Nearly all game development companies ever created have failed and disappeared --- at some point. The question is what they managed to accomplish while they existed. Looking Glass Studios can boast Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Ultima Underworld II: The Labyrinth of Worlds, System Shock, Terra Nova, Thief: The Dark Project, and Thief II: The Metal Age. Not many companies have done better.
UPDATE: Hints of the Stygian Abyss and Backer Rewards
Hello everyone,
The last month’s been busy and productive, as the team just hit yet another major milestone on Underworld Ascendant. (Whew…)
We’ve got details to share about our progress, plus an important update on backer rewards.
Let’s dive right in.
“HOW’S EVERYTHING IN THE STYGIAN ABYSS?”
Joe Fielder, here. That question above was a message a friend and external tester sent me earlier this week. I was happy to relay that, for an incredibly dangerous environment on the borders of The Underworld, it’s quite well, in fact.
We’ve recently completed a Milestone where we allow the player to enter the settlement of Marcaul, make a choice of six, unique different quests in our Upper Erebus level, complete it, and return to town to collect their reward, grow their character, and choose another quest.
A sneak peek at a map of Upper Erebus
Since Upper Erebus is a level the player wouldn’t encounter for a few hours into the game, we provided a few choices of demo-only “hero kits” that represented growth and equipment choices they might’ve made by that point. Each mixed combat, stealth, and magic skills in a different, interesting ways.
While those kits won’t be in the final game, they let us hop in and quickly have fun and start experimenting in the simulation. One kit provided combat skills, the ability to heave heavy objects, a few movement options for tough-to-reach locations, and a Create Fire spell. Another focused on stealth skills, like soft step and a combat bonus for attacking enemies while undetected. The third was a combination of a little stealth and a lot of magic, with spells including those you’ve seen before (like Gravitate and Slow Time) and a few you haven’t…
The level is comprised of spaces that are interesting to explore and areas designed to provide a bevy of options for combat, stealth, magic, and interacting with the environment. One of the most fun things to interact with in the world so far is the Deep Slug, which we’ve mentioned a bit before, but haven’t previously shown you up close.
Deep Slug 2D concept art by Nate Wells
It’s an example of what we refer to as an “ambient” creature, which exist in the environment, don’t attack on sight, and have useful behaviors that the player can exploit. In short, a tool or toy.
In the Deep Slug’s case, it’s a peaceful creature that avoids conflict and has a few different useful trails. You can bait it with its favorite foods and its trails will change depending which one it devours.
For instance, if you feed it the fruit of a Ripper (a terrible tree monster), it’ll leave behind a flammable trail. Bait it into the patrol path of skeletons or near a wooden platform, apply fire, and enjoy!
If you feed it a Nether Caps? It leaves behind a trail of sight-blocking smoke. Beyond that, we’re not saying.
It’s not only fun to experiment with, it’s often vital when dealing with groups of foes to difficult to tackle one-on-one.
And, it’s kind of adorable. In a gross way.
Since hitting that milestone, we’ve been doing another round of external testing so we can get key feedback on how to further refine our core experience (combat, object interactions, spell interactions, and more). Ensuring that the logic underlying the game’s simulated systems (physics, physical properties) is clear – without overt handholding – is a key part of creating an immersive sim.
We’ve also been digging into VFX, expanding our bestiary with the Lich and Outcasts, adding new spells and skills, and design work on multiple levels, including the Necropolis and… well, a space that fans of Ultima Underworld will definitely appreciate. We’re holding back in-depth looks at those for a bit, both to refine and so it doesn’t get lost among news of holiday releases, but we’ve been making much progress and will have much new to share.
Last, but not least, we have some exciting news on the narrative front: the game’s script is approaching completion and we’re recording with Stephen (Thief, Fallout 4, Dishonored 2) Russell in a just few weeks.
New Underworld Ascendant Website
505 has done an awesome major update to our Underworld Ascendant website. Check it out at the usual www.underworldascendant.com. We’ll continue to keep this updated with new info as we reveal it.
Next Developer Roundtable and Brainstorm Call
We will be holding our next Developer Roundtable in the next two weeks on our Twitch channel!
Backers who pledged at the DIGITAL PROTAGONIST tier and above ($125+) are eligible to join the roundtable.
Please check your email for the specific date and times! The email will also include a survey form for those who are eligible to participate but cannot make the time frame and would like to submit questions. We’ll be picking from a mix of the live audience and the archived questions and will try to address as much as we can!
We will also be holding a Brainstorm Call for all “ENLIGHTENED ONE” backers and above around the same time. More information — and the “Name a Character/Item” survey — will be made available for these backers through email.
Crowdfunding Update: Underworld Ascendant is Now Closed to New Backers
We are encouraging any future people interested in backing Underworld Ascendant to wishlist the game on Steam instead. Existing backers are still able to adjust their pledges by logging into their BackerKit and updating their survey information.
Note, we will lock down that ability in the not-to-distant future so that we can start preparing for fulfillment, particularly for physical goods. Stayed tuned for more info.
If any backers have trouble accessing their accounts or upgrading their pledge, please contact us at support@otherside-e.com .
Recap: Underworld Ascendant at Unite Austin
We had the pleasure of showcasing Underworld Ascendant and speaking at Unite Austin 2017 from October 3-5.
Our Art Director, Nate Wells, spoke about our “Rewarding Creativity” system and how the history of the franchise affects how we design Underworld Ascendant.
You can watch the interview here on YouTube.
Nate Wells interviewed at Unite Austin Live
Unpacking the Past
We moved into our new office in October and are still in the process of unpacking.
Some of the forgotten gems we’ve rediscovered are System Shock, Terra Nova, and Ultima Underworld awards from the 1990s! Few things invigorate the soul quite like some Looking Glass history…
We hope to share more pictures of our new space soon!
Looking Glass history on the kitchen table at OtherSide Entertainment
In Other News…
In case you missed it:
- Check out NightDive Studios’ November update, which shows off mutant dismemberment and more!
- What might the future of “Immersive Sims” look like? Robert Yang weighs in.
- Warren Spector shared his creative philosophies as the keynote speaker at Wisconsin’s M+Dev Conference.
Wanted to be part of the beta and get some backer goodies too, though.
REMINDER: Developer Roundtable, Brainstorm Call, and Forums
Hi backers,
Just as a reminder, the next Developer Roundtable and Design Brainstorm Call are next week.
Developer Roundtables are available for Digital Protagonist tiers and above ($125+)
Design Brainstorm Calls are available for Enlightened One tiers and above ($1000+)
Please check your email to make sure that you received your invitation to the events and have filled out any missing information requested in the email.
Last but not least, we'll be posting for weekly updates on our forums before the next newsletter, so be sure to check in if you're hungry for more information!
If you receive a login error on our forums, make sure that you are NOT using the simplified login box at the top, especially if you haven't logged in for awhile. Please login using the entry field, which can be opened by clicking on the "login" link option above the login box. (see attached image):
If anyone has trouble logging into their forum accounts of if you haven't received an email, please notify us at support@otherside-e.com as soon as possible to resolve it.
Cheers,
The OtherSide Team
Hey all,
I've been seeing a lot of activity on the forums this weekend (woo!) and also a lot of questions, so I want to compile a few here as a reference:
* When is the next Developer Roundtable?
It's THIS Thursday, December 7 2017, and will be held on our Twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/otherside_entertainment
The timeframe was secretly sent out to all the relevant tiers through email a few weeks ago, but I see a few of you have shared it on the forums anyways. I won't stop anyone from other tiers from joining this time, but we would like these to remain somewhat exclusive so the appropriate tiers have the chance to ask questions live. (The sessions themselves will be uploaded to our YouTube channel for the public, so if you can't make the timeframe, they'll still be available to watch!)
* What happened to the Developer's Insider Logs?
We were swept up by other commitments for awhile, but we're getting back into writing these. Joe is planning another one right now that we're hoping to get out either by the end of this year or by the very beginning of the next year.
* So... what's going on in the office since last week? You promised a Monday update!
I did! And so here I amJust as a reference point, I'll probably be posting these around 10-11am EST when I can, just to check in on the forums and update you guys.
We've been having a lot of meetings coordinating with artists, musicians, and other designers to work on Underworld Ascendant, which has been very exciting! We should be able to reveal some names by the next newsletter. (It's been hard keeping quiet about working with such incredible people...!!)
On the development side, there's been a lot of adjustments and fine tuning to ensure that we can easily test out a lot of features at once. For example, Tim (Stellmach) added a command-line to extinguish all fires in the scene, so you can easily tell what things will look like to the player who goes wild with water arrows. (The command is "smokeybear.") This will help us check the design of our layouts if a super stealthy character is playing and make sure that they can still "see" certain areas (or give us ideas on what we can hide in the darkness...)
Animation has been a big feature these past few weeks as we've been constantly bullying our test dummies to see how they react in different situations. We want them to react in a multitude of ways, whether it's "chase you for awhile and then give up to return to their regular post", or "keep their distance because they know they have the higher ground, and they see you only have a sword".
I've also attached a forum-exclusive picture for you guys of Chris Siegel (MajorMalphunktion) working with one of his many whiteboards.
Joe Fielder said:
Hey everyone! Happy Monday!
I got to "talk to" a number of you this week through the Roundtable and the Brainstorm Call on Thursday and Friday, which was awesome! We've been trying to be more open on our communication channels about what's going into UA and our progress, so we'd love to hear whether this is something you guys are enjoying! I know a few of you are avoiding certain topics to keep your first playthrough spoiler-free, so I'm hoping to find a happy medium.
That being said, let's recap!
For the Roundtable, I see Starker has already started a WIP transcript of the entire 2 hour session, which can be found here on the forums.
If you want to watch the entire YouTube video, it's here.
Overall, it was a great exercise for us to address some popular questions about features, where the Mac and Linux builds are, what we have planned for the game, and consider some of your design suggestions.
For the Brainstorm Call, a lot of our discussion focused on how to design around the importance of player freedom. We want the world to be highly interactive (NPCs have their own life goals, areas will change over time, the repercussions of your actions will affect the environment and your reputation with other characters, etc). At the same time, it can be tough building all of these systems with such a small team, so we want to be as economical about our focus as possible.
So far, much of this has gone into the physics system and ensuring that the player is given tools to build their own play style. We talked about how the “wizard” build can typically seen as overpowered because “magic has no limits” and how we could build the warrior and rogue skill sets to balance that (specifically by making the warriors more mobile and athletic, and the rogues able to utilize a lot of traps and deceive enemies).
Other points that came up were confirmations that Underworld Ascendant is STILL very much a role-playing game! We understand that a lot of the footage and gameplay you’ve seen so far seems open-ended and puzzle-based without a lot of story. Story is very much an important piece of the game, but we’ve been testing the physics and improvisation engine as much as possible since we feel those are the systems that we could use the most data on. There will be returning easter eggs, the ability to write notes on maps, runes, the lizardmen and other important characters from the Ultima franchise.
Overall, we agreed that having minimal tutorial and hand-holding sections fit the theme of the game the most, and started to touch on how we might show that through the game without it seeming too laborious.
We'll actually be holding a SECOND brainstorm call sometime next year to follow up on some of the design specifics we discussed in the call, so there will be another update on that.
Phew! Still with me?
On the dev side, last week was pretty similar to the week before's work. A lot of rigging the new models that were coming in, adjusting our current models to make them more flexible for animations, and testing more features ingame by designing new tools. I know Joe has been working all week on Cabirus' script for Stephen Russell VO work, and fleshing out the world's bestiary and lore in general.
We also have some publisher-commitments coming up that we'll need to attend to, which requires gathering assets and working with 505 to make sure both of us are happy with the representation. Newsletter is also coming along, and I'm still hoping to send it out this month. It feels like we'll have a LOT of information we'll want to present... so much has happened in just two weeks!
Morning everyone!It's your Monday update!
Starting with Stephen Russell, he and Joe spent 2 days recording over 40 pages of dialogue, exposition, and various audio requests. I saw there was a question on the "Is there any of the old Lore left?" thread about whether there was any improvisation, and there certainly is! I was able to grab video and pictures on the first day of recording, and it was INCREDIBLE to watch Stephen work. Sometimes we would fiddle around with the tone or delivery on a couple of important lines to ensure we had multiple options, and once or twice Joe would jump in for an alternate take if different phrasing sounded more natural.
As for the newsletter that we've been working on for this month... it'll be released this Wednesday! We'll be talking about our progress over the last year, including never-before-seen screenshots and "before and after" shots! We hope you find it interestingI also finally got to put in some shots that I'd been dying to add. Be sure to examine some of these images carefully... I snuck in some hints of unreleased stuff in there!
Within the office, still a lot of VFX work and working with the player's hand animations! We've been trying to perfect the magic system again recently, so that means adjusting hand animations for how runes are used. We've also had the chance to dig through the forums for ideas and suggestions, which has led us to think about how we want to handle certain forms of transportation... we're still leaning closest to using the Silver Sapling as the main means, since it wouldn't be tied to any particular class and is a staple of the series. We also began expanding on the Marcaul hub by adding additional wireframes of certain features, and redid the model for the Lizardman and are nearly finished rigging him up! The Outcast is also getting rigged, so it'll be exciting for me to see how they interact once we can drop them in the world and start tweaking their behaviors...
On a more personal note, we also had our holiday party on Friday!! We played a lot of MultiBowl (which is like a WarioWare of various games from the 80s and 90s), and a lot of Drawful.
Phew! Not as large of an update necessarily, but we hope you'll be satisfied with our end of the year newsletter, since we talk about some more work over there.
UPDATE: 2017 End of the Year Update and Recap
Hey everyone!
It’s only been a month since our last newsletter, but we have a lot of updates to share with you to kick off the New Year!
Let’s get started:
December Development on Underworld Ascendant
On the development side, we’ve been focused on fine tuning tools to ensure we can easily test out a lot of features at once. For example, Tim Stellmach added a command-line to extinguish all fires in a scene so we can easily tell what things will look like to the player who goes wild with water arrows. (The command is “smokeybear”.) This will help us check the design of our layouts for stealthy players and make sure that they can still “see” certain areas (or give us ideas on what we can hide in the darkness…)
What is this?! A huge pile of… apples?
…and of course, fine tuning goes hand in hand with creating lots of accidental bugs.
One of our favorite examples of this was discovering that if players plucked something from the environment, such as a simple apple, it would result in an infinite amount of that object in the player’s inventory. It was fun to traverse the Abyss with infinite distracting projectiles that also doubled as food, but we quickly patched it out.
Another bug we had fun with was crates would damage anything that touched them. We had recently tweaked the crates so that they would damage people if a crate was dropped on them. However, the crates became “over-sensitive,” and suddenly, the levels became an obstacle course filled with wooden landmines. The Abyss had never been more dangerous!
Animation has also been a big feature these past few weeks as we’ve been constantly bullying our test dummies to see how they will react in different situations. We want them to react in a multitude of ways, whether it’s “chase you for a while and then give up to return to their regular post,” or “keep their distance because they know you have a sword and can avoid you from the higher ground.” Recently, skeletons have been sliding across the ground to chase players instead of running because they’ve discovered it’s the optimal way to catch up. While it’s hilarious and slightly intimidating, it’ll be patched out after the holidays.
On Joe’s side, he’s been locked away this month working on fleshing out the bestiary, lore, and writing out Cabirus’ script for Stephen Russell’s VO work. Backers who pledged at the EXPLORER tier or above ($50+) will be able to see (and hear!) clips of Stephen Russell working behind the scenes in the “Making of Underworld Ascendant” backer reward, and perhaps we’ll be able to share something in the near future…
A sneak peek of Stephen Russell recording lines for Cabirus
We’ve had a lot of meetings coordinating with artists, musicians, and other designers to work on Underworld Ascendant, which has been very exciting. One of whom we can now proudly announce…
Meet our New Audio Director: Jim Bonney
Yes. THAT Jim Bonney!
Jim is a BAFTA award-winning composer and audio director, and his credits include: BioShock Infinite (2K/Irrational Games), BioShock Infinite: Clash In The Clouds (2K/Irrational Games), BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea pt. 1 & 2 (2K/Irrational Games), Perception (The DeepEnd Games/Feardemic), and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Midway Games), to name a few.
We’re extremely excited to work with him, many of us for the second time or more!
December’s Developer Roundtable and Brainstorm Call
DIGITAL PROTAGONIST backers and above were invited to join our second Developer Roundtable on December 7, and the entire 2 hour session is now available here on YouTube!
We took a lot of notes based on your feedback and suggestions, so thank you again to everyone who could join us!
A transcript of the session is also being made on our forums, so for people who are searching for particular questions: click here.
We also held our first online Design Brainstorm meeting with ENLIGHTENED ONE backers and above on December 8th.
During the call, we discussed how to maintain player agency during tutorials, how to balance the appeal of the warrior, rogue, and wizard skill sets that we’ve been developing, and the importance of Underworld Ascendant as a role-playing game. We understand that a lot of the footage and gameplay you’ve seen so far seems open-ended and puzzle-based without a lot of story, but story is VERY much an important piece of the game. We’ve been testing the physics and improvisation engine as much as possible since we feel those are the systems we could use the most data on.
We also confirmed that there will be returning easter eggs, the ability to write notes on maps, runes, the lizardmen, and other features from Ultima™ Underworld 1&2.
And yes… the Mac and Linux builds are still being worked on. Thank you for your patience!
We hope to see all of you for our future Roundtables next year!
Recap: Looking Back on Underworld Ascendant in 2017
A wireframe of an area created by Justin Pappas from October 2017
As this year draws to a close, we’d like to thank all of you again for your support as we continue to work on Underworld Ascendant.
We started the beginning of the year working on our first area, the ‘Trial of Ishtass,’ which was used to make sure that the main core systems of the game were functional. There were three main goals we wanted to get right: player skills, world interaction, and the look and feel of the environment.
For combat, we made sure our movement skills were all working, and that the player could swing a sword and block, and to make bows functional. The AI was stood up to be able to ‘see’ the player and have some basic interaction with them. Combat in general has been a constant challenge. UA is not a fighting simulator, but we still want combat to feel good. For example, we spent a lot of time discussing how we wanted the sword swing to work, something that is seemingly mundane and straightforward (it’s not). Should it be fast? Slow? Movement based? What we didn’t want was a ‘chopping the tree’ simulator.
Over the year, we proved out the basics. Combat has been constantly tweaked on the AI side, and problems like timing and distance have been tuned. Where we haven’t spent time until recently was expanding out the player’s moves in combat. Over the next couple of months that will all come online, and I’m sure cause some more adjustments to the AI and creatures.
Early prototype of Lizardman with bow pose from January 2017
If you remember, one of the two creatures that was shown in the beginning of the year was the Lizardman. He could shoot a bow or use a sword. He was ok, but did not match the look and feel we were looking for, so he was sent back to the creature factory for some adjustments. The new and improved Lizardmen will be coming to the Abyss really soon.
Over the summer, we introduced our Skeletons and were able to use their more humanoid models to prototype a whole bunch of other behaviors for other bipedal creatures. Some of the more exotic creatures were tested out using some VFX or other models that were approximately similar. This has set us up so that when the real creatures make it in from the art team, we already have the basic groundwork for their behavior and in some cases animation, and we can get to tuning them all that much faster.
Stealth at the beginning of the year was simple. If hidden, the AI didn’t see you. If they did, they saw you forever. It was truly binary. Now it is a bit more complex. Creatures can see or hear you all based on your skills. If they do detect you, you can hide, and they will eventually forget about you. We have fooled with how many alert states they have, and how easily it is to fool them, and how easy it is to get seen. Some of the main factors of stealth are about creature behavior based on alertness and distance. It is pretty easy to make Capt. Omnipotent or Capt. Oblivious. The trick is to get it to feel… juuuuust right. Recently it is getting better, and with more interesting tools to play with, and the AI getting smarter about world states (like boxes making noise, for example), it should play very well soon.
A very early first look of “Swamp1,” an area we revealed when we announced our partnership with 505 Games…
…compared to an ingame screenshot of “Swamp1” today!
Magic started the year with Repulse, Slow Time (“Prolong”) and Gravitate. Repulse basically was part shield and part physics-push-object. Repulse could push other rigid bodies around the world and also reflect projectiles back at their users. Slow Time well, slowed time. You could dodge an arrow, or take more time to do some other action before the time bubble burst. Gravitate would gravitate a number of objects and attempt to line them up.
What we quickly learned is Repulse needed to be simplified. In our enthusiasm, we sometimes over-design systems. That was the case with Repulse. The original idea was a shield, but in our excitement, we started amping up the secondary effect of being able to push objects. Sometimes you follow the interesting idea down the rabbit hole, but in this case, we backed off and kept it as a defensive spell for the most part. You can still use the push ability to great effect, especially around ledges over bottomless pits.
Gravitate started as a ‘hey look I can move a thing from a distance’ into a much more interesting and robust skill. We like the idea of magic being ‘smart’ about what it is doing, so we had Gravitatenot only grab multiple objects, but then attempt to rearrange them into something useful. The obvious thing to do was to make a bridge out of crates. That led to Gravitating on a bunch of burning crates and bashing enemies with them, which incidentally doesn’t get old and does a ton of damage.
We have since fleshed out the magic system and are testing it to see what kind of fun we can have with it. We have finally added some purely offensive spells – as “purely” as an OtherSide game can be anyway. Of course, we are already seeing other ways to use spells than originally intended.
(These three images are screenshots of scrapped areas from February 2017)
Setting up the world has been its own adventure. From tweaking the art style in both world and creature design, to letting loose the level designers, the Abyss is starting to feel like a place. Amazing to think just a few months ago we had a single space to play around in. That is no longer the case. Art and design are in a good spot with helping each other out, and having gameplay and challenges work well with the look and feel of a space. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
With interactivity as the centerpiece of the game, we have been spending the bulk of our time on our core interaction tools: player skills and the systems the player can interact with. We try to break down into the smallest bits on what we want to allow the player to do, like play with physics, manipulate the AI, playing with light and darkness as some examples. The player skills, the AI and the world objects need to take these interactions into account. It can quickly become a nasty web. I don’t want to give away too much on some of the interesting ideas that we have been working on since some of them will be core to the game, and some others you are going to have to discover on your own.
Beyond the core of what we were doing all those months ago, we have also been forging ahead in everything that supports the core game. From the UI, to the sound FX and the Visual wizbang we are starting to put in, it really is looking like a game.
Forum Discussions and Hints of More to Come
Company review of a milestone build; quest board assets are placeholders!
Last but not least, remember to check in on our forums for narrative hints and more:
https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1876.0
We’ll also be posting mini-updates on our progress every Monday (excluding holidays), so if you’re starved for content, you may find what you’re looking for on our discussion boards.
In Other News…
In case you missed it:
- Square Enix announces its plans for the next Deus Ex game
- Larian Studios’ Divinity Original Sin 2 surpasses 1 million copies sold in 3 months
- This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the original Ultima Underworld; check out an original sales pitch video in honor of #TBT
- Warren Spector was recognized as this year’s Playcrafting Bit Awards’ Game Changer Honoree
- Congratulations to our friends at The Deep End Games for winning PC/Console Game of the Year at the Playcrafting Bit Awards with Perception!
From all of us on the OtherSide, to all of you, we wish you Happy Holidays. Until next time!
Cheers,
The Team at OtherSide
We're thinking about it!
The current plan is to develop only for PC, Mac, and Linux. We're not opposed to console, but those are our priorities.
Morning everyone!! Oh, it's not a Monday, is it? Oops...
ANYWAYS, just wanted to give you all a quick update on what's going on in the office and what's coming up! (Also Happy New Year!)
PaxSouth:
I don't think we've announced this on our public socials yet, but we'll be releasing some new information and screenshots at PaxSouth from January 12-14!You'll see more information on this the week after PaxSouth or so, so keep an eye out for that...
What's Happened since Dec 18 - Now??:
VACATION! (for most of us; some troopers in the office went straight back to work on Dec 26, but we've officially all trickled back into the office as of today).
*Please note, this section contains minor spoilers about monsters and places! Please skip this if you'd like to be surprised!*
For the work that HAS been done, we've plugged in the new Lizardmen models and have been rigging up their new animations. It's always exciting for us to see massive art improvements in the build (especially for the art team), and the Mind Crippler model from the pre-alpha build has been adjusted so it moves less predictably.
Another reason for us being so quiet at the end of the December was wrapping up a big milestone build for 505 before the end of the year. The Design team cranked out 5 expansive level drafts over the course of two months, which the entire team had the chance to review together on the 22nd. Programming and Art pitched suggestions to the design team as we "took a tour" through the levels, and areas were assigned based on where Design needed help. I don't want to say too much about where the levels are, but it was interesting to see how the "tutorial area"/training playground was set up for UA. (I had just played through the first level of Thief 1, so "learning how to play" was still fresh on my mind...)
*Spoiler section over*
This was one of the first times where I, as a junior developer, had the chance to really appreciate how special working at OtherSide is. Chris Siegel has mentioned it before, but it's amazing how much input any member of the team can have on the project and the range of experiences we have in the office. For many of us who have worked in a more corporate game-development environment, it's incredibly freeing to be able to dip your hands into so many different aspects of making the game and not be limited to your "role". (You'd be surprised at how many artists never even SEE how their assets look ingame until very late in production!)
I see you've all been busy on the forums, so I'll be catching up with you on those threads soon! (and checking in with the rest of the team to see if they can answer some of your more pointed questions)
For this week, it's been a lot of PaxSouth preparation and fleshing out on the levels that were presented in December, so we're going to be "heads down" for a bit. We've all been feeling the itch to work after such a nice break, so it's time to take advantage of that!
SNOW:
Apparently there's going to be a HUGE winter storm starting tomorrow for Boston, so we'll all be working from homeStay safe this weekend, everyone!
Joe's currently en route to PaxSouth, so you'll have to wait until next week to hear some more news from us!
Just to give a quick insight to the dev team in Boston, we're getting ready to lock the next milestone build and are testing out a lot of bugs. We added a number of new enemies and areas this time around, so we want to make sure they're all getting along nicely
We were in a private room showing Underworld Ascendant, but you may have seen Paul/Warren/Joe/Walter walking around during breaks! More info will be released this week about what was shown
