Website powered by
IceBathGames
Solo Game Dev
Home
Resume

Lifecycles of the Traveler Spider

Lifecycles of the Traveler Spider is a Sci-Fi, surreal, exploration game set to release this April. The game’s mechanics focus on a “6DOF” traversal system from varying perspectives and scales, built using Unreal Engines flight mechanics. Check it out on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4134330/Lifecycles_of_the_Traveler_Spider/

Lifecycles of the Traveler Spider is my latest project, a Sci-Fi, surreal, exploration game, set to release this April. Here I will be highlighting my process for some of the elements that make up the game.

For this map, lava channels were masked and scaled towards the planet's center. Cliff models were generated along splines for the channel banks. Particles with a refractive sprite material were then painted onto the lava model using the foliage tool.

Most of this project's development time took place in Unreal Engine. Building a set of tools for a lot of the visuals in the project made designing the maps a lot faster and more controlled.

For the foliage, the leaves and rocks were modeled in ZBrush and the trees and grass were made with SpeedTree. Sub-surface scattering is used in many of the materials to give another layer of color.

For the foliage, the leaves and rocks were modeled in ZBrush and the trees and grass were made with SpeedTree. Sub-surface scattering is used in many of the materials to give another layer of color.

Because most of the animations are fairly simple loops, I'm only using IK in my rigs. Each limb has a control at its base that the IK handle is parented under. This control is scaled and rotated per limb to drive the IK handle's position.

The majority of the modeled assets were made from a handful of base models. Instanced models were painted onto a sphere, then merged and re-meshed in ZBrush to make the planet, for example.

The majority of the modeled assets were made from a handful of base models. Instanced models were painted onto a sphere, then merged and re-meshed in ZBrush to make the planet, for example.

This is a material function that gets used on some of the planet surfaces. Height maps for rocks and a sculpted, tiling mask were exported from Zbrush. Those maps were used with the splatter pattern node in Substance Designer to generate the final maps.

This is a material function that gets used on some of the planet surfaces. Height maps for rocks and a sculpted, tiling mask were exported from Zbrush. Those maps were used with the splatter pattern node in Substance Designer to generate the final maps.

Report