Community Update 3
Greetings, Skyward Adventurer! What a month it’s been! From environments to cannons to airships, the team has been inventing, innovating, and blowing things up, all to create an experience that will live up to our dreams of what Starfall can be. When we embarked on this journey, we never imagined building a game studio alone. Instead, our dream was to create a Worldbuilding Studio, and we don’t want to do it alone. We firmly believe that the best worlds are built together, by the people who love it most. Soon, we’ll bestow upon you tools and platforms to build your own creations within the world of Starfall. Until then, we’re already absolutely blown away by how incredibly creative and talented this community is. Keep it up, we love seeing everything you share in Discord and on socials!
Frontier Lore
The Skylands
The Skylands are a vibrant floating island chain filled with bloodthirsty pirates, gunslinging Orcs, and cunning Elves. Long a mystery to the Mainland cultures below, the Skylands became reachable with the discovery of advanced airship technology. Due to the Skylands’ plentiful resources and strategic value, once they came within the reach of the many species, cultures, and factions below, a worldwide race began to explore and settle them.
Countless in number, the Skylands are extremely diverse in climate, flora, fauna, and size. Some Skylands are so small that only a single person can stand on them, while the largest Skyland is believed to be nearly 100 miles long. The lowest Skylands, known as the inner ring, sit at roughly 500km above the Mainland, or a 24-hour airship voyage. The Inner Ring is filled with Skyland settlements, from individual estates to thriving metropolises.
Beyond this “civilized” area, far out in the Outer Ring, is an unexplored world in a completely uncharted sphere of existence where the brave will find what is known as Frontier Skylands. These Frontier Skylands have a higher density of Lumite, so they float closer to the Arcus. Up at these altitudes, Kaos radiates across the sky in the form of Auroras – which makes these Skylands more magical, more volatile, and less hospitable to those who dare to land on their shores.
These frontier Skylands are what the team has been building and we couldn’t be more excited to take you on a journey behind the scenes of designing one!
In-Game Frontier Development
The Vision: Crafting the Perfect Frontier
Our vision was to create a frontier that players could explore, giving them a taste of the adventures ahead. To do this, we sought to design a breathtaking landscape incorporating diverse elements, from soaring airships to vast terrains ready to be explored. This “proof of concept” frontier would serve as a testbed for various gameplay mechanics and allow us to explore the world.
The Challenge: Limited Blocks
One of the significant roadblocks the design team faced was the limited availability of textures and blocks in the game. Not having all the necessary blocks to create the desired terrain posed a significant challenge. We had to think creatively and do a few unique things to overcome this. Due to our current limitations, we’re using vanilla-styled blocks to create a limited selection of tree assets. In the future, we hope to enhance and create more tree species and build out a modular tree branch system in-game. Through trial and error, we started meticulously stacking and clustering trees at varying heights, mimicking the organic growth patterns in nature. Each cluster represented a small ecosystem, with different species intermingling harmoniously. Over two weeks, we poured creative energy into this frontier. We fine-tuned each cluster, ensuring the trees blended seamlessly, giving the appearance of a flourishing undiscovered oasis. What had once been an empty and barren frontier, had transformed into a vibrant and enchanting landscape!
The Voyage Continues: Embracing the Adventure
From creating an impactful first impression that would leave players stunned from the moment they entered the frontier, to incorporating the abilities of gliding, running, and walking across those Skylands – each day we find ourselves faced with new obstacles. And each day we find creative ways to overcome them, through teamwork, creativity, and love for Starfall, and in the end, we think we created an extraordinary proof of concept. But enough, about what we think. We wanna know what YOU, our community thinks. So embark on an adventure filled with endless possibilities with us, and take a look at an opening view of our frontier…
Final Words
We hope this behind-the-scenes journey inspired you and shed light on the dedication and passion required to create a Starfall Frontier concept. Watch the following video to see the end results. And don’t forget to share your creations with us!
So long, Skyward Adventurers!
The Kaliko Crew
