Fortress Occident Developer Blog

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SKETCHES FOR SKILL VISUALS

Mikk Metsniit

Environment Artist

We are absolute LOONS for icons here at ZA/UM. Video games have always had great iconography — think of the iconic Pipboy or the sci-fi minimalism of Alpha Centauri’s technologies. Both came up when we started thinking of the logos for the 24 Skills that represent You in No Truce With The Furies.

They need to feel precious, special, hard earned. Personal. After long, arduous consideration we have begun to look into using paintings as logos. These paintings change visually into different states in-game (become more colourful, change expressions, get extra snippets of detail), as you progress through the dialogues and your thoughts begin to mature.

Today we present four sketches for the Intellect attribute skills. They are still very much a work in progress and a constant delve into the depths of what’s possible and what we actually need.

Intellect attribute skills - can you guess what each one represents?

 

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FELD PLAYBACK EXPERIMENT

Mikk Metsniit

Environment Artist

This is a special screenshot for us, showing our redesigned dialogue engine in action. It’s called the Feld (short for Feld Playback Experiment).

The Feld is a highly advanced tape computer, a prototype lost during the turn-of-the-century Revolution. The machine and it’s copies were appropriated by the ultra-left, raided from the R&D division of Feld Electronics, then lost to the fires. This computer uses long strips of film for feedback (projection), memory (storing on magnetic tape) and interfacing (submit commands in handwriting) purposes.

All our menus are designed around the Feld Playback Experiment. The dialogue engine is just one aspect, although the most important one, as players will spend a lot of time reading text in it. It has to be perfect.

It’s pretty much working as envisioned. Dice rolls are accompanied by a tape fast forward animation, the results are announced by subtle lighting effects. The whole thing makes this nice insect-like sound, very delicate. It wasn’t easy coming up with a menu paradigm that hasn’t been done to death yet – stone slabs, cybercomputer, papyros pages, detectivy notebook paper, black techno triangles – but this is something we feel we can make our own.

As a bonus - it is a part of an in-world mystery.