• Dev Diary Disclaimer
• Dev Diary episode 2
• Dunia — The Zone
• Dunia — First Try
• Dunia — Second Try
• Dunia — Final
• In-game Footage Teaser of Dunia
• Next Episode

Note about Metaverse, Gameverse, and Augmented Reality Updates

Information on all of these new gameverse/AR releases will be given tomorrow (Tuesday).

Today’s Dev Diary will focus on Dunia zone developments, the whole history of the zone work, and some in-game footage of the zone.

Dev Diary Disclaimer

The Mist Dev Diaries take us back in time. They take us back in time months ago, and will walk us through some of the development process that the team does. These images, videos, and screenshots include OLD photos and assets. Please don’t mistake the old photos for current versions of the game.

These Diaries take us though the re-design of the game and its processes. The Mist team decided to fully re-imagine and transform the game. We have been working on this new visual style, redesign, re-build, and much more over the past months, and will release small pieces every few days.

We will release a Dev Diary episode weekly or a few times a week, and each diary will summarize about 14–20 days of development time. We started the diary from updates from August of this year, and will catch up to our current developments quickly. After we get everyone caught up with our past developments, the Dev Diary will be a real-time series with work that we are working on at the current time.

Dev Diary, Episode 2

Time Period: February-March 2021.

The oldest dev pictures in this article are from about 8 months ago.

Other pictures are more recent, as you can see we made updates.

Dunia — The Zone

We began game development with basic (but complicated to implement) game functionality such as game physics, character rigging/animation, colliders, movement, and more.

The first zone we decided to create was our starting zone, Dunia.

For the rest of this article, feel free to watch this ambiance video, and listen to our ambiance music while reading.

We hope this music will give you a better feel for what Dunia zone really is. The artwork and music are custom made by our soundtrack and concept art teams. Big shoutout to them.

Dunia is a golden, green, lush forest that players will begin their journey in. This zone offers a few dark caves and dungeons, magical forests, castles, and a stunning beach with cliffs.

Players will encounter entry-level monsters ranging from wolves, to goblins, and lower level dungeon bosses. Teamwork will be needed, as many monsters will be too strong to kill by yourself. We want this feeling of “groups” and “teamwork” to be a trademark of Mist. You will need to work with others to succeed.

The lore for this zone will be revealed later, but to tease a little bit: Dunia’s forests hold the start to an ancient secret, and players will begin the journey to save the soul of humanity from the first minutes they step into Dunia.

Zone Ambiance and Feel

When exploring and wandering around Dunia, we want players to have a feeling of welcoming beauty, mixed with the feeling of exploration and freedom.

We wanted players to feel like this was the terrific start and terrific introduction into a much larger, more diverse world.

Dungeons and caves are present in the Dunia zone, along with beautiful beaches, lush green forests, and quaint splendid little towns and villages.

Iluna city, the main heart of the Dunia zone, is a towering fortress town that overlooks the beautiful forests.

Players can explore Dunia by themselves, to level up, kill monsters, collect loot, and prepare their characters for more advanced zones.
However one of the main goals for players should be to make friends, create alliances, and build connections with other players. Doing so will allow them to team up and explore more difficult parts of the zone and obtain better loot.

Growing your friends list will be important, and having fellow players on speed-dial will allow you to send messages and get help for harder monsters and zones.

And not to mention, games are always more fun with friends.

Dunia — The Original Design

This original Dunia design is from 8 months ago. Since then we have made updates (obviously), but these are the earliest Dunia pics. (Later in this article we will show dev pics from later dates).

The original Dunia design was done using our first game and graphics engine. Of course it used some low poly assets, but designing and building the zone did take a while.

There were many parts, pieces, and more that we wanted to fit in.

Some things you will notice in this first design is the lower quality of the world, the ground, the trees.

Additionally, the ground details were quite poor.

In the above pics we can see the generic buildings we used to sketch out the zone. The buildings were so out of style and not even low-poly!

We also see that this town looks jumbled, random, and has no real identity. I mean, what was the point of this city? What was its soul, it’s purpose? We had to improve this.

The environment itself looked quite bland as well. Again, ground clutter looked cheap, the trees were out of style, and the world just looked like it was put together randomly.

We had some other cities in as well, that were more like little towns. These were okay but we knew we could make them better. Also, check out the “Hand Monument” towards one of the pagan gods in the game. It was a cool idea, but it just seemed, again, cheap.

The map view from birds-eye above. Note that zooming out reduces the amount of trees and things you can see. However you can still tell that the zone was quite small, cities did not have a common theme, and there were things to improve.

Another problem (you can see on the left pic above) was that the original Dunia zone was a perfect square shape. It had no beach borders, no mountain dividers, nothing. So we began fixing that.

Also, note that we move the cities around in order to give the zone a better feel.

The first “dungeon” from the outside. Crazy to think it looked like that!

Also, check out our first dungeon. Out of style, glitchy, and very poorly done. But hey, we’re a dev team and we improve things.

Dunia- Second Try

After our first attempt at Dunia, we decided to revamp it. Here’s that process.

Immediately we see that we have revamped our color system a bit. Colors are brighter, more vibrant.

Trees also look better and we see ground clutter is more full. Not perfect, but a definite improvement.

The zone is looking more full, more completed. However things such as the sky begin to look too cheap. We fix this later.

Also, while the ground looks more full with flowers and grass, it actually looks too busy and mismatched. The trees and the grass don’t fit together well.

Our cities begin to look more colorful and playful. Like something that can actually be enjoyed.

Still here, we are using assets from the asset store to help speed up the development. We since then have changed to custom towns and buildings, but at this point we were still using the assets.

Some extra screenshots of the towns and wilderness. Again, note the mismatches.

Our dungeons were revamped again with the help of a few assets. While not fully custom during this time, they did help us focus in on the low-poly style and offered us a more playable type of dungeon.

Dunia — The Finishing Touches

NOTE: We have since updated our character models as well. However since most of these screenshots are from many months ago, they still show old character models. Keep in mind that these models are updated now too. We will share them at a later date.

Dunia has since been re-imagined and re-designed into our new style with our new engine. We have moved away from the low-poly, asset style and have customized the zone and things in it.

Dunia is a semi-diverse in-game zone. That means it has a few environmental areas.

The first area is more highlands-type. Not a snowy place, but mountains that are high and don’t have many trees. And the few trees that are located here are pine trees, due to lack of oxygen.

 

 

 

The Southern Beachfront

Dunia also as a wide variety of water, beaches, and cliffs.

Most of these beaches are on the southern side of the zone. Here you can find aquatic monsters, fishermen, and little fish villages.

 

 

The Golden Forests

The majority of the zone is golden, green forests. In these mystical old forests you can find many different villages, monsters, treasures, and more.

Players here will have a sense of adventure and possibility.

 

In the picture below, we show a few house models as well. These houses have since been changed to more custom houses, but it gives you a sense of how the zone will look and feel.

 

Some ruins that are found around the Dunia zone. Around these areas players will find monsters, treasure, and other players.

Dunia In-Game Footage Teaser

Some quick teaser in-game footage of the new zone.

PVP, combat, and other gameplay systems footage will be coming in the future Dev Diaries. Remember, we are releasing this in the same timeline schedule as we developed.

Enjoy the footage of the Dunia zone:

Final Comparison:

 

The difference is everything.

Next Dev Diary Episode:

In the next Dev Diary episode, we will discuss the redesign of a few musical assets which will bring the zones to life. We may include some items and asset re-design details as well.