2014’s Styx: Master of Shadows was a recreation a couple of goblin with a magpie’s eye for shiny issues. So it appears becoming that, when builders Cyanide realised that they had a tough diamond, they determined to maintain maintain of it – prototyping new concepts for a sequel nearly instantly after launch.
Related: the best PC sandbox games.
“We had some good feedback from the press, and most of all from the players,” remembers lead degree designer Julien Desourteaux. “People liked the characters. We wanted to polish that.”
Two and a half years later, Styx: Shards of Darkness sits proudly on Steam with a prized ‘Very Positive’ person score. The climb Cyanide took to get there has seen them attain new technical heights.
To the storage! Time for an engine swap
The most important shift in Cyanide’s working course of for Styx’s second outing has been an improve from Unreal Engine three to Unreal four.
“It’s all about improvement,” Desourteaux explains. “We changed the engine, [and] that allows us to have better graphics and better cinematics as well. So it’s great to tell a story and to showcase a lot of different environments.”
The change was comparatively straightforward for Styx’s degree designers, who discovered themselves working with familiar-but-improved instruments. It was more durable on Cyanide’s programmers – however the studio have been in common contact with Epic for assist.
“We have a lot of conversations with them,” he says. “They go to us typically throughout the manufacturing so we will tackle our issues. Sometimes they take our options as properly, to implement it of their engine, so it is an alternate.
“There are loads of Focus [Home Interactive] builders which can be in Paris utilizing Unreal Engine as properly, so we we will share our experiences.”
Bringing gentle to the (excessive fantasy) world
The approach a recreation is lit isn’t simply an aesthetic selection – and that’s extra true within the stealth style than another. Cyanide have designed a system of gradient colors to switch Styx: Master of Shadows’ binary lighting, in order that their goblin protagonist isn’t merely ‘visible’ or ‘invisible’. Enemies react dynamically relying on what degree of lighting he’s in.
The engine improve additionally grants Cyanide extra freedom with regards to enabling complete shadows at lengthy distances – important when gamers come to plot a path by means of the sequel’s giant and layered environments. The studio’s artwork crew have been influenced by Escher – the 20th century artist greatest recognized for his limitless staircases.
“Some of them are very compact, others are very vertical,” notes Desourteaux of the degrees. “We like to play with different structures to renew the experience for the player.”
One degree, as an example, finds gamers fleeing an airship and coping with vertigo.
“We like to play with this vertical effect and it’s all about doing metaphors,” says Desourteaux. “You are small, the world is very big, and so I like this tension you can communicate to the player through the environment.”
The artwork of being dumb
The extra sprawling and layered these ranges get, the extra complicated a problem they develop into for his or her AI inhabitants. Thankfully, buying and selling up from Unreal Engine three to Unreal four for the sequel has enabled extra superior pathfinding to match.
“Now our AI can climb as well,” says Desourteaux. “They can jump – not everywhere, not like Styx, but sometimes they can go on the roof.”
Even as Cyanide grant their guards better intelligence, nevertheless, they should take some away.
“Of course it’s always a challenge because it’s a balance between too smart and too dumb,” explains Desourteaux. “Sometimes the AI have to be dumb in a stealth game like Styx.”
Styx himself is not any muscled covert operative however a scrappy little creature, and so the implications of discovery are sometimes deadly for him. Because of this, Cyanide have their AI play dumb – maybe looking out beneath the desk subsequent to the one Styx is hiding below, giving the participant an opportunity to flee to a brand new vantage level.
There are limits, after all: it’s a really completely different situation if the identical guard have been to see Styx stuff himself beneath that desk. In that case, he would attempt to seize the goblin moderately than have interaction within the pretense of looking out.
“It’s this kind of balance that is quite hard,” says Desourteaux. “It’s all about the timing you have to give to the player to try to perform a kill or stuff like that.”
The finish result’s a recreation that efficiently evokes Thief and the basic stealth video games of yore. Next time you play Shards of Darkness, maybe you’ll discover the gradients of sunshine going into it too.
Styx: Shards of Darkness is accessible on Steam. Unreal Engine 4 is now free.
In this sponsored sequence, we’re taking a look at how recreation builders are benefiting from Unreal Engine four to create a brand new era of PC video games. With because of Epic Games and Cyanide.
Source
