Echoes of Somewhere

An experimental freeware 2.5D adventure game featuring AI-assisted graphics.

How it all started

Updates

Development Blog

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Using Midjourney for game locations (city hall part 1)

September 18, 2023

Sometimes these locations require more art direction. More specific features. In these cases, a lot more work is required. Here is a breakdown for how to direct Midjourney for game locations using it’s vary region and pan / zoom out features.
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Building a Puzzle

September 11, 2023

Building Adventure Game Puzzles is fun. This is a very complete breakdown of creating a bathroom scene with its puzzle in under 2 days! (Spoiler alert!)
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New teaser trailer

September 10, 2023

The original teaser trailer I did way back started to look a bit dated with old character, locations and UI, so it was time for a new trailer!
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Custom post-process effect: Anamorphic Bloom

September 4, 2023

Anamorphic bloom is for sure the most cyberpunk aesthetic there is. I wanted to use it as a use case for learning how to create post process materials for Unity URP. This post explains the process.
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Using AI as inspiration for UI design

August 28, 2023

All throughout the project, I have been slightly tweaking the UI from time to time. Now that I have a better understanding of the functionality of the UI, a more polished look and feel begun to creep into my mind.
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Rendering custom shadows with URP shader graph & apartment ext location

August 21, 2023

As I upgraded the render pipeline for the game, I noticed that my custom shadow rendering shaders turned pink. It was time to transition from custom HLSL shading for the environments to a more modern shader graph based approach.
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Additional effects for the apartment scene

August 14, 2023

I have been working on the apartment for absolutely forever! I have begun to approach this room as a vertical slice for the game. This post is about some of the features I added this week: simulated cool air mist and fluorescent light flicker.
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Footstep Audio

August 11, 2023

I have actually never before done footstep audio set for a game. I wanted the system to be able to play audio from animation events and work on multiple different surfaces. Read how I ended up doing it.
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UI audio groundwork

August 4, 2023

For a while now I have been laying the foundations for UI audio for the game. This was more involved than I thought.
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PDA Part 2 – notifications

July 10, 2023

Now that I had stuff tucked away hidden in the PDA I wanted to let the player know of these a little bit. So I decided to do a simple on screen notify when new To-Do list items are added or then new messages arrive.
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News

News on AI

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AI skyboxes

May 2, 2023

There have been multiple advancements in the AI space that I have found very interesting but there has not been a use for them in the game project yet. So I set up a news section to cover more things.
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Building the Metaverse Podcast

April 21, 2023

I got to share my thoughts on using generative AI in game development on Building the Metaverse.
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In the media

Media Reactions

PC Gamer

The project convincingly shows how an individual artist with limited resources can use these controversial, questionably ethical tools to punch above their weight when developing a game.

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80 Level Talent

A massive 2-part breakdown, describing the pipeline behind the project, discussing the process of creating characters and environments using artificial intelligence.

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