Developer Diary 107 - Death & Control

 

The death of my Mom taught me many things. She had been suffering from dementia for several years now and her conditioned had declined steadily over that time. I believed, that when the day came, I would be able to deal with it in an orderly fashion. After all it had been foreseeable and we had plenty of time to prepare. What I didn't expect was, that when she passed away I immediately started missing her former self, more than I had through all those years. Her dark humor, her strange conspiracy theories, her love of nature and animals... I really miss her mind, more now than ever.

My Mom didn't drift away peacefully like in the movies. We stayed at her bedside throughout the entire process and I think it had a deep effect on all of us.

I like to think that I have control over my life and the circumstances that ultimately determine whether or not my career and my personal life are successful. But how much control can I really exercise?

I can't sleep. I can't control the moment of sleep; I can't control when I relax or let go.Yet I have some control over the circumstances that can contribute to a healthy sleep schedule. I can dim the lights, open the window to let in fresh air, put on relaxing music .... but the ultimate moment of drifting away is elusive to me. I can't force myself to fall asleep.

How much control do I have over a project, that I really love doing? Hiring crew members and contractors ultimately means giving up control. But by not doing that, I don't necessarily have more control over the outcome of this project, because all contributing factors are now dependent on my own mental state and surrounding conditions. 

So it isn't necessarily a question of the "right" or "wrong" way to do something, but instead a question of "letting go". But how can anybody do that? I seriously ask myself that question over and over again ... how can anyone just give up control over something, that is really close to their heart? Is it just a leap of faith? Is there some way to predict the outcome, when I put my heart, my soul, my love into somebody else's hands?

It probably comes down to the question of whether or not we live in a just universe. Just by observing the news I think we can all agree on the fact, that there is no such thing as inherent justice in the world. Buddhists may believe in karma and the consequences of a person's "doing", but these consequences are not predeterminable either, since they arise out of a consciousness that has free will (at least to some degree). If you are Buddhist and you believe in a non-dual reality beyond the realm of what is perceivable to us, then you also need to believe in the unpredictability of a person's "doing" and therefore human nature is ultimately unpredictable.

I remember this story of a guy who took DMT every day for 6 months straight. He documented his experiences on and off the drug over the entire period. During one of his trips he was on a hill and a thunderstorm was roaring at him. He felt like giving up, like the sheer force of the winds would simply blow him away. But he realized in that moment, that a human being's strongest and most valuable quality is perseverance in the face of impossible circumstances. He saw creatures as tall as buildings pass him by and felt the universe in its totality. And he knew that the life of a human being is unique in that regard and the story it tells is irreplaceable.

 

Developer Diary 106

I've made decent progress over the last month:

- I created an additional 64 SFX
- I bought a new PC with a massive 32 core processor and an additional screen to work with UE4
- I read up on NDEs over the last month and finished an important part of the plot

Jonah is caught between the red army and a german batallion after his escape out of the orphanage. He decides to take his own life by jumping off a cliff out of fear and perceives what he believes is his own death. The player sees it like this as well. In the beginning of the game, Jonah sees his own body lying on the ground and then travels through a tunnel, enters a luminous light, with energies and stars in all colors surrounding him. He finally arrives in a meadow and explores Lakini's Woods, fights the dharmapalas (symbolizing his own strengths and weaknesses) and discovers his own shadow and consequently his own light. In the end he is confronted with a choice: Return to earth and help the remaining children escape the battle and the psychopathic hunter "Silver", or remain and find peace.

It is strongly hinted at throughout the game, that saving those children is of incredible importance. The singing souls inside Lakini's Woods teach Jonah the story of the universe, how the first consciousness split itself into smaller parts, that enter their own dream and then return back to the great one. But due to this first split, light and darkness came into the world. The great consciousness' curiosity created duality and with it independent beings living in a dual world of light and darkness (which is basically the world human beings perceive). Now parts of the great consciousness are in danger of forgetting who they actually are. Darkness will prevail if humanity is not set on a path of self-realization and eventually the great consciousness will split over and over and over again and finally forget itself. The children Jonah saves, play an important role in this.

Jonah died at a crucial moment in time, and saving those children would bring the world back onto a path of self-realization and with this, the great consciousness would be able to perceive itself again, to remember who and what it actually is. But the shadows fight with all their might against it, as the dissolution of duality will also mean the end of darkness, the end of their existence as they know it. They fight for their eternal survival, as they do not wish to return to be part of the great consciousness. Jonah is a mortal threat to their existence.

The goddess Lakini is an acolyte of the great consciousness. Lakini lights a fire in the hearts of men, for their shadows to manifest in front of them. It is the ultimate force that hopes to reunite the great consciousness with the sum of its parts. But in order to give light and realization to Jonah, it will inevitably have to give life and identity to Jonah's darkness as well. Ironically in order to create a realization of non-duality in mankind, Lakini has to push a man's consciousness into a world of extreme dual separation. His fears, his anger, his imbalance, his helplessness, his suffering... The shadows inside the forest embody those qualities, the dharmapalas however embody personal qualities that Jonah can conquer and use to his advantage.

Silver's shadow (dominant and affecting his behavior) and Jonah's shadow (subservient until awoken by Lakini) are the ultimate acolytes of the darkness. They wish to manifest in their own form, they strive for independence, power, pride, control. They are predators and wish to secure their own survival, their own independent identity. There is no antagonist to the great consciousness, only former parts of it, that have lost their way and wish to remain separate. These shadows are an integral part of human existence and they live in all of us. While pursuing that goal, in their ignorance they appear to be almost as powerful, if not more powerful than the great consciousness itself, since the foundation of all conscious unity is free will. No conscious entity can be forced to act a certain way. Just as the great consciousness is free, so are its dissociated parts: Human identities, animals, demons, spirits, shadows, gods ....


Right now there are a lot of things going on in my life. Unfortunately my Mom is very sick, and the reality is that she will not make it. The prognosis in her case is, that she will die with an 80% probability in the next month. I can't even begin to describe the effect this has on me. But reading up on many NDEs (Near-Death-Experiences) has helped me deal with this experience. I sincerely hope that once Lakini's Woods is done, it will give many players a new perspective on life, death and depression.

To some extent I do believe, that there is " a great consciousness" and that all of us have split from it for one reason or another. I also firmly believe that self-realization is a massively important part of human existence. I experienced this "great consciousness" at least once during meditation when I was 24 years old and it left a deep impression on me. I cannot put this experience into words, but I felt tremendously grateful at that moment and the experience moved me to tears. I hope that someday I will be able to transmit this experience to other people. Lakini's Woods will be a first step on that path.

Developer Diary 105

 

Over the last month I worked with the SFX asset sheet, that I had previously created a couple of months earlier and finished 70 SFX. Working on Sound files and creating ambient atmospheres (Caves, Forests, Palaces) is probably my favorite work among all the other stuff I do. I have no words for how relaxing it is to listen to different sounds of recorded thunderstorms and rain sound files and use them to piece together a coherent atmosphere for the game world.

I also fought a lot with myself about how to implement music during daytime when Jonah is traveling through different outdoor segments of the maze. I recorded several pieces of music on my pianos and wrote a couple of guitar underscores, but they would constantly battle with all ambient SFX and when I started working on the boon SFX it became obvious, that the gameworld needs silence more than anything else. I don't want to plaster music and sound everywhere and so I decided to give boons and gems individual notes played by orchestral chimes and crotales. They are all part of the same C#minor scale and every time when Jonah picks up an elemental a different note corresponding to its type is played. It sounds a little bit like wind-chimes .... very peaceful .... I like it much better this way. I will still use music inside the dharmapala cathedrals, but will refrain from doing so in any outdoor locations. This way all the sounds I worked on (frogs at night, insects by day, rivers, waterfalls, trees a.s.o.) can be heard and won't be buried underneath layers of score.

I keep listening a lot to Bon Iver these days. I used to listen to their songs a lot when I was studying in the Netherlands and I think I really should stop doing that, because even though this music is so heartbreakingly beautiful it sometimes makes me a bit depressed. But at least I'm making great progress on all fronts of my life at the moment. It's tough, but it's always tough when you're trying to do something big. Next month I will finish all boon SFX and UI SFX. I also hope to finish some dharmapala SFX and if I keep my pace up I will be able to finish the entire sound by Christmas including implementation. It will still be necessary to add more SFX later, since I hope to add more dharmapalas and enemies soon. But by that time I will at least have a playable coherent demo with sound, start menu, UI and music.

Developer Diary 104: Palace Suites - 60 Minutes Of Music - Two Months Of Work

Tonight I finished the last palace suite for Lakini's Woods. These are scores that will be heard when Jonah steps into the Dharmapala's cathedrals for the very first time, when he encounters the Dharmapala's themselves or as underscores while exploring each corresponding area.

During the next two months I will be working on acoustic underscores and SFX for the maze itself. I had my pianos tuned to 432 Hertz and I'm curious of whether I can get a decent effect out of this. I will be working with acoustic guitar as well. Let's see how it turns out.

Developer Diary 103 - Water Palace Theme

More are to come ...

Developer Diary 102 - Working On Palace Scoring Suites

At the moment I am working on a couple of scoring suites, that will make up the background music of Lakini's Woods. I have made decent progress over the last couple of weeks and I will release a bunch of them at the end of this month.


 

Developer Diary 101 - Fear & Perseverance

Over the last two months I have created two asset lists for music and SFX and pulled a ton of SFX audio from soundrangers. I categorized them and set up Pro Tools sessions for music and SFX.

I originally planned to finish all SFX by the end of May, but as always life got in between. I'm genuinely afraid I'm working too slow, getting too little progress done. But I can't neglect my girlfriend, my family or my job. There is little in my life I have ever wanted more than to create this world and yet I feel constantly torn between my responsibilities and my passions.

There is a part of me that won't allow me to quit, whatever happens. It would feel like the ultimate betrayal, as if I would cut out a part of myself. I catch myself sitting at the piano, playing Lakini's theme over and over again. Improvising while closing my eyes .... I lose myself completely ... and for a second I am back there, inside the woods, trying to find the light I so desperately need.

Surviving as a musician means, that you constantly have to be on guard. Your next paycheque is never secure and your network, your professional performance and discipline determines whether you will survive. It takes constant maintenance and effort to grow and learn.

Ever since my dog died I noticed that I have grown weiry of my everyday life. She used to bring so much energy and light into my life. Now that she's gone I'm sometimes struggling during times when I'm alone. I grow tired and cynical and I don't want to be this way. I'm used to pulling myself back up when I'm knocked down, so this is nothing new to me. But it's hard at times to maintain a steady routine or constant effort in order to persevere.

I have this vision of myself lying in the sun. I am close to a river and I can hear the sound of flowing water in my ears. The wind in the trees, the sun on my face .... I just drift off and clear my mind for the first time in years. I believe in that moment and I want it to happen. I will do what I can to make it happen. Whatever it takes ....

Developer Diary 100 - Final UI Layout

After 2 months of work. This is the final layout of Lakini's Woods UI.

Developer Diary 99 - UI Development Progress

These last couple of weeks I have been working on various UI Interfaces. Here are the most recent versions:

I will in all likelihood settle on the last one: gothic windows with glass mosaic paintings of dharmapalas. There's still a lot of work ahead. I need to replace each individual color segment with individual screenshots tinted with colors corresponding to each element.

Developer Diary 98 - New UI Attempt with 3d Widgets

My best attempt so far. Shapeplanes with translucent Lensflare Materials merged in a single blueprint which is itself attached to the player character.

Developer Diary 97 - UI Attempt

Another attempt .... I don't know if I like it or hate it. On the one hand it looks as if a child drew it .... on the other hand it has something innocent and human about it .....

Developer Diary 96 - UI & HUD

Over the last couple of weeks I worked on keyboard and controller (XBox) functionality of the main menu and the game. After a lot of trying I finally found a way to make the main menu work with joypad controls, but a new problem came up in the process .... and it's a problem that is giving me headaches.

For testing purposes I had linked each element to the number buttons on my keyboard. 1 = Void, 2 = Wind, 3 = Fire a.s.o. So when I wanted to switch from throwing fire at an enemy to throwing a water elemental, all I had to do was press the corresponding number button and BAM - the game switched it for me.

But this doesn't work with joypad controls. So right now I'm trying to figure out a non-invasive way of incorporating a basic HUD into the game, that gives players with a joypad easy access to all the different elementals and dharmapalas. I can't expect players to learn keyboard controls while wearing the Oculus Rift. This is especially important, because I need people to test my demo levels, so I can focus on better level design. And nobody can test these levels without proper controls.

I have no idea which direction to take. All I can do is rely on my own experience as a gamer and go from there. Which kind of HUD would be the most non-invasive? How much immersion am I willing to sacrifice? In how far can I use 3d Widgets?

I have already figured out that non-transparent, non 3d Widgets look shitty. As you can see from this test screenshot I made...

So my next likely approach will be using 3d objects as part of the in-game HUD. But I need to find a system that isn't heavy on FPS either ... and currently all my elementals contain particle FX, which will reduce the overall framerate to 0 if the player is constantly staring at 10 of them. Not to mention the sheer annoyance and loss of immersion with an animated HUD.

Tough road ahead.

Developer Diary 95 - Creation Of The Final Maze System

As a general rule: If I don't post for a while, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't work on the project. Most of the time it means, that I'm going down an alley (development-wise), of which I am not quite sure yet.

Over the last years I have been bouncing back and forth between various designs of the game world: A procedural world, that creates itself as the player progresses on the one hand, and a pre-generated world, that simply streams in and out levels as the player encounters them. At the same time I couldn't decide on how to optimize performance. That's why I had repeatedly incorporated "forest rooms", closed boxes, that aim to deliver the illusion of a deep dark wood. But every time I followed through with one of those concepts my FPS would eventually drop below a viable point. It always happened during the last stages of game world development and it crushed me quite frequently, because I knew I had wasted hours and hours of work for nothing.

Over the last month, I had the opportunity to try out many things with my new GPU. And this time there was no excuse. If the FPS drops below 90, it's bullshit. If there is overdraw, it's bullshit. If it looks shitty, it's bullshit. Because I knew performance-wise, that I was now on the high end of my previous bottleneck component - my GPU.

And then one night I returned to one of my earlier concepts: A maze-like structure, built from circular walls, with entrances on all four sides of it. About two years ago I had created a procedural maze like this, that would open it's doors to the player once he discovered a diamond hidden in the level. Back then I discarded the idea, because since the maze was procedural it quickly brought me to my limits regarding my skill in blueprint and c++ programming. But then an idea hit me: Manipura Chakra is frequently translated as "the city of jewels".... what if the gates correspond to certain types of gems, that in turn correspond to the five elements that the player encounters?

A unifying concept, that would give room to the entire gameplay I had already set up ... each segment could be optimized and separately streamed, and each part of the maze could be individually prepared as a separate level. There would be no overdraw, as all the other segments would not be streamed at the same time, and the player's line of view would be blocked by these circular walls. There would be no FPS drop, as I would be able to optimize each segment individually. If split into separate segments, I would even be able to use transformable landscape components, lakes, mountains, canyons, as long as they were limited to a single level segment. And the player would still be able to make his own decisions and his own way through the maze, since only one of those four gates needs to correspond with the gem contained in each segment. If one of the remaining three gates by chance corresponds with the gem he encounters, he can move forward in various completely unforeseen directions.

I would be able to use my previously created transition-gates, my destructible blueprints, my dharmapala palace meshes ... all the work was done, it just needed to be put into context and optimized in a way, so that the game was ready for VR.

And so I worked on it. And I created my gems, from public domain images of diamonds. And I recreated my transition gates, so they would respond to the color of the gems. And I set up 8x8 landscape segments and another 36 ocean segments, placed all gates inside the maze and connected them to their corresponding jewels. On top of that I built a randomization system, that places each gem in one of six random locations. So players will never be able to tell in advance where each gem is hidden.

And now all of this preparatory work is done and with a fresh pack of forest assets by the amazing MAWI company, I am ready to start detailed level design of each segment. And the best part? I don't need any outside help. It's all on me, and I love it.