Neyyah News

Hey everyone! Hope you're all keeping well ... Prepping yourselves for entering the portal to Neyyah ...

While the engines warm up, symbols are being created. Special symbols. Symbols galore, in Neyyah. However, I'm not going to say much about them, other than they are very fun to create.

Here's an example of the process!

1. I take the texture in which any symbol may appear within the game - the material it needs to be imbedded on! In this instance, it's a metal plate. I focus on the device in which the plate is fixed to (where the symbol / s will apear) and render a close up of this plate.

plate render - raw / unedited

2. I then bring this into Photoshop, ready for symbol art to be imbedded onto!

3. The symbols themselves are created on paper, drawn with pencil, then when I'm happy with the design, I will run over it with a fine liner black pen.

raw drawing edited drawing in Photoshop

4. The metal plate from the render I previously showed is then cropped, as I only need to work with the metal. I can place the symbols on top of this, and merge them into the image using Photoshop:


5. Now I have the symbol set in place, I can edit the entire texture as a whole in Photoshop!


6. Before long, I now have my finished symbol plaque in Blender, ready for renders! Ready for the game :)
Console with the new symbol plaque applied

So this is just one example of how certain elements of the game have to be created by hand then digitised to be able to work within the renders, and eventually the game itself!

Hope you enjoyed a different view into the graphical world of Neyyah!
Have a great week guys!
- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Today is my 'background' day. Sundays usually run like this for me - where I might be doing some odd engine work, odd modelling work (maybe texture designs, or animation fix ups in the engine - the smaller jobs). This day also includes getting into my Patreon work and, of course, the Steam page updates!

I have also finished stitching together and publishing a new dev log to my Youtube channel, which you can watch here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
SATELLITE FUN IN BLENDER - plus sneak peek into build!

Work continues nicely in Blender. Again, I've been roaming the realms of Blender now for about a month roughly, after having lived in the Visionaire Studio 5 game engine world for a while. Revamps to a set I'd created in 2018 are coming along VERY nicely! Some really awesome updates, design choices and evolutions compared to the previous set from 2018.

Recent satellite design for the environment I'm focussing on currently

Blender is where it all started for Neyyah. I used to use another software called Anim8or (www.anim8or.com) - that's where I picked up 3D modelling in my teens, and much later, picked up Blender in 2018. The rendering results blew me away, so I knew I had to use this for Ne... Well. Not Neyyah. It was another game I was developing beforehand, and Neyyah took charge! Neyyah came about in July 2018, very soon after picking up the basics of Blender.

While my work in 2018 / 2019 was cool, the upgrade in hardware here at Defy Reality Entertainment, and the progress and evolution in my work flow that continued from this point, pushed Neyyah to other levels, raised the bar in the visuals - in various ways!

2018 artwork / rendered in 2021 for the Felitsu Island Walkway test build

While the graphics remained beautiful (using action lists I'd created in Photoshop), the actual model elements, and some of the texture art, lacked the detail in which I'd been working with through 2020 onwards. Neyyah's world evolves during development, and I think it's important to let a game world breathe in this way, and grow.

Recent revamp work on the same scene as above! The models have been redesigned to fit Neyyah's more recent aesthetic style

There'll be many other alterations / variations in Neyyah's environment design along the rest of the development journey ahead. However, it's important to keep a coherent feel throughout, and this established through having core cultural flavours within Neyyah's world. Some of these are minute, while others are very obvious, but it all comes down to one thing: telling story within the world. Reflecting the characters within the game through the world design. This is very important, especially if characters don't appear too much within the gameplay!

Another area of this particular scene that I have revamped recently is a 'forcefield' ring, which also featured prominently in the Felitsu Island Walkway test build playthrough from a year ago - available to watch here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
While I was happy with the look of the ring, it still didn't fit with how much Neyyah has grown since, in its environmental style and how the story had evolved since to push this artistic bar higher.
So, from this ...
the 2018 original forcefield ring - this render created in 2021 for last year's test build (link above for the gameplay video)
To this ...
The new forcefield ring, created recently

I think one of the biggest evolutions in Neyyah's environmental design is the inclusion of terrain. Aroudn 2020, I started experimenting more with terrain and foliage, which delivered a nice contrast to the otherwise steampunky, mechanical theme I had set for Neyyah's foundations. I think over time this became more balanced, and the new revamp on this set will definitely show this!

Feel free to have a watch of last week's dev log video too, which shows another example of taking what I'd created in 2018 and bringing it to the current Neyyah game screen:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hope you enjoyed this dev update, fellow Neyyah adventurers!
Thanks for having a look, and if you like what you see on the Youtube dev logs, please like, subscribe, comment and stay tuned for more dev logs coming soon!

- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment

Hey everyone! Happy weekend! Sunday today - a day of getting behind the scenes material done for Neyyah mainly, some odd jobs in the engine, setting up various states in Neyyah's environments ready for rendering, as well as editing a dev log from Tuesday just gone. I do have a dev log which I'll be sharing here in this post, delving into the realm of Blender ...

Finished doorway area - render test

It's been great getting back into 3D modelling over the last couple of weeks, after having been working in Visionaire for pretty much a month straight (getting lots of things into the game) but it's never the same as working in Blender and actually creating the worlds for Neyyah. It's where my deepest passions lie: modelling out the exterior and interior sets; the texturing, the lighting (working in Photoshop, etc).

Feel free to take a look into my work with Photoshop in this dev log on Youtube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Doorways, gates, etc ... They play a cool role in the world of Neyyah, and definitely symbolise that element of intrigue, of mystery. What lies on the other side? Can you even open the door straight away? Do you even really need to, right now?

Interestingly, doorways are designed in Neyyah to keep a coherent look through the game world. So for instance, in the following dev log which shows my work in designing a new doorway for Neyyah, I do take elements of previous assets I've created, but tweak them to stay unique for the location they're being designed for. This could include weather conditions, or just a general change in scenery and possibly history behind the design of the door (the cultural aspects: why it was designed the way it was).

Here is my most recent devlog on designing a doorway in Blender, the process behind getting it set up within the rest of the scene, and incorporating some previous assets I've created for Neyyah already!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thanks for teleporting into this portal of dev goodness and catch you in the next portal, coming soon!

- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment

Hey everyone! Hope you've all had a wonderful weekend :)

I will be delving back into 3D modelling for a good while - at least for the whole of May, jumping out of engine work. It's been fantastic working on so much animation based developments recently, generating different animations to play at various states of the game, depending on what the player has changed within the environment ... Seeing it all come together has been magical, along with simple animations such as doors opening / closing and some cool journey mode transition animation sequences too! I might also be adding a feature to Journey Mode, where you can have these transitions play at either normal or fast speeds.

A great game developed by Cryo in 1996 called Dragon Lore II: Heart of the Dragon Man was full of prerendered movement transitions whenever you turned right / left, moved forward etc (no wonder it was released as a 3 CD-rom version for PC back in the day). This game has influenced Neyyah in a few ways, including the prerendered fmv movements. Whenever you had an animated transition play, you could speed it up by pressing on spacebar. This is something which could be brought into Neyyah, or perhaps by simply having a setting within the Options menu. There will be some experimentation down the line, for sure.

Feel free to watch a playthrough of Dragon Lore II here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]











A lot of my recent work has consisted of not only implementing animations into the engine (the open GL drafts temporarily, before rendering them out fully) but also setting up a system which enables the player to skip animations - most of them, anyway.

Screenshot from Visionaire Studio 5

Very short animations won't require a skip so much, but the longer ones will (and again, it all comes down to personal preference.) If desired, this skip feature will enable the player to get around a lot quicker in the game, along with other features such as Faster Travel, disabling Journey Mode, and disabling transitions too.

Feel free to watch my recent dev log where I delve into setting up the skip animation method within Visionaire Studio 5:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So far, the skip option is implemented through a left click anywhere on the screen while an animation is playing. The same goes for Journey Mode animations, which tend to fade away and reveal the next scene (point B of the transition).

Button magic ...

However, if you wish to enjoy Neyyah at its fullest and indulge your love for FMVs, this game will conjure up an abundance of cool animations - from doors being opened, levers being pulled, buttons being pressed, and ... Well, I'll leave the rest for you to discover yourselves! ;)

Have a great week ahead guys, and catch you on the next dev log!

Don't forget to like and subscribe to my Youtube for upcoming dev logs, revealing the journey of Neyyah's game dev progression! https://www.youtube.com/c/AaronGwynaireGameDev

- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment

Neyyah is a very large scale project! It's not just one small island that you look around and solve puzzles that are like rubix cubes, scattered around the place ... It's a very real-feeling, large, complex world, which plays in a very non-linear way.



As such, a lot of time goes into building these sets, and rendering out these scenes is one of the most time consuming areas of development for Neyyah! Fortunately, I run two powerful Ryzen machines, both pumped with 64gb RAM, and they tackle the rendering exceedingly well ... but they are still pushed, due to the detail I have created in the environments, and the amount of renders needed for the game.

Luckily, I have come across a few helpful techniques to speed up the overall scene renders for Neyyah - for exterior and interior shots, thanks to the help of fellow Blender user Zachary Macintyre, who also helped out with getting the ocean look for Neyyah where it is today and also assisted with horizon line atmospherics too! You can check out his youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/StaticPhotons



So I have just recently returned to a set for Neyyah which was still in development last April! A whole year later, I am finally delving into the final renders for this scene ... and thanks to Zach's advice, this set can be rendered out a lot faster than originally thought possible. It's a very detailed area, due to the level of detail I added into the set ... It's a hit and miss experience with creating the worlds for Neyyah. Since designing this set, I have learned when enough is enough, and this has sped up development considerably in the 3D modelling department, but looking back at this set, coming to life before my eyes within the magical window of Blender's cycles rendering engine, then being processed within Photoshop, it's so rewarding to see the time and effort spent on creating this place come together after so long!


Raw Blender render


Edited render within Photoshop

Feel free to watch my devlog on how I bring the raw renders to life using Photoshop:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Seeing renders come to life after a long period of having created sets feels new and refreshing for myself, and I look forward to bringing this same level of excitement to you fellow adventurers as well, before you start packing your bags and setting forth into the portal that will await you upon Neyyah's release!

- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment