We received numerous feedback about the vibrant emotive color scheme in the different planets already available in early access on Steam. However, we knew something was still missing to create a better immersion in the gameplay. So, we created a real-time system to control the fog and the day/night cycle.
Work in progress on how fog and night would look on Mazir.
We have created an actor blueprint that we can drop in any level in Unreal Engine, which lets us control things like; day versus night, day or night light intensity, fog duration (during day and night), and various fog parameters.
Some may notice that there is no sun on planet Korala, as there is no rotation of the shadow when the day/night cycle is in progress.
This is because the planets in Spheriums are around a black hole without a sun. The black hole attracts the worlds like a magnet, so they always face the same direction. However, an unknown object is orbiting around the black hole, creating the day and night cycle.
This was the story’s reason :) The actual development reason is that since we are also porting the game to the Wii, we are baking some shadows for optimization. Therefore moving two lights would have broken the visual.
Introducing the weather system will let us be more creative in the game's design and add some specific gameplay elements, like different or more aggressive enemies at night.
We are one developer and one modeler working on Spheriums. You can support us on Patreon:
Patreon.com
