Underworld Ascendant: Pillars and Prototypes, and $900,000 Raised (Which Means Liches)

by ·

So this is exciting news:

And, indeed, a quick glance at the Store page on the Underworld Ascendant website confirms that the project has, to date, raised just over $900,000 in its ongoing crowdfunding campaign. Which means three things:

  1. Liches will be added to the game
  2. Tyball, from the first Ultima Underworld, will re-appear in Ascendant as a lich
  3. OtherSide Entertainment are now looking forward to the $950,000 stretch goal: the Necropolis region of the Abyss

OtherSide are also running a summer cross-promotion with inXile Entertainment; basically, if you pledge at least $20 each toward the development of both Underworld Ascendant and The Bard’s Tale IV, you’ll get a $5 pledge coupon for Underworld Ascendant, which can be used toward your pledge proper or redeemed for add-on content.

And finally, a new issue of the Stygian Sentinel has been published, in which the OtherSide team discuss pillars…and the creation of their first playable prototype:

Design has been spending time making what we call a Phase 0 map. This is a typical map layout but made with basic editor shapes, and imported shapes from a 3D program. As we go on and are happy with the layout, we move on to phase 1 and 2 which has more detailed replacement assets.

A pulled back view of the level… notice it is for the most part just basic shapes and some simple prefabs

A closer look at a lower part of the level.

So, a spiral staircase in phase 0 is easily replaced with a new phase 1 version. It’s the same size, same shape, but with more detail. We then repeat the process with however many iterations on that staircase we want until it looks just how we like.

What this allows us to do is very quickly stand up all the gameplay, all the object scripting like doors opening, things swinging and other basic map specific tasks. This leaves our system designers unblocked and can plug in all the gameplay very early and very quickly, while art continues making the area more and more detailed.

You can check out the entirety of the latest Sentinel post here.

Tags: