Phantom Fury News

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The wait is over.

Phantom Fury, Slipgate Ironworks and 3D Realms' newest entry in the universe of Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison is out now!


Several years after the events of Ion Fury, Shelly returns for an explosive new adventure. Now sporting a deadly bionic arm, Shelly embarks on a dangerous hunt to find the Demon Core — a lethal artifact with unfathomable destructive power. Stop at nothing to unearth every clue possible and prevent the artifact from falling into deadly hands.

Sprint through the streets of Chicago or kick up dust in Albuquerque on a rip-roaring road trip across the United States. With an arsenal of more than 20 weapons, mow down hordes of oncoming enemies in style. Fast-paced mechanics with retro inspirations meld together for a riveting FPS adventure.

Shelly’s bionic arm offers a range of combat abilities and enhancements, encouraging creative solutions to combat encounters against hellish cyborgs, grotesque mutants, and super-enhanced soldiers. Raise an impenetrable shield to prevent damage, or paralyze enemies with a shock-inducing melee attack. Alongside her bionic arm, Shelly can toggle between powerful weapons, including Ion Fury’s fan-favorite Loverboy Revolver, Motherflafkker shotgun, and more.

Engage in adrenaline-fueled sequences straight out of an action film. Charge through the skies in high-stakes helicopter showdowns, avoiding deadly fire and raining bombs down on foes. Take down vicious bosses, and do what it takes to reach the Demon Core. Prevent a cataclysmic event by preventing the enemy from getting their hands on the deadly artifact.

Phantom Fury is available now on PC for $24.99 with a 10% launch discount during the first week, with console versions available on May 30th this year.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/

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Hey folks!

As you all know we're rapidly approaching our PC launch date of April 23rd, but we didn't want to make you wait to see a bit more. So we grabbed our resident bearded nerd Jared Bair to make a short video that will serve as an introduction to the world of Phantom Fury.

This addresses questions like:

1. How is this related to Ion Fury?
   
2. What are the inspirations for Phantom Fury?
   
3. Is Phantom Fury coming to consoles?
   
4. Can Jared read a script?
   

And I'm sure a few more.

So thank you for your support of Phantom Fury and we'll see you on April 23rd, 2024.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/

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Greetings everyone!

We are thrilled to announce that Phantom Fury will launch on PC on April 23rd, 2024!

As revealed during The Mix x Kinda Funny Spring Showcase, the time has come for Shelly's triumphant return! Dive straight into the action in this road trip-inspired shooter adventure across the United States and help her track down a deadly artifact called the Demon Core.

Additionally, fans that will attend PAX East will have the chance to get a quick taste of the Crater Bar level on March 21-24, 2024 at Booth #18019. So if you see us there, make sure to tag us here, here or here.

We appreciate your patience during this development process and we look forward to bringing Phantom Fury to you on April 23rd.

See you at launch.

Hey there! I'm Gustaw Mackay, a 3D artist working on Phantom Fury. My focus on Phantom Fury is creating weapons and vehicles in the game, I've also had the chance to work on larger environmental elements and smaller props. In this dev blog, I'll take you through the journey of creating the in-game Minigun model, including all the different design iterations it went through. So, let's dive in and explore the exciting process behind bringing this powerful weapon to life!



Creating concept art is the first step in developing an important asset like the minigun. In our team, concept artists collaborate with everyone and gather feedback from all team members. They usually sketch multiple ideas, and one is chosen and refined through several iterations before the modeling process starts.

The concept artist created four different variations of the Minigun, and the team discussed and voted on which one they thought was the best. In the end, they decided to combine the barrels from variation A with those from variation C in order to create a big and powerful weapon with a strong visual impact in the first-person perspective.

Minigun sketch variations by Richard

Building upon the feedback provided, the artist then proceeded to refine and enhance the initial concept by incorporating colors and shading, resulting in the finalized concept.

Minigun concept art by Richard



With this concept in mind, I crafted the base mesh for the minigun using Blender. Starting with a simple silhouette.

While I was working on the model, I noticed a few functional problems with the design that could cause issues for animators later on. The rear handle was positioned too low and too straight, making it difficult for someone to reach if they needed to carry it. Additionally, the ammo box was at a different level than the rest of the gun, so it couldn't lie flat on a surface. Lastly, the front brackets were too small to fit the rotating triangular barrels.

During the modeling phase, it is very common that functional issues pop up which may impact the asset's usability or animation. A lot of strange things can happen in the transition from a 2D image to a 3D model. Something that looks awesome on paper might end up looking a little wonky in 3D. This is not something that is a reflection of the the concept artist’s abilities, it's just part of the back-and-forth process we go through to make things right.

I made some notes to highlight my feedback and discussed them with the concept artist and the team. Eventually, we found a solution to address these issues, moving as well as removing the problematic aspects of the weapon.



As we're going for a low-poly look, I hold off on adding too minor details until I’m in the texturing phase. So, when it comes to the modeling part, my main focus is on nailing down those basic shapes without getting bogged down in the small stuff.

In this phase I really like to think a lot about shape language. I’m a big fan of older games because they have a really strong use of shape language. Games like Crash Bandicoot and the Warcraft series have shapes that are extremely exaggerated in order to produce something that's super memorable and interesting to look at for the eyes. The same goes for classic FPS games – those guns in Duke Nukem are massive! So, for me, it's not about making things super realistic; but rather creating something memorable.

Final model with the design changes.


The next step in the process is UV unwrapping (everyone’s least favorite) where you create a 2D canvas for applying textures to your 3D model's surface. When it comes to UV mapping, it's essential to carefully plan how to avoid texture distortion and make the most of the available texture space. This task is extra quite tricky for our project, since when dealing with pixelated textures, as you must ensure that every pixel fits neatly within the boundaries of the UV Islands, which are those cutout sections you see in the image here.

UV Map of the Minigun.



Now comes my favorite part – particularly texture painting. After completing the unwrapping phase, I import my model into 3DCoat, a 3D software that functions much like Photoshop, but with the feature of allowing you to paint directly on the model. It's incredibly convenient.

In games that aim for a more realistic art style, you often work with various texture maps, such as albedo maps, normal maps, and roughness maps, among others. These maps help simulate lighting, define materials, and even create the illusion of lighting on details that might not even exist in the model. But for our game, we're taking the old-school approach, where we bake and paint all the lighting and materials directly into the texture.

Before I start painting, I create an ambient occlusion texture, which adds some basic shadows and saves me time. Then, I start with the base colors, giving each part its own color. When it comes to lighting, I try to imagine it coming from the top right, but I don't stress too much about it. If it feels right and looks good, I'm not overly concerned with the technical details.

After adding base colors I add in the basics of the lighting.


Model with AO map.

In addition to the base colors, I apply basic lighting by shading the angled sides and tops of the weapon. At this stage, it is crucial to consider the values, which refers to the relationship between the dark and light areas. If the values are not correct, the texture will look off, regardless of how well everything else is done.

The relationship between black and white is fundamental in determining the appearance of a material. Shiny metal exhibits a high value contrast, with deep blacks and pure whites. On the other hand, materials like leather or brushed metal tend to have various shades of grey.

Quick and dirty demonstration of light values.

After I'm happy with the overall lighting and shading, I add layers for rust, scratches, and other weathering effects. At this point, I think about how the weapon has been used and which parts would be most likely to get damaged and worn.

One issue I had with the weapon was the rotating barrels. If I painted lighting on them, it would rotate along with barrels, which would look pretty strange. So, I had to make sure that all sides of the barrels had the same brightness, which meant I couldn't add as much detail as I wanted. But luckily there are lights in the game that will handle that for me, so it’s all good.

How rotating barrels would look if they had light.

After painting for a good while, I end up with the final result, and here it is!







Designing the Minigun for Phantom Fury was not an easy task. It went through many changes and design iterations before it made its way into the game. From the game designer to the concept artist, the 3D artist, the animator, the sound designer, the VFX artist, the programmer, everyone had a hand in shaping the final version.

And that concludes our journey through the process of creating the Minigun for Phantom Fury. I hope you found this dev log informative and enjoyed a peek into the world of 3D modeling and texturing. Stay tuned for more updates and behind-the-scenes insights as we continue working on bringing this exciting game to life. Thank you for your support, and we can't wait to see you in action with the Minigun when the game launches!

It has been a bit over a week since Realms Deep ended, and we feel that now is the perfect time to thank you all for checking out the Phantom Fury demo! We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to play it and share your feedback and thoughts with our team. Rest assured, the feedback we’ve received from the community will be instrumental in the further development of the game.



We will keep the demo up on Steam until tomorrow Tuesday @8 AM PT / 5 PM CEST, as this was intended as a special drop for Realms Deep only. The primary goal of the demo was to solicit feedback from the community as well as to display what we have been working on. You have all been gracious in your appraisal and accurate in your criticism and the team is taking both of these factors to heart and working to implement this feedback to secure the highest-quality product. Below is a list of key takeaways from the feedback we have selected. Some of the highlighted issues, as listed below, have been in development already but due to time limitations they weren't added to the Realms Deep demo.

• Enemy voice lines are still in the process of being cut and will be present in the full game.
  
• Auditory hit feedback and gibbing sounds are still worked on and muted on purpose in the demo.
  
• Full-gibbing enemies when doing over a certain damage threshold was not implemented in time for the demo. It is now.
  
• Insta-use arm punch (instead of manual equip) and targeting towards the center of mass are being worked on and refined.
  

Furthermore, the following issues are being investigated and addressed.

• Various bugs with saving and loading, such as inconsistent collision with gas tanks causing soft locks, lack of camera animations on checkpoint load and other miscellaneous bugs in regards to player input.
  
• Various game settings and rebinding keys were missing in the demo and we profoundly apologize to all our non-WASD users. They will be added to the full game.
  
• Profile system causing issues has been noted and being investigated.
  

Regarding the overall polish on the game:

• Game balance is not final and subject to change in the coming months.
  
• This includes AI which is currently in the progress of getting balanced and bugfixed.
  
• Performance will improve closer to launch - we are aware of issues with older machines and are working hard with our QA team to optimize for them.
  

Moving forward we will continue our push towards completion of the game and aim to release an updated version of the demo in February for the Steam Next Fest. This also means that we are going to move the release date to 2024. We feel that this is a necessary adjustment to ensure that the game meets the standards of the 3D Realms/Slipgate Ironworks community and of the underlying IP which the game is being created.



Once again, we appreciate you checking out our demo and we will be seeing you soon.

• Wishlist Phantom Fury here.
  
• Follow Slipgate-Ironworks on Twitter.
  
• Follow 3D Realms on Twitter.
  
• Join the 3D Realms Discord.
  
• Join the 3D Realms Subreddit.
  
• Check out the 3D Realms Website here
  
• Check out the Slipgate Ironworks here