Early Wayfinder : Part 1
Back in 2019 Joe Mad contacted me to help Airship Syndicate find the look for their next ambitious game. The first interview I had with Andy Hansen (Producer/Art) Joe Mad (CEO) and Jesse Carpenter (AD) showed me that this was the dream project I’ve been wanting to work on before even entering the industry, a multiplayer, fantasy, handpainted stylized RPG. Some weeks after that first call we were experimenting on what Wayfinder could be and look like, here’s some shots from more than 5 years ago. So welcome to the first part of this little retrospective where we will going back in time!
This is probably one of the earliest screenshot of Wayfinder, back when we were trying to understand what mixing the painterliness of Battle Chasers, the shapes of Joe and Baldi and the PBR of Darksiders would look like. The foliages were blockout and here to convey a feeling and give us tools to block levels with.
At the time Wayfinders were explorers, you had your little gear, backpack, cooking tools, and you would venture around, the combat system was super barebone, but this screenshot showcased something that sadly never made it which was the Time of Day system. Playing at night changed the all atmosphere.
Because we had time of day, we also wanted weather and Seasons! Here's some researches for volumetric clouds that I've worked on with the great Isabel Grayce (she probably screamed a bit the first time she saw how expensive that material was)
Before using a tile system for dungeon generation (Like the Reaver Woods, the Ruins) or even having the idea to have static maps like the Highlands, we tried doing randomized generation for the environment, this was a test I made with some procedural tool in order to create forests, valleys, mountains, deadlands...
Some of the art style tests were raw, chunkier, painterly, those trees sadly never made it to the final game but I'm still deeply in love with what they were trying to do. We went throught so many iterations of Birch and Beech trees for that game that we ran out of naming ideas for them, it was a great and fun time on my side, going back and forth with Jesse Carpenter (Art Director) Joe Mad (CEO) and Baldi Konijn (Concept Artist)
Some of my very first implementation for our fog system, which was allowing us to have volumetric effects but also blured the image in the distance in order to convey an early morning thick fog being affected by the sunrise.
Making the world of Wayfinder was in itself an adventure and I’m so gratefull and glad to have been a part of it since the very beginning, we were already having a lot of fun exploring it, doing group activities during playtest. In this video, you can see a bit of what it used to look like after world generation.
That’s it for this sunday, next time, we will be looking at some tech art, ideas, concepts and more 3D!
Wayfinder is also getting out in 1.0 on October 21rst 2024! Go on the Steam page for more infos!
