Another exciting developer diary for Deathverse: Let It Die is live, bringing with it a wealth of new information for fans to soak up. The video opens with everyone’s favorite grim reaper, Uncle Death, back at it again at the Supertrick Games office.
This time around, Uncle Death is rolling chairs around and speaking with members of the Deathverse development team as part of a fun studio office tour led by Director Hideyuki Shin.
Starting with game design, Director Shin introduces Uncle Death to Toshihiro Fujikawa, Lead Game Designer and Planner on Deathverse. If you’re wondering “what the hell does Fujikawa do?” as asked by Uncle Death, the answer is pretty straightforward.
“As a Planner I create the basic specification, explain it, have it added into the game, and check if everything is in order,” Fujikawa explains.
While elaborating on what he does, Fujikawa informs Uncle Death he’s working on creating some of the text that’ll appear in the game. Leaving him to it, Uncle Death and Director Shin move on to speak with the game’s Lead Level Designer, Tomoharu Takata, and Lead Environment Artist, Daisuke Oka.
“As the Level Designer, I create the stages that everyone will play on,” Takata says. “With the Unreal Engine editor, I can add like a Mushroom here,” Takata demonstrates. “Then I test it by walking around myself to make sure it’s fun to play in.”
Director Shin tells Uncle Death that Takata will then pass things along to Oka, who works on the visual designs. As an example, Takata remarks on making a globe seen in one of the game’s maps, though it was Oka who made it more visually representative of a globe.
Jokes are made about how the globe started out as a square on Takata’s screen, and ended up as a globe on Oka’s screen. “Yes, squares can transform into globes,” Director Shin tells Uncle Death.
During this portion of the dev diary, bits and pieces of one of the levels that the team is working on can be seen from a rusted Galaxy Palace sign to a moving space-themed billboard with a rocket on it. While the level design looks rad so far, fans will naturally be curious about the characters in the game that’ll move through those environments.
To help touch upon this subject, Director Shin and Uncle Death head over to speak with Character Artist Takashi Kasahara.
“We first have concept designs before making the characters, but he works on everything up to creating the models that’ll be used in the game,” Director Shin notes about Kasahara’s work. We then get a look at a character that Kasahara is working on with steel armor that looks quite formidable.
“I use this tool to set up the texture and appearance, then use Unreal Engine to make the final adjustments,” Kasahara says while rotating the character model around. Confirming Uncle Death’s question about lighting, Kasahara continues, “Yes, I check them under the actual game’s lighting environment.”
We then get to see some character models that are almost finished. The word “almost” is stressed here. Continuing the office tour, another important member of the team is introduced as Kazuki Shirahama, the game’s Lead Animator. It’s his responsibility to take the characters from Kasahara and move those characters around.
“He breathes life into them,” notes Director Shin. On Shirahama’s screen, we can see animated movements for one of the game’s weapons, the Katana.
“This is the final movement for the Katana. I take it to UE to have the collision detection adjusted and add effects. Then, we check and finalize things within the actual game. Like this,” Shirahama demonstrates, showing various Katana slashes. “We also add the camera work here.”
Finally, wrapping up everything that was shown during the developer diary, Uncle Death tells Director Shin it was a day full of great content before teasing, “I think we’re getting close to the day when we can share the game with everyone.”
Director Shin goes on to end the video by telling fans, “We hope everyone will look forward to it when it’s ready!”
We are among the fans looking forward to seeing more of Deathverse, and really enjoyed the latest walkthrough of Supertrick Games with Director Shin and Uncle Death. It’s both a fun, and informative, watch.
To catch the full tour for yourself, be sure to check out the latest developer diary video over on Uncle Death’s YouTube channel. Be sure to check back here at Shacknews as we'll have even more Deathverse coverage for you in the near future. And if you missed it, we also have an interview with Director Shin on one of the previously released dev diaries, and why Deathverse isn't Let It Die 2.
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replyMorgan Shaver posted a new article, Deathverse's third dev diary shows how developers utilize tools like Unreal Engine
