ESCAPE FROM CASTLE GALDOR
ABOUT THE GAME |
INFO |
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Escape from Castle Galdor is a virtual reality game made in Unreal Engine 4. You play as an imprisoned wizard with the sole objective of escaping the castle. To succeed you have to brew and master three different spells along your way to freedom. But beware; monsters lurking the castle will try to stop you! Role & Responsibilities
I was chosen for the role of art lead/director, managing the 3D and 2D artists to make sure our artstyle held together and that our priorities worked with our tight production time. |
Platform |
PC |
VFX
The games nature allowed for many particle effects to be made, both for the spells, but also a lot of environemntal effects to enhance the atmosphere. Below are a some examples.
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The flags atop the towers on the courtyard are actually simulated in real-time using PhysX APEX Cloth simulations on the GPU. It was a bit tricky to set up, but I think it looks slightly better than a baked animation and it wasn't that expensive in terms of fps to add a pair of them. |
These are the three spells that appear closest to the player, as they are stuck to your hands when preparing to cast spells, so they had to be taken extra care of.
I used mesh particles for the lightning arcs to avoid several cases of overdraw so close to the camera. The core sphere of each effect is also a mesh particle as it helps with feeling of rotating the effect in your hands.
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The lightning effect is fast and violent. It also has a chain-lightning feature where it arcs over to enemies nearby if there are any. The main lightning sprites were made in Houdini. |
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I learned that effects that require volume, like explosions, often do better with mesh-particles in VR. This explosion uses regular particles for small details like sparks, but mesh particles for the lingering smoke. |
These effects were used as targeting recticles for the lightning and teleportation spells. I added a black gradient ramp under both of them to separate them from the background, making them easier to use in-game.
Many subtle environmental effects like these ones were made. We wanted to make different rooms and locations have a unique feeling to them.