Greetings once again! Things are rolling right along with Exoverse, so let’s go over some of the neat things we’ve been up to in September.

First, we’re nearing completion of our first batch of monsters. We’ve currently got 9 monsters (which you can see here) that have all been sketched, and are nearly completed in terms of their modeling, texturing, and animation. It’s really cool to see them all come together, and really gives the game more of its own personality when it doesn’t have placeholder Wrack enemies running around.

What’s really nice is that we’re taking the time to make little tweaks and adjustments as we go along. For instance, the clarrg doomwalker was very gray in its sketch. That’s certainly fine, but giving it a little hint of purple really helps it pop – and also fit with its other clarrg brethren.

TO DO: Add dentures.

But probably the coolest thing we’ve been up to? Particles! Now, that might not sound that exciting, but once you have some good effects in place, you realize what an impact it has. Particles and other little visual effects is an area we don’t feel like we quite nailed the first time around with Wrack. Thankfully, this year at QuakeCon we met our newest team member Chaofanatic who’s helping change that in a big way!

With his help, we’ve remade the original Wrack particle editor with tons more features and a much better interface. The new interface has allowed us to add as many different possible particle effects as we want – without making a nightmare out of the main interface.

Imagine this with twice as many options, and then try not to throw up.

What’s key though is that instead of trying to cram as many effects as possible to one particular particle graphic (smoke, fire, clouds, etc.), now a particle can spawn child particles. This means that when you spawn one specific particle, it also spawns a bunch of other particles as well – each with their own individual properties and randomization. It allows us to have highly layered effects, and more importantly, preview those layered effects in the particle editor itself! The result is a thing of beauty – like this!

Boom!

We’re just starting to hit our stride with this, so we fully expect the final game to have plenty of these sorts of effects that make the game feel so nice! Personally, I can’t wait until really nail down some of these gib effects. In a tower defense game like this where you’re blasting tons of monsters away at once, there’s going to be so much beautiful, bloody death!

I know I can’t wait!