As part of our more frequent dev updates, we would like to showcase in more detail some of the environment work we have been doing in OFF GRID. This week, we will be giving a sneak peak to the new external environment art used for the levels.

> Joe looks up at the buildings and says "You are breathtaking", he was talking to the smog

The first iterations of the city environment lent itself to being quite cartoony, which deviated from the original concept of the game and what we were trying to achieve with it. We created a new asset pack of modular assets both for the players and us to create OFF GRID cities that feel fitting to the tone of the universe.

The new reworked version of the cityscape next to Joe's workplace

The commercial district is where Joe works, it's an accounting business called Ascent Auditance that has absolutely nothing suspicious going on behind the scenes, it's part of a larger building that encapsulates both Firestream and Aldrenna as well, businesses that Joe has the opportunity to explore on this level (and also feature in our spin-off game OFF GRID: Red Team).

We did mention that we are going to start posting more regularly to show progress, and so we have started with updated screenshots on the store page carousel.

Here's a quick look at what we have put up, and we'll be following up with deeper dives and more screenshots on what has changed in each instance. Make sure to drop a line in the comments to let us know which of these you want us to post more detail on next time!

We've been pushing the city's external environments and vistas to make the world feel more alive.Added some atmospheric details to make all the server-rooms fell that ice cold feeling you get when you walk into one!

We have the screens on devices now able to to play animations and timeline sequences (a Unity feature) - to really push our environmental storytelling further.Those who played earlier builds will be relived to know that we have put a lot of work into the character controls this year, making it now worth while making all the vents much spookier and more interesting!

We've done some significant work on the data view rendering to make it as good in day time scenes as it already was in night time ones, without making it hard to see the regular environment.

We've also updated the art style to be able to conservatively make use of minimal and stylised textures, providing some nice visual contrast in places.

The offices feel much more lived in now.

We've also updated how the app dock works, this is definitely one to dive into further!

Joe's workplace now has much more to it, we've got several businesses that you get to manipulate in the opening sequences of the game as you try to work out what is going on.

Joe and Jen's apartment has been entirely reworked to feel like a real space that a father and daughter would live in.

Jen's room is now plastered with hacker culture references, can you spot any in this shot?!

...and we have been working on how to rep her favourite distro without infringing any of the permissions (fun fact, Canonical have a trademark on not just the logos but the "look and feel" of the desktop - meaning we cant just drop any Ubuntu screen in there, were in the process of making desktops that feel like different distros without being too much like them). And on that note...

We have done a complete overhaul of how devices are put together, they can now have a completely customiseable front end and backend dependent on how you access them.

This opens up a world of possibilities for how much further we can take the hacking puzzles. They are all fully moddable and scripted in lua, so creative players will be able to make lots more interesting devices.One more device screen to show the flexibility of the same system, layouts all defined in lua in the device scripts!

We hope this has been a tantalising update on what we have been upto and makes up for how quiet we have been. We'll start posting about all this more regularly now, in shorter form to make it more frequent.
Let us know in the comments what you would like to hear more about from the above!

Happy Hacking,

The Semaeopus team.