Matching Pace
It may not have escaped your notice that it’s been a little quiet around these parts recently. It’s been a slow couple of months for the Starry Expanse Team, a lot of us have been very busy with other commitments that pull us reluctantly away from the project. The first quarter of the year has traditionally been a slow period for us, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected. We anticipate things to start picking up again soon, as they always do!
However, we’ve not been idle these past months! We’ve been focusing on a new development philosophy which we think you’ll really appreciate. In the past, we’ve focused on presenting an island, or a section of an island, for each update. This has allowed us to explore our development pipeline and refine our methods, but it has also been a very slow process. Too slow, if you ask us! Now that we’ve mastered our process, from camera-match to final polish, it’s time for a change of tack.
Since January, we’ve been working on camera-matching everything in Riven. Yes, everything. Our new goal is to have as much of the game as possible playable by Mysterium 2016, albeit untextured and unrefined. This, as always, is an immense challenge – but we’re just as eager as you to see it finished.
March 17th, 2016 at 10:19 am
The hype cannot be contained
March 28th, 2016 at 5:07 pm
The hype has been imprisoned inside a book.
Find the yellow pages to free it
March 17th, 2016 at 10:50 am
Great news. Polishing made a lot of sense before, and roughly hewing makes a lot of sense now. I exist in a happy superposition of hype and patience. I’m excited to follow your progress.
March 17th, 2016 at 6:14 pm
It seems like an intelligently made and important change of tactic. I’m glad to see an update, and I wish you all the best!
March 17th, 2016 at 9:13 pm
Sounds great. I can definitely appreciate this development choice. it seems to make much more sense too from the point of view that you will be able to quickly update assets on the game rather than having to do all the programming as well.
March 18th, 2016 at 10:30 am
Cool! I think a whitebox walkthrough of Riven at Mysterium will be a nice treat. I think seeing something without final art (even if it is whitebox) will be a great show of progress.
Imagine doing a node-based camera system where on a split screen we’re seeing Riven on one side and Starry Expanse on the other. Live (two games running simultaneously). That might be a best show of progress for the game as far as your camera matching goes.
Cheers!
March 18th, 2016 at 1:31 pm
I’m so impressed I don’t have words for it! RealRiven will be ready earlier than I expected! Nice work and good luck!
March 18th, 2016 at 3:12 pm
Wow really cool ! The future can come …
So don’t give up 🙂
March 19th, 2016 at 7:28 am
Great to hear about this change of plans. It’s going to be an exciting year for starry expanse!
March 19th, 2016 at 12:07 pm
Soo… Just curious if you guys are still working on finishing up Gehn’s office and the rest of Age 233?
March 21st, 2016 at 2:09 pm
Finally, i was really hoping you would do that instead, get a playable version, even with just cubes or low poly meshes. That way you will feel much better about your work, and it will also go faster.
Really exited guys!
March 21st, 2016 at 8:54 pm
Plus it’s exactly the way Cyan talked about doing for Obduction, so… industry approved method!
April 4th, 2016 at 11:30 am
Keep up the good work!
April 4th, 2016 at 7:05 pm
Temple Island at last !! 🙂
April 12th, 2016 at 8:08 pm
You guys don’t have time pressures that big gaming companies have (only us fans!). So thanks for the update and please continue perfecting this game. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for us!
April 13th, 2016 at 3:36 am
So how much have you got to camera match, what sort of percentage?
April 14th, 2016 at 7:20 pm
Sounds like an awesome plan. Can’t wait. You guys are doing an amazing job!
April 18th, 2016 at 12:09 am
So question, in the first image up there, there are the cameras obviously (I’m fascinated by the fact that most of the directly opposing views are not taken from the same point), but what are all the red empties for? I assumed they were clickpoints, but then there are all of the ones on the mountain as well.
April 18th, 2016 at 10:17 pm
The empties are actually details that are visible from more than one camera angle. These are things like rocks or plants, or even recognizable patterns in textures. We place a point on a detail from one camera, then adjust its location to match its position from another camera. The more angles it’s visible from, the more accurate you can get its placement.
Once we have a cloud of these points, it becomes very easy to create geometry that fits the points – geometry that is now highly accurate to the original models!