The ride out
The opening's ride to The Source was 2.1 km over the ridges: 2.7 minutes at a flat gallop, nine at a trot, with nothing to do on the way. The brief wants a…
3 min read ↗
Field notes / 24 entries
The development
journal.
A record of the work: the places, people, experiments, and small decisions that make a world.
Follow by RSS ↗Real motion on Ioma
The characters read as ragdolls on the arrival movie: Meshy's library clips are generic, played in place, the feet floating, the weight nowhere. This round…
6 min read ↗
Ioma's pack
The game turns toward Ioma, and she gets a pack: see a thing, read it, take it, carry it.
4 min read ↗
The arrival at The Source
The first in-engine cutscene. Ioma rides into the camp at The Source; the bars close over the ride; the keepers of the drawpoint, who sent word that the…
6 min read ↗
The camp at The Source
The first campaign goal. The hydrology already agreed with the story without being told to: The Source sits on the west bank of a 33 m river bed that the…
4 min read ↗
The whole world on the sheet
The M map surveys the whole world, pauses the ride, and pans and zooms.
3 min read ↗
The objective on the ground
The goal marked in the world, not only on the sheet; entering it completes it.
2 min read ↗
The living surface
Water increment 2: the surface moves, and a wind.
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Vegetation from the water
Trees, shrubs, reeds and orchards placed and given a health by the generator, from the hydrology and the seed.
3 min read ↗
The water finds its way
Water increment 1: hydrology in the world generator.
4 min read ↗
The World tab
The round no longer needs the shell. The library, the page that already shows the props, the characters and the reference boards, has a World tab.
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The vantage board
The loop is closed. The world is data, the generator turns it into ground, the camera stands wherever a scene might be framed, and now one command shows…
2 min read ↗
The detached camera
The world can now be looked at from anywhere, and the places worth looking from can be kept. This is the cinematographer's tool from the world design: not a…
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The ride over the world
Ioma now rides on the generated world. The dunes she gallops down at the start, the flat track under the hooves, the boulders and the dead trees are where…
3 min read ↗
The shape of the world
The ride has had a disc of dunes under it and nothing beyond. Today the world got a shape: all of it, Cael to the Ashfold, as data and a drawing.
2 min read ↗
Skin that isn't plastic
The younger Ioma came into the game looking like a figurine: a hard sheet of highlight down her cheek and hand, the same sheen on her coat. Here is the same…
2 min read ↗
A younger Ioma, and the first one becomes her mother
Ioma has been mid-forties since the brief was written: grey-streaked, lined, tired. Today she got younger. The direction: early thirties, strong in spirit…
3 min read ↗
Prints in the sand
The horse and Ioma now leave tracks. Every hoof that lands and every step she takes presses a print into the sand. Each one holds for a while, then sinks…
2 min read ↗
Dusk: the ride goes dark, with grain
The opening ride was a bright, dusty noon. It's now the last of the day: a low orange sun, a dark ground, a broken cloud deck lit from below, and film grain…
3 min read ↗
Under the hood: from a test scene to the shape of a game
Nothing new to see in this one. Riding, the cinematic, the HUD and the dismount all look exactly as they did. Underneath, though, the project changed shape…
3 min read ↗
On foot: getting down from the horse
Ioma can leave the saddle now. Press E and she gets down from the horse's near (left) side, the way riders do. On the ground, WASD walks her relative to the…
3 min read ↗
The survey sheet: a first HUD
Once the letterbox opens and you have the reins, a HUD now fades in. It has a round minimap in the lower left and a health meter in the upper right. It's a…
3 min read ↗
Taking the reins
The ride-in used to end on black and loop. Now it hands over to the player. About three seconds after Ioma passes the lens, the letterbox bars slide away…
3 min read ↗
Godot → Unreal: rebuilding the ride-in
The game keeps turning out to be cinematic: a low sun, haze, a rider coming out of the dust. The opening shot is Ioma riding in over the lens, and in Godot…
2 min read ↗