Happy Holidays! It’s been a nice relaxing week but now it is time for an update. I recently returned home from school for a few weeks. At college I had little time to work on my personal projects (sintel the game) so I admit, not a whole lot got done in the past few months. I worked on enemy AI a little bit, started re-designing the dialog system, and a bunch of other small things. Since I’ve gotten back, I started re-programming the player mechanics. I know this sounds silly seeing as we already have a working, controllable player, but there was room for improvement in the design and in the code. We also gave Sintel a nice new IK rig which needed to be implemented. As of right now, I’ve improved the movement system, making it easier to walk up and down hills, giving it a more realistic and less glitchy feel. It already feels a lot smoother than before. The code is optimized this time around too. Now i’m working on making the player camera better. I’ve also updated the Gallery!

David has been working on a smaller, but more aggressive troll character. Perhaps David will post about what he has been working on in a future post. I know he has plans to make another modeling time lapse video so be on the lookout for that.

I’d like to personally thank everyone who helped us out with animation. We got many people who were more than happy to send us a few animations. They all look wonderful and I’m excited to make use of them.

We still want to release a demo as soon as we can. We are slowly making our way towards a release. I think I speak for all of us when I say we don’t want to release a demo unless it is fun. The pre-demo was short and bland because we rushed it out without spending enough time on making it fun. The demo will include some different gameplay elements, a good taste of combat, and a boss battle that is actually challenging.

I can’t say when the demo will be ready, but the moment we pinpoint a date, I will let you guys know.

Finally, I would like to make a shout out to Team Aurora. Over the past few months a couple friends and I got together and talked about our futures. We all felt that the professional game industry right now does not reward or encourage innovation and good unique design in games. We want to work in a field where we can make games that we find fun and innovative, rather than games that will make the most money. So we formed Team Aurora. We recently announced the first game currently in production – Grey. If you want to find out more, read about it here.

Since I am committed to finishing Sintel The Game, I will not be directly involved with the development of Grey. I am still a member of Team Aurora, but my time is going to be focused on Sintel The Game.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the levels that are going to be included in the demo and bringing them to a more pleasing level of quality. First on the list was the Docks level. I started by adding more details to the level such as planks of wood, pathways and construction materials. I played with the lighting some more and decided in order to get the look I wanted, I would need a new skybox. Here is a picture of the old docks level, and then a picture of the new level. (Click to enlarge the images)

Next on my list was the Troll Cave level. This hasn’t had much attention since it was first made, so a lot of work was needed. It took some time, but I eventually got it to look pretty decent if I do say so myself. I added some light crystals (like from the cave in the movie) to add more detail and depth to the environment. I ended up re-texturing almost everything in the scene which made the level blend together a little bit better. I also added some mist, which helps make the level seem larger. Here are the screenshots, old and new.

Finally, we have the tutorial level. In the pre-demos the tutorial level is a plain all white scene. This was done because we simply had not completed the real tutorial level. The actual tutorial takes place in a garden in the town of Garway. Now that I had the time, I went ahead and started creating the garden. As of right now the main portion of the scene is complete, but there are still some final touches I want to add.

So its been a while since we updated this blog…yeah I know it seems like we say that every time.. Sorry about that..
Anyway during this period of absent updates we have been busily working away on a multitude of game related projects, from optimization to new content creation.

The docks level has had its poly count considerably reduced, without impacting the visuals I may add. Its also been adorned with voice over’s from the talented folk over at the digital bard  (no need to read those pesky subtitles .. Unless you want to of course). We’re also taking steps to up the fun factor of the level, so look forward to some interesting game play improvements in the not too distant future.

The cave troll has been receiving some much needed T.L.C. Unfortunately he seems to have intimacy issues, and since we can not afford therapy  you’d better prepare to engage with a much more formidable opponent. On top of his new found aggression, he’s been joined by an equally deadly companion. If you think this all sounds a bit unfair on Sintel, fear not as her combat system is currently being updated.

The bandit model is now game ready, you can check out a time-lapse of his transformation from high to low res below:

Geoffrey has been undergoing a complete revamp and many new characters are in various stages of development.
Below is a time-lapse of one of the new characters head being created:

Continuing our efforts to make Sintel the game look as good possible we are also experimenting with new material set ups, depth of field and even screen space ambient occlusions.
One of the new material effects can be seen below, its still a work in progress but we think it shows promise:

OK so I may have been stretching it a bit when I put real time SSS in the title. As  I’m sure you’ve realized it’s  a fake SSS effect, no subsurface scattering calculations going on. However it is real time and does not have any discernable effect on frame rate. (The slow frame rate in the video is due to the video capture)

Finally I know a lot of you  want to know when we will be releasing the demo. I’m afraid we still can not give you a firm date, as there are still many things we wish to add and improve.


As some of you may know we released a pre-demo version of the game back at the start of January for entry into the blender summer game contest. We are proud to announce that we came second in the contest and would like to thank every one who took the time to play the pre-demo and vote.

The demo itself was quite hastily put together. Although we have been working on the game for quite a while now, most of our time has been spent on research and design; meaning we had very little in the way of completed assets. As a result the main bulk of the pre-demo was created in the short time between Christmas and new years, culminating in a very long nights work which saw myself and Jon working right up until the deadline on new years eve.
Below are some in game screen shots and some production images from the pre-demo:

While we are reasonably happy with how the pre-demo went considering the timeframe in which it was put together, it’s no where near the standard we are aiming for. Many of the game play ideas which we are really excited about have not yet made an appearance.

The official demo release will include an updated and more polished version of the levels displayed in the pre-demo, along with a host of new features/characters/objectives. Which if all goes to plan will result in a longer play through time and most importantly a more fun gaming experience.

A while back we were contacted by Digital Bard, an indie team of professional audio engineers, translators, voice actors, and musicians. They have worked with projects such as Zeno Clash, Eufloria, The Ball and Divinity II. We are pleased to announce that we will be working with them to localize the game / website, in addition to in-game voice overs. Voice overs were not originally planned to be in the game because I felt voices could make or break the game experience. I am confident that Digital Bard will do a more than wonderful job. We are very excited to be working with them and we can’t wait to see what they come up with.

In other news, Noah will be returning soon, David is sculpting and converting characters to their low poly versions, and I am working on improving the fighting system, making it less awkward. Also, we got a twitter account. You can follow us for more frequent but smaller updates.

In the last post Malcolm mentioned ‘big news’. The big news is that we plan on releasing a demo to the public pretty soon. We made a small incomplete demo for the blenderartists.org competition but we want to polish it up before we release it. We’ve been working hard on improving gameplay systems based on the feedback we got from the pre-demo.

Recently, my graphics card went out of commission. My computer has been having issues for months but it finally gave out this week. I am currently running an extra card a friend had lying around. I would replace the old one, but my motherboard is too outdated to support a newer card. Looks likes I’m going to have to build a new computer sooner than I thought.

The reason why we don’t update as often as we’d like is because I have very little free time. I am a student, and I’m employed as a Conceptual Game Designer. Any spare time is spent doing homework and working on Sintel The Game. I will do my best to give you guys more news about whats going on. Thanks!