Dev Blog #5 - A Little Light Reading

Hi everyone, we’re back again with another development insight for you all!

I’m Ed, the Lead Artist here at Junkfish, and this week I’m going to talk a little about how we’re capturing the feeling of Monstrum in our visual development.

With Monstrum 2, we are moving to an abandoned Sea fort in the middle of the ocean. From the outside of the fort, everything looks normal and dilapidated, but on the inside, bizarre and futuristic experiments have taken place at the behest of the evil corporation, ‘Hongsha-Miller’.

We aim to faithfully recreate the atmosphere and tone of the original Monstrum game, by taking advantage of the latest tools available in Unity3d, namely the High Definition Render Pipeline.

HDRP is specifically designed for next gen consoles and PC hardware, and gives us the option to add realistic volumetrics to most of the dynamic lights. Additionally, by using emissive objects and baked lighting, we can realistically define areas of illumination and darkness, which are crucial for core gameplay.

Procedural generation presents us with the challenge of creating unique experiences for the players each and every time they play. For backgrounds, we use features such as ‘Layered Materials’, that will allow us to have an extendable library of tile-able objects that can be shared between several of the locations.

It’s not just walls, ceilings and floors. Background artists are also creating many usable items and interactive elements that in terms of scope, surpass the original Monstrum game.

When we bring all of the assets, effects and lighting together, you can start to see the signature Monstrum 2 art style emerge.

In future blog posts, we’ll discuss the procedural generation in more detail and demonstrate more of the environmental challenges that the players will face from this inhospitable Sea Fort.

We still have a long way to go and lots to show you along the way, so remember to like and subscribe to us on social media to get all the up-to-date news and insight.

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram @ TeamJunkfish, and chat directly to the devs and other fans on our discord.

Signing off,

Ed