⚒New Logo, Perspective Change, 3D Modelling & More!

This one is going to be quite the journey! A lot has happened in making the Isle of Gūr since the last update — for one, the lore has totally shifted from more generic fantasy with a grounded twist to a much more grounded world and lore inspired by the ancient & medieval history of the great Celtic countries: Wales, Ireland & Scotland.

The new lore is designed to toe the line between fantasy & reality. Fantastical creatures basically do not exist on Gūr, but the folklore surrounding them does… in spades. It's more of a "we can't show you this mythical stuff, but it all totally exists and our whole way of life is based around it" thing, which is quite true to real-life history!

The lore manuscript grows day by day. Having a knowledge & fascination in Celtic history and religion is certainly helping, and being surrounded by ancient ruins & monuments within walking distance helps too — especially for…

Textures

In pursuit of making as much of Copper Trader myself as possible, I have set a goal to personally make all of the textures from images I take on my travels and here at home, in Wales.

It took a bit of doing to learn the process, but it's essentially:

Take a 1:1 image on my phone camera of a texture → import into Affinity Photo → Affine tool → fill in seams → export.

This means that the website now uses all of my own textures! I'm not bothering too much with the actual game at the moment, as I'm still just relying on placeholder assets to prototype — building the actual game is still about a year off.

Modelling

I've also been finally learning to model, rig and animate in Blender! Another goal is to have all 3D assets in Copper Trader modelled by myself (with my own textures!). This is something I've wanted to commit to for years and years, so finally doing so feels fantastic.

I won't go into detail regarding my "workflow" as, at this stage, it's whatever the smart fellas on YouTube are doing!

Perspective Change & Others

This one is quite large. Copper Trader has entered the first person, and it will stay that way!

The two things I'm always doing for CT is playing old RPGs & IMSIMs I love, and reading through my reading list. I then make loads (and loads) of notes about what I like/dislike or any inspirations, review Copper Trader's design doc and ask myself what I can do better.

One game I've been playing through for this cause is Arx Fatalis (via Arx Libertatis), and the sheer immersion struck me. Being able to see your body in first person, the movement speed, animation, interactivity… This excited me and caused me to rethink things. And so, Copper Trader is now a first person game!

I feel like the physics interactivity is so much better in this mode, and also, I feel more confident designing terrain & environments for this perspective — which I think is very important.

Some other things to note relate to the CSDK. Interior cells can now be managed, created, edited and linked to doors within the UI, which obviously makes things way easier. The exterior cell view is now generated from the actual terrain mesh, so it avoids a prior issue I was having where the heatmap would be terribly outdated after a Terrain3D edit.

New Logo

As far as aesthetics go, Copper Trader has a new logo! The font is "Black Flag", and the two characters — who, in my head canon, represent the two rivalling factions on the Isle — are from a 1500's print called "The Six Saints".

I spent a few hours cutting them out & cleaning them up in Affinity. I used the polygon select tool for a rough outline, then opened in a new file to get in closer with the cut-out.

After they were properly cut out, I applied a monochrome filter and brought out the black/white levels, then went in with a brush to clean any discolouration/staining or parts I didn't want! After all of this, I passed them through a vectoring tool with some further cleaning up after it made some mistakes.

Lastly, I spent some time finding the font and choosing from my 4 cut-out characters, positioning them then calling it a day!

I think it fits the new lore very well!

New Tracks!

Yes, that's right — I have composed even more slightly-jank MacBook-microphone ambient tracks for the game. We have "Ambience — The Palace", which was composed for an interior I'm concepting, and "The Four Saints", which is an ambient track designed to mimic an important side of the lore. As always, you can listen below!

Thanks for reading, and as always…

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having fun!