Darkness Within: The Dark Lineage Developer’s Diary: Part 2 by Onur Samli – Article
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Hi everyone and welcome to the Darkness Within: The Dark Lineage developer diary part 2! In the previous part, I promised to talk about the new features and characters of the game. Also I will reveal some of the game locations in this chapter; so let’s begin! Feature-wise, the game was really enhanced in contrast with the previous game. In addition to all of the nice features of In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, The Dark Lineage will present a lot of new and great features that will make the game play more realistic and frightening. One of these features is the lighting. Lighting is probably the most important and atmosphere enhancing part of the game. You can carry different light sources, like an old fashioned lantern, a flashlight and even a candleholder and with these, you will light your way up through the thick, darkness-clad areas of The Dark Lineage. Of course you will not be in complete darkness. There will be light sources other than yours that are cracking the thick veil of darkness here and there but these also will cast their shadows around and thus create an ominous mood for the game.
The second most important improvement is the support for real-time physics. In The Dark Lineage, you can push and pull some objects to clear your way or reveal underlying secrets. Or you can use objects as stepping-stones to get to spots you cannot normally reach. However, you don’t need to worry, you do not need to push or pull doors or lids to open them. We implemented the physics support only enough to make game play more realistic. I think that’s enough about the lights and physics; so let’s talk about the characters a bit: The Dark Lineage will include a lot more beautiful and detailed characters than its predecessor. Hearing this may disappoint some players who loved the solitary exploration of the In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, but don´t worry, we tried to keep the solitary exploration of the previous game as much as possible. The side-characters in the game are only present at some points of the story to provide information to the gamer. Other than these, you will be alone in your exploration.
Amongst the new characters, there are a lot of out of the ordinary ones like a madman, some grave robbers and the crawling chaos, Nyarlathotep. I am sure the latter one will make Lovecraft fans grin. By the way, did I mention you will also see a shoggoth? And lastly I want to talk about the game locations. We prepared a lot of moody places that will make use of the new features of the game engine. A lot of dark, attractive and detailed places are waiting to be explored, like an old Victorian mansion, a dark and quiet town, a tomb, an abandoned nursing home and more! That’s all for now. We will talk about more game locations and some other interesting things in the next part. I hope you enjoyed this second part of my diary as well. If you have any questions, I encourage you to access our forums at www.zoetrope-interactive.com/forum. Thanks for reading! |
