Lost Paws April Update
Hello dog lovers!
Welcome to our latest doggo filled devlog! In this one, we will be going over the progress made in April and what to look forward to this month.
Lighting
Firstly, the main focus for this month was a revamp of interior lighting. We felt like the experience wasn't as cohesive when going from building interiors to the rest of the world. It created almost two distinct lighting environments which we wanted to unify.
To do that, we first trashed our simple lighting setup and started to pick the kind of light (either spot of point) based on the type of fixture. We then would add a second light per fixture that would affect the area around it like the roof. After that we would add an area light near the floor and sometimes walls to simulate external light coming in. Lastly, we would bake a reflection probe for the interior. All these changes were made because we needed a performant template that we could put in each interior. Below are a couple samples.
Vet Lobby:
Apartment Lounge:
Performance and Bugs
Another big focus for us this month was performance. While it is still ongoing, we have already managed to massively improve stability and most importantly FPS. The primary way we did this was leveraging our boxed off building designs. Most of the lights in the scene are located in interiors with the exteriors mostly lit by sun light. As a result we can effectively create our own light level of detail (LOD) system. We check based on a light's distance to the doggo and then depending on how far we turn on and off light and lighting features like shadows to prevent them from adding performance costs when the player is too far away to see them.
Speaking of LOD, we have added it for various buildings with a lot of details as well as bake and atlas the buildings to lower the cost down further. Props and other details have been added to the LOD system so that they are culled from rendering when at distance even when occlusion can still see them but being too far for the player to notice. Combined this has jumped the FPS by over 50% allowing for it to run on even more PCs then before.
Lastly, here is a highlight of some bugs/requests you all found either at the conventions or mentioned in previous demos:
- Make Angry Old Man drop an item when defeated
- Allow begging to convert from sit to stand up
- Allow players to adjust zoom of camera with mouse wheel up and down
- Fixed Beg detection for Friendly Old Man
- Improve physics interaction on balls and inventory
- Fixed the Vet getting knocked out on occasion during respawn
Future
We wanted to wrap up by providing a little update of what can be expected this month. Dog breed selection is well under way and we currently are working on adding our first new breed a Doberman!
Here is a brief sample:
We are hoping to add more breeds in addition to more building interiors and a new adversary in the forest this month!
Thanks for reading! If you have any interest in signing up to our closed beta you can still access the sheet on our discord: https://discord.gg/3mQnjNSMcW. If you liked what you saw, please consider wishlisting on Steam as it helps out a lot! Thanks again and see you all in the next one!
Lost Paws Winter Update
It has been a while since our last dev log thanks to our adventures in PAX East and Playthrough NC, but we're back and here to give you all the details on what we've been working on these past couple of months!Lost Paws will be at Playthrough NC
Hello fellow dog lovers!
Lost Paws will be demoing at Playthough NC March 18-19 in the Raleigh Convention Center!
Lost Paws will be at PAX East!
Hello fellow dog lovers!
We got amazing news! Lost Paws will be at PAX East March 23 - 26 in the Boston Convention Center! We will be showing off the demo and giving away convention swag at our booth. If you are planning on heading over to PAX we hope to see you there.
If you can't make it to PAX, fear not! We will be running special digital events during the convention and beyond. Keep an eye out here by following the game on steam or joining our discord! We will be announcing more as we get closer to the convention. Thanks for all the support thus far and excited to show more of Lost Paws in the near future!
Lost Paws October NextFest Update
New Updates for Lost Paws and NextFest Demo announcement! New skill tree, achievement system, interactables, and HUD. Try out our demo for Steam NextFest!Announcing Lost Paws!
Hello internet denizens!
It has been a while since we last posted, and that is because we had bit of a shift in organization and people at the studio. But we’re happy to be back and excited to share our newest project, Lost Paws!
Lost Paws is an open world survival game where you get to play as a stray dog! Run free and explore a wild world from a dog’s eye view. Choose how you want to play the game and be a good or bad doggo. The actions taken determine how the world will interact towards the player, and what options the player will have to develop themselves and progress further to making the world their own.
So, we wanted to go over a few more details in addition to what we have already revealed. The first one is the partially procedurally based nature of the game. While the world’s buildings and macro elements are pre-determined, we have a system called the sector spawner that gives the player a unique experience each time they enter a section of the world. What spawns in are NPCs, vehicles, and various active/interactable items. This ensures that each time you go to a new part of the world it will be a different experience every time!
Ultimately, we want a huge world for the player to explore, but today we wanted to show off parts of Beaver Town, a suburb of the metropolis known as Big City, which is separated from Beaver Town by a river. It serves as the starting point for the player’s journey. It is generally a friendly place with a lot of people who love animals. The town also shows the player how to begin doing things like crafting as well as great ways to unleash their inner stray.
On that note, we do have a few things to make your adventures as a four-legged friend even better! Right now, we are working on enhancing the begging system. One of the big ways to get items in the game is to befriend humans. One way to do that is to beg for thing from friendly humans. Depending on who you try to beg to and what kind of beg you do will determine the type of item and type of reaction. This is still currently being worked on and will be expanded, so expect to hear more about it in the future.
We will be providing development updates, game concepts, and other tidbits as development progresses. If this at all interests you, please wishlist us to keep up to date on all our latest news updates on Steam! Every wishlist helps immensely. Thanks for reading and hope to see you all in the next one!