Project Existence - Multiplayer Sandbox News

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since we’ve released an update and we’re well aware that Project Existence has been quiet (and slightly broken) for a bit. That might sound like a negative thing, but for us it’s quite the opposite!

For those of you who have been with us for a while, you might know that Project Existence is our studio’s way of exploring new ideas and testing out what we’re working on in a live environment. Some of you might shake your head at us for having the prototype available on Steam, and others might find it interesting to follow us and see how the world evolves.

Either way, Project Existence is extremely valuable to us as a team, since it allows us to validate our work early on in the development process. For the past few months, our artists have been hard at work on realizing the game’s art style and visual language, and we have a ton of concept art coming through the pipeline! We’re excited to soon be able to share the results with you all.

But enough rambling!

The point of this post is to tell you we’re slowly going back to more frequent updates to Project Existence, implementing new features and mechanics for you all to try out! Our first priority is to stabilize the current build of the game and slowly introduce new features as we move closer to a larger update that we have planned.

We’ve just released a patch with some optimization and bug fixes:

• New assets for resources. I didn’t think these trees could look any better!
  
• Added some new points-of-interest in the world. Textures might be missing.
  
• Implemented fast travel so you can easily get between places (for now)
  
• Laid the groundwork for a new mission system
  
• Players' state is now persisted, so your location and inventory is saved for when you log back in
  
• Fixed a bug that caused invisible assets to spawn
  

In the coming weeks, we’ll be improving the missions system, but for now it pretty much looks like a debug menu. See if you can find and complete the current mission we have implemented!

That’s all for now! We have more stuff coming very soon, so be sure to join us on Discord to stay updated.

We’ve released a new update, focusing on the visual aspects of our game world along with some new and/or improved features!

Project Existence has always been a sort of development sandbox for us to test out the things we are working on, and explore ideas we have for our upcoming game.

For the past few months, we’ve been focused on testing our landscape simulation technology, and we’re happy with where it is right now. That’s why we want to start focusing more on the gameplay aspects, but more importantly, focus on fleshing out the world we are creating!

What this update includes is still a work in progress! I want to emphasize that Project Existence is not supposed to be a fully fledged game, but more so a world that evolves and changes over time as we take new ideas and inspiration to create something fun and interesting (at least in our opinion).

[h2]What’s new in Project Existence:[/h2]

• Added actual, good looking UI! Or I mean, I think it looks great. Players should now have a better idea of what they can do in the world, but be aware that some elements are still placeholders.
  
• We’re reintroducing player settlements to the game, in the form of a tiny little tent. This will continue to evolve as we go on, but for now, go find a nice camping spot and enjoy yourself!
  
• “Improved” harvesting logic. Harvesting didn’t work at all, and now it almost does! When harvesting rocks, players now get a randomly generated number of “units” into their backpack, that they can then load into their settlement container.
  
• Implemented a new character model. Look how cool everyone is! This is only the first iteration of our character design, but expect to see more interesting equipment and outfits added in the future.
  
• Added a blockout of a Social Hub / Settlement area. We added this in order to show the potential of what player settlements can become, so imagine starting with your little tent and ending up with a massive factory after grinding for who knows how long. Fun stuff right?
  
• Better looking trees! Remember the old ones? We’re still working on making these harvestable, but for now they at least look good.
  
• Improved landscape rendering and the environment mood - now with snow!
  

With the summer holidays finishing up soon, we’re excited to continue improving and evolving Project Existence! We have a lot more exciting things lined up and in development that we can share with you very soon.

Be sure to join us on Discord for the latest updates, or if you just want to chat with us!

It’s time for a new dev blog - and this time it’s all about the visuals!

Our team has grown quite a bit since our last update, with three talented artists joining our creative team last month.

After releasing the Valley of Sand update to Project Existence, we wanted to focus more on the art aspects of the game and continue evolving that visual narrative. In this post, I wanted to dive a bit deeper into what we’ve been working on, how the process has been, and show a bit of what you can expect to see soon in our live prototype.

[h2]Let’s start with our vehicle asset.[/h2]

We previously had created some 3D models in order to explore the visual style that we wanted to go for. One of these assets was the RTV truck, and while this solidified the design we had in mind, we wanted to iterate on it and improve the quality of the model.

Enter our new environment artist, Alexander!

The workflow we used was really old fashioned, so the in-game asset itself was using a lot of memory. Although it was using 4k textures, a lot of objects on the vehicle lost all of its detail, and the final asset looked blurry when up close.



Alexander brought a lot of very efficient new ways to the workflow, and after a lot of cleaning up and polishing the model, we ended up with a more crisp texture besides the file size being eight times smaller!

The solution involved using tiling textures and decals at a lower resolution, baking masks for the entire vehicle to introduce grime and scratches that can be controlled with parameters, and increasing the triangles for edge highlights.

The old model was using 16 individual 4k textures and had around 60k triangles, while the new model has around 92k triangles but uses:

• Three tileable painted metal texture in 1k
  
• Three decal normals texture in 1k
  
• One decal stickers texture in 2k
  
• Two scratch/grime texture in 1k
  
• Two tileable pattern texture in 256
  
• One unique mesh mask in 2k
  

The results are like night and day!

This way is much cheaper while the quality of the textures are sharper. All of the new textures can also be instanced on other vehicles and objects which will let us keep a higher and consistent visual across the entire game, plus saving us the time from having to uniquely create textures for each and every object!

[h2]Designing the Character[/h2]

We’ve been doing a lot of exploration when it comes to the design of the playable character. The art style we are aiming for is a hopeful second dawn for humanity. After a catastrophic event, humans have been forced to live in extreme shelter for a long time, and are finally returning to the surface to explore and rebuild.

The world is hostile, with extreme weather conditions and harsh environments, so it was important that the character’s clothing and equipment would reflect that. The current state of the landscape and environment is very bleak and lifeless, with snow and sand stretching out as far as the eye can see.



To introduce some contrast, we wanted the characters and the things they build and make to be very colorful and bring more life to the world.

For the base layer, the idea was to design a futuristic, but simple utility outfit that serves as the clothing worn when not in hazardous environments. This would also be worn underneath the more protective gear, and provide extra protection.



The second layer is what you will be seeing in Project Existence - the Exosuit. The main purpose of the suit is to function as protection against extreme weather conditions as well as serving as an underlayer for additional equipment.

The connectors at the hips, knees, shoulders and elbows allow the attachment of armor pieces or an exoskeleton, while the large plug on the back is for a detachable backpack.



We're super happy with how everything is turning out.

We'll be releasing a new update to Project Existence this Friday (July 2nd) where you'll be able to see the new vehicle and character in-game! Another WIP that will be added this update is a new settlement mode and resource harvesting, along with a first iteration of a Social Hub area, with outlines of buildings and factories that players will be able to use in the future.

Be sure to join the Discord for more news and updates!

[h2]The Valley of Sand is here![/h2]

This update brings a lot of changes to Project Existence and should give an idea of the direction we’re going to as we move forward.

We consider this to be the start of phase two of development here at the studio, and to kick things off, we’ve completely overhauled the graphics and introduced a massive new world level to the prototype.



In the coming weeks, you can expect to see new features implemented as we continue to flesh out the world and explore new ideas!

Here’s some of the features and things you can do in the most recent update:

• Walk around (very slowly), sprint and even jump!
  
• Left clicking on an element brings up a context menu that lists the different actions that are available
  
• Actions that are currently enabled are harvest (blow up) rocks and trees and place down structures in the world

Check out the update, let us know what you think and be sure to join us on Discord for any news and updates from the team!

Hey everyone!

It feels like it's been forever since we put out a development update, so here goes.

Somehow, we're already halfway through March! Time flies when you're completely overhauling the graphics and working on large features having fun.


Our studio started with an ambitious idea for taking the MMO genre to the next level. This idea is what we call Annex (a working title), a massively multiplayer game focused on exploration, manufacturing and collaboration. When we started development, we had so many cool and exciting ideas that we wanted to put in front of players as quickly as possible!

This led to the creation of our prototype, Project Existence. Making it available through Steam had us motivated to constantly implement new stuff to try out and test, and having real player engagement was just the icing on the cake.

These past few months we’ve been in phase 1 of development. By having the prototype public so early on, we’ve encountered (and fixed!) issues that we probably wouldn’t have ran into until months later had we kept everything internal, which has been extremely valuable to us as a team. It’s also been an absolute blast growing our community and getting players involved in what we’re doing, and we can’t wait to continue doing just that.


Ok Ólöf, that’s cool and all, but where are you going with this?


I’m here to let you know that phase 1 is over, and we’re moving into phase 2. We feel that it’s the perfect time to take the next step, and want to start by giving everyone a glimpse of what the grand vision is. How exciting!

Phase 1 Project Existence is very different (visually, at least) from what we have planned for Annex. We’re a small team, so things like graphical assets, 3D models and animations weren’t high on the priority list in the beginning. As much as we love the low poly stuff we’ve shown so far, it doesn’t really fit what we want Annex to be.

At first, we thought people would “get” that Project Existence was a prototype, but it turned out that the gameplay was actually interesting enough that people thought it was a real game set in a weird 50s suburban fantasyland where the main protagonist worked at a diner.

So, with phase 2, we’re going to be focusing on visual assets and start creating the atmosphere and vibe we want Annex to give off. What you’ll be seeing in the next update is an introduction to Annex, the first step in filling in the gap between the prototype and our vision.

We’ve started to work with artists to create 3D models and assets that showcase what we have in mind for the world, while the game world itself is being completely overhauled with new graphics and landscape!

An example of an in-game vehicle model


Our next update will feature a demo mission that serves as an introduction to Annex. Set in a world where humanity has had to survive underground for centuries after a catastrophic event led to the surface becoming uninhabitable, the demo is a vignette into the mysterious history and current state of the world.

The underground's leaders have put together a mission that players will take part in. It's simple - head to the surface, gather intel and resources, and try to make it back alive.

Are you excited yet???

This first glimpse of what Annex will be is a first of many, and we plan on bringing more content and features into the prototype very soon. And yes, don’t worry, manufacturing and base building will come back… someday…


On the more technical side, we've been working on GenOS (previously called Landmass) - which is our own terraforming and simulation technology. It has to do with how the game world is created and how players can interact with different elements like resources and the environment, as well as how the environment reacts to player actions which will be really fun to see in action.

The first iteration of this was implemented to Project Existence with our "Ice World" update back in December, and the next version will have a lot more depth to it. The landscape you'll see in the new update is actually created from a real place in Iceland. The technology uses DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data generated from satellite images as the basis for simulating real environments, so get ready to roam around an actual Icelandic glacier!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Here you can see a bit behind the scenes of how the new landscape was created



Finally, we're working on the first iteration of combat mechanics. This will introduce weapons, controllable units (including a dog!), automated turrets, defences and vehicles. We're currently testing these new mechanics internally in order to optimize and finetune it.

As we get the technical stuff done, the second part of this feature is the visuals. Like I've mentioned, we're implementing new graphics and models, so in order to keep a consistent look and feel of the prototype moving forward we'll have to take a bit more time before we feel that it's ready to go live for players to try out.

You might see some of the mechanics in action in the demo, but I'm not going to make any promises yet!


Alright - that's it for this dev update. Expect to see more details, teasers and information soon. Oh, and if you haven't already, be sure to join us on Discord!


Until next time,

Ólöf

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