We’re trying this “Below Decks” series as a way to share more moments from the studio, and give a look into what’s under development. In the future, you can expect some bigger stuff and proper sneak peeks, but we’ll start with something light for this one. Hope you like it. :)
-GSG_Aaron (new content writer)
The rogue wiggler
It’s a Tuesday afternoon in August, and Harpa’s focus for the day is troubleshooting the upcoming sausage hat. The sausages are simply too wiggly.
Harpa Ellertsdóttir, 3D Artist at Ghost Ship Games, is making a new hat for the dwarves. You might not call it a hat by any conventional definition, but the dwarves will be using it as such. It’s a metal bucket with a leather chinstrap, and a big bouquet of sausages flopping out the top.
But making the perfect wiggly sausage hat is easier said than done.
“Right now the sausages are very stiff. They used to be a lot more floppy,” she explains. She’s fine-tuning the hat’s physics setup using Unreal Engine. She punches in some numbers in the model’s properties, and the sausage links go limp, drooping down over the rim of the bucket. She resets the physics, then tests the individual sausages to see how they behave. Each one jumps when she clicks it, responding with a playful little bounce. But one sausage starts misbehaving.
“These ones are wiggling fine, but this one’s wiggling all on its own. It was wiggling normally before, which is concerning,” she says.
Christian Øelund, Senior Technical Artist, rolls his chair over to her desk to help troubleshoot the rogue wiggler. In Maya, they adjust the sausages’ properties for Dampening and Stiffness. But this only makes the rebellious sausage even more wiggly.
“I’m getting hungry looking at this,” Christian says.
“I’m not, I hate sausages,” Harpa says. She used to work at a gas station back in Iceland. “I had to do 12-hour shifts there, and every day I would come home smelling like hot dogs. It’s like my past is haunting me through this hat.”
The 'Sausagebucket' hat as shown its final form, with its bones showing, and with physics colliders visible.
Coding the right amount of wiggle
Everybody knows you don't want your wiggly sausage hat to be too wiggly. But where’s the sweet spot?
When it comes to silly hats, Harpa’s approach is to make things as jiggly as possible, without causing problems. Wiggly elements shouldn’t clip through the dwarves’ beards and armor, nor should they completely freak out and defy physics in certain situations.
To ensure that Deep Rock Galactic’s wiggly hats behave “normally”, each hat goes through a rigorous testing regime.
On her second monitor, Harpa runs the prototype sausage hat through these trials, testing every situation it’ll meet once it’s in the dwarves’ hands. She cycles through all the armor models, to make sure there aren’t any stray sausages causing clipping issues. Then she cycles the test dwarf through different animations: dancing, getting downed, reviving, pressing a button, shouting “Rock and Stone” – and notes how the sausages respond. Somehow, the rogue sausage from earlier has fallen back in line.
Structurally speaking, this isn’t a very complex hat, but the wiggly sausages make it a bit of a rascal. ”Programming the physics makes this hat a little finicky. Not all hats are like this,” Harpa says.
Each new hat crosses at least five different desks at Ghost Ship Games, ping-ponging around between artists, art directors, QA testers, and the Founders. All told, Harpa estimates this sausage hat represents about 12 to 15 hours of work.
LEFT: Our muse. RIGHT: Two slappable, wiggly palm trees from the Space Beach Party.
What’s so funny about a jiggly sausage?
Deep Rock Galactic certainly isn’t the first game with wiggly hats, but we do our best to contribute to this proud tradition.
As Harpa sees it, these jiggly elements are fun because they look a bit broken, but in a purposeful way. It’s hard to be serious when you’re wearing a floppy hat. She pulls up an image of a wacky waving arm inflatable tube guy, the type known to flap around in front of auto dealerships. “This is like, the funniest thing ever. It’s peak comedy,” she says.
Generally speaking, Deep Rock Galactic is at its wiggliest during seasonal in-game events, when the Space Rig gets special decorations and the dwarves get new hats. Among all the wiggly items in DRG, Harpa gives special historical importance to the inflatable palm tree, introduced to the Space Rig during the summer 2022 Space Beach Party.
When designing that tree, she recalls a “eureka moment” in a conversation with Lead Artist Jacek Oczki that has since inspired the crew’s approach to wiggly bits.
“He saw the model for the palm tree, and was like, ‘Cool, but can you slap it?’ After that, everything’s been a lot more jiggly and slappable.”
The jiggly 'Sausagebucket' hat will be available during this year’s Oktoberfest 2023 celebrations aboard the Space Rig. The party kicks off this Thursday, September 14th, at 13:00 CET.
Sorry for the bumpy start with this patch everyone.
For anyone that opened the game during the few minutes the bad patch was up, this next patch will fix your save files from not showing and unlock them.
Unfortunately (or fortunately for some) if you opened the game during the 0.6.02 patch, your skill-tree will be reset when you log back in. All of your skill points will be refunded and you can spec the skill tree back up with the same skills you had. It just might have moved some of the weapons around on your hotbar, which you can access from your storage as per usual.
We have been working pretty tirelessly to patch the game and sift through feedback to make everything runs super smooth. Throughout that process a bug slipped through our fingers that caused this issue. So the next patch will likely be a few days out, once we have got some proper rest and have the time test the heck out of our fixes to make sure nothing gets through again. We are just a small handful of developers making a very big and complex game, so it can be a little tough to keep up at times like this. Thank you all for your patience and kind feedback though, we really appreciate it!
We also added some new backpack retrieval options! We heard some feedback from players feeling the difficultly of the dungeons a little too harshly. So we've now given Alex (at the 1st town) the Druid (at the 2nd town) and the Sorcerer (at the 3rd town) the ability to go collect your backpack for you, for a small fee. This can help if you're struggling during a section of the game and would rather just pay a little gold, mushrooms, or dark essence to get your backpack back.
+ New additions and changes this patch:
Added new backpack retrieval services to Alex and the Druid. They collect a dropped backpack in the world for a small fee.
Added 3 new custom map icons for mining locations.
Added Lightstone dust and stone drops to lightning projectile tower.
Made the shipwreck armor locations a little more noticeable.
Increased healing from mushroom stew and lowered its crafting cost.
Lowered falling tree damage to player.
! Bugs and issues resolved in this patch:
Fixed bed respawning in the caves not working and causing player to sometimes fall thru map (sorry for anyone that experienced this).
Fixed player being able to die during level changing.
Fixed visual glitches from egg sacks and other prefabs using particles that make crazy colors fill the screen.
Fixed one of the hunger skills not saving.
Fixed music not fading when changing levels.
Fixed save file duplication issue.
Fixed the backpack spawning in the air on death.
Fixed issues causing the Void Troll to not respawn.
Fixed clay vendor from 2nd town not working.
Added missing steak pie recipe to the pantry and other storage containers.
Fixed repairable bridges not properly loading after being rebuilt.
Fixed enemies not moving in the tomb entrance level.
Fixed various spelling and grammar mistakes across item names and NPC dialogues.
Fixed constantly respawning machine parts crate on desert island.
Fixed issues with cursing the tomb levels and them not resetting properly afterward.
Fixed blueprints not disappearing from purchased decoration items.
Fixed Titanium ore showing x/7 instead of x/8
Stopped coal form showing x/10 in storage
Fixed some dungeon warp alters not being enabled by their chest unlock.
Please keep the bug reports coming if you find any issues!
Upgrade to Unity 2022.3.7f1 Finally, after 2 years of struggling with an old version of Unity, I've been able to update to the latest 2023.3.x release, which will allow me to truly start finishing the game and get everything ready for early-access release!
Refactor Menu system to use UITK and GameFrame This one is a major step forward in terms of the User Interface available in the game. This was also a major limiting factor, where now UI components can be added and optimized quickly.
Beta Performances Content This has been a major step forward - not a very technical one, and also not very applicable to the playtest version of the game, but additional music has been licensed and will be included with the public demo and early access releases.
Other Updates
Update ProTips
Update vendor intent position rotations, update placement to set rotation properly
Release notes: - More Tutorial Hands on UI in tough moments ( Equip Dagger ) - Quicker loading of the popups - Popups are able to be updated without a build - Guild emblems were crashing the game. - Silo goblin wasn't able to be finished - Gatcha chest animations - Early funnel changes. - Automatic collecting instead of going into and collect ( income objects ) - New Quests Look (Divided into Main and Side Quests) - Navi look fix. - New market look. - New trainer house look. - [fix] Quest Video Button was blue - [fix] Gear tabs not appearing. - [fix] layout issue when posting gear on iPad - [fix] x5 passive income for free - [fix] Unequipping gear items after the battle - [fix] Fighting without a tool - [fix] Airport layout was broken on landscape
STEAM: - Fish url's not opening in the fish area - Auto collecting when not clicked - The center point was off the character when chat was opened. - Character was running when clicking on the chat. - Pet boost value unequal comparing to mobile video ( fair play change )
Today is the grand opening of The Isle Tide Hotel! Expect a live-action, interactive mystery movie about an absent father who must rescue his teenage daughter from an eclectic cult before their final night at the Isle Tide Hotel.
Think a British Twin Peaks with a Wes Anderson aesthetic! Or, if that doesn't convince you, how about a grittier Knives Out? There's so much to explore and discover about The Isle Tide Hotel that one playthrough won't get close to telling the whole story.
Why is your daughter estranged in the first place? Will you join the cult to save her? How will you interact with the bizarre people you meet? Each playthrough of The Isle Tide Hotel's branching narrative will be completely different, with seven main endings in your mission to rescue the daughter you've never met. Just remember… don't break the Etiquettes.
Created by brother-sister director-producer combo Harry and Grace Chadwick of Interflix Media, the themes of The Isle Tide Hotel draw on the transformational journey of parenthood and the unique paths that can be taken when dealing with family dynamics.
You don't want to miss our biggest production yet, with a cast including UK icons from shows including Game of Thrones, Call the Midwife and Happy Valley.
It's our biggest project yet. Every decision affects the story and you'll have to keep an eye out for clues - it's on you if you miss something important.
The Isle Tide Hotel is OUT NOW on PC, Epic, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android
Today is the grand opening of The Isle Tide Hotel! Expect a live-action, interactive mystery movie about an absent father who must rescue his teenage daughter from an eclectic cult before their final night at the Isle Tide Hotel.
Think a British Twin Peaks with a Wes Anderson aesthetic! Or, if that doesn't convince you, how about a grittier Knives Out? There's so much to explore and discover about The Isle Tide Hotel that one playthrough won't get close to telling the whole story.
Why is your daughter estranged in the first place? Will you join the cult to save her? How will you interact with the bizarre people you meet? Each playthrough of The Isle Tide Hotel's branching narrative will be completely different, with seven main endings in your mission to rescue the daughter you've never met. Just remember… don't break the Etiquettes.
Created by brother-sister director-producer combo Harry and Grace Chadwick of Interflix Media, the themes of The Isle Tide Hotel draw on the transformational journey of parenthood and the unique paths that can be taken when dealing with family dynamics.
You don't want to miss our biggest production yet, with a cast including UK icons from shows including Game of Thrones, Call the Midwife and Happy Valley.
It's our biggest project yet. Every decision affects the story and you'll have to keep an eye out for clues - it's on you if you miss something important.
The Isle Tide Hotel is OUT NOW on PC, Epic, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android
Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? - Wales Interactive CM
Today is the grand opening of The Isle Tide Hotel! Expect a live-action, interactive mystery movie about an absent father who must rescue his teenage daughter from an eclectic cult before their final night at the Isle Tide Hotel.
Think a British Twin Peaks with a Wes Anderson aesthetic! Or, if that doesn't convince you, how about a grittier Knives Out? There's so much to explore and discover about The Isle Tide Hotel that one playthrough won't get close to telling the whole story.
Why is your daughter estranged in the first place? Will you join the cult to save her? How will you interact with the bizarre people you meet? Each playthrough of The Isle Tide Hotel's branching narrative will be completely different, with seven main endings in your mission to rescue the daughter you've never met. Just remember… don't break the Etiquettes.
Created by brother-sister director-producer combo Harry and Grace Chadwick of Interflix Media, the themes of The Isle Tide Hotel draw on the transformational journey of parenthood and the unique paths that can be taken when dealing with family dynamics.
You don't want to miss our biggest production yet, with a cast including UK icons from shows including Game of Thrones, Call the Midwife and Happy Valley.
It's our biggest project yet. Every decision affects the story and you'll have to keep an eye out for clues - it's on you if you miss something important.
The Isle Tide Hotel is OUT NOW on PC, Epic, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android
