to visit. Currently how the spawn works makes the area where you drop fully safe, but this may change in the future

- Added new staircases models notably in the first level inside of the Temple

- Adjusted fog color (was too purple-ish and didn't match well the mood)

- Added new paintings for Lumberia canvas you may find inside old temple areas

- Fixed major drawcalls issues on Lumberia Temple, especially visible when in Ultra graphic settings

- Added new areas to visit in Ancient Temple of Lumberia (you'll have to climb on a hidden pathway)

- Added a lot more Forceghosts on Lumberia Temple, as new areas were added to explore

- Added cobwebs

- Added big degradation to some parts of the temple (mainly pillars), where we now have growing trees. This ages the Temple a bit more, since it's supposed to be a very, very ancient place

[BONUS Level - Lumberian Dungeon] :

- Added cobwebs

- Adjusted Jedi spawn

- Started the addition of a new zone, which will explore paths one level down

[BONUS Level - Geonosian Caves] 

- Added new rooms to explore, with a Lucrehulk blend & a new little arena with a few Jedi Knights against many droïds

[Mevenn] :

- Fixed logic behind Helmet/Hood toggle on/off. Now, if you turn it off, then switch to another outfit, the helm/hood won't show back magicaly. Also if visibility is on and you decide to switch to off, you will no longer need to hit the shortcut twice.

- Fixed a logic routine that didn't always switch off light if lightsaber was off

- Changed where that auto-light/sound routine runs in code, as well as saber impacts, so it no longer runs on event tick but on a separate loop logic fired when necessary (this was too much hungry on resources)

- Fixed how increase/decrease lighting works so it also consider light attenuation radius

- Optimized how often "Depth of Field" blur was called (was on tick, now the routine is called once and just regularly tested in paralell)

- Changed Mevenn's half-shaved hairstyle for a more natural/elegant/detailed one

- Changed Max. critical chance up to 90%

- Changed rule to unlock all the bonus levels, now if you have captured up to 150 Forceghosts, you'll unlock these levels

- Changed rule to unlock the "Reinforcements" multiplier bonus, now if you have captured up to 250 Forceghosts, you'll unlock this bonus. This affects both enemies & allies and can now be adjusted in options (restart level to apply new settings)

- Changed rule to unlock the "random start spawn" bonus, now if you have captured up to 350 Forceghosts, you'll unlock this feature

- Added a new rule to increase base damage (from 2 to 10), and critical damage (from 10 to 40) based on total captured ForceGhosts. You can collect up to 501 of them. Please note that there's a strange display bug that doesn't always keep up with the exact current count, in case of any doubt, just restart the level ; this will refresh the counter

- Based on this new rule, a Dash distance multiplier is applied (from 0.5 to 1.5)

- Added new variant for the Jedi outfit : Novice (Numpad 5)

- Added a shortcut to shot/hide Jetpack when in clone outfit (Numpad 7)

- Added a slight FOV change when dashing, to immerse more into the action

- Adjusted the surfacing look of the "Clean Armor" suit, to get the same level of dirtiness than what we have on basic Clone Troopers

- Adjusted Helmet LOD, as it appeared lowpoly too fast

- Raised Life (Easy=1500 (was 1000);Normal=45(was 30);Hard=20(was 10))

[Jedi Knights] :

- Optimized animations

- Added lights to lightsabers, matching their actual blade color. This makes Them more visible in dark areas (Archives, Dungeon...etc)

- Reduced blade lengths

- Added a HealOrb drop if the Jedi was a strong one (they last longer and has a slightly greater light radius)

[Clone Troopers Phase I] :

- Optimized animations

- Updated idle animations, notably on Geonosis

[Clone Troopers Phase II] :

- Optimized animations

- Added a new logic to add a backpack or a Jetpack or nothing at all in order to bring more diversity to ARC troopers

- Added a new Clone ARC Trooper class, the "RotaryBlaster Z-6". These are the most difficult to overcome, but also a rare unit at first spawn. Once killed, they won't randomly respawn as any clone unit, meaning a group of clones that respawns will gain more of these through each respawns and make the game more and more difficult if you stay in the same area for too long. They shot much faster but with less accurate precision and they have a lot more bullets per load, meaning they won't enter in a breakpoint of reloading as often as other kind of ARC troopers. Only an ARC trooper can respawn as a Rotary Blaster one.

[BattleDroid B1]

- Optimized animations

- Adjusted shot pace per unit (B1 Commanders and Security are more aggressive)

- Adjusted respawn as-elite chance, since B1 Commanders are more dangerous

[Additional features] :

- Added "voices" to jumpy mushrooms (First time I'm doing voice acting =P)

- Added a "ghosted" mode (Ctrl+Alt+G), this is mostly just to take environment screenshots without Mevenn (you'll still be visible to enemies so be careful when using this command. Also since it's a persistent mode, don't forget to switch back yourself to normal visibility ;))

- Modified Mushrooms "OnCliff" so they look more alive and reacts when play jumps on them, which gives a better platforming feeling

- Restored the good behavior of flying forceghosts when catched, instead of sticking to Mevenn's torso movements (which resluted as jaggy motionpaths)

- Added new AI spawn logic (simple "doors" that will keep trying to generate new units if below maximum unit count). Also these spawners works only if player is far, so you should rarely see them actually generate their units

- Added a new settings that allows you to modulate the number of ennemies & allies brought in game by global generators (does also affect new spawners/training room spawners, but not space level spawners that currently looks quite balanced as is). You can choose between 0, 1, 2, 3, or even 4. You can change these parameters while playing in a level, in the options sub-menu. And so yes, if you just want to explore without any enemy, now you can =)

- Added Mute buttons in audio settings, near the reset button. This mutes the current channel, but the game saves the fine-tuned setting so when you unmute later, you'll retrieve the same value you setted earlier. Reset button actually resets that "memorized" value to 1 (=100% of the audio channel)

- Added a filter for ship homing missiles to avoid allies starfighters

- Starfighters Generators now have a dynamic spawn limit that changes regularly, in order to vary the density of a battlefield

- Added collisions (and death) in flying mode. Keep out diving inside star destroyer's geometry ! Death is fired if you collide too many times in a row, I've tried to get something still cool to pilot but ending the flight if player does to many bad tricks (spin is still allowed. It's a good one after all !). Pay attention to VFX of damage (bursts of flames), if you can see them, you're about to crash if you keep bumping on surfaces

[General BugFixes] :

- Fixed an issue in flying menu>options that was preventing player to reset value on resolution/gamma sliders

- Fixed a bug where access to Audio settings led to discard any previously changed options

- Fixed some sound issues with concurrency settings

- Fixed an issue on respawn transforms that sometimes could cause unit to use an unwanted orient

- Fixed an issue preventing player to get a healorb if the Orb has already been overlapped by another actor than the player

- Fixed curious glitch issue on mushrooms on cliff by simplifying their shader

[General Improvements/Adjustments] :

- Improved VFX of Torch flames

- Improved VFX of steaming gas

- Raised HealOrbs healing range (Min=9 (was 6);Max=18 (was 12))

- Raised HealSources (healing=1500 (was 1000))

- Adjusted all enemies shot rythm. Most of the Elites shoot a bit faster, normal units shoot slower, most units now have a more random delay between shots

- Each reload delays has been increased, this offers player a better window frame to move and slay enemies

- Adjusted sparks/glowing halo VFX to make them look more volumetric at a cheaper cost

- Adjusted translation ENG/FR to new features

- UI has been slightly adjusted to better handle window scaling to different ratios and be more easy to read over bright levels

- Adjusted UI so if you're playing into a bonus level you no longer see the dragonfly counter in the top left corner

- Optimized how units spawns (no longer a big block of 90 units at once, this saves performance)

- Changed the spawn logic in space battles, now the starfighter you pilot hosts units generators (one for allies, another for enemies), starfighters spawns always near you so you can fight anywhere in space

- Changed respawn logic, it's no longer hosted in enemies dead corpses and resolves several issues (pathfinding, collisions, performance costs...etc)

- Adjusted light spawn distance on projectiles and lightsaber blades to reduce performance costs

- Optimized all Starfighters animations so they are now using only 30 keys per second instead of 50 (up to 60 sometimes)

That's all folks ! 

Des Bisous ♥ , et que la Force soit avec vous !

Hi everyone ! Since the 2.0 came out in end July 2022, I've taken some time off to recharge my "creative batteries", but I also kept working on the demo to improve it, fix bugs, and bring few more cherries to the cake =) The goal remains the same : shift to a new project in my own IP, but SWR is still the best learning sandbox I have to this date, so that's why you may still see improvements on it. I'm also working on the scenario, mostly the origins of the Force-users of Lumberia. The story I want to tell will not lean towards Skywalkers, but explore. Explore new planets, new areas, new characters, to have a new story and a new journey in the end. This may never be finished, but just in case the project enters in production in the future, I think the initial base that will ensure it's going in a good direction is to have a solid scenario, a real vision that embraces the story from its core to its far far away details. I also want to keep a lot of doors open-able for potential divergences, secondary quests, or simply further detailing ;)

Both videos covers all new things available in this new version (sorry for posting so late on artstation by the way !)

Please find here all the improvements made in the last update (2.5) :

- Added Jump recover anim/code, depends on player's speed

- Fixed a bug preventing jump repeat to cut jump start animation

- Reworked Dash logic, so it responds better to player's input & design choices

- Added a Air-to-Ground attack, offers another way to bring devastating attacks

- Modified max dezoom amount (800 to 1000)

- Added a "Force Order 66" option (in menu/pause/GameOver UI menus). Activating this will skip Order 66 timer on Training Room & Coruscant space, so you can dive in combat directly

- Fixed bad Mevenn's posing in the ARC-170 driver seat

- Adjusted v3 look of Phase 2 ARC Trooper

- Adjusted rig of Phase 2 ARC Troopers so they can use LOD systems. Generated LOD, so they are less performance hungry

- Fixed the "Air-to-ground" attack transition to swimming movement mode (was missing)

- [Lumberia Temple] Adjusted the "two-lakes" Cave exit "rock table" visual stability

- [Lumberia Temple] Adjusted all bushes, so they can block player and projectiles, and then adjusted some of them to keep the platforming good to explore

- [Lumberia Temple] Refined level art of the "return to level pathway" on the beginning of the level (near the first group of clones)

- [Lumberia Temple] Added random Time of day (on this map only, may change later, but I think it won't benefit to other environments as it does for Lumberia Temple) and adjusted lighting/Post-process to remain consistent throughout whole day & night

- [Lumberia Temple] Refined lighting points (so the map looks also cool at nighttime)

- [Lumberia Temple] Added more VFX of "lightbulbs" when there are grass packs with glowing seeds

- [Lumberia Temple] Added more areas where Mevenn's footsteps triggers lightbulbs (mostly visible in caves)

- [Lumberia Temple] Fixed an odd-looking rift mesh on the first staircase near default player start

- [Lumberia Temple] Closed a remaining hole near the v1 player start and on the rift near the first river we can cross

- [Lumberia Temple] Fixed a huge drop of FPS when facing the Temple by temporarily disabling cinematic graphic mode, so at the moment Ultra=Epic, I'll see if/how I can overcome the issue which has to deal with distance culling on particle systems being uncapped for cinematic mode

- [Jedi Archives] : fixed spawn logic of Jedi Knights (they were never unloaded, causing an imbalance in faction placements), fixed also the "sewers" Clones spawn logic, so they could spawn more evenly through the pipes 

- Added DLSS support (nVidia RTX cards only). You can disable it in the options if you want. It's on by default. When enabled, this gives a significant improvement of frames per second, so the game and all mechanics responds more efficiently

- Added VFX trigger on jump end animations (especially visible on Geonosis/Lumberia environments)

- Fixed a bug of a curious sphere being visible in main menu

- Fixed some over-decimation issues on Detla-E Starfighter, so the interior control board looks better

- Added Diablo 1 Potions Easter eggs in Lumberia Dungeon level

- Modified HealOrbs in Lumberia Dungeon level, so they represent more clearly the Diablo Easter egg

- Added more movement to HealOrbs

- Fixed HealOrbs collision offset issue

- Improved transparent glass shader

- Improved hit feedback on enemies with a real push when they get hit in addition to the animation

- Fixed anim logic on hit feedback, so this doesn't glitch anymore

- Modified the tree/bush leaves, so they look more "fluffy-esque"

- Revamped Oak tree's trunk/branches model & textures, so they look definitely stylized

- Fixed jump_end anim bug that kept on playing the static recover when you start running again too quickly after it

- Fixed jump_end logic that was preventing player to attack during the animation

- Fixed a bug where multiple Mevenn models were visible on speederbikes

- Fixed a bug in anim of hit feedback on enemies where an additional impact offset was still there 

- Improved Camera path interaction to reduce "jump-zooms"

- Fixed camera collision on enemy death (this also gave "jump-zooms" that might have appeared as glitches)

- Fixed issue with collisions on bushes that were triggering too many decals and particle systems

- Added more persistent parameters through sessions (using SWRSaveGame.sav file), like : Difficulty mode, DLSS, Force Order 66, Full Elite Mode, Resolution (needs DLSS off in order to work), Gamma, Saber VFX, Audio settings & UI mode ON/OFF. This way, you don't need to adjust the game every time you launch it

- Adjusted Emissive to react better with eye-adaptation

- Fixed a bug where Mevenn could capture the same ForceGhosts several times, resulting in a graphical issue

- Added volumetric lights on ForceGhosts, with shadows so it brings a better immersion

- Adjusted ForceGhosts looks so they look more skeleton-ish

- Added effects when gathering a ForceGhost and dimmed the glow effect when gathering a HealOrb or a ForceGhost

- Added lighting & burst VFX to all StarDestroyer's reactors

- Adjusted Delta-E missile's trails/self-destruct VFX

- Adjusted Aeten II lighting

- Improved planet shader to give a better result of light/shadow transition

- Added a few options for color vision deficiency support (Normal (Default, use it if your vision is OK), Deuteranope (Green weak/blind), Protanope (Red weak/blind), Tritanope (Blue weak/blind))

- Fixed tiling problems on Geonosis background textures/materials

- Fixed a bug that prevents Forceghost to follow Mevenn during the capture animation

- Improved Destroyers turret projectile's impact VFX to look more volumetric

- Added a reset button near Gamma, Resolution, and each Audio settings, so you can quickly recover default values

- Added Auto-parry 360° to the attack air-2-ground, all projectiles will be parried in random directions except if player toggles parry (only facing projectiles will be sent back to opponents)

- Added Auto-parry to both dash attacks, facing projectiles will be parried in random directions except if player toggles parry (only facing projectiles will be sent back to opponents)

- Restored Bubble VFX during swimming mode

- Added lightbulbs VFX in Lumberia ruins




That's all for this one =) I wish you a lot of fun with it !

Hello there ! 

Here's what changed since the last update : 

- Turrets added on big star destroyers, they mostly try aiming the closest enemy battleships. Player can only destroy lucrehulk's turrets, as it's purely visual there is no big destroyer explosion (yet you'll feel the impress there are some big booms everywhere ;)). As usual, the rig/skin/anim is completely made on akeytsu

- Code has been partly optimized, in order to avoid CPU overhead, a lot of code logic now run through independent loops when objects spawns (mostly for flying levels actors) 

- Added better self-destruct sounds, so you can hear plasma blasts dying near you when you fly under heavy shots 

- Added lights to the biggest explosions in space combat (destroyers blasts & player's missiles), this to bring more immersive surfaces 

- Optimized a few of the VFX used for explosions, so you can have more at the same time at a cheaper cost 

- Added random spawn to flying maps, since levels offers tons of places to have magnificent fights. To reach a new point quicker than flying on it, just to restart the level, and you'll have a chance to spawn elsewhere 🙂 

- Fixed Jedi Purge heavy FPS drop (was due to volumetric clouds in the sky, they are now simple 2D clouds, effect remains the same but costs much less to process 

- Revised all flying levels "battle strategic placements" of star destroyers. Mostly so you can see them sending all their firepower to their enemies ^^ Also adjusted spawn of starfighters AI 

- Reworked the projectile's logic of the player's starfighter, so they no longer keep existing after a collision. Also, the code is now optimized through loops instead of using event tick (that was a bit bad for performances) 

There's still some bugs & strange behaviours, but as is it's extremely satisfying to mess with ^^ 

...Again, A BIG THANK YOU for bringing so much love to this project, the last year have been quite hard for me and the love you brought to the project always helped me to keep going forward. I/We love you ♥

Hello folks !

Today I want to bring on a very exciting news, as the 3D character Vira joins the pool of available characters you can get and animate.

She features a cool hairstyle, a light mantle and a curious saber, perfect to animate some fights (against e-LysE ? ;)), this plus little details you can animate to give her even more life. She also offers the standard facial rig setup I use to bring on my recent characters, so you can give her some personality, even if it remains quite simple (it's a game-res model ;)) 

As for other assets, she comes with a ready-to-animate rig on akeytsu, as well as some animation samples, so you can have a first idea on how you could animate her.

You can grab her directly here : https://artstn.co/m/K5rNJ

She also comes with skin variants, so depending on your taste, you can render her with your favorite one ! You can see all the skins below :

Vira comes in custom EULA and Akeytsu Lover licenses. Please note that the "Akeytsu Lover" license only provides the akeytsu rig (no PBR textures, yet of course Vira has her template default texture in akeytsu so you can see what you animate ;)). This variant license also exists on most assets, so if you enjoy akeytsu and simply want more rigs to mess with, here's your chance ;)


That's all for this small news ! Please spread the word, and have fun on akeytsu ♥ 

Hello there !

As promised, since the SWR 2.0 release of July/August 2022 here is a hotfix coming up to...well, fix things. But not only ;) I'll let you read all the details below, have a good read and, if you want to test all these things, simply download the demo, once again (really sorry for unstable or slow internet connections !)




- Blaster shots no longer collides with each other (this could prevent parry to send back a shot well blocked but cancelled by an opposite one)

- Enemies can now shoot you up & down. So each level has become quite dangerous now you can no longer escape through jumps

- when they die, enemies/Jedi knights no longer leaves a hidden capsule on the ground. This was preventing AI to find its navigation path

- Jedi Knights has more life than before (+33%)

- when you or a Jedi knight hit or parry a shot to an enemy, the target now gives a proper hit feedback (hand animated instead of simulated)

- Added the Jedi Purge bonus level, reachable only if you die in the bonus levels section

- Added Audio settings (Music, voice, ambient, SFX sound layers can be adjusted at will)

- Added pause menu>controls when you're in a starfighter level, so you can learn how to pilot this thing

- Made the UI On/Off persistent (but only per game session). Useful if you want to play without having to remove the UI before making screenshots every time you change a level

- Fixed a "red" door could open while she should remain closed in lucrehulk

- Fixed Vertex paint, was too black on some updated models of both Training Room's walls

- Fixed stairs and nearby models that weren't properly welded in both training rooms

- Fixed Jedi as they could receive decals from the environment

- Fixed a few of the UI translation (French) was issued

- Fixed a few walls that were having no collision in Lumberian Dungeon (bonus level)

- In Lumberia Dungeon, some areas of the ceiling were open and that has been fixed too

- You could still be able to fall down in space if you walked near the Venator hangar force field and stayed static while falling. Now you'll die if you jump into space

- Modified Jedi numbers in levels (generally increased), so you can see them more often and fight alongside them

- Modified Navigation mesh on some areas, so the AI can navigate easier through these pathways

- Modified 501st Clones so now they can spawn in the intermediate sections of the vent tunnels (Jedi Archives)

- Optimized Lights in the Venator hangar level (this issue was causing a huge drop of fps)

- Added new Main Menu (with a supercool music I wanted initially on the V2 trailer ^^ btw if you want to know a music title in the game, I've listed everything in the credits section, you can find them on popular music streaming apps, I recommend you audio network if you never looked at it, it's a fantastic place to find the perfect music for your project =))

- Improved the default idle of Mevenn (so she looks less...uh, obviously looping in the menu ? haha

- Improved backgrounds of Geonosis, Venator Hangars & Venator 66 by adding a few starfighters having fun far far away + minor fixes in galaxy sky holes

- Added random starting points if and only if you've reached the endgame (else it would've broken player's first exploration experience)

Now I should not spend much more time on the demo, maybe I'll work back on the scenario then, or maybe even not, I don't know ^^" I wish you the most pleasant time in this little game demo =)

Des Bisous ♥ Et que la Force soit avec vous !

Hello folks !

Here's a wonderful news, as today is the release of the last update of  Star Wars - Redemption project. Still for free (as it's a fan game and just a little demo)

Like in the past, please take the time to read the following lines before getting the demo :

- First ! The FAQ ;) https://www.artstation.com/blogs/vexod14/WzLz/star-wars-redemption-frequently-asked-questions

- The demo is given for free, all you need to do is to register here on artstation, go to my store here : https://artstn.co/m/y138n and pick the demo. If you want to share the demo to a friend, please share the link to the free product instead of copying files on a USB key, it helps me having an idea of how many players tested it (it should also help reporting bugs later on, tracking who gets what...etc. Thanks in advance)
I wish you will enjoy exploring this little project ! If you already have bought it, then simply head over the links and the update will be there, right next the 1.0 version ;)

- Since it's "inspired by" star wars (but not only), you may recognize environments, starfighters, destroyers...etc. Yet I didn't want to stick to existing designs at a "fanatic"-precision, so you may notice differences between official designs and those from Redemption

- As I mentioned several times, this update 2.0 of the demo will be the last. Please understand that I, as well as my friends who helped me on this update, are legitimately in despair need of fresh air and holidays. The demo has been at least made on our spare time and in my case, often during in-between jobs "like" a real one, except I could work drastically more per day. What you see took a lot of time, efforts, to a small group of peoples and there's no magic here, only hard work, and luck from time to time to get things working as expected by accidentally hitting the good button haha.

- Speaking of friends who helped me, let me introduce them again ! Laurent Dessart, he helped me on blueprints parts I wanted to code myself, and implemented great features to the demo like the Jedi Knights with a solid randomization system, savegame for ForceGhosts count, Critical hit chance, or the OST switcher. Thomas Chaumel, was here to animate Mevenn, Battledroïds B1 & Starfighters, as well as doing 5 nice shots for the trailer last year. For this update, he polished Mevenn animations (Attacks, jumps, idles...etc) and animated the Jedi Knights ! Last but not least, Thibaut Hunckler, was also here like Laurent to guide me through code logic in blueprints. Thanks to him, we now have the possibility to attack enemies and see them die, especially with a dash (whish is super cool to use ^^)

- The game should run fine on most configs and now offers real ways to cut off ressources at runtime, so if you feel your PC is struggling, head over the Options and try changing the global quality, as well as reduce the resolution to 75% or less. This should greatly help. Yet, if your hardware is too old, some functions may not work properly and the game may crash or simply refuse to launch itself (but that should be only for 10y+ computers). Settings are applied each time you modify them, no longer needs to restart the level ;)

- We tested the demo on a 2080 RTX with a i7 9th Gen & 8GB of RAM, so if you've got this (or better) it's good ! By default game quality is set to Epic, the "Ultra" mode is here for "Cinematic" quality, but is visually not this better, only sharp trained eyes will see a difference.

- You'll find an update list in the shared folder, if you want to read all that's been added to the initial release (I won't put this here as it may spoil some parts and is, honestly, quite long/boring to read ^^")

- Also, good news for english readers : the ArtBook now has a translated version =)

This last public release is here to polish the demo part of the project, still as a simple tribute to the fantastic & inspiring StarWars universe. We hope you'll like it and that you'll have some fun with it =)

Now I'll go take some sleep before well deserved holidays, if I don't answer that's normal, I'm out of screens =)

Des Bisous ♥

Salut à tous (haha, en français cette fois les gars !)

This one will be full FR, because why not =)

Donc, petite mise à jour de la progression de la démo.

Pour commencer, je suis heureux de vous présenter la "version SWR" du chasseur Naboo N-1, pour les besoins de la démo je n'ai pas fait tous les détails du cockpit ce qui simplifie pas mal de choses à commencer par le rendu (pas de transparence=pas besoin d'animer/modéliser le reste).
Vous pourrez l'admirer sous toutes les coutures dans un nouveau hangar du Venator ;)

Je n'exclus pas de faire le cockpit plus tard, notamment pour la version marketplace du modèle car c'est un peu un must-have quand on veut filmer du dogfight un minimum sérieux.

Ce vaisseau a probablement le design le plus léché de la saga, et a donc été un des plus compliqués à cerner. Il y a énormément de lignes de force, de courbes, et de simplicité qu'on peut difficilement le rater, ça demande toutefois pas mal d'observation et c'est une autre paire de manches que de foncer tête baissée dans la création d'un décor.

Voilà un apperçu de ce que ça donnait en jeu il y a un bon mois avant ce post (ça a un peu évolué depuis ;)). Notez que le mode combat spatial, qui n'est dispo qu'en bonus, a été codé par mes soins ^^ C'était un énorme point manquant depuis la création du jeu, et je n'aurais jamais penser m'y coller ni atteindre quelque chose d'aussi amusant à jouer (ça reste trèèèès simple et imparfait, mais c'est déjà chouette d'avoir tout ça !)

Ensuite, viennent les Commandants Clones ARC Troopers Phase 2. J'en ai créé un par armée intégrée à la démo. On a donc ceux de Kamino (les "blancs", pas vraiment de gros marquage sur l'armure, ils sortent quasiment de l'usine)

Puis ceux de Coruscant, les "Shock troopers". Ce seront aussi eux qui vous embêteront dans Lumberia. Parce-que le rouge se détache bien du vert avant tout ! Cohérence graphique oblige, on adapte le scénario après (ça va pour le coup rien de compliqué : on est post Ordre66 et les Jedis sont traqués. L'armée Clone est démantelée et ne subsistent un temps que ceux vraiment proches du pouvoir, des postes clés ou des missions importante, donc en toute logique on croiserait soit des Shock troopers, soit des Kamino troopers, avant de passer à du Stormtrooper =) Que je ne suis pas prêt de faire, j'aime pas des masses ces armures retro, vous savez mon amour pour la prélogie et ses designs ;))

Ensuite on a la 414ème (ceux de Mevenn, notez que je n'ai pas fait Maxonn/Axe'L/Crusher et RedJaws. Je me réserve la liberté scénaristique de les faire évoluer plus tard. RedJaws notamment, passera outre l'ordre 66 et son histoire se poursuivra sur un arc relativement indépendamment des rebelles/empire)

Et enfin la 501ème (qu'on verra bien évidemment dans les Archives). Je vous avoue que la tentation de faire un des clones bien connus de la série était très, très grande. Mais ça collait pas, j'essaie d'être raccord autant que possible avec ce qui se passe dans l'univers canon, et l'une des grandes astuces est de tout simplement mettre en place l'histoire dans de nouveaux décors (comme par exemple Lumberia). En revanche dès qu'on plonge dans des lieux connus il faut faire gaffe (et je suis presque sûr que malgré toutes les précautions que j'ai prises il y aura des incohérences...bref). Le tout c'est de pas passer 15 ans à vérifier trop dans le détail mais tenter plutôt de capturer l'essence du lieu, l'ambiance, qu'on s'y sente un peu comme dans les films et les séries, rapidement (et puis bon, je vous rapelle que je suis seul à faire tout ça haha, j'ai pas le temps de niaiser comme on dit !)

Ces clones ont pour but de servir d'ennemis + coriaces, mais également d'habiller certains décors. Il s'agissait aussi de compléter la base de chaque armée, il manque encore pas mal de spécialisations comme les pilotes, mais ils sont moins importants pour le gamedesign.

Ils sont à la fois une mise à niveau côté modélisation (+ d'équipement) mais j'ai également revu l'ensemble pour créer les peintures de guerre, histoire de conserver un maximum de cohérence. L'ARC Trooper de la 414ème a un peu + de détails que les autres, je voulais faire un mix entre l'armure de Mevenn et celle des Clones Troopers réguliers de la 414ème, en accentuant les clins d'œils jeux de formes qu'on lit sur l'armure Phoenix et en ajoutant + de couleurs (Mevenn garde le violet sombre pour elle, histoire de la garder démarquée)


Ces ARC troopers sont modulaires, comme les Jedis. On peut donc créer plusieurs variantes facilement =)

Viennent ensuite de l'amélioration de niveaux (enfin...disons que j'ai pété des murs pour voir + grand =D)

Geonosis

Probablement le niveau le + barbant (bah oui, y a pas un pèt de véget, c'est tout plein de sable, ça manque de vie...) bref, fallait améliorer ça !
Et comme l'été dernier j'avais posé vite fait un potit bout de concept pour une sorte de gouffre avec des tuyaux et tout et tout, je me suis mis à plancher là-dessus...quasiment depuis le mois d'août 2021. Je sais. Un an, c'est long. Mais je ne suis pas resté bloqué sur le syndrome de la page blanche, non, je l'ai habillement laissé de côté pendant des mois (haha, astuce du chef !), le temps que ça infuse dans ma tête, que je trouve quelque chose de cohérent, un angle d'attaque. Et ça s'est résolu en deux trois soirées (le + long a été de s'y mettre, j'ai enlevé des morceaux que je pensais vitaux, de bonnes idées mais impossibles à faire pour le moment faute de temps...et c'est rentré nickel !) L'extension n'est pas géante mais elle offre un petit supplément plutôt sympa à explorer, ça reste une "petite" map ^^



Le plus gros morceau étant...le Temple de Lumberia. Enfin !

Pour la petite histoire, je fais des recherches graphiques sur ce temple depuis 2018, je suis même passé par une construction à base de Kappla haha ^^" Mais assez tôt, je voyais un Temple dans Lumberia, un peu comme dans un Indiana Jones ou un Tomb Raider/Uncharted. Mais dans l'univers Star Wars. C'était dès le départ un casse-tête sur le plan technique. Comment j'allais pouvoir texturer un décor aussi gros ? Sans qu'on ne distingue la répétition des textures ou de gros pixels ? Faire des décors de cette taille pour un jeu demande de la patience, et beaucoup de recherche. Si je ne l'ai pas fait à l'époque, c'est que je manquais de connaissances sur la façon dont créer des décors pour du jeu-vidéo. Alors oui, j'en avais fait pour divers projets, et ça tournait très bien, mais jamais je n'avais envisagé de faire un bloc aussi colossal, et pendant longtemps eh bien, j'ai laissé ça de côté. J'avais le temple au loin, enfin, une ébauche, un test. Mais je ne savais pas par où commencer. Et au final, ça a été le déclic juste après avec tombé la salle des serveurs dans les archives. Pas besoin de faire des tonnes de textures, juste viser les couleurs qui fonctionnent bien, rester subtil aussi. Car de loin il ne fallait pas que ce soit un pâté de pixels. J'ai aussi eu une idée qui m'a motivé l'an dernier ; des piliers "fleurs". Même si quelque part on est pas tout-à-fait dans ce que j'avais en tête, ce point m'a permis de donner une âme à ces lieux et je pense que c'était ce qui manquait pour savoir comment dérouler le reste du temple.
Autre point important : l'architecture. Je voulais que ça fasse cathédrale, mais sans connotation catholique ou autre, juste cathédrale avec de longs piliers et une voute impressionnants. Et quitte à faire, de partir sur un mix avec une pyramide triangulaire. J'aime bien, parce qu'un triangle est une forme élémentaire et quand on s'y promène, chaotique. C'est moins évident qu'avec une base carrée ou rectangulaire, et ce chaos apporte du mystère au décor. Pourquoi les Lumbériens ont-ils fait ça ? Comment s'y repérer ? Quel était leur culture dans ce coin reculé de la galaxie ? Qui a allumé tous ces cierges ? (haha. Bon, c'est moi. Je trouvais déjà ça étrange dans Diablo, mais ça reste excellent pour l'ambiance !)

(Excusez le framerate pas dingue, j'ai toujours un souci avec le setup d'OBS et c'est balo, parce-que mon PC est loin d'être à genoux ^^") 

Lumberia a été un terrain de jeu fantastique pour créer des coins féériques, et je pense que je pourrais pousser le délire beaucoup plus loin si jamais je bossais à nouveau dessus plus tard. C'est un peu une planète magique où on peut se permettre des écarts temporels assez profonds, et où la nature omniprésente est empreinte de magie, de rêve. Et puis y a des champignons qui sautillent ^^


En parallèle de ça, Thomas a créé de nouvelles animations pour Mevenn. C'est une feature sympa qu'on retrouve dans beaucoup de jeux, parfois très vieux même (comme Rayman 2), Mevenn peut désormais jouer des animations après un certain temps. C'était l'occasion pour Thomas et moi de faire autre chose que des idles simples, et si j'ai lancé beaucoup d'idées et fait les premières versions de nombre d'entre elles, heureusement pour vous, les anims finales ont été soigneusement faites par Thomas. Et il est bon, le bougre

En voici un bref aperçu :

Autre point très, très, mais alors très important : la gestion des projectiles.

Avant, c'étaient de vrais passe-murailles et les ennemis pouvaient se tuer entre eux, on avait donc un gameplay à la fois super simple (dans les plaines) et super chaud (dans les couloirs, car imprévisible). Désormais, les ennemis ne peuvent plus s'infliger de dégâts entre eux (ce qui vous force à les attaquer) et leurs tirs sont bloqués par l'environnement, avec un joli effet d'impact que j'ai adoré faire =) (mon tout premier =D)

Dernier point : les outils du photographe (bon, pas aussi poussés que dans la vraie vie, mais suffisamment costauds pour vous permettre de prendre de beaux screenshots, bien cadrés =))

On retrouve donc la règle des tiers, la spirale du nombre d'or et les diagonales (non-visibles ici, la capture date pile d'avant que je rajoute ces overlays), ainsi qu'un offset de la caméra qui permet de modifier la position de Mevenn dans le cadre (voire ne pas la cadrer du tout pour juste capturer le décor). On a également un focus qu'on peut soit maintenir en auto (il fera alors systématiquement la mise au point sur Mevenn peu importe la distance), soit en free, pour faire de la macro par exemple(les textures s'y prêtent bien en général). Et enfin un changement du FOV, qui permet d'aplatir ou d'élargir la perspective et par la même occasion d'accentuer l'effet de profondeur de champ (ça n'accentue pas vraiment l'effet, mais on le ressent + si le FOV est bas=perspective aplatie, les éléments flous seront "plus proches" de ceux nets ;))

Bon, et le tout devrait être dispo very, very bientôt. Des Bisous, et que la Force soit avec vous ♥

Hello there ! (one day I should stop beginning with this ^^")

It's been many months since you heard about SWR. But as I said, I want to bring a more finished version of the demo =)
it will still be just a demo, any kind of real game isn't planned, and I'll be switching to another project once SWR demo will be done

So, what's up ?

A few levels, in terms of pure art. Just cause I wanted to bring on more levels now I've defined a solid way to produce them =) (And you probably don't know my penchant for making overkill details & stuff no one but me will notice x)) New levels added consists in :

Jedi Temple on Coruscant, showing magnificent blue holobooks, one of the high places of Order 66. I found cool to create this interior environment,it was like playing the sims except you can craft everything you want. I learnt a lot while making this, especially on the texturing process. Making env. Art is definitely a technical problem to solve first, making sure your shaders meets most requirements, having the good texture palette (that's how I see an atlas, just a painter's color palette. Offering enough texel density & surfaces when covering most of the room).I initiated this level last year for just a single shot of the trailer, keep in mind that I simply wanted to show like... a wall behind Mevenn, and perhaps a balcony and a sculpted bust. I ended up making the whole place. It's always like that, I plan a little thing, then I add a lot over the first idea. Pfew !

I started off with a simple shape to kinda mimic the good old battlefront 2 level from Pandemic, just to have a starting point for the servers blocs. Then I brought a box around them and started to build some things. I wanted to bring the player close to the server towers in confined clusters, that's why you see a 1st floor. And this was only a starting point made roughly at the end of the day. Next was about to be much more exciting and it brings the Archives level to another pleasing state of nostalgia exploration. Archives was already good as is and "Servers Room" was only meant to be a bonus, for when I will have time to build it... and I finally added this to the level in nearly a little week of work (put apart the Jedi Statue sculpts ^^)

Statues are completely using the Jedi characters assets I made before them, but they are static and uses only a single UVSet without mirroring/overlapps, since I wanted to control completely the surface and avoid unwanted "butterflies" patterns. There came a wonderful tool of 3DCoat : UVs. Cool point is they are synced with paint layers, so if you rearrange them, 3DCoat will automatically bake old texcoord to new one for each layer. It's awesome how it saves a lot of time ! This way I could simply repack my textures per statue, reduce drawcalls and improve the final look while keeping normalmap/AO baked data =) It's wonderful ! An important point to keep in mind when doing this is to avoid to rotate or flip UV islands, else you will break the bake of your normalmaps. And don't worry, you'll see jedis next in the post ;)

Just because "pourquoi pas ?" =D Simply the Roughness render pass. These clones look terrific !

Except here I wanted to refine a technique I used on Lumberia Assets : make use of a second UVmap to add dirt over the base surface. This greatly helps selling the asset as part of its world and not just a 3D asset with tiling stuff everywhere. Making big environments of course you will use tiles a lot, but it's better if you can hide them as much as possible. One solution would be to make everything by hand on a 8K map, pretty un-optimized and not the best time saver...another is to mix UVs to actually texture your asset, using fewer maps. Like really fewer. It's also way faster than painting 8K maps per asset of course ;) I keep this for really important props and characters, but tiles are textured the same way : by hand. Smartmaterials are a base, just a base. It's up to you to take your best brushes and give these automated texture a better & more personnal look ;) The diff with how I approached this technique on Lumberia is on details put into the dirtmap. Lumberia has a shy paint look, I wasn't completely sure of the direction I wanted to take, and I had only straight dirt gradients. A lot of variants, colors...etc, but here what really helped me is I decided to add circular and rectangular dirt shapes, and when you have domes, boxes and curved areas, this rapidly becomes helpful. Else it simply requires more vertices on the geometry, just to support a second UVmap...I don't like it, especially if I can avoid it.

Here's the comparison of with and without this "Dirt" effect :

Looks better, right ?

Now here's how it looks once polished :

Also new characters, such as these R2 Units, with cool animations to enjoy of course. Animation is a fun part of game art I learnt to enjoy thanks to Akeytsu. Anim - I think - is often misunderstood compared to modeling or texturing. Sadly, it's probably the most interesting part =P. That's where things get alive at their deepest level. Especially an important point to keep in mind if you're in 3D. I've been making tons of environments & characters, but being able to animate them gave a new dimension to my work. I can finally give life to them, it's a really special feeling ♥

You can view more R-Units here : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/G881qd

Second tips : use "global" retopo to ensure smooth connection between cloth parts/layers. Here I had to keep the cloth bands following the Pelvis/Stomach/Spine/Torso, so I used a global mesh underneath to copy/paste skinweights, then I removed influences from shoulders and gave them to extra cloth joints. Just so I can adjust these parts if needed and avoid them to always depends on arm-cloth. If the jedi is in a relaxed pose, then I need to keep the shoulder cloth up =)
Also, as I wanted to have modular possibilities on my character like changing the lenght of the sleeves, their meshes needed to be split out of the main body part. Thanks to the same global mesh I could transfer the connected area weights and avoid having ugly seam when deforming each sleeves =)
Finally,if you look closer you can see meshes only has one side. This simply helps keeping final mesh thickness cause I'll source a single vertex for two targets, so both will end up with the same weights and reduce drastically front/backfaces overlapp fights

Isn't she beautiful with these skinweights ? Fun fact : twilek version wasn't planned at all. It was... (guess what ?)

A bonus. Hohoho =) But a really good one, that's my favorite version of the female Jedi Knight ♥

Below are some old WIP shots of the male version, the outfit colors wasn't good yet and I didn't paint over the leather of the boots. It looks a bit better once finished ;)

I wanted to bring a more painterly look to the base color (I really loved what Fortiche Prod did with Arcane. Animation is awesome, but what bugged me even more was the painterly look they managed to put everywhere, it's extremely fine, precise, aaaaand wild/bold at the same time. I love it so much ♥ So as overwatch did back in 2016/2017, Arcane inspired me)

To finish, please keep in mind that this is still WIP and subject to change/evolve up to an unkown level, it actually depends on how much time I can pour into the project. I'm working hard on it (like never before) since early March of this year, and I wish things will be over as soon as possible. But I don't plan to release something i'm not proud of.

Cheers, et que la Force soit avec vous =)

des Bisous ♥