INDUSTRIA 2 News

[p][/p][p][/p][p]Hey everyone![/p][p][/p][p]August was a crazy time for us here at bleakmill. For the first time in 10 years, we brought together almost the whole team in person. As some of you know, we all work remote from all over the world on INDUSTRIA 2. But with having a playable showfloor demo at gamescom this year, we decided to finally step into planes and hug each other for a 4 year late “congrats-for-releasing-industria”-hug.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As if that wasn't enough, we had six computers constantly being used by people visiting the gigantic booth our publisher Headup set up. We had some hardcore INDUSTRIA-fans popping by, as well as people from Naughty Dog and Crytek checking out the demo and giving us super sweet feedback on it. After two official days, we already said goodbye to each other, warmingly overwhelmed from these few intense days in Cologne.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The demo itself ran like a dream and apart from a few crashes here and there (despite running almost 24/7) we had no issues really. A few small Level Design and UX issues were pointed out and are already on our list for fixes.[/p][p]Now it's time for us to move on to the rest of the game. But not without preparing the same demo as a Steam Playtest. The last few weeks were spent a lot on performance and technicalities like FSR implementation, much deeper graphical settings as well as a difficulty selection on the demo start.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Very soon you'll be able to also play the demo. We are awaiting your feedback, which will directly impact the rest of the development time.[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for the ongoing support and all the best from everyone at bleakmill!
David & The Bleakmill Team[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p]Hey all! It’s been a while![/p][p]Today we are happy to share another commented gameplay video. INDUSTRIA 2 is part of the Games Forged In Germany event and therefore, we decided to give you all another glimps into one of INDUSTRIA 2ˋs levels: the cannery.[/p][p][/p][p]Keep in mind that what your about to see is work in progress footage, so expect some things to change.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]One of the most interesting things for us, was to have a full circle of INDUSTRIA 2ˋs core gameplay in a coherent, well looking level. In the last year we have worked on countless gameplay systems, like AI for enemies and companion, the diegetic inventory including crafting, multiple weapons, an upgrade system, physics interactions, looting, a motion sensor for stealthy gameplay and of course our art style itself (with a view things still to come which haven’t made it into the video).[/p][p][/p][p]Now it’s time for us to bring all the elements together, which honestly, is even more challenging than creating all the pieces. The video starts with Nora entering the hub level, from which there are two sublevels accessible. It features a main puzzle, which has to do with a huge pump relay built by the machines, branching into the levels nearby. The goal here is to create spaces for the player to return to, to create a sense of place and time. Our companion, Marlene (which you maybe saw in the story trailer), will wait here for us, as she is unarmed and injured.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Nora proceeds into the West-wing of the Cannery. Here she encounters multiple ATLAS robots. She can use her motion sensor to make more strategic decisions, on how to move through the level with as little as possible enemy contact. INDUSTRIA 2 is not about gunning down every enemy on sight. Ammo is scarce, levels are dark, enemies can grab Nora and kill her if she doesn’t free herself in time.[/p][p][/p][p]Nora makes her way into the attic space, where a big ATLAS cluster holds the item she needs in order to proceed in the hub level. When she returns, a new enemy is introduced. We call him the „Surger“. A Vampire kind of humanoid. It run dry of the fluid we call Petrichor (basically the machines fuel they produce themselves), making it ravenous, almost craving to find more of the fluid it needs so desperately.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We needed to end the video there. But there are good news: if you attend the Gamescom in cologne in august, you can play our first demo on the showfloor. We will be present with almost the whole team. For those who can’t attend physically, well have a Steam Playtest starting a little bit after Gamescom.[/p][p][/p][p]We hope you like what you saw and wish you a good weekend. See you soon!
David & the bleakmill team[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

Greetings all!

Today we want to share with you a brand-new story trailer we made for INDUSTRIA 2. Maybe you have seen it already in the Future Games Show Spring Showcase or on the product page, if not, have a go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHsewJZ7Eo

We put a loooot of love into this one, as we decided to show you a bunch of new levels, one of the main characters and also the new enemies in action. Let me start by talking about Marlene:



(Be aware: tiny spoilers ahead!) INDUSTRIA 2 starts with Nora being stuck in the parallel dimension you might know from the first game. After surviving alone for years, trying to find a way back home, she meets Marlene, a familiar face, back from East-Berlin where Nora is from. Well, 'meeting' is kind of wrong, more correct would be that Nora stumbles into her. After being alone for a long time, Nora is obviously suspicious, and so is Marlene. But the harsh environment and ever looming presence of the dangerous ATLAS presence (the machines) more or less forces them to think of a strategy together.

We are not The Last of Us with a big budget, but nevertheless we wanted to create a memorable NPC you collaborate with to some extent. To make that work, we had to figure out how to animate faces and full body characters. Our animator Ben did an insane job and figured out a system which will be used in the game a lot: a library of facial animations he made we can use to create all the scenes we need to tell a story. And yes, Marlene will fight with Nora. We try to hit a good satisfying spot where her AI is not annoying but actually helpful and memorable (the perfect reference for us still is Alyx in HL2: Episode 2).



Fear not, INDUSTRIA 2 is light on cutscenes and we always try to mix good old Half-Life 2 style in-game cutscenes with a handful of actual camera-cuts. But it's always from Nora's first-person perspective and the game will maintain its unique feel of solitude, even if there are other characters with you in the world.

There are more characters in the game, but we don't want to spoil anything else. In the trailer we also showed exactly one black and white shot. If you played the first game, you probably know what this refers to and I can gladly announce that the Library and its inhabitants still play an important role. We love to mix the familiar with the unfamiliar as Viktor Antonov (Half-Life 2/Dishonored Art Director, who sadly passed away recently) would have said and we will continue that surreal path from the first game.



Well, that's it so far. There is so much more stuff happening of course, but I will keep this for the next development update. We hope you like the direction this project is going and can't wait for your feedback and thoughts!

All the best and until the next dev update!
David & The Bleakmill Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/

Hey everyone!

It's time for another update on what's happening behind the scenes. Since this year started, we have been hard at work to get our new enemies designed, modeled, textured, animated and moving around the world of INDUSTRIA 2. The other thing we spent some time on, was refining our environment art workflows.

Since we started, we often came back to Half-Life: Alyx and their environment design workflows. We are a young studio, learning a lot as we make this second game. So to learn good environment art, we came to the conclusion to look at games who did it right. For us long term Valve game fans, it was an easy choice: Half-Life: Alyx offers a super transparent look behind the asset creation process through the workshop tools everyone can use. Here we learned how to create efficient assets, the right amount of detail and smart material usage.

Valve used something called “Hotspot” texturing. Maybe you have heard about it already if you're into game development. If not, it's a simple, yet efficient way to texture any object quickly, with just a handful, sometimes just one texture map. Normally, you create unique textures for your models, resulting in hundreds, sometimes thousands of unique materials in the game. Hotspots solve this manual labor (and performance issue) by automatically picking the right part of a large texture map for the right polygon. What comes out is a pretty satisfying looking asset, featuring edge wear. That way, a whole train carriage can use the same 2 materials like the tracks it stands on, or the metal railings or pipes on the wall.



To get enough visual variety, we added a color wheel option per model as well as a vertex painting shader, so we can paint rust, dirt or color layers on top of the metal, wood or plaster. Since we are using Unreal Engine 5, we can't use the wonderful tools Valve built for their Hammer Editor. But we can try to get close with the tools Unreal provides, as well as some improvisation. We are super pleased with the look of INDUSTRIA 2. It's much more streamlined and optimized then what we achieved in the first game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGEWGzTg8tw

The other big thing we did in January was getting our final new enemies into the game. This is probably the 6th generation of enemies since we started INDUSTRIA back in 2015 and definitely the most complex we ever made. It started with designing them based on concept art and really finishing the lore behind those enemies, so they fit into the universe properly. We call them the “Hollows”, a machine built worker unit, maintaining the ATLAS fluid network all over the country.



The main feature here was to make a disgusting looking machine, really blurring the line between organic and machine built. It's supposed to be this dirty, oily, creepy AI controlled humanoid wandering through the world of INDUSTRIA. You should almost feel sorry for it when it stumbles through dark corridors. Until it wants to rip you apart.

For this task, we knew that variety was key. Variety in their looks, in their states, in their animations and in their sound design. We want vivid shot reactions on different body parts, as well as satisfying feedback when hitting them with bullets or melee. Our animator Ben has to undergo a long process of creating enough animations and stances so that, even when there are three of these beasts walking towards you, they all look unique and characterful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qokmVSGYwKM

Their foot placement also is a huge task to get right. You probably all know how it looks, when characters in games have feet sliding all over the scene. Getting this right is super hard, but we are trying to improve on that front compared to the first game. Going forward, we are trying to give them even more creepy-vibes, by controlling where they turn their heads, for example when reacting to their buddies dying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ujiljBv8c

All in all, character animation as well as good AI is one of the hardest things to get right and one of those subjects, where you can spend weeks and months to make it look satisfying. We don't have unlimited time, so we won't have AAA quality characters. But in the end, we are neither AAA, nor AA and still just a tiny indie team scattered around the globe trying to make something awesome with the limited resources we have available.

We hope you like what you saw and wish all of you a wonderful February.

Until the next dev update!
The Bleakmill Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/

Happy New Year everyone!

This is David, from the bleakmill team.

To conclude the year 2024 here at bleakmill, we wanted to give you a little update on what we have been up to in the last months. Mainly, we want to fill you in on the outcome of the first internal playtest we did with about 20 players and long term community members this December.

When we started making INDUSTRIA 2, we knew that we would need in depth playtesting to make sure the game is, in its core, fun and entertaining. Especially because we planned to make a few changes to the combat and AI systems from the prequel. In INDUSTRIA, the combat mainly results in the enemies seeing the player, followed by an endless chase until either the enemy or the player is dead. Even though there were quite a few complex systems working together in the background, the outcome was mostly “okay” combat.



One of INDUSTRIA 2’s main goals is to change this. Now we have a task based AI system at work, with enemies being able to lose the player, fall back in alert states or complete complex chains of tasks, which can range from opening a door, to using items and playing specific animations. We also feature a stealth system, as well as a crafting system, to allow for more dynamic gameplay and more player choice. Weapons can be upgraded with stats and attachments, and the looting has been overhauled completely.

In short, the whole core loop was upgraded with countless systems so it can stand on its own legs.

Because of all these changes, it was crucial we test them with a mix of the prequels playtesters, and people who have never played any INDUSTRIA game yet. The test was running for one week and we could not be more happy about the results: no issue people reported was unknown or something we didn't see coming. The main feedback we got was valuable comments on controls, movement and the inventory. For most players, playing Nora felt a little bit slow and clunky. This was because we deliberately slowed player movement down, to really let people sink into the world.



INDUSTRIA 2 really is the opposite from a movement shooter. But we may have exaggerated a little bit. It also didn’t help that the enemies moved quicker than Nora herself, resulting in an unfair perception, as the big metal robots were faster than Nora. The inventory feedback was also very valuable, as it's going to be the heart of the core loop. Here you can swap your 2 active slots with other weapons from your stash, and craft firebombs, explosives, traps and bandages from components you find in the world. Currently, the inventory sometimes clips into foliage, or nearby objects. Also, when crouching, the inventory opens into the floor, blocking half of it with level geometry.

In stressy situations (which are super fun), this can lead to frustrating moments of being unable to change weapons quickly. Apart from the core loop feedback, people really liked the atmosphere and general tone of INDUSTRIA 2, which made us very happy. We are super grateful for all this feedback, suggestions and ideas, because they shed light on INDUSTRIA 2 from a completely fresh perspective that we - who are working on Nora's second adventure every day - can easily overlook. And thus make the game an even gaming experience!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

All in all, it was a super successful first playtest and we really can't wait to do the next one in 2025. We believe that these playtests should be a fundamental part of the development cycle and finally, we found a good internal pipeline to deliver these tests with much less hussle compared with the INDUSTRIA 1 days. If you are interested in joining the next INDUSTRIA 2 playtest, feel free to join our Discord server and follow INDUSTRIA 2 here on Steam and on Twitter to keep up to date.

We hope you all have a wonderful and peaceful year 2025.

Best,
David & the bleakmill team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/