The following is our latest blog, originally posted on July 29th, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.

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The eagle-eyed among you may have already spotted it, but we’d like to introduce to you the Emblem Creator – a new section on the website. It’s a little tool we made so you can create nice logos for your Alliance (or your profile picture, if you aren’t in an Alliance, or if you just fancy doing that because you’re super-creative). Many players have already started making some amazing things (shown in this blog post). How does it work? Read on…



First of all – some instructions for you:

You can access this by clicking the ‘My Alliance’ tab at the top right of the website (when you’re logged in), or if you’re not in an Alliance, you’ll need to use THIS LINK for now.



All good? Here’s how it works…

– Select an object from the object panel on the left to add it to the editor as a layer. You can add up to 20 layers and there is a count at the top of the layers panel to the right.
– The layer can then be moved, resized and rotated in the editor using the mouse – You can also use the arrows on the keyboard to move the layer.
– Use the flip buttons at the top-right of the editor to flip the currently active layer (highlighted in the layers panel) on it’s X or Y axis.
– Click a colour in the colour palette to change the colour of the currently selected layer.
– The opacity slider can be used to alter the opacity of the currently selected layer.
– Click the ‘Delete All’ button at the top of the layers panel to delete all unlocked layers and start again with a blank canvas.
– Within a layer on the the right column, click on the move icon, preview image or name to select that layer and make it the current active layer.
– You can also drag the layers up and down to bring them forward or move them back on the editor.
– On the right of each layer are 3 buttons…

1 – Clone
2 – Delete
3 – Lock – This locks the layer, preventing any changes being made to it. Locked layers can still be reordered in the layers panel or cloned, however.

– Click ‘Save Emblem’ to open the save menu – you can save the emblem as your profile picture, to your personal gallery or submit it to be used as the emblem for your alliance.
– Click the ‘Undo Changes’ button to clear all changes and reload the current emblem.



How do you access your personal gallery? Head into the emblem creator and your personal gallery will be below the emblem you are currently working on.

Here are some more designs from our community. If you’d like to add your own to our forum thread, it’s here.







Have a great weekend, and if you have any questions about the Emblem Creator, make sure you ask us in the comments.

Cheers,

Poppy
PR, Community & Social Media Manager
@spankgrrrl

Hey there everyone.

As there wasn't a round-up last week, we'll show you a little bit of what's been happening during the past TWO weeks.

First up - what is that amazing GIF at the top? It's some guns that Iain has been working on. They're not finished, they're not final, but the GIF was cool, so we wanted to share it.

Next - the Emblem Creator launched on the Worlds Adrift website.

It’s a little tool we made so you can create nice logos for your Alliance. Instructions on how to use it are right here.

Here are a couple of emblems that our community has already made.





Luke's been thinking constantly about shipyards. Here's a ship he built using the new tool.He thinks it looks like a chubby whale. What do YOU think?



We also chatted to Tom, creator of the Island Creator tool, in the Worlds Adrift show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuOn_dKSDn0

More exciting stuff for you next week.

Love and kisses,

The Worlds Adrift Team

x o x o

Hey there everyone!

As you've probably heard, we've been running an art competition for the last month or so - the prize is for your art to be featured in our art book, plus a whole lot more.

Here are some of the entries we've received so far - there's still time to enter if you haven't already, as the contest closes on Sunday 31st July.









More details are HERE.

Artwork submitted by: Devilkate, Andrea Mahaffey, Zeckker, Daniel Frietas, Marcus Galic.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Cheers,

The Worlds Adrift Team

x o x o

The following is our latest blog, originally posted on July 22nd, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.

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In games, visual effects (also known as particle effects or simply VFX) are similar to music and sound effects in that they are essential to player experience, yet often forgotten about or left until late in development.

Particle effects are perhaps a little easier to iterate on than other parts of the game, which is a good thing since they’re reworked rather a lot throughout development as other visuals change. And sometimes, you can watch something happen in a game and have it just not feel quite right.

Here’s an example of how VFX can add life to an event:



This effect plays when a part is broken off a ship due to impacts or taking too much damage – this is just the smoke and sparks from the breakage, and doesn’t include dynamite or other explosions if they were the root cause of the damage.

When you start making particle systems in Unity (the game engine we use for Worlds Adrift) this is the first thing you’ll see:



Great, right? To start turning this into something other than miscellaneous white blobs, you need to head over to your Particle Editor which looks like this:



WHOOP! MORE FUN!

All of these dials and value fields definitely require experimentation if you want to create the right asset for a specific effect you have in mind. In addition, one of the best ways to get better is to look into how someone else did their effects. I first learned how to use this current implementation of the Particle Editor by buying one of the many Particle Effect packs from the Unity Asset Store, specifically the Cartoon FX pack.

When you find an effect you like, or is along the same lines as something you want, you can open it up and start playing with all of its stats to see how each one changes the outcome. Eventually you’ll get something that’s more like what you’re after. Here’s a look at the sparks and debris effect that is played in my example:



Here we have the debris, smoke, glow, and two separate spark effects. The separate spark effects are both the same in their look, but the second one has a slight delay and emits less than the first. This gives the sparks more of a “one two punch,” rather than just blowing all of the energy in one burst. You can also do this with just one spark effect, but it gets harder to manage the timing and scale of the particles, so keeping them separate is often easier to manage.

Anyway, GIFs are more fun than reading about particle systems so I’ll not go into too much more detail. There are lots of tutorials out there on particle effects but honestly I think just experimenting yourself is the best way to learn.







As well as the particles themselves, there are other effects that can enhance the VFX. In the first GIF above I included some camera shake and a flash of white over the screen. These are applied to the camera elsewhere in the development team, but also play a big big part.

I’ll leave you with two great videos about the impact of effects on game feels:

Juice it or lose it – a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho

https://youtu.be/Fy0aCDmgnxg

Secrets of Game Feel and Juice | Game Maker’s Toolkit

https://youtu.be/216_5nu4aVQ

Iain
Artist
@gillespionage

What’s been happening this week? We’re really glad you asked - we have lots to tell you! The first thing we need to tell you is that the animation above is BROKEN - it's not supposed to look like that (but you knew that already, right?).

The REALLY BIG THING that happened this week, the main event, was the update we released for the Island Creator.

If you haven’t already seen the update trailer, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mKAMEvle4

The list of updates is WAY too long to post right here on this page, but if you would really like to know every detail, we’ve created a forum post that details them all for you, right HERE.

Here are some screenshots that will show you a little bit of what was updated...







We've also had quite a few entries to our art competition- here is a little selection of what we've received so far...



By Noah Barrett




By Daniel Freitas

The deadline has been extended until 31st July, so you still have plenty of time to create something amazing, and send it to us.

We were over at Abbey Road Studios today (the really famous ones that The Beatles recorded in), doing some filming for something amazing we're going to be showing you later, but if you'd like a little peek now, it's all on our Snapchat story (but be quick, that will all disappear within 24 hours!).



Have a great weekend, and don't forget to ask us any questions in the comments.

Cheers,

The Worlds Adrift Team

The following is our latest blog, originally posted on July 12th, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.

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Hello, aspiring world builders! Tom here. For the past eight months, the Island Creator tool has taken up the majority of my time. It started life as a modest development only tool made purely to work on our procedural generation. As the tool matured, I began making it user-friendly enough for our artists to use at Bossa so that they could create target islands. That was all well and good, but after a complete UI and UX redesign, I was convinced it had the makings of a consumer grade product, and it should be a much bigger part of our game. It was always going to be a tough sell to get approved as my time was 100% taken up by gameplay programming and procedural generation code (Not to mention it is a hundred times more challenging to make a tool that is consumer ready as opposed to something only for use internally).

Somehow, It got approved, and it was full steam ahead to get the tool out there and into the hands of the players.
We had no idea what would happen (if anything), but the idea was to put it out, with no restrictions on who can use it, and just ‘See What Happens’™. At best, we’d get some feedback and potential indicators in how players would like the world to look. Worst case, we had a useful tool we could see being used internally at Bossa in some form or another for many level design tasks.

A relatively short 12 weeks ago, we released, and within days, all expectations were exceeded. Peoples creations were so far beyond our comprehension, pushing the tool to its absolute limits so quickly.

Within a month we had 1200 unique user created islands. An incredibly high standard of quality, and it seemed, people were taking their creations really seriously. The Worlds Adrift lore is indeed very rich, but you would only know the extent of it if you’re following the development. Many people were playing with the tool without having heard of Worlds Adrift. Even so, the works that players came up with were fantastic, profound, and deep in environmental storytelling. A testament to our art team and their incredible assets that inspired many people to use them in creative ways.

As of right now, the latest update is live on Steam, and I’d like to showcase some of the great new features that make creating islands orders of magnitude easier and more fun than ever. This also serves as a testament to the perseverance of the following authors, as their achievements without the added ‘quality of life’ features we’ve developed since, is outstanding.

“The Makers Sundial” by rykaan.



The placement of all these assets on the top of the sundial building is a work of art in itself. Each one would have been hand placed then numerically positioned based on some formula the creator derived.

Now with the duplicate function and multiple selections, this is as easy as pressing Ctrl+D a few dozen times.



“The great cathedral” by JetSet.



The work of a great architect. The surprising thing is, all the pieces used here, were never designed to go together. We have designed purpose built ‘ruin-kits’ with base pieces to allow you to let your creativity run wild. The latest release includes the first batch of Saborian pieces.

Here’s a quick fly over our artist Jack’s latest island showing how easy it is to create structural features that seamlessly blend with the island terrain.



“Arid Island” by SuspiciouslyAwesome.



A perfect example of making a few textures go a long way. We only supported four surface layers in the previous version, but this island makes that look like more than enough. However, you were crying out for more so we somehow managed to squeeze in an extra four.



“Mountain Ruins” by Daft Vader.



This is an incredible display of sculpting prowess. The mountains are so well defined and this was before the sculpt tools overhaul. In the latest version, we have a rotatable flatten plane, carving and adding mass are now extra smooth, keyboard shortcuts to change brush size mid-sculpt (Square Brackets [ and ] ), and as an added bonus, we also added pressure sensitivity support for graphics tablet devices.

There are too many changes in the new Island Creator to go through them all in this post but click here to check out a full list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mKAMEvle4

So what’s next?
Firstly, the Island Creator is an on-going effort, parallel to the main title. It will continue life through many major updates, adding features, creating more assets, player control and camera updates in line with the game, and optimisations as we get closer to a release for Worlds Adrift.

After the game is playable, the Island Creator is still entirely relevant. The game will have a good amount of procedurally generated islands alongside the community and our artist’s creations on the first release. But what I would LOVE to see in the distant future, is every single island in our world… completely bespoke and handmade. Imagine that, 10,000 islands all lovingly crafted, each one unique and ripe for exploration. That is a huge drive for me, and I believe it would be the first persistent shared world to attempt something on that scale.

As for the distant future, we already have plans for systems to ‘refresh’ the existing islands in the world, by making them sink into the void beneath the extreme pressure of the ‘death clouds’ and new islands rising to take their place. Ultimately this allows us to replace islands without taking the server down. So even if the world were to reach a theoretical ‘full’, there would always be a place for community created content many years after release, making the skies of Worlds Adrift an ever evolving, ever moving and compelling place to be. I cannot wait to see you all out there .

Tom
@quickfingerz
Coder

Hey there everyone!

We were browsing the forums today, and we came across this thread which highlighted a few discussions about the game feature set and polish, namely that some of you were suggesting we should put as much time as we needed to get the game right, to not rush it out before it was ready. Quite a refreshing take, this is something you don’t often hear in game development.

It has been a while since we had an alpha for Worlds Adrift, or gave you a clear update on how development is progressing, so we thought you would like to hear what our Gamer-in-Chief had to say on the matter in response to the original post. Over to you Henrique:



It’s a very humbling exercise to read a post where you ask us to consider delaying the game in order to get it right. You know it, as well as we do, that it’s not often a development team gets to experience something like this. This is pretty awesome, really.

tl;dr: You’re right.

The long answer is that pretty much everything [we have previously said will be in the game] is already in the works at some stage or another. I’ll actually update the state of these items at the bottom of this reply to give you a better update on them.

The main issue we face [in developing Worlds Adrift] is that we’re not dealing with just features, but a new way of engineering a massive multiplayer game whose core tech affects each one of the features all the time, generating a huge amount of rework and debugging. Since Alpha3.5 we’ve been delayed by roughly 10 weeks as most of the team had to focus on the network code, with features’ development slowed down. Only in the past week have we picked up the pace again.

We’ll not launch a game that’s not ready, that is a commitment myself and the team have made to ourselves early on. While we’re still optimistic we can get the features in and properly polished before the end of the year, we will not hesitate in pushing the launch date if we find ourselves unable to deliver on our dev plan.

The upcoming Alpha4 will hopefully see a lot of stability built into the game, plus a few new features and tweaks. The bulk of the new features are scheduled for Alpha5 soon afterwards, and from there onwards is mostly polishing of what we’ve got, with a few new features making into the game if we all (dev team and community) deem them necessary to make up the first version of the game.

Onto the list, then!

– Custom ship hulls > In the works, advanced stage

– Melee combat > Design complete, dev yet to start

– Ranged combat > In the works, mid stage

– Some guns and melee weapons that suit all major play styles > In the works, mid stage

– Armour (could live without at launch but high enough on my list to mention it) > Not before launch

– A few more creatures > Design complete, dev yet to start

– A working game world (islands populated with creatures, stuff to do) > In the works, mid stage

– A progressive path that leads towards higher gear/areas/creatures > In the works, mid to advanced stage

*Advanced stage = currently in-game and working (internal build).

*Mid stage = being coded, about to go into the game (internal build) including rework (in the case of Ranged combat, for instance); or in-game already but requiring more work.

Henrique Olifiers, Gamer-in-Chief

Hopefully that has helped give you a clearer picture of what stage the development of the game is at. If you have any questions, just add them in the comments or hop into the forum.

Right, back to what’s been happening in the team during the week!

You may have missed our latest livestream on Twitch this week - it was a pretty spectacular one! We showed off some new and unseen gameplay from our latest in-house playtest, presented by the charming Colm and charismatic Malford. Luckily, it’s all saved here for you, so grab a cup of tea and some snacks, sit down comfortably, and enjoy an hour of beautiful new things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og5yzzWV_es

Finished? Didn’t that hour go quickly? Lastly, we wanted to present a little sneak peek of the Island Creator update that’s coming next week. Here is a screenshot, showing the new environment tab, to whet your appetite. There will be a lot more besides that in the update! 



If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments or in the official forums. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. Oh, and add us on Snapchat too - we’re showing off lots of behind-the-scenes stuff there that you won’t see anywhere else.



Take care, and have a great (AND SUNNY) weekend.

The Worlds Adrift Team

x o x o

Hey there everyone!

It's Friday, so let's start with some moving and shaking, otherwise known as 'OH NO, THAT ISN'T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT'. But it looks cool, so we thought we'd show you anyway.

Here's another. Boats can dance. Who knew?



Have you ever checked out our Twitch livestreams? This week, we showed off some new and unseen gameplay from our latest in-house playtest, presented by the charming Colm and charismatic Malford. Luckily, it’s all saved here for you, so grab a cup of tea and some snacks, sit down comfortably, and enjoy an hour of beautiful new things.

Finally, after all that video and flashy lights, here are some screenshots from some new islands that Jack has been making.





That's all for this week. Have a great weekend, and make sure you follow us on Snapchat!



Love and kisses,

The Worlds Adrift Team

x o x o

Hey all!

Just above - a little bug Andy found while testing some animations. How we laughed!

Hope you've all had an amazing week. We just wanted to share a couple of things that we've been doing this week.

Firstly, a new episode of the Worlds Adrift show, where we speak to the game's writer - Matt Cook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYiaOME7Xa8



This is some stress testing of visual effects. The gif looks a bit rough, we know, but it's because THE REAL VIDEO IS AMAZING. Where can you see it?

Here.

We've started to show a lot of behind-the-scenes snippets on our Snapchat. Want to check it out? Here you go:



That's all from us this week, and because we love to make you smile, here's another little thing that we had to fix (although some of us wanted to keep it as a feature!).



Love and kisses,

The Worlds Adrift Team

x o x o

The following is our latest blog, originally posted on June 24th, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.

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In this week’s blog our writer, Matt, gives you a sneak peak at the backgrounds of some of the many cultures that once populated Foundation . . .

Sabor (Saborians) – Self-Proclaimed Gods

The Saborians grew up alongside the Redusa river delta on the continent of Amum, a land that while hot, was as rich and fertile as any. Four once-disparate city-states unified there under the shared tenets of freedom and equality. They believed in creating a utopia, self-sufficient and untainted by the rest of Foundation – an inclusive society, without crime or poverty. They dreamed of an afterlife known as Aetherium in which they would one day take their place as gods. Saborians spent most of their lives at a bathhouse called the cloistrum, where they exercised and socialised.



Bandinia (Bandini or Bandinians) – Lost in the Shadow of Sabor

A barren and desolate desert, the Kingdom of Bandinia was Sabor’s poor neighbour on the continent of Amum. The cities of Darat and Drissa were an assault on the senses. Their ancient labyrinthine alleys arriving at quaint markets to which tourists used to flock during the Golden Age. The King of Bandinia had a magnificent palace in the centre, incongruous amid the squalor. The Bandinians were the creators of Foundation’s most popular sport, Lallara.



Ishgiru, Karem, Pin (The Kioki Unity) – Under the Gilded Parasol

The nations of Ishgiru, Karem and Pin unified to become the “Kioki Unity”. Ishgiru was southernmost of the three, a prosperous and enterprising people, subjects of a line of Empresses who had ruled the vast city of Ten-Rui for millennia. North was Karem, its leafy foothills under the command of the Warlocks, an enigmatic band of spiritualists. For a long time Karem fought with the Pin to the north, until Ishgiru stepped in to unite them. The Pin lived in the Pintins, the steepest mountain range in Foundation. They led rustic lives, preferring festival and colour to politics.



Melliflua & Chabuti – Fraternal Twins

The Mellifluans and the Chabuti lived on the temperate continent of Shabo, with the Korchis mountains forming a natural border between them. While the Mellifluans blossomed into a radical and creative society, the Chabuti by contrast were a stubborn and traditional people. In spite of this, the Mellifluans and Chabuti remained courteous to one another, and seldom had cause for disagreement. Many of Foundation’s best-known artists lived in Melliflua, and many of its best-known layabouts lived in Chabuti.

Gall – The Ebony Tower

The black rock of Gall, an island in the warm sea, was home to the Gallish people. The unparalleled University of Panyana was the cornerstone of their system, which put science and discovery ahead of all else. The Gallish traded their ideas to all comers, using the proceeds for new research. Their society was matriarchal, with men rarely holding important positions, and unable to attend the University as students. Gall’s population may have been small, but their influence was great.

Verduba – Frozen Out

Verduba was to the far north of Foundation, its icy waters eased only by the Verduban love of hot springs and saunas. Obsessed with the human body, the Verdubans began as hundreds of small cantons or “Houses”, with each House most often represented by a body part. However, it was House of Ice that became sovereign when Verdubans began to revere and worship the Ice god. The Verdubans were an open-minded peoples, much like the Mellifluans, though their frequent interference wherever they saw injustice made them unpopular.

Great Marsha – Stewards of the Estuaries

The Great Marshan homeland was a tangle of swamps, black alder and bayou. Broadly-speaking there were two types of Great Marsha; the ordinary folk, who lived in the settlement of Darnik, and the Deep Marsha who lived in the hollows. It is said the Deep Marsha were very small and possessed of a translucent greenish skin. Great Marsha was largely ignored by the rest of Foundation, as it was not properly understood. Marshan estuaries often saw the birth of baby Kraken in spring.

These are a few of the people that once inhabited Foundation, though you may find evidence of many more. Tall stories abound of the untame and bizarre, those that thrived in the hottest deserts, the dankest most perilous jungles, and the deepest oceans of the old world.

Make sure you check out the next episode of the Worlds Adrift Show next week as Matt answers your questions about creating the lore for Worlds Adrift!