Industria
INDUSTRIA 2 Dev Update #3: Combining the puzzle pieces
David & the bleakmill team[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2"][/p]
INDUSTRIA 2 Dev Update #2: Some more details on our brand-new story trailer!
Greetings all!
Today we want to share with you a brand-new story trailer we made for INDUSTRIA 2. Maybe you have seen it already in the Future Games Show Spring Showcase or on the product page, if not, have a go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHsewJZ7Eo
We put a loooot of love into this one, as we decided to show you a bunch of new levels, one of the main characters and also the new enemies in action. Let me start by talking about Marlene:
(Be aware: tiny spoilers ahead!) INDUSTRIA 2 starts with Nora being stuck in the parallel dimension you might know from the first game. After surviving alone for years, trying to find a way back home, she meets Marlene, a familiar face, back from East-Berlin where Nora is from. Well, 'meeting' is kind of wrong, more correct would be that Nora stumbles into her. After being alone for a long time, Nora is obviously suspicious, and so is Marlene. But the harsh environment and ever looming presence of the dangerous ATLAS presence (the machines) more or less forces them to think of a strategy together.
We are not The Last of Us with a big budget, but nevertheless we wanted to create a memorable NPC you collaborate with to some extent. To make that work, we had to figure out how to animate faces and full body characters. Our animator Ben did an insane job and figured out a system which will be used in the game a lot: a library of facial animations he made we can use to create all the scenes we need to tell a story. And yes, Marlene will fight with Nora. We try to hit a good satisfying spot where her AI is not annoying but actually helpful and memorable (the perfect reference for us still is Alyx in HL2: Episode 2).
Fear not, INDUSTRIA 2 is light on cutscenes and we always try to mix good old Half-Life 2 style in-game cutscenes with a handful of actual camera-cuts. But it's always from Nora's first-person perspective and the game will maintain its unique feel of solitude, even if there are other characters with you in the world.
There are more characters in the game, but we don't want to spoil anything else. In the trailer we also showed exactly one black and white shot. If you played the first game, you probably know what this refers to and I can gladly announce that the Library and its inhabitants still play an important role. We love to mix the familiar with the unfamiliar as Viktor Antonov (Half-Life 2/Dishonored Art Director, who sadly passed away recently) would have said and we will continue that surreal path from the first game.
Well, that's it so far. There is so much more stuff happening of course, but I will keep this for the next development update. We hope you like the direction this project is going and can't wait for your feedback and thoughts!
All the best and until the next dev update!
David & The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/
INDUSTRIA 2 Dev Update #1: Diving deeper into enemies and environment art
Hey everyone!
It's time for another update on what's happening behind the scenes. Since this year started, we have been hard at work to get our new enemies designed, modeled, textured, animated and moving around the world of INDUSTRIA 2. The other thing we spent some time on, was refining our environment art workflows.
Since we started, we often came back to Half-Life: Alyx and their environment design workflows. We are a young studio, learning a lot as we make this second game. So to learn good environment art, we came to the conclusion to look at games who did it right. For us long term Valve game fans, it was an easy choice: Half-Life: Alyx offers a super transparent look behind the asset creation process through the workshop tools everyone can use. Here we learned how to create efficient assets, the right amount of detail and smart material usage.
Valve used something called “Hotspot” texturing. Maybe you have heard about it already if you're into game development. If not, it's a simple, yet efficient way to texture any object quickly, with just a handful, sometimes just one texture map. Normally, you create unique textures for your models, resulting in hundreds, sometimes thousands of unique materials in the game. Hotspots solve this manual labor (and performance issue) by automatically picking the right part of a large texture map for the right polygon. What comes out is a pretty satisfying looking asset, featuring edge wear. That way, a whole train carriage can use the same 2 materials like the tracks it stands on, or the metal railings or pipes on the wall.
To get enough visual variety, we added a color wheel option per model as well as a vertex painting shader, so we can paint rust, dirt or color layers on top of the metal, wood or plaster. Since we are using Unreal Engine 5, we can't use the wonderful tools Valve built for their Hammer Editor. But we can try to get close with the tools Unreal provides, as well as some improvisation. We are super pleased with the look of INDUSTRIA 2. It's much more streamlined and optimized then what we achieved in the first game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGEWGzTg8tw
The other big thing we did in January was getting our final new enemies into the game. This is probably the 6th generation of enemies since we started INDUSTRIA back in 2015 and definitely the most complex we ever made. It started with designing them based on concept art and really finishing the lore behind those enemies, so they fit into the universe properly. We call them the “Hollows”, a machine built worker unit, maintaining the ATLAS fluid network all over the country.
The main feature here was to make a disgusting looking machine, really blurring the line between organic and machine built. It's supposed to be this dirty, oily, creepy AI controlled humanoid wandering through the world of INDUSTRIA. You should almost feel sorry for it when it stumbles through dark corridors. Until it wants to rip you apart.
For this task, we knew that variety was key. Variety in their looks, in their states, in their animations and in their sound design. We want vivid shot reactions on different body parts, as well as satisfying feedback when hitting them with bullets or melee. Our animator Ben has to undergo a long process of creating enough animations and stances so that, even when there are three of these beasts walking towards you, they all look unique and characterful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qokmVSGYwKM
Their foot placement also is a huge task to get right. You probably all know how it looks, when characters in games have feet sliding all over the scene. Getting this right is super hard, but we are trying to improve on that front compared to the first game. Going forward, we are trying to give them even more creepy-vibes, by controlling where they turn their heads, for example when reacting to their buddies dying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ujiljBv8c
All in all, character animation as well as good AI is one of the hardest things to get right and one of those subjects, where you can spend weeks and months to make it look satisfying. We don't have unlimited time, so we won't have AAA quality characters. But in the end, we are neither AAA, nor AA and still just a tiny indie team scattered around the globe trying to make something awesome with the limited resources we have available.
We hope you like what you saw and wish all of you a wonderful February.
Until the next dev update!
The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/
Wrapping up the feedback of the first INDUSTRIA 2 playtest!
Happy New Year everyone!
This is David, from the bleakmill team.
To conclude the year 2024 here at bleakmill, we wanted to give you a little update on what we have been up to in the last months. Mainly, we want to fill you in on the outcome of the first internal playtest we did with about 20 players and long term community members this December.
When we started making INDUSTRIA 2, we knew that we would need in depth playtesting to make sure the game is, in its core, fun and entertaining. Especially because we planned to make a few changes to the combat and AI systems from the prequel. In INDUSTRIA, the combat mainly results in the enemies seeing the player, followed by an endless chase until either the enemy or the player is dead. Even though there were quite a few complex systems working together in the background, the outcome was mostly “okay” combat.
One of INDUSTRIA 2’s main goals is to change this. Now we have a task based AI system at work, with enemies being able to lose the player, fall back in alert states or complete complex chains of tasks, which can range from opening a door, to using items and playing specific animations. We also feature a stealth system, as well as a crafting system, to allow for more dynamic gameplay and more player choice. Weapons can be upgraded with stats and attachments, and the looting has been overhauled completely.
In short, the whole core loop was upgraded with countless systems so it can stand on its own legs.
Because of all these changes, it was crucial we test them with a mix of the prequels playtesters, and people who have never played any INDUSTRIA game yet. The test was running for one week and we could not be more happy about the results: no issue people reported was unknown or something we didn't see coming. The main feedback we got was valuable comments on controls, movement and the inventory. For most players, playing Nora felt a little bit slow and clunky. This was because we deliberately slowed player movement down, to really let people sink into the world.
INDUSTRIA 2 really is the opposite from a movement shooter. But we may have exaggerated a little bit. It also didn’t help that the enemies moved quicker than Nora herself, resulting in an unfair perception, as the big metal robots were faster than Nora. The inventory feedback was also very valuable, as it's going to be the heart of the core loop. Here you can swap your 2 active slots with other weapons from your stash, and craft firebombs, explosives, traps and bandages from components you find in the world. Currently, the inventory sometimes clips into foliage, or nearby objects. Also, when crouching, the inventory opens into the floor, blocking half of it with level geometry.
In stressy situations (which are super fun), this can lead to frustrating moments of being unable to change weapons quickly. Apart from the core loop feedback, people really liked the atmosphere and general tone of INDUSTRIA 2, which made us very happy. We are super grateful for all this feedback, suggestions and ideas, because they shed light on INDUSTRIA 2 from a completely fresh perspective that we - who are working on Nora's second adventure every day - can easily overlook. And thus make the game an even gaming experience!
All in all, it was a super successful first playtest and we really can't wait to do the next one in 2025. We believe that these playtests should be a fundamental part of the development cycle and finally, we found a good internal pipeline to deliver these tests with much less hussle compared with the INDUSTRIA 1 days. If you are interested in joining the next INDUSTRIA 2 playtest, feel free to join our Discord server and follow INDUSTRIA 2 here on Steam and on Twitter to keep up to date.
We hope you all have a wonderful and peaceful year 2025.
Best,
David & the bleakmill team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/
8 Minutes of commented gameplay out of INDUSTRIA 2!
Hey hey everyone!
Since the release of INDUSTRIA 2 is still quite some time away we skip gamescom 2024. We are making great progress and are super happy with how our baby is developing, but give us a little more time. After all, good things take time, right?
BUT we don't want to leave you here without at least a few new insights!
Almost 2 months ago, we published a 2-minute gameplay trailer that showed the first gameplay after the announcement of the game in March. We've now added (mysteriously missing) 6 minutes so that you can now watch a total of 8 minutes gameplay from INDUSTRIA 2. Among other things, it includes combat against the arachnid Atlas enemies, more inventory management, physics-based puzzles, and a Molotov cocktail. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh-TLBO_ZS0
We recently showed you a lot of rocky underground material from INDUSTRIA 2. But of course you will also be out and about in the - more or less - fresh air. So here's a little preview of where else Nora will be hanging out:
And that's it for today, friends. Thank you for your interest and attention, and for joining us again (or for the first time) on this second journey!
If you want to stay up to date and follow our development process further, follow and wishlist INDUSTRIA 2 here on Steam, join our Discord community and follow us on Twitter.
Have a great day and talk soon!
David & the Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/
Fixed Save game Corruption
we heard that some of you have a very annoying bug which corrupts save games, especially from the Canal chapter. This results in long loading times and eventually leads to a game crash.
Thank you all for reporting this one. We just deployed a hotfix which resolves this issue. Your corrupted save game files should now load as expected.
All the best from the team!
Nora’s Journey continues with INDUSTRIA 2!
Dear INDUSTRIANS,
David here. Long time no talk! So, how have you been? It's been a while since the overwhelming release day of INDUSTRIA 2.5 years ago. And finally we can reveal what we've been secretly working on since then!
All of you who have followed our Twitter (or "X") channel over the last few months will probably already have had a glimpse at some of the GIFs we have been sharing. The response was pretty intense on every post and many people were already guessing the game's name: INDUSTRIA 2. Today we can confirm: You guessed right!
It really is a relief that we can finally talk officially about INDUSTRIA 2. Just a few minutes ago we have let the cat out of the bag and unveiled the game with a first trailer in the Future Games Show Spring Showcase:
For quite some time, it was not at all clear whether INDUSTRIA 2 would ever happen. We really would have loved to have started working on INDUSTRIA 2 earlier, but sometimes life throws a spanner in the works. Or the industry you work in. But that's a story for another time. Today is nothing but a happy day for us, as we can finally share the good news with all of you out there!
We also did it like the Blues Brothers back in the day; we brought the band back together: since INDUSTRIA was a close and intimate collaboration of Bleakmill and Headup, we are super happy to announce that also Headup is back as the publisher of INDUSTRIA 2!
What more is there to say? We had a lot of fun sharing the development process of INDUSTRIA with you on our social channels and Steam back then, and we'll be doing it again for INDUSTRIA 2. So, if you want to stay up to date and follow our development process, follow and wishlist INDUSTRIA 2 here on Steam, join our Discord community and follow us on Twitter. Accompany us on this journey; we have so much to talk about!
We are really happy to be back, friends. ❤️
See you very soon!
Dave, Steve & The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2
New "Anniversary Update" Adds Dev Commentary, Languages And Fixes To INDUSTRIA!
Dear Industrians!
Today we release something special we have been working on: the INDUSTRIA Developer Commentary. You can activate it in the Options Menu under the Gameplay Tab. As soon as you ticked the box, you will see these hovering and rotating questionmarks scattered around all levels. Simply walk up to one and press "USE". You will be granted with a commentary of either us two co-founders David and Steve, or our Sound Designer Clemens, our composer Lukas or even INDUSTRIA's animators Ben and Gabriel.
We talk about our thoughts when designing the game, as well as discuss the challenges we faced creating this game next to uni and work in our freetime. In some logs, we show a little slideshow with screenshots and photos of early levels, mechanics or references we used when building the levels. We also show scrapped content like old enemy models, concept art or level shots.
This tradition of developer commentary is something we always loved to see in Valves games and we hope you like what you see and hear. ❤️
Apart from that, we also added new languages and fixed a few minor bugs.
Changelog:
- fixed a wall in the factory which was see through from one side
- fixed a few holes in the level geometry
- fixed various audio assets not having a sound class
- fixed physics objects not playing their impact sounds
- added Japanese language
- added Korean language
- added Chinese language
To all you Achievement Hunters: We hear your feedback. We are still actively hunting down the Hardcore Achievement issue where it just does not want to pop in certain situations. We will resolve this issue in a separate patch very soon. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and hope you can apologize our messy work on that one. We will keep you posted!
Also look out for a little something we added to the office level... a hint to something-new?
We hope you will enjoy this commentary and this intimate insight into our heads.
Happy listening and exploring,
Dave, Steve & The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172650/INDUSTRIA/
INDUSTRIA 1.2.1: Hotfix for bugged savegames and low performance on load
Dear INDUSTRIANS,
this is a quick hotfix for low performance on loading save games. Some players experienced low FPS when loading a save game, but this should now be fixed. We are sorry for any annoying situations here!
Changes:
- Fixed a bug where save games would load with very load FPS (if at all)
- Added an achievement tracker to the pause menue
- Fixed floating pick ups
Apart from that, some of you report crashes on load, which should also be fixed with this update. Let us know if your issues persist, in case this patch does not help. Please check your drivers and also try running the game in DX11 mode (choosable on start up) if you have frequent crashes.
As always, thank you for playing and welcome to all the new players!
All the best,
Steve & David
INDUSTRIA Update 1.2.0 is available: Weapon Balancing, Level Rework, and more!
Dear Industrians!
Update 1.2.0 is now available! And it's by far the most comprehensive update we've released for INDUSTRIA to date. We mainly focused on polishing or completely redesigning some unfinished looking areas in the levels. In places, INDUSTRIA is a completely new experience - especially in areas of the leves "Streets" and "Canal".
In addition, we've adjusted the balancing of the weapons, adjusted the amount of ammo distributed in the levels, reworked the save system and made a big bunch of general fixes and adjustments. In total, update 1.2.0 adds around 100 changes/additions/fixes/adjustments to INDUSTRIA:
Office:
- Added white noise effects to the TV in Nora’s apartment
- Skipping the cutscene now correctly sets the TV to white noise
- Fixed the telephone hanging in mid air when skipping the cutscene
- The Stasis car is no longer visible until required
- Cutscene at the end now correctly fades to black (player was visible at the end)
Institute:
- Removed Mr Bean
- Fixed a bug where you could ride the elevator back down, soft-locking progress and trapping the player inside
- Moved first pistol pickup into post-elevator room and out of the dark
- Cleaned up old lighting actors
- Coal in Boiler puzzle now correctly saves it’s visual state with save games
- Supply crate added to the Brent cutscene
Streets:
- Closed a whole in the landscape near the shop fronts
- Fixed buggy crow ragdoll (once and for all!)
- Fixed clipping mailboxes inside apartments
- Placed a rifle spawn at the Rosendal statue in Streets level
- Visual overhaul of the Town Hall
- Visual overhaul of Factory area
- Fixed collision on suitcases in train station
- Collision when going down the stairs into the townhall street has been fixed
Canal:
- Fixed a hole in level bounds where player was able to get stuck (Beach)
- Added missing collisions to railing near Train
- Fixed the beach elevator so it no longer clips through geometry
- Fixed the beach elevator so it no longer pushes the player into the wall
- Visual overhaul/Layout change of the beach warehouse
- Fixed inaccurate stair collision
- Visual overhaul of the section when Nora falls down (bridge collapse)
- Visual overhaul/Layout change of the underground corridors
- Complete rescript of underground elevator puzzle + new meshes/design)
- Visual overhaul of the underground puzzle
- Visual overhaul of the section after the underground
- Fixed Underground elevator shader
- Underground floodlights are now shadow casting correctly
- Added Scouts to the section after the underground
- Fixed door in Brent’s building which would clip into walls
- Removed the doorless door frame in Brents building
- Visual overhaul of the rooftop area
- Fixed some bad collision around greenhouses on rooftop
- Visual overhaul of Brents shack
- Fixed door animation when entering Brent’s shack
- Fixed buggy glasg shader at Brent’s shack
- Added missing railings to the gate control room
- Fixed bright foliage lighting in Canal level
- Added additional enemies inside Brent’s building
- Added additional enemies after Brent’s building
Forest:
- Removed floating grass meshes from tracks
- The radio which acts as a music source, can no longer be switched off
Library:
- Removed blockout mesh from Library
- UI no longer notifies players of picking up weapons whilst in this level
General:
- Fixed extreme white flashing artifacts in most interior spaces (inaccurate object occlusion)
- Fixed Nora falling sounds
- Fixed the hound ragdoll
- Fixed the blue fog in lower shadow settings, and made shadow settings more consistent
- Fixed some foliage lighting issues
- Fixed an issue which prevented cloud saves being backed up
- Fixed Rifle bug which make the weapon semi-automatic
- Normalised several music tracks so they are more audible
- Removed FOV horizontal clamping for Ultra Wide resolutions
- Fixed Prophet footsteps not playing correctly
- Fixed Hound footsteps not playing correctly
- Added new Hound attack sounds
- Fixed numerous light sources that caused player hands and physics objects to render black
- Fixed various LOD meshes throughout
- Added collision for tree meshes
- Increased render distance for low shadows
- Fixed supply crates not always awarding loot
- Fixed various physical materials (for footsteps & impact sounds and effects)
- Added a number of extra flashlight batteries
- Hive Tanks now render correctly in RTX modes
- Added occluders to windows and doors in apartments to improve readability and performance
- Fixed numerous lamps that are off but show an illuminated lamp shade
- Fixed inconsistencies with motion blur settings toggling on/off in various levels
- Fixed pickup collision for vinyl records
- Exile sounds are now spatialised correctly
- Optic shooting sounds are now audible at a distance
- Bullet impacts from enemies now correctly align to the surface normal they hit
- First-person camera is now centered around pivot
- Various fixes to weapon visuals and feedback
- End credits now scroll at the correct speed in sync with music
Balancing:
- Nerfed SMG damage per bullet
- Lowered max ammo on all weapons
- Pistol: 12/24
- SMG: 32/32
- Rifle: 4/8
- Shotgun: 6/12
- Reduced pick up ammo amount for all weapons
- Increased scout damage and radius (particularly on Hardcore) meaning they must be dealt with rather than ignored
- Supply Crates don't drop Health or Battery items anymore
- Rifle is now less accurate in hip-fire
Save System:
(Note: some save game fixes will only work with new save files!)
- Doors now save correctly
- Levers now save correctly
- Planks now save correctly
- Supply crates now save correctly
- Spawned ammo pickups (from supply crates) now save correctly
- Hound enemies will no longer multiply on loading saved games
Achievements:
- New achievement: "Power doesn’t reside in the barrel of my gun" (Complete the game without shooting a single bullet, the Axe is allowed)
- New achievement: "Shipshape and Shiny" (Complete the game without taking a single point of damage)
- New achievement: "Bookworm" (collect all 25 notes)
- Achievement fix: "The hard way" (now requires all levels to be finished on hardcore, not just the last level)
Known Bugs:
- Sound becomes muffled for a second whilst riding the elevator out of the underground (Canal)
I know what you are asking yourselves now: "Why doesn't it work like that right away?". Time is the main reason. We are super happy with how successful INDUSTRIA is - that's not a given these days and we are very grateful to you all! But it's not enough for Steve and me to make a living - and that's why we both have "normal" day jobs, plus some private life. We optimize INDUSTRIA in our spare time. And that's why everything takes a bit longer.
That said, we are super happy and proud with the results of the INDUSTRIA update 1.2.0! And we are really looking forward to her you feedback on it. You can reach out to us in the Steam Community Hub or on our Discord Channel - whereever you want. We are looking forward to hear from you! ❤️
Have a great and sunny day everyone!
David & The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172650/INDUSTRIA/