For some bizarre reason, we managed to remove the beards in the previous release. It's hard to think of a worse fate for a dwarf! Beards should be central to this game., so we are talking about adding features, where players can customize their beards. Heck, maybe we'll even do procedurally generated beards some day!

Apart from getting the beards back, there are also many other improvements and fixes. You can see the list here:

• Probably our most requested feature, BEARDS are in!
  
• Dwarf outfits tweaked to match key art
  
• Updated icons for dwarves and gear
  
• New Status Effect and Affliction systems means we can make stuff like web slowing and fire burning effects more easily.
  
• The shooting spider now shoots a web that slows and impairs the vision of the player.
  
• Flamethrower can now light enemies and the environment on fire. (not to mention other dwarves)
  
• Improved enemy spawn systems means more dynamic enemy encounter and waves.
  
• Improved many particle effects across the game
  
• Added third person animations for heavy weapons and pistols.
  
• Several weapons have had their models and skins improved.
  
• Added angle indicator to tools that have angle restrictions.
  
• Improved map generation speed.
  
• A first, rough pass on the new Biome system is in. Each location will feel more unique already, though we are still only at an early stage of implementation.
  
• Grappling hook now has a cooldown between each use and a softer landing ...
  
• Improved zipline grabbing, holding E while falling will ensure you grab any zipline that comes close to you.
  
• New Flare system: you now hold up to 4 flares in your inventory, slowly regenerating over time as you use them.
  
• Improved Enemy Pathfinder. They can now properly avoid and walk on Non-Terrain entities.
  
• Cam shake and sound levels on drop sequence have been tweaked.
  
• Attenuations on sounds have been tweaked, making the game less loud.
  
• Lots of bug fixes and smaller tweaks
  
• Added Invert Mouse Wheel and ShowHelpButtons options. Invert mouse is also saved correctly.
  
• Fixed some weapons can shoot extra fast just after switching weapons
  
• First pass on controller support (only tested with Xbox 360 wired):
  There is currently no aim assist and no acceleration on turning or other fancy features.
  NOTICE! Only gameplay is supported at present! Menus cannot yet be navigated with a controller.

For some bizarre reason, we managed to remove the beards in the previous release. It's hard to think of a worse fate for a dwarf! Beards should be central to this game., so we are talking about adding features, where players can customize their beards. Heck, maybe we'll even do procedurally generated beards some day!

Apart from getting the beards back, there are also many other improvements and fixes. You can see the list here:

• Probably our most requested feature, BEARDS are in!
  
• Dwarf outfits tweaked to match key art
  
• Updated icons for dwarves and gear
  
• New Status Effect and Affliction systems means we can make stuff like web slowing and fire burning effects more easily.
  
• The shooting spider now shoots a web that slows and impairs the vision of the player.
  
• Flamethrower can now light enemies and the environment on fire. (not to mention other dwarves)
  
• Improved enemy spawn systems means more dynamic enemy encounter and waves.
  
• Improved many particle effects across the game
  
• Added third person animations for heavy weapons and pistols.
  
• Several weapons have had their models and skins improved.
  
• Added angle indicator to tools that have angle restrictions.
  
• Improved map generation speed.
  
• A first, rough pass on the new Biome system is in. Each location will feel more unique already, though we are still only at an early stage of implementation.
  
• Grappling hook now has a cooldown between each use and a softer landing ...
  
• Improved zipline grabbing, holding E while falling will ensure you grab any zipline that comes close to you.
  
• New Flare system: you now hold up to 4 flares in your inventory, slowly regenerating over time as you use them.
  
• Improved Enemy Pathfinder. They can now properly avoid and walk on Non-Terrain entities.
  
• Cam shake and sound levels on drop sequence have been tweaked.
  
• Attenuations on sounds have been tweaked, making the game less loud.
  
• Lots of bug fixes and smaller tweaks
  
• Added Invert Mouse Wheel and ShowHelpButtons options. Invert mouse is also saved correctly.
  
• Fixed some weapons can shoot extra fast just after switching weapons
  
• First pass on controller support (only tested with Xbox 360 wired):
  There is currently no aim assist and no acceleration on turning or other fancy features.
  NOTICE! Only gameplay is supported at present! Menus cannot yet be navigated with a controller.

It is time for a trip down memory lane and to take a look at the trailer for Deep Rock Galactic. (I know! ...memory lane is only 10 month long, but so much has happened that it feels much further away!).

Today I'm gonna show you a comparison between the first version of our trailer and the updated version of it. And why is this interesting, you may ask? Well first of all it shows how crazy fast this project has developed. Secondly it shows the game before and after we nailed - or I should maybe say, sort of haphazardly discovered - the high level art direction of the game. And last but not least, I’m doing this because I simply wanted to see the trailers running side by side :-) …. But first I will give you a little background about why we made the trailers.

The first trailer was created around one month after we got together and founded Ghost Ship Games. From the start we knew that we needed to get some funding in place, so we were heavily focusing on making a playable prototype and at the same time preparing a lot of material for the fundraising. The gameplay trailer was the single most important piece of promotional asset we could make. The purpose of it was to give potential investors confidence that we had a strong game concept and that we had the skills and experience to go through with the production of the game.

Our first prototype of the game used a fairly simple voxel based system to generate the caves - it looked a bit like Minecraft. We didn’t like it and we knew we wanted to get away from this look and create an artstyle that was stylish and unique without being too simplistic. Henrik, CTO at Ghost Ship, further developed the terrain tech and made it look more smooth. This system (or the 1st iteration of it) is what you see in the old trailer in the video.



The gameplay trailer worked and we secured funding from Capnova and received a government grant from DFI. We were happy and in business :-)

The updated trailer was made when we started attending our first couple of game conferences. The first conference was Steam Dev Days 2016 in Seattle. Here, we were attending to connect with Valve, so we could get our store page live on Steam and start the closed alpha. The second conference was Games Connection in Paris a couple of weeks later, where we went to meet with potential business partners.

Before these events, we had had an amazing breakthrough in the art direction. Henrik had made a system, that enabled us to generate debris and smaller objects like stalactites and crystals and turn them into a diggable and destructible material. When it got in the hands of Robert (our art director) magic happened and he created some amazing looking caves. Now we could see that the combination of a mesh based terrain combined with extended use of debris sets enabled us to create seemingly endless variations in the caves.
​


Since we felt that the game now looked so much better we decide to update the trailer. We didn’t really have any time to do a new trailer, so instead we just did a remake of the old one. And almost shot by shot, we recreated the trailer.

The updated trailer looked much better and helped us get a lot of attention from publishers and gamers - signing up for the Closed Alpha (and yes, we will release more keys soon!). It also played a big part in Coffee Stain noticing us and in the end, closing a publishing deal with us.
​
So if there is a lesson to be learned it is that a cool trailer can work wonders for your game and your company, so you better invest time in making a cool one!
Below is the video showing the two trailers running side by side. It is marvelous to see the giant leap we made in the art style between the two trailers and in so short time. To me, It is a testament of the magic and wonder of game development. Enjoy!

- Mikkel Martin Pedersen, Game Director

https://youtu.be/Azi6D-hNM2Y

It is time for a trip down memory lane and to take a look at the trailer for Deep Rock Galactic. (I know! ...memory lane is only 10 month long, but so much has happened that it feels much further away!).

Today I'm gonna show you a comparison between the first version of our trailer and the updated version of it. And why is this interesting, you may ask? Well first of all it shows how crazy fast this project has developed. Secondly it shows the game before and after we nailed - or I should maybe say, sort of haphazardly discovered - the high level art direction of the game. And last but not least, I’m doing this because I simply wanted to see the trailers running side by side :-) …. But first I will give you a little background about why we made the trailers.

The first trailer was created around one month after we got together and founded Ghost Ship Games. From the start we knew that we needed to get some funding in place, so we were heavily focusing on making a playable prototype and at the same time preparing a lot of material for the fundraising. The gameplay trailer was the single most important piece of promotional asset we could make. The purpose of it was to give potential investors confidence that we had a strong game concept and that we had the skills and experience to go through with the production of the game.

Our first prototype of the game used a fairly simple voxel based system to generate the caves - it looked a bit like Minecraft. We didn’t like it and we knew we wanted to get away from this look and create an artstyle that was stylish and unique without being too simplistic. Henrik, CTO at Ghost Ship, further developed the terrain tech and made it look more smooth. This system (or the 1st iteration of it) is what you see in the old trailer in the video.



The gameplay trailer worked and we secured funding from Capnova and received a government grant from DFI. We were happy and in business :-)

The updated trailer was made when we started attending our first couple of game conferences. The first conference was Steam Dev Days 2016 in Seattle. Here, we were attending to connect with Valve, so we could get our store page live on Steam and start the closed alpha. The second conference was Games Connection in Paris a couple of weeks later, where we went to meet with potential business partners.

Before these events, we had had an amazing breakthrough in the art direction. Henrik had made a system, that enabled us to generate debris and smaller objects like stalactites and crystals and turn them into a diggable and destructible material. When it got in the hands of Robert (our art director) magic happened and he created some amazing looking caves. Now we could see that the combination of a mesh based terrain combined with extended use of debris sets enabled us to create seemingly endless variations in the caves.
​


Since we felt that the game now looked so much better we decide to update the trailer. We didn’t really have any time to do a new trailer, so instead we just did a remake of the old one. And almost shot by shot, we recreated the trailer.

The updated trailer looked much better and helped us get a lot of attention from publishers and gamers - signing up for the Closed Alpha (and yes, we will release more keys soon!). It also played a big part in Coffee Stain noticing us and in the end, closing a publishing deal with us.
​
So if there is a lesson to be learned it is that a cool trailer can work wonders for your game and your company, so you better invest time in making a cool one!
Below is the video showing the two trailers running side by side. It is marvelous to see the giant leap we made in the art style between the two trailers and in so short time. To me, It is a testament of the magic and wonder of game development. Enjoy!

- Mikkel Martin Pedersen, Game Director

https://youtu.be/Azi6D-hNM2Y

Welcome to yet another look behind the scenes of Deep Rock Galactic! This time we’d like to present a bit of backstory for the world and setting of DRG. Where in the universe are we and what the heck is going on!

Before we get to that though, a short explanation of our thinking behind it: As you might know by now, Deep Rock Galactic is first and foremost a multiplayer game, and as such is meant to be experienced online together with your friends or strangers (who are just friends you haven’t met yet!). You can play it 1-4 players and with any combination of dwarves. This means that telling a character-driven story centered on the dwarves themselves doesn’t make that much sense. Instead, we will be focusing on embedding narrative within the world itself - a narrative you will uncover as you progress through the game. We want to hint at what’s going on rather than explicitly tell you, and allow you to piece it together at your own pace.

​So what do we know so far? Robert Friis, our Art Director, put it into writing and here it goes…


Hoxxes is a nasty piece of work. A real shithole. A scorched, tidally locked planet, orbiting the angry blue sun of Creus, along with several siblings. Hoxxes stands out among them all, for two reasons:

1. Her extraordinarily rich deposits of precious minerals, and
   
2. her staggeringly hostile environment.

For years, interplanetary mining corporations have attempted to tame Hoxxes, but up until now they have failed. One by one they have left, tails between their legs, seeking to please their shareholders elsewhere in the galaxy.



Only one corporation stubbornly remains: Deep Rock Galactic. The company is notorious for its general lack of safety precautions, but famous for taking on the opportunities other companies would not even consider. It offers hefty paychecks and bonuses rather than sanctioned work safety guarantees, which tends to mean that their field operatives are among the meanest and most capable bastards this side of Orion. Mercenaries, soldiers, ex-pirates, bounty hunters...and dwarves. This stunty race of surly, muscular humanoids, otherwise known as “Stonekin”, is known across the galaxy as some of the most skillful miners and hardiest warriors ever to exist. Deep Rock Galactic offers exactly the kind of challenge dwarves thrive in.

Hoxxes bears her battle scars proudly. Generations of corroded mining equipment, crashed freighters, and the withered, ash-filled husks of lost outposts litter her surface, and thousands of miles of half-collapsed mine shafts and vast cave systems stretch deep and enticingly underground, as if to say “What of it, boys? Who’s next?”.



There’s more to worry about on Hoxxes IV than just the electromagnetic storms, gravity anomalies, tectonic instability, or seas of sulphuric acid however - Hoxxes IV is home to one of the most diverse selections of horrible, horrible life yet found in the galaxy. Fueled by an unending barrage of radioactive emissions from Creus, and aided by a steady influx of biomatter and rapidly mutating micro organisms left behind by the invading mining corporations, the children of Hoxxes grow up large, angry, territorial, and generally impervious to most ammunition short of a tank round. And if the pincers, teeth, tentacles, and altogether too many eyes of Hoxxes’ children isn’t enough to scare you away, rumors of even worse and much older, sinister, and alien things down in the deepest excavations abound.

The road ahead will not be easy on the operatives of Deep Rock Galactic. But that’s fine. There’s profit to be made, and there are always more volunteers arriving.

So that’s what we’re going with for now - a brutal, dirty sci-fi setting that pulls no punches. We haven’t settled on many of the finer details yet, and we’re very excited to discover and develop this universe as the production progresses. If you want to chip in with your ideas, please feel free to do so. :-)

Well, that’s it for now! You got a hostile planet to mine, and Deep Rock Galactic doesn’t pay you by the hour. The danger and the darkness awaits! Time to get to work!
​
Cheers, Mikkel
https://twitter.com/Mikkelmartin

Welcome to yet another look behind the scenes of Deep Rock Galactic! This time we’d like to present a bit of backstory for the world and setting of DRG. Where in the universe are we and what the heck is going on!

Before we get to that though, a short explanation of our thinking behind it: As you might know by now, Deep Rock Galactic is first and foremost a multiplayer game, and as such is meant to be experienced online together with your friends or strangers (who are just friends you haven’t met yet!). You can play it 1-4 players and with any combination of dwarves. This means that telling a character-driven story centered on the dwarves themselves doesn’t make that much sense. Instead, we will be focusing on embedding narrative within the world itself - a narrative you will uncover as you progress through the game. We want to hint at what’s going on rather than explicitly tell you, and allow you to piece it together at your own pace.

​So what do we know so far? Robert Friis, our Art Director, put it into writing and here it goes…


Hoxxes is a nasty piece of work. A real shithole. A scorched, tidally locked planet, orbiting the angry blue sun of Creus, along with several siblings. Hoxxes stands out among them all, for two reasons:

1. Her extraordinarily rich deposits of precious minerals, and
   
2. her staggeringly hostile environment.

For years, interplanetary mining corporations have attempted to tame Hoxxes, but up until now they have failed. One by one they have left, tails between their legs, seeking to please their shareholders elsewhere in the galaxy.



Only one corporation stubbornly remains: Deep Rock Galactic. The company is notorious for its general lack of safety precautions, but famous for taking on the opportunities other companies would not even consider. It offers hefty paychecks and bonuses rather than sanctioned work safety guarantees, which tends to mean that their field operatives are among the meanest and most capable bastards this side of Orion. Mercenaries, soldiers, ex-pirates, bounty hunters...and dwarves. This stunty race of surly, muscular humanoids, otherwise known as “Stonekin”, is known across the galaxy as some of the most skillful miners and hardiest warriors ever to exist. Deep Rock Galactic offers exactly the kind of challenge dwarves thrive in.

Hoxxes bears her battle scars proudly. Generations of corroded mining equipment, crashed freighters, and the withered, ash-filled husks of lost outposts litter her surface, and thousands of miles of half-collapsed mine shafts and vast cave systems stretch deep and enticingly underground, as if to say “What of it, boys? Who’s next?”.



There’s more to worry about on Hoxxes IV than just the electromagnetic storms, gravity anomalies, tectonic instability, or seas of sulphuric acid however - Hoxxes IV is home to one of the most diverse selections of horrible, horrible life yet found in the galaxy. Fueled by an unending barrage of radioactive emissions from Creus, and aided by a steady influx of biomatter and rapidly mutating micro organisms left behind by the invading mining corporations, the children of Hoxxes grow up large, angry, territorial, and generally impervious to most ammunition short of a tank round. And if the pincers, teeth, tentacles, and altogether too many eyes of Hoxxes’ children isn’t enough to scare you away, rumors of even worse and much older, sinister, and alien things down in the deepest excavations abound.

The road ahead will not be easy on the operatives of Deep Rock Galactic. But that’s fine. There’s profit to be made, and there are always more volunteers arriving.

So that’s what we’re going with for now - a brutal, dirty sci-fi setting that pulls no punches. We haven’t settled on many of the finer details yet, and we’re very excited to discover and develop this universe as the production progresses. If you want to chip in with your ideas, please feel free to do so. :-)

Well, that’s it for now! You got a hostile planet to mine, and Deep Rock Galactic doesn’t pay you by the hour. The danger and the darkness awaits! Time to get to work!
​
Cheers, Mikkel
https://twitter.com/Mikkelmartin

Robert here, the Art Director and Lead Artist on Deep Rock Galactic - some of you may know me as Bluntie on our Discord server.

Among the many, many, many things we are currently working on, one of the big ones is a major overhaul of the way we generate our caves. I've been caught up in producing marketing material for GDC and PAX for a while now, and have had to settle for stealing envious glances over the shoulders of our programmers while they develop lovely new tools for my fellow artists and I. But now, marketing material behind me (for the moment), I finally get to dig in (sorry).

Those already in the closed alpha will no doubt have noticed that our current caves tend to look a little samey, but that is all about to change with the first iteration of the - fanfare - Biome System.

Long story short, it's a new and muchly improved way to make the caves differ from each other and to show off the many and varied zones we have planned for the planet that the game takes place on and in. Basically, it allows us artists to put together a set of rules, assets, and materials to apply to any given cave, meaning that applying different biomes to the same cave can result in some spectacularly different experiences. I can with relative ease put together anything from smooth sandstone caves with very little to obstruct the players, to absolute hellscapes of black craggy rock and volcanic activity, to terrifying ash-lands covered in deadly, radioactive fog, pierced by teeth-like stalagtites threatening to puncture your suit or worse.

Pair all this with our game designers putting together new caves specifically for these biomes, and we have a fast and easily expandable method of getting a much more immersive and diverse exploration experience into your hands. To begin with, our goal is to produce three complete biomes full of all new assets - enough to show a wide breadth of content for the first pass, while still allowing us to quickly iterate on the systems and introduce new features into the tools and biomes themselves.
https://youtu.be/56dCue6SNPA
​I could ramble on about this at length, so let us know if you'd be interested in more detailed explanations of how our systems work. Till then, I'll let the visuals speak for themselves - I've put together a short video that showcases what I'm talking about. Be aware that it is VERY early footage and that the caves shown aren't in any way done, but it should still give you an impression of things to come. It's three little clips of a short trip inside the EXACT same cave, except with three different Biomes applied to it. With any luck, you'll get as excited about the prospects as I am. And just wait - this is gonna get amazing. :D

Dig deep!

Robert here, the Art Director and Lead Artist on Deep Rock Galactic - some of you may know me as Bluntie on our Discord server.

Among the many, many, many things we are currently working on, one of the big ones is a major overhaul of the way we generate our caves. I've been caught up in producing marketing material for GDC and PAX for a while now, and have had to settle for stealing envious glances over the shoulders of our programmers while they develop lovely new tools for my fellow artists and I. But now, marketing material behind me (for the moment), I finally get to dig in (sorry).

Those already in the closed alpha will no doubt have noticed that our current caves tend to look a little samey, but that is all about to change with the first iteration of the - fanfare - Biome System.

Long story short, it's a new and muchly improved way to make the caves differ from each other and to show off the many and varied zones we have planned for the planet that the game takes place on and in. Basically, it allows us artists to put together a set of rules, assets, and materials to apply to any given cave, meaning that applying different biomes to the same cave can result in some spectacularly different experiences. I can with relative ease put together anything from smooth sandstone caves with very little to obstruct the players, to absolute hellscapes of black craggy rock and volcanic activity, to terrifying ash-lands covered in deadly, radioactive fog, pierced by teeth-like stalagtites threatening to puncture your suit or worse.

Pair all this with our game designers putting together new caves specifically for these biomes, and we have a fast and easily expandable method of getting a much more immersive and diverse exploration experience into your hands. To begin with, our goal is to produce three complete biomes full of all new assets - enough to show a wide breadth of content for the first pass, while still allowing us to quickly iterate on the systems and introduce new features into the tools and biomes themselves.
https://youtu.be/56dCue6SNPA
​I could ramble on about this at length, so let us know if you'd be interested in more detailed explanations of how our systems work. Till then, I'll let the visuals speak for themselves - I've put together a short video that showcases what I'm talking about. Be aware that it is VERY early footage and that the caves shown aren't in any way done, but it should still give you an impression of things to come. It's three little clips of a short trip inside the EXACT same cave, except with three different Biomes applied to it. With any luck, you'll get as excited about the prospects as I am. And just wait - this is gonna get amazing. :D

Dig deep!

I am Fran Avilés, Level Designer on Deep Rock Galactic. However, I am not going to talk about caves yet.

Every new element that we introduce in our game (or in any other game for that matter) needs 3 different kinds of intervention: conceptual design, technical implementation, and visual representation. That’s the case of a very simple (but effective) object that is going to populate some of our caves from now on: the exploding plant.



The specific behaviour was defined by the design team: it has very few health points, they regenerate over time if the plant is not shot, there is half a second of delay between the plant reaching 0 health and the actual explosion, and they can cause chained explosions. The artist created a model that could both communicate its function and fit the aesthetics of Deep Rock Galactic, while one of our programmers implemented all the behaviours.

The plant now existed in our game and it was working as planned. However, games have to do an extra effort to communicate the states of all their elements. Game effects, particles, etc. have an obvious aesthetic reason to exist, but most of them are also there to let the player know the result of a certain action. You may think about blood coming out of the enemy after being shot in a shooter or the way in which Mario blinks while the effect of the star lasts. We were clearly missing that:

https://youtu.be/qJumsx9A4zQ

For the past two weeks, our artist has been very busy with other stuff and didn’t have the time to finish the implementation of the plant. This lack of visual effects was having gameplay consequences, therefore, even if I am not very experienced with Blueprints in Unreal, I knew that something had to be done as placeholder.

The material that the artist had created already had more than enough properties for our purposes. Just by connecting the health of the plant to the emission and to one of the parameters of the displacement function, the plant behaviour became more apparent:

https://youtu.be/yBZLZ2JFDQE

I am Fran Avilés, Level Designer on Deep Rock Galactic. However, I am not going to talk about caves yet.

Every new element that we introduce in our game (or in any other game for that matter) needs 3 different kinds of intervention: conceptual design, technical implementation, and visual representation. That’s the case of a very simple (but effective) object that is going to populate some of our caves from now on: the exploding plant.



The specific behaviour was defined by the design team: it has very few health points, they regenerate over time if the plant is not shot, there is half a second of delay between the plant reaching 0 health and the actual explosion, and they can cause chained explosions. The artist created a model that could both communicate its function and fit the aesthetics of Deep Rock Galactic, while one of our programmers implemented all the behaviours.

The plant now existed in our game and it was working as planned. However, games have to do an extra effort to communicate the states of all their elements. Game effects, particles, etc. have an obvious aesthetic reason to exist, but most of them are also there to let the player know the result of a certain action. You may think about blood coming out of the enemy after being shot in a shooter or the way in which Mario blinks while the effect of the star lasts. We were clearly missing that:

https://youtu.be/qJumsx9A4zQ

For the past two weeks, our artist has been very busy with other stuff and didn’t have the time to finish the implementation of the plant. This lack of visual effects was having gameplay consequences, therefore, even if I am not very experienced with Blueprints in Unreal, I knew that something had to be done as placeholder.

The material that the artist had created already had more than enough properties for our purposes. Just by connecting the health of the plant to the emission and to one of the parameters of the displacement function, the plant behaviour became more apparent:

https://youtu.be/yBZLZ2JFDQE