Project Growth

Update*
This topic was changed from "Project Growth" to "LuGus Studios Projects". I wil use this topic not only to show work for Project Growth but all Unity project from our company.

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LuGus Studios is happy to announce Project Growth!
Project Growth (codename) is a 3D education game being developed on the Unity engine.



In our game you play as an Alvergast. Alvergast are a unique human-like creature, very similar to elves, trolls and leprechauns. The Alvergast are very small (5cm) and live underground. They have a Celtic-like culture. At night the Alvergast go outside and do chores in the 'human-world' when people are sleeping. In return these giants leave some food on the tables for the Alvergasts, to thank them for the work they do at night.



Education is very important in our project and our goal is to make 'learning' fun by incorporating education aspects in our gameplay. Our game is made for young children, we are aiming for a PEGI 3 rating. This means our world and characters look friendly and there won't be violence and gore in our game.





The gameplay consist of puzzles, exploration, collecting, character building and interaction with NPC's and other players. We hope to add many mini-games into our project. In our game you will be able to do quests in the underground Alverworld and do missions for the Alver-King Furisto in the human world.



We have been hard at work the last couple of weeks. Today we are happy to release our very first in-game screenshot of Project Growth! Thanks to the Unity engine gamers will be able to play our game on the web, this screenshot was taken in a web browser. Note: this screenshot is made in a very early game build, so keep in mind that this is all work-in-progress. Please let us know what you think!




*update 27/06/2011:

latest screenshots:















Project Growth at the EXIT Master exposition at C-Mine Genk (Belgium). Our first public demonstration of the project.

 

amazing! looking forward to playing it!

 

truly inspirational!

 

yea looks awesome!!

 

Thanks everyone, it's always very motivating to get nice reactions, even with our first concept and screenshot release!

We just released a second (exclusive to indiedb) in-game screenshot on indiedb.com, a great website for game modders and indie developers.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/project-growth/images/project-growth-screenshot#imagebox

 

This sounds like a cool project and the artwork is simply gorgeous! I look forward to seeing more!

 

Thanks Dele! We will be using our indiedb.com profile as are main commnity portal for now (until we are close to release), we will try to update it on a regular basis. So for more info and media, I recommend to check it out ofcourse I will also try to update this topic if possible. Thanks!

 

New screenshot, Happy 2011 everyone!

 

Looks very promising, the artwork is awesome.

BTW: are you from infinity:tqfe forums?

 

Thank you and yes I worked on Infinity for 3 years

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/71115-Blood-In-Blood-Out-Stay-Alive
Don't try post my topic!

 

Oh, I don't know how that happend, I'm sorry about that. My post is gone now.

 

Beautiful~~~~~~~~~

 

Thank you!

Something a bit different this time:

 

in a web browser:

 

Amazing =)

 

Thank you!

 

nice concept art + design!

 

like it, keep going,

 

Lovely. More!

 

Thanks guys! We hope to show some work on the characters soon

 

Loving the visuals so far

 

Graphics are amazing!
leaving me speechless )
Keep up good work, can't wait to try it in motion

 

Looks great I'm especially loving your concept art, very beautiful
It looks like you going the diffuse only way in your materials(not a bad thing, as I'm guessing you are aiming for lower spec'ed computers). But then I think your textures on ie. the rocks in the screenshots would benefit enourmously with some highlights painted on the edges, like in the first concept image. I can't wait to see more

 

Very creative and different from any game I've ever heard or seen before keep up the amazing work.

 

In the last builds we have added some objects with normal maps, the rocks have them for example. It's very subtle and you don't notice them that much on the last screenshots but they still add a little more detail to the environment

 

A lot has happened the last couple of months, we have been very busy with Project Growth (PG) and some other projects too. Since we mainly work on the project with 2 core developers (we do get some help from time to time), development on PG is not as fast as with similar projects. Still we managed to do a lot of work since our last update and we are finally finishing our first visual demo.



This demonstration includes 1 level showing off the underground world of the Alvergasts, an Alvergast character to explore the environment with, atmospheric music and a dev-commentary system for those who are interested to know more about the development of the project. Our visual demo will be presented to a jury and for the first time to the public in C-Mine Genk next week. We hope to do an online release of this first demo level soon too, so you guys can get a taste of what the final product might be like.



If we get enough support and feedback we might do more releases like these (demos, prototypes, ...) in the future!
If you want to get the latest news on the development of Project Growth and other projects from LuGus Studios, follow us on facebook now! We'll be doing our online demo release on our facebook page first!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/LuGus-Studios/127832163943816

 

very nice!!

 

Thanks!

New screenshot:

 

when will there be a demo so we can give back useful feedback.

 

Very soon, we are doing a public demonstration next week at an exposition in Belgium we hope to do an online release of our visual demo soon after

 

Look forward to it! Im in-love with your art style and i think that will be one of the key elements in your success.
What platforms will you be building for?

 

Thanks! ^^ Since we want our game to be accessible and userfriendly we hope te release it on the web (webplayer) for PC and Mac.



Some info about our characters:

In my previous posts I showed one of our Alvergast characters in-game for the first time, these characters are very important in Project Growth so we have spend a lot of time designing them.



You can see the original concept on the left side, a model sheet in the middle and the low-poly 3D version of our character on the right side. While we tried to stay true to the original concept, the end result in 3D looks a little bit more 'human-like' than the original concept. This is to make our Alvergast characters look more friendly and familiar. Since we are aiming for a PEGI3 rating, we try to make our characters and environments look as friendly as possible.

Another character I want to show for the first time is one of the Alvergast pets. Since Alvergasts live underground they keep glowworms and fireflies as pets, to give warmth and to light up their underground world. The following concept shows our cute glowworm (beetle), while its 'cartoony', the design is based on the real-life glowworm.



As mentioned in my previous posts we are preparing to show our visual demo for the first time to the public in an exposition in C-Mine Genk (Belgium) next week. As part of the presentation we will be showing a 'real-life' Alvergast brought to life with a 3D printer! We've uploaded a picture of this ‘real’ Alvergast on our facebook page: check it out!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/LuGus-Studios/127832163943816

 

Project Growth at the EXIT Master exposition at C-Mine Genk (Belgium). Our first public demonstration of the project.

 

New screenshot: Amvergast structures and firefly.

 

I love your concept art but the in-game screenshots looks dull and dirty mainly because of the diffuseshading coming on to heavy. I'd suggest abit more emmisive shaders letting the textures come out more and cranking up the contrast both in value and saturation.

 

Thanks for the feedback Filto, with emisive shaders, do you mean glow shaders (like self-illumine shader)? Also, where would you suggest them? On the characters? The mushrooms?


Btw, amazing portfolio!

 

Like the visual style, reminds me of the game Beyond Good Evil!

 

Look nice, keep up the gud work.

-- TwisterK

 

I would suggest them with different strength on everything but especially characters. You can always tint the emmisve color abit for greater control. Just to get away from the blackness which makes stuff look dirty. I think with your style would work well with this. Abit more vibrant look. If you need really dark areas somewhere just paint it into the textures. And yes i think the mushrooms would look very magical if they were fully emmisive actually combined with a light. Glowing mushrooms

I'm glad you like my portfolio. thank you very much for the kind comment

 

AMAZING!!!! Congrats!!

 

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, we are still experimenting with the visuals, and its alway great to get feedback like this early on! I'm going to experiment a bit with emmisive shaders

Ofcourse, while our art-style is cartoony, everything we show is based on real life. All the mushrooms are based on existing mushrooms from our area, so making them glow might not be that realistisc. Still, a little bit of glow might not be that bad.

 

Since we get a lot of questions about what our project is about, some extra information:



Not only does Project Growth stand for our own growth potential while creating this project, it also stands for the theme of the project and the educational aspect that we want to incorporate in it.
In addition to education, "Flemish" is another pillar of our project. Flanders (Flemish speaking part of Belgium) can be proud of its forms of visual entertainment, ranging from comic strips and children's books to television productions. Our aim is to develop a game that equals the quality of the other Flemish forms of visual entertainment.

Project Growth is a game aimed at children in the first and second year of primary school (aged 7 to 9 years) who are just learning to read, write and do arithmetic but also still like to play a lot. Since our game is made for young children, we are aiming for a PEGI 3 rating. This means our world and characters look friendly and there won't be violence and gore in our game.

The 3D game world in which players are free to explore at their own tempo is inspired by Flemish folklore. The game is an interactive children's story, told by a fictional storyteller that encourages players to dream away in an imaginitive world with interesting locations and characters, and story-based assignments with challenging puzzles.
In Project Growth you play as an Alvergast. Alvergast are a unique human-like creature, very similar to elves, trolls and leprechauns. The Alvergast are very small (5cm) and live undergrond. They have a celtic-like culture. At night the Alvergast go outside and do chores in the 'human-world' when people are sleeping. In return these giants leave some food on the tables for the Alvergasts, to thank them for the work they do at night.

Wr also want to make the game a tool that can be used in education environments (schools) or at home. It enables educators or parents to follow the performance of their children. This should help clarify a child's abilities and/or matters. Becayse the test is in the form of a game and the player does not know an analysis is being made, the result is not unfluenced by stress and pressure to excel. This might be the case in current tests being used.

 

Project Growth on Tv-Limburg (3:18)

 

Whoa! Very nice!!

 

Thank you!

Does anyone know a good free alternative for Fraps that works on Mac?

 

anyone?

 

Looking great already. I'd spend a little more time on the lighting setup, to remove the 'dirty' colors in dark areas. You're quite close to super awesomeness!

 

Thank you! experimenting with the lighting setup right now