Steam Greenlight

Hey guys!

We’ve finally got our game up on Steam Greenlight after a couple of weeks of long hours! If you’re following what we’re doing and like our project please sign in and vote for our game! We’d really apprecaite the support, every vote counts! Also, if you favorite the game it helps us out even more 😀

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=96424148&searchtext=

Also, be sure to check out the new trailer:

Thanks for all your support so far! Still a long way to go though 😀

Ether Teaser Trailer

Hey guys!

We’ve been working hard over at White Paper Games to get out game developed and out! We finally released a teaser trailer for you all to check out (if you havnt done so already!)

We’re putting a lot into this game at the moment so it would be great to hear any feedback you all have!

Also be sure to check out the Ether Game website! I’ll be sure to keep adding more WiP and any other interesting things I come across but for now, back to development! Thanks for following!

Blocking out 4th level in Ether

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on a blockmap I’m working on showing the different stages of fleshing out. Around 3 hrs work time. Planned it out and gathered some architecture reference for around an hourr beforehand also.

 

Ether Episode 03 WiP shots

I realised I hadn’t posted much about the design stuff I had been working on recently. I finished this blockmap around a month ago and at the moment we’re testing it and tweaking the gameplay. It’s a pretty basic whitebox (which is how I like them) with UDK assets thrown in there as placeholders. In some parts I added more detail than needed, this helps me to get the feel of the level which is quite important to me.

I generally work off a quick paper design but don’t spend too long on it. I don’t spend too long because I think its only when you get it into the editor that it really comes alive. However, paper design is an important step as it gives you  a good layout and direction and allows you to focus on getting it interesting when you get it into the editor. Generally, people that go straight into editor without basic planning end up having a very linear and repetitive level design which the experience suffers for in the end. Anyway, check them out! Not going too much into the design as we want to keep quite a lot of the rest of the game hidden until you actually play it!

Memory lane.

Schoolhouse and Village

Mining area.

Village continued.

Village continued.

Lady of the Lake.

Testing begins.

Transportation.

Puzzle idea.

Puzzle idea.

Puzzle idea.

So as you can see, a good direction in place, the later shots have static meshes being overlaid on the whitebox. These are assets that we can re-use from the first level from the mining area. This level very much focuses on Jeans past and her memories growing up so some exciting parts of narrative and gameplay in this episode I think.

Next step is to continue testing and tweaking, not the most fun part when you’ve spent a couple of weeks on the same blockmap but an essential step!

UCLAN – 6 week Level Design brief.

So I’m pretty proud of my students at the moment at UCLAN. They worked their asses off for 6 weeks to produce some really awesome stuff. They are way ahead where I was at in my second year of University and I can’t wait to see what they can achieve in their final year. We’re trying to get them at a standard suitable for the top end of the industry which I feel if they keep working as hard as they are doing now they can get a nice junior position at a company. We are teaching Design first, aesthetics second, and with the help of Aaron Foster (Lunar Software) we have got some amazing results. So check them out! This was all done in 6 weeks from concept to design, to arting up the final level along with a video. Keeping in mind these guys have only been using UDK for around 10 weeks now.

If you would like to contact any of them for anything I can pass along a message.

James Caldwell – Synth

Emma Smith – AquaSol

Saija Sipilä – Arctic Greenhouse

Jason Ashcroft – Crimson Dawn

Christoph Lehmann – Heist

Art Update

So here’s another art update. This isn’t the finished art direction for Ether but you can get a better feel for it. Currently we’re working on getting a fully arted chunk of Ether done so that we have a standard to hit for the rest of the game, we can also get feedback on that finished chunk so that we know the finished product will be the best it can be. Enjoy!

A lonely board walk

Silence all around

What was beyond the darkness?

Ether Art Update

“All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I”. Louis L’Amour

After a lot of hard work, design and planning we can finally reveal to you the first screenshots showcasing the distinct art style of our game in development, Ether. After many different iterations and experimentations of the art style we are extremely happy with the direction our creative artist, Oliver John Farrel has taken. As a studio we feel it complements the exciting world that we are currently creating and the explorative and puzzle based game play that we are striving to create. We wanted to create something that stood out from the crowd and really drew you into the mysterious world of Ether and the secrets that it contains.

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.” H. P. Lovecraft

I am not going to say much else apart from this and let the images take up the major part of this post, all I can say is that as O.J. continues with the art for Ether he will be keeping a distinct blog showcasing his work which we will reveal as soon as it is ready as well as post updates as and when we can.

“Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?” Fanny Crosby

We hope you enjoy what you see and as always comments are always welcome.

Ether Episode Two

Hey everyone, since our last post we have been getting tons of development work done over the first episode and the second episode as well as getting a slice of the game fully arted up to test our aesthetics and general art direction. With Pete working on Episode One which is getting closer and closer to being finished in terms of game play I have been working on Episode Two of our debut game, Ether. Now the first episode is the first time the player gets to experience the strange memories of Jean, which we are building to be exciting and bewildering and tight. The second episode is the second memory that you work through and is going to be a little more open (but not too open) in terms of design, giving the player opportunities to explore larger environments. The second memory is based upon thick foggy moorland pushing into woodland which has given us an awful lot to play with in terms of game flow, design and puzzles and is something I am very excited about. Before I give you a brief and spoiler free walkthrough of the level in its current state let me explain how the level is broken down and where we are up to in terms of playability.

The episode is broken down into 3 key sections with adjoining areas that will ease the player into each. The first section is set upon open moorland that is dense with fog, the second section is set within a woodland enclave and is a lot more open for exploration with more visibility and the third area is based around an observatory that is nestled at the top of a hill in the woods. Each area offers players new and exciting game play that is linked together by the level and the games core game mechanics and loop, but enough of that or I will ruin the surprises we have in store!

So far the entire map is playable from start to finish with the third section having all the puzzles and gameplay placed into it. By the end of this week we are hoping to have the second section underway and by the end of next week the blocked up Alpha will hopefully be ready to play through for very early testing.

Enough about the nitty gritty parts of development and lets have a look at a few images and what they could possibly hold for players when Ether is released.

This overview shows you the three distinct areas quite well, at the moment the block is just brushed in but will feature quite a large amount of landscape on top of what is already there.

This shot is from the very start of the level and as you can see the line of site for the player is very important so they can move through the level comfortably. Here we can see (what will be foreboding silhouettes through morning fog) of two beam engine houses.

Underneath each engine house is a network of mine tunnels with lots of puzzles and gameplay in them, here is shot of one of those mines. We are keen to mix this level up from having more open areas, to tight rooms will lots of gameplay. This is to pace the level and the player progression, allowing them to face many different challenges along the way.

This next shot is another line of sight view of a key focal point when you emerge from one of the mine shafts.

Here is a shot of the outside of one of the mine networks, I’m not going to show you the inside as there is an atmospheric puzzle in there that would be ruined if I did 

As players navigate through the foggy moorland they will need find a way of not straying and getting lost in the fog, one such puzzle using our levels core game play loop can be seen here as a block but don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you exactly what it is.

Here is shot of the second section of the level, I’m not going to go into too much detail here as there is still a lot to be worked into which I will go over in an episode two update post later in the month, but what I can show you is how open this are of the map is. Using specific focal and direction methods, the players will have a great opportunity to explore this area for hidden items whilst also being able to navigate to areas that have plenty of puzzles to solve for narrative purposes and level progression. We also have a cottage in there on the left hand side which holds some exciting secrets and features.

This is a shot of the final area of the level and is based around a large and magnificent observatory and its grounds. There are lots of puzzles here that again mix up exploration and tight puzzle solving to create an exciting and climatic end to the level, but again I must stop there or I’ll let things slip 

So as you can see compared to the first environment you will traverse this is a little more open, to give players that sense of delving into these memories and unearthing clues to what is happening.

I hope you enjoyed a little more development from Ether and we should be showing you some more detailed images with art of the game soon. For now though we must say goodbye but please follow us on Twitter and Facebook by clicking the contact tab at the top for up to date news and chat about White Paper Games and Ether, all support is greatly appreciated.

Hey guys,

 

Its been a while since we’ve posted anything directly design related. I just wanted to give you an update to where we’re at right now in terms of development. I’ve been working away trying to get the first episode of the game blocked out with all the game play added. Ben has also started work on the second episode and has all that pretty much blocked out too with game play being added as we speak. The UDK has really given us the option of quickly prototyping our levels so that we can focus a lot of our time on the actual game play and the balancing of the levels.

We’ve also got some added support on the art side of thing’s so hopefully more visual updates to come!

I’ve also included a breakdown of the first episode level design so you can see how we have developed our levels.

The first episode is the first time the player will experience gameplay inside of Ether. I won’t give too much away at this point about how the gameplay changes, but it will be different to play on the Island. The main aim of the level is to introduce the player to the environment and past memories of Jean. Here she will experience lots of different emotions not only through the narrative, but also from a ludology point of view. The player will then make their way through a Cornish coastal town and up into the lighthouse.

Here are a few images showing in the basic block map with around 60% of the game play added. Still more puzzles to go in but that may give too much away 😉

This is the main overview of the level. There is still a lot more fleshing in to do and adding bits of landscape but this is the bare bones of the gameplay.

This is the first puzzle part and in the last room (indicated on the right of the image) you will find a lamp which shows what type of gameplay this level may have. Theres also a small jumping section getting up on to the top of the cliff..but we may alter some of that to be a little less repetitive after play testing it.

Heres one of the first puzzles. Mght be able to figure it out from the screenshots if you look closely 😉

Walking down the steps to the coast..the lighthouse as a focal point ever present in the level.

As you emerge from the town, ive positioned this walkway to focus back on the lighthouse as this is always the players main objective.

Main part of the mining town, lots of puzzles with moving parts here.

Man Engine. (Google?)

Apologies about the image heavy posts, hopefully you have a good idea about how the first level is going to play out now. I’ll be back with some more design breakdowns very soon but now to start fleshing out the level and adding some more Kismet.

I’ll leave you with a concept for this level by our resident wanderer Josh Taylor

New Year Ether Update

Hi all,

Not posted in a while. The Christmas break was good and allowed us all to take a step away from the project and approach it with a fresh perspective in the new year.

As you can see from the image below, the island looks less like an island and more of a square. Although this may seem obvious, when staring it at for hours a day, you don’t notice yourself. So after the break we decided to study the structures of islands to create something much more organic which also allows us to still house all of our design ideas.

So the image below is what we came out with. I’m happy with the results. Although the area of the island has reduced dramatically, it feels much more open and fresh. Early play testing also feels much more promising with areas becoming much more accessible. The island hasn’t been refined yet so textures are still all over the place and some hard edges which need smoothing down but the overall shape works.

(ROTATE MAP CLOCKWISE IN YOUR HEAD FOR ACTUAL LAYOUT)

So far we’ve got 3 puzzles done for the ‘vertical slice’ demo we are going to release to test. We’ve got some pretty interesting mechanics going on, which although pretty simple is Kismet, play really well. An example of the cave puzzle is below. I didn’t want to add screenshots of the cave puzzle because I didn’t want to give too much away, I’d rather you play the game 😉

Another mechanic I spent the afternoon with was how to stop the player from leaving the island. We didnt want to have invisible boundaries which the player couldnt pass. Hopefully we’ve created a mechanic which will lend itself to the gameplay. The idea behind it is if the player gets too far out there are multiple trigger volumes situated around the level which will pick up the player depending on what section they are in and then an event will happen and wash the player up on the beach. Again, I won’t give too much away but I’ve put the Kismet example and a few matinee shots up for curious people!

I think thats all for now. Ben has been ironing out the script over Christmas and we have pretty much sealed the story in terms of events. We’re still on track to having a trailer out and we’ve got our artists working hard on the assets and texturing so everything is coming together.

Thanks for checking our stuff out and hope to hear some feedback! 🙂