GRAVEN News

Steam Game Festival 2021: Graven hands-on preview

Developed by Slipgate Ironworks, Graven is a throwback to old-school action games like Doom, Hexen, and Duke Nukem 3D. It’s a fun idea that offers a fairly smooth execution all while capturing the nostalgia that gave those original games such an iconic look and feel.

Starting out in the demo, Graven can leave you very confused. The game offers no real clue as to why you’re here or even what you’re supposed to do. Vague prompts push you forward, and at times it can be a little frustrating to figure out what you’re supposed to do. This is very reminiscent of older games, which never really held your hand as you worked your way through them.

There are no prompts for actions, which means you’re going to find yourself just running up to different NPCs and spamming the interact button to see if they have some kind of quest for you. Despite these quests, the game does seem to follow a more linear story, though that could change in future versions, or even in later parts of the campaign.

Combat is a big part of the gameplay showcased in the demo, though Slipgate did mention to us that the game will aim to offer a more immersive sim experience in the final versions. For now, though, what we have in front of us is a really solid addition to the throwback action games we’ve seen popping up in recent years.

The use of your staff and the expandable magical spell book that you add to as you progress work well together, offering you ways to blow up explosive barrels with fire magic, or to shock and stun enemies using lightning. There are also other spells I’m sure you’ll be able to get your hands on, though these are the only two that I came across during my time with the demo.

If you love the graphics of old-school FPS games, and the bloody gibs that highlighted their combat, then you’re going to find plenty of that on display here. Movement is frantic, with the sprint allowing players to maneuver very quickly through the various levels. The hits on enemies feel chunky, though playing at higher mouse sensitivities can make it a bit tougher to nail those headshots, which really get the blood gushing.

Much like the older games that it is inspired by, Graven features various puzzles for players to solve. In the short time that I had with it, I came across at least three different puzzles, which all tasked players with exploring the environment and finding solutions to the problems laid out before them. Sure, some extra context to those problems would have been nice, but I also can’t blame the developers for embracing that less hand-holding nature of old-school games.

What’s on display right now is really quite good. The blend of magic and melee with the other tools you can get your hands on—you can even get a crossbow that looks like it belongs in an Assassin’s Creed game—all work so well together, allowing you to mix and match in combat with ease. I’m intrigued to see how the developers intend to make it feel more like an immersive sim, but I’d be more than happy with a full game that offers the same type of content as the demo currently does.

This preview is based on a demo code provided by the developer. Graven is available as a limited time demo in the 2021 Steam Games Festival.

GRAVEN Demo will be available during the Steam Game Festival!

Greetings traveler!

The next Steam Game Festival is around the corner! We are happy to announce that the GRAVEN demo will be once again be available during this time. From February 3rd to February 9th you will have the opportunity to once again step into the shoes of the priest and experience the world of GRAVEN first hand!

GRAVEN Dev Blog #4 - Making Procedural Pixel Textures for GRAVEN

My name is Ben Hale, and I’m a texture artist on GRAVEN. I currently work full time at ILMxLab making Star Wars VR games, and have had the pleasure to work on GRAVEN during my spare time and weekends.

This is not a tutorial, but a bit of a peek into my workflow.

I make every texture in GRAVEN inside of Substance Designer, a powerful node-based tool specifically designed for generating tiling textures. Even though Substance is intended for current-gen PBR materials, it’s surprisingly useful for chunky pixel art or retro diffuse textures.
You might think “wouldn’t painting in photoshop be easier?” Sure, it’d be easier if I only needed to do something exactly once. Thus far I’ve made about 500 textures for GRAVEN in only a few months, and that time can add up remarkably fast even with batch scripts or a solid painting pipeline.

You only have to do something once in Substance, and with some parameterization you can turn that one something into a tool to create many more. I’ve made several tools for GRAVEN that enable me to work modularly, and create textures in minutes rather than hours or days. Though making these tools in the first place was a time commitment, in the long run I’ve saved several months of labor.

I start a lot of graphs with a simple pattern like this:

From here, I can derive a lot of information, such as edges, which I can generate individual islands from, which I can turn into random gradients….

And after layering enough random gradients at different angles and intensities, I can get some lovely large rocky shapes, blend some additional rocky height into it, chop off the tops with some levels…

We’re getting something resembling a brick wall.

Here’s a gif of the whole thing through:

And here’s what that graph looks like, mmmm mmm spaghetti!

It’s worth mentioning that I don’t work blind with just the grayscale height trying to imagine the output, I have a 3d preview while I work.

You’ll notice that I have some OUTPUTs in there, those will come in handy for the next phase: color!

For the sake of brevity, here’s what the color part of the graph looks like:

To explain, I’m taking the height I made earlier, and some of the masks and other outputs I made, and using that information to create gradients, drips, color variation, grunge, edge wear, and dirt. Here’s a gif of what that looks like:

At this point, things diverge from a current-gen PBR workflow: I bake in the lighting. Using the green channel of a normal map I generate from the height, I can mask out the tops and bottoms of the bricks using 2 histogram select nodes. I then use those as masks to blend in a top light color, and a bottom shadow color, with a bit of ambient occlusion on top.

And to scale it down to retro size? This is possibly the laziest part of the whole thing, but the results can’t be argued with. I just down-sample it to 512 or 256, give it a light sharpen filter, a pat on the back, and send it on it’s way.

Okay, so you might be thinking “Ben, this is the most dull and arduous way to make a brick wall texture I’ve ever seen, why don’t you just paint it in photoshop like a normal person?”

Ahh you see, here’s where the magic starts. Remember that first pattern we started with? What if we just swapped to a different one?

Instant results, new texture, minimal effort. Remember, I only had to do the work once.

I can do more. I’ve separated the height and color into separate graphs with inputs and outputs, look how clean that is now!

And I’ve parameterized several functions in these graphs to allow me to edit things like brick damage, grout height, brick color, drip length, lighting intensity ect. From 2 graphs, I can make infinite brick textures of all kinds.

As I’ve worked on Graven, I’ve created many tools like these two. I find myself using them interchangeably to do surprising things, such as making a bookshelf!

Substance Designer has transformed the way I work forever, it’s enabled me to be more productive and inventive than I ever have been in my career. I highly recommend the software to anyone looking to improve their texturing, or to start for the first time!

Thanks for reading!

Written by Ben Hale.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371690/GRAVEN/

GRAVEN - Art sneak peek: Crossbow

Thwipthwipthwip "Ouch ouch ouch"
[h2]"Delicately arranged crystals are loosed in threes, making short work of weak points in armor, and with some effort, against foes out of line of sight."[/h2]

WRATH: Aeon of Ruin Content Update #3 is now availible!

Greetings mortal! We are back with a third major Content Update and there's a lot new stuff for all of you to enjoy, explore and exterminate!

This update brings in a brand new level called The Hollow - a forest choked with ancient trees and forgotten ruins. Delve into the heart of the long-corrupted woods and discover the new Trinket of Deflection, an Artifact that summons an arcane shield. Activate the Trinket of Deflection in emergencies to ward off enemy projectiles or go on the offensive and unleash bullets, bones, and blood. But beware the Lurker, a new aquatic abomination waiting in the depths.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1000410/WRATH_Aeon_of_Ruin/