Every story has a beginning...

Pheeew!!!

Finally, after three months of intense work, I'm finally able to release something eye candy about the game.

But first let's make an introduction:

Distant Souls is a third-person, action-adventure game with gameplay mechanics and style which could be best described as in the middle between Assassin's Creed and Kingdom Hearts; playing in up to 3-member teams.
The story will put you in the body of 4 characters with tragic backgrounds in the pursuit of a dark being trying to take over the world. While the world is in a grim and sad state, the story will surround how people manages to overcome tragedies and find happiness, generosity and glimpses of humour.
The project started around beginning 2010 in my spare time spending no more than 3 hours a week, until it became full time in January this year through March. We are looking for some 3D modelers, because it's that time. Most of the code is finished at this stage.
I've been doing all by myself (art, coding, story) but study (I'm studying economics) has slowed me down and now I need talented individuals who can help me speeding up with the artistic side.
Hopefully, the game will reach beta by the end of the year.

Over the course of the development, I've been taking screenshots at different progression stages, which are now the ones posted below.

You may notice the game has always the same character. That's because I'm always testing with the same model, the only one so far. This should change now that all C++ code features have been locked. It's counterproductive to have many art assets while you're constantly changing the code.

These four are among my favourite screenshots. Lots of stuff is going on (HDR, Godrays, SSAO, Tree wind). Note all of them are in alpha stage, and may not represent the final quality of the finished game.

The test level where I try everything new. Loads in no time. In these photos water reflections were being tried out:

One of the first HDR tests, the overbloom is on purpose. Looks chilly:

These screenshots were taken to test the wind system that brings life to Distant Souls:

Clouds are generated procedurally using libnoise and custom shaders.

Clouds can also cast shadows.

First time basic particle FXs were tested

This is one of the latest levels. This is actually a mockup from the city of Jul Kaseem, which is the first city to be visited in the game. Still needs a lot of work.

One of the very, very, very early screenshot of the game. I still like to keep it because it looks cool, and gives that feeling the final game should preserve. Was very impressive by the stage the engine actually was. I didn't even have my own model, so I used the green ninja that comes with Ogre.

The engine uses or supports:

• Ogre 1.8 for rendering
• Havok 7.10 for Physics
• Supports multiplayer, using Asio as library
• Uses Lua 5.1 for scripting.
• OpenAL for sound
  
• Takes full advantage of multi-cores (dual core is highly recommended)
• Seamless day/night transitions.
• Cloud generation, real time cloud shadows
  
• HDR, SSAO, Water Reflections & Refractions, Heat Blur, and more post processing effects.
• Filmic tonemapping
  
• Linear Gamma pipeline
• Blender, GIMP, Arbaro
• Ogg Vorbis, libnoise, OIS, tolua++
  

- dark_sylinc

Follow @matiasgoldberg