Hi, it’s been a while since we’ve given some progress update here, so today, I will showcase our event editor for Thea 2.
Those of you who tried the one from Thea: The Awakening may find some familiar features, but the tool has been done again from scratch and has some amazing potential, especially for those willing to do some scripting too.
Please keep in mind that this is still very much WIP this is certainly subject to change.
It’s been a long road and not always smooth, but finally, our game is ready to launch on both XBox One and PS4 at the end of this month!
A full version of the single-player game will be out in time to be enjoyed during the long summer holidays.
Hi everyone, it’s time for an update!
We don’t have much to show you today, but we wanted to present a couple sound tracks from Thea 2. On launch, Thea 2 will feature 33 tracks that fall into 3 categories – battle themes, settlement themes and map themes. And there’s of course one menu theme.
We’ve hired the same guys that did the music for Thea: The Awakening – murmur sound workshop! Nik & Victor did a great job last time, so the decision to ask them to write music for the sequel was obvious.
Continuing last month’s expose on the many good and bad monstrosities in the eastern lands of Thea, we’ll talk about some more demons and the scourge of the unliving.
The un-living are those poor wretched beings who’s soul was destroyed/torn out or taken, yet the bodies remain animated by dark, gruesome magics. Unlike demons, who can also be born out of death, the unliving were made by necromancers, twisted warlocks or wicked witches. Such magic is deadly, dangerous and forbidden by the gods, yet its scourge remains a constant threat in Thea. While last month we gave an account of varied creatures who may or may not wish you harm, today’s selection is rather more keen on human demise.
During the long century of darkness, it has been recorded that the unliving gained strength and numbers and while the sun has awakened more than two centuries ago now, the shattering has once again de-balanced our world and brought out yet another wave of the unliving plague.
A sample of monsters, both natural and unnatural – although the distinction is often foggy at best.
Skeletons and unliving corpses – the two main types of the unliving are skeletons and corpses. Scholars argue to whether the two forms are separate in type: do they require different rituals to raise? Are they different in nature? Some insist that the two are simply raised at different stages of the body’s decomposition cycle, thus some will be mere skeletons and others will still carry flesh. But some experts suggest that unliving corpses have been known to bite and even devour the flesh of the living, while skeletons seem to work more as bodyguards or fighters, and seem rather uninterested in any form of sustenance. There are few written accounts to draw a single conclusion, but the latter carries more weight.
Today I wanted to share one bit I’ve been working on recently – day/night cycles.
Those of you who have played Thea: The Awakening surely remember that one of the game’s features was a day/night cycle that affected visibility and difficulty. We’ve decided to keep this element in Thea 2: The Shattering as well. An opportunity to work on this bit appeared after Khash has added handling of specular maps into his terrain and water shaders this week. So to test how things work, I played a while with different light setups and thought it would be cool to put together a switchable animation with a set of lights that would show the day/night cycle. After two days of trying to get the light and shadows right (being fairly new to different lighting settings), here’s a short video showing the progress:
Other terrain elements also got an upgrade – water got an improved normal map, can now bounce off light and also blends with the shore much better. Also terrains can now use emissive maps, so I can add a nice glow to lava tiles on the volcanic island (yet to be done). And KIhash is improving terrain blending as I type this post. Of course there’s still much work needed – rivers are a bit buggy, fog of war is missing, etc. – but I do hope we’re going in the right direction.
Below are a three more screens from different biomes.
Thea is a vast land split into many continents and cultures, and now, after the shattering, it is even more fractured and diverse. Slavya was once a continent where the Cosmic Tree grew and the battle with the Darkness took place. Despite the earth being torn to pieces, the floating islands remain steeped in Slavyan folklore and infested by the so called demons.
In a world filled with ghosts, risen dead, magic and unhumans, it is often unclear how the Slavyans distinguish one to be a demon, but the general definition stands as follows:
Since a number of people asked, we’ve set up a Newsletter!
You all know what is it for, so just go and sign up if you want the news delivered to your e-mail.
On the development front – works are progressing and Khash has begun coding a first pass of the card minigame (and things related to it, such as networking). Having it in playable state will be a great help for event writers. We have no new screens to show just yet but when we do, we’ll definitely share them with you.
It’s no secret that Thea: The Awakening turned out quite well for us. But it’s been a while since our last news entry (and I have to admit I neglected our website a bit…) so people were wondering what exactly are we doing at the moment. We kept our head down for a while and since autumn promised to announce our next title “soon”, but the time has finally come!
