I use many spotlights in a level, usually over 100, and try to be disciplined about radius to keep things performant. A skylight is in every level to provide ambient light and I swap out a static cube map and post-process LUT per level to give each level a unique ambience. ![]() ![]() The world is completely destructible so static lighting was of no use in fact, it is disabled project-wide. To improve readability of level design, I use simple emissive voxels to highlight ledges, edges, and points of interest. I usually toned down the roughness on most materials to give the game its sleek and shiny look. I use an albedo map, normal map, and a packed texture with Metallic, AO, Roughness, and Emissive info. The majority of world textures are sourced from Quixel. While experimenting with different visual styles, I realized that even a flat surface can look very interesting with a properly setup material and the right lighting. Because I am working with voxels of 20cm in size, there isn’t the resolution for super detailed geometry. Larrabee: Unreal Engine’s PBR and emissive combined with the constraints of working with voxels drive Severed Steel’s look. What shaped the game’s aesthetic and how did Unreal Engine help you achieve that look and feel? It lets moving towards the enemy become a strategically safe move if done right, which allows the player to be very aggressive. The stunt system in Severed Steel gives the player the opportunity to have more influence over incoming damage besides hiding behind cover, essentially chaining stunts creates cover wherever you want. Between the narrow field of view and unknown player hitbox, taking damage feels arbitrary in even the best designed FPS game. Larrabee: I’ve always thought taking damage felt awkward in FPS games. Ultimately, I was trying to distill a certain feeling of the flow state I feel when I’m super immersed in a single-player FPS game.ĭigging in a bit more into some of the game’s delightful mechanics, what made you decide to blend bullet-time acrobatics with the frenetic energy required to essentially stay bullet-proof in an engagement? The above three are definitely influences, along with other favorites like FEAR and the Half-Life mod The Specialists. Larrabee: Severed Steel is a mashup of the coolest action game mechanics I’ve encountered in my 30 years of gaming. How did your personal history with gaming shape the look and feel of this title? There are elements of Severed Steel that feel almost like an homage to gaming classics like Max Payne, SUPERHOT, and Hotline Miami. By the end, they are fighting where the executives hang out: museums, ornate gardens, and marble-tiled meeting rooms. So, for the arenas, the player starts in the underworks of Edensys, fighting in factories, cafeterias, and tunnels. The narrative serves to inspire the arenas the player fights in, and the short cutscenes give the player breaks in the action in an otherwise intensely paced campaign. The main character, Steel, has worked for the company Edensys her entire life, but after an injury on the job, Edensys decides she isn’t of value anymore and throws her out. Larrabee: The narrative is a revenge story. What is the narrative behind the game, and how do the narrative and the game’s mechanics work together? That being said I definitely had allies, which Severed Steel wouldn’t have been possible without. I think I’m pretty solitary by nature, and it just felt like the natural thing to do. I’m not sure why I chose to develop Severed Steel mostly alone. Before it, I tried to make an open-world RPG which is a bit much for a first-time solo dev. Larrabee: Severed Steel is my first “real” game. Is Severed Steel your first game and what made you decide to essentially develop it alone? I think teaching that for a few years made me think I could actually make a marketable game. In my mid-20s I got an entry-level job at a public school and through a few promotions, ended up teaching game development to sixth graders. I didn’t have the patience or resources back then to make anything of note, but I think those lessons stuck with me for many years. ![]() In middle school, I loved trying out new mods and even messed with the Half-Life SDK a bit. Matthew Larrabee: The seed of interest was probably planted from the Half-Life modding scene. How did you get interested in game development?
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