The Pulse Monthly - 5.0
Hey everyone,
As we continue our countdown towards launch, we’re back with another monthly edition of The Pulse! For April, we’re peeling back the layers of the universe of Scorn, sharing some new behind-the-scenes content, and as usual, providing an update on our development progress.
A Macabre Universe of Despair
Game development always comes with its own unique set of challenges, and that’s certainly no different for Scorn. Creating an entire universe to provide context and uniformity to the world in-game can be a daunting task, but this is especially true as things become more abstract from what we find in reality. Creating this unique world of macabre and dread has certainly been an ongoing learning experience.
The team has invested a tremendous amount of time and effort into bringing our vision for Scorn to life. A lot of trial and error, dedication, and passion have created an unsettling organic ecosystem in which players can fully immerse themselves.
This becomes more apparent when we look at the totality of manually created assets representing the building blocks of just the first couple of levels. Each piece is sculpted and textured with great attention to detail. As covered in February’s update, once all the completed assets are placed in a cohesive way, additional effort is spent adding all the finishing touches.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
For the Spill Your Guts segment this month, we spoke with our Art Director, Lazar Mesaros, about the team's process for building out the universe of Scorn.
Can you tell us a bit about your role within the team?
As the Art Director, I’ve been involved in almost every stage of the creation of Scorn. From exploring unique concepts to supervising production, I lead a team of incredibly creative 3D artists, animators, modellers, and other artistic staff to bring the universe of Scorn to life through the visuals found throughout.
It’s an immensely difficult task that combines game design, world-building, and people skills. Even more so when you consider the fact that there are limited real-world references for anything you might encounter in Scorn. The only field of reference might be found in your worst nightmares.
How would you describe the style presented in the world of Scorn?
It’s not an easy task to describe it precisely or to place it under a certain known category. The style embraces architecture, technology, arts, literature, and even biology. It is a coming together of the Gothic style and modern industrial elements, often impregnated with biological elements.
We believe that we managed to establish a style that is expressive and open to a player’s interpretation. It’s not so much about imposing meaning on it, but about the players, their experience and how they will understand the alienated world they’re exposed to.
What was the creative process like?
Hard. When you create a scene that takes place in the world around you, there are plenty of real-world references: trees, grass, animals, etc. You just need to add a creative element to already existing things and you’re on the right track. In our case, we did a lot of our own research through trial and error. Experimenting with weird combinations in order to ultimately produce a feeling of unease.
For the various structures throughout the game, we spent considerable time studying architecture from different cultures in order to truly understand the technicalities of their art, as well as expand our creative ideas for the final design.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Did you have a specific goal in mind while experimenting?
As everybody knows, we’re keeping information about the game’s core content minimal as such a major part of the experience will come from reflecting on the game and its meaning.
There is an obvious bridge between nature and architecture, there is intelligible logic of structures, and there are living (and not so living) creatures. There’s an entirely different element to be considered, however, and that’s the player. Their experiences, thoughts, and feelings are deeply involved in the unfolding of the Scorn adventure. When considering all that, who am I to blabber on about meaning?
Do you have a favourite location in Scorn? If so, what do you like about it?
I think my favourite area in the game is the Field of Decay. With its gigantic glooming buildings peering through the fog, its atmosphere always leaves me with a disturbing feeling of loneliness and death.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
To wrap up our 5th edition of The Pulse, here’s our latest development update from Ebb Software’s CEO and Creative Director, Ljubomir Peklar:
Not a whole lot of new things to report on this month, but development is progressing well. We are slowly but steadily getting things done and remain on track for hitting our next major milestone. Our VFX artists are currently in the spotlight, enhancing the overall visual experience and breathing life into the CG elements. Once they’ve completed adding the final touches, we’ll begin the fine-tuning for optimization.
Also happy to report our Kickstarter goodies are in production and we are so excited to share the results with you as soon as they come out.
As always, thank you all for taking the time to read through our monthly update. If you’re not already following us on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to check out our social channels for additional updates and behind-the-scenes content.
As we continue our countdown towards launch, we’re back with another monthly edition of The Pulse! For April, we’re peeling back the layers of the universe of Scorn, sharing some new behind-the-scenes content, and as usual, providing an update on our development progress.
A Macabre Universe of Despair
Game development always comes with its own unique set of challenges, and that’s certainly no different for Scorn. Creating an entire universe to provide context and uniformity to the world in-game can be a daunting task, but this is especially true as things become more abstract from what we find in reality. Creating this unique world of macabre and dread has certainly been an ongoing learning experience.
The team has invested a tremendous amount of time and effort into bringing our vision for Scorn to life. A lot of trial and error, dedication, and passion have created an unsettling organic ecosystem in which players can fully immerse themselves.
This becomes more apparent when we look at the totality of manually created assets representing the building blocks of just the first couple of levels. Each piece is sculpted and textured with great attention to detail. As covered in February’s update, once all the completed assets are placed in a cohesive way, additional effort is spent adding all the finishing touches.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Spill Your Guts
For the Spill Your Guts segment this month, we spoke with our Art Director, Lazar Mesaros, about the team's process for building out the universe of Scorn.
Can you tell us a bit about your role within the team?
As the Art Director, I’ve been involved in almost every stage of the creation of Scorn. From exploring unique concepts to supervising production, I lead a team of incredibly creative 3D artists, animators, modellers, and other artistic staff to bring the universe of Scorn to life through the visuals found throughout.
It’s an immensely difficult task that combines game design, world-building, and people skills. Even more so when you consider the fact that there are limited real-world references for anything you might encounter in Scorn. The only field of reference might be found in your worst nightmares.
How would you describe the style presented in the world of Scorn?
It’s not an easy task to describe it precisely or to place it under a certain known category. The style embraces architecture, technology, arts, literature, and even biology. It is a coming together of the Gothic style and modern industrial elements, often impregnated with biological elements.
We believe that we managed to establish a style that is expressive and open to a player’s interpretation. It’s not so much about imposing meaning on it, but about the players, their experience and how they will understand the alienated world they’re exposed to.
What was the creative process like?
Hard. When you create a scene that takes place in the world around you, there are plenty of real-world references: trees, grass, animals, etc. You just need to add a creative element to already existing things and you’re on the right track. In our case, we did a lot of our own research through trial and error. Experimenting with weird combinations in order to ultimately produce a feeling of unease.
For the various structures throughout the game, we spent considerable time studying architecture from different cultures in order to truly understand the technicalities of their art, as well as expand our creative ideas for the final design.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Did you have a specific goal in mind while experimenting?
As everybody knows, we’re keeping information about the game’s core content minimal as such a major part of the experience will come from reflecting on the game and its meaning.
There is an obvious bridge between nature and architecture, there is intelligible logic of structures, and there are living (and not so living) creatures. There’s an entirely different element to be considered, however, and that’s the player. Their experiences, thoughts, and feelings are deeply involved in the unfolding of the Scorn adventure. When considering all that, who am I to blabber on about meaning?
Do you have a favourite location in Scorn? If so, what do you like about it?
I think my favourite area in the game is the Field of Decay. With its gigantic glooming buildings peering through the fog, its atmosphere always leaves me with a disturbing feeling of loneliness and death.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Development Update
To wrap up our 5th edition of The Pulse, here’s our latest development update from Ebb Software’s CEO and Creative Director, Ljubomir Peklar:
Not a whole lot of new things to report on this month, but development is progressing well. We are slowly but steadily getting things done and remain on track for hitting our next major milestone. Our VFX artists are currently in the spotlight, enhancing the overall visual experience and breathing life into the CG elements. Once they’ve completed adding the final touches, we’ll begin the fine-tuning for optimization.
Also happy to report our Kickstarter goodies are in production and we are so excited to share the results with you as soon as they come out.
As always, thank you all for taking the time to read through our monthly update. If you’re not already following us on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to check out our social channels for additional updates and behind-the-scenes content.