Aztecs The Last Sun News

What a year it’s been, hasn’t it? We decided to summarise the most important stuff that has been done with Aztecs: The Last Sun for the last 12 months. We also will share some plans regarding the future. We’ll also show heaps of cool artwork and a special message straight from the development team. Let’s get started!



[h2]2023 Milestones & Art[/h2]

While we had started working on the game before 2023 (and had done quite a lot), we still had plenty of things to consider regarding what the game would exactly become. So, the first major decision regarded the art style. It seems that combining historical sources with a less realistic style is the way to go. Tenochtitlan is placed on a lake and it’s quite marshy there - however, going with muted browns, and greens wouldn’t make for a pleasant viewing experience. This is not a simulator, after all!

Then, we prototyped some of the crucial systems that will rule the game. The Blood Meter, hunger, homelessness and others. City-building games are filled to the brim with these and we decided to have them included in ATLS. They will bring more depth to the gameplay, while also having the player manage more things at once, effectively increasing the challenge.

These things, combined with a lot of other stuff and the previous work, resulted in a demo released during the Steam Next Fest in June 2023. It was a happy time for the players and us. The reception was positive and we got tons of valuable feedback. It confirmed some of our expectations and we adjusted our workflow to counter the issues encountered. There were also some ideas, many of them interesting and insightful and we expect to have a part of them incorporated into the game.

Modifying the workflow, despite being a pretty boring topic, was one of the biggest achievements. It made the development quicker and more effective, and it’s great - we’ll be able to deliver the game as quickly as possible to the market while keeping the quality very high.

We’ve also made tons of awesome art and assets. Have a look at some of them!















[h2]The Future[/h2]

So, what are the plans for the next year? The short answer is a lot of work. A more detailed one includes stuff like:

• working on the UI,
  
• enhancing the day and night cycle, as they are going to have a massive impact on the gameplay,
  
• optimising production chains and logistics within the game,
  
• expanding the aspect of interaction with gods and other supernatural phenomena,
  
• tons of other stuff, both big and small tasks…
  

All of this will result in releasing the game in early access. We’re not going to share a more precise release date, but we hope that we all, both you and we, will be able to play the game, work on new features and polish it. It’s going to be a blast for you and a ton of work for us and we hope everybody’s looking forward to this!



[h2]Message Straight From The Developers[/h2]

We want to finish this devlog with a message to you straight from the dev team:
Firstly, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who supported us during the Steam Next Fest. These 2 weeks gave us a massive boost in terms of player engagement, business capabilities and motivation. The success we achieved convinced us that all of you are waiting for Aztecs: The Last Sun. We vow that we’ll do everything in our power to make the game as good as it gets.



That’s all for this entry. See you next year! :)

Aztec lives revolved around their gods and beliefs. This will be strongly evident in Aztecs: The Last Sun. The supernatural will influence many of the events in the game. However, contrary to some belief systems, we’ll be able to pinpoint some of the godly workings. How? Due to a number of mechanics, such as the Blood Meter and Grace. In this article, we’ll talk about one of them - Calendar.



[h2]The calendar mechanic[/h2]
As you already know, partly due to the failed 2012 end of the world Mayan calendar prophecy, particular days and periods of time held great weight for the Mesoamerican people. They dictated sacrifices, activities, wars and such. ATLS will have a built-in calendar system and it will influence your proceedings in the game.

The calendar will feature a 260-day-long year divided into 20 weeks, each one lasting 13 days. Each day in the week will be assigned to a different god. We are about to use a list of 20 deities, featuring some known ones like Quetzalcoatl and more obscure ones too, like Xiuhtecuthli - this is what Aztecs used in their actual lives and is meant to stay (kinda) true to how it worked in the real world.





[h2]How will the patronage work?[/h2]
There will be a relationship between the inhabitants of your city and each god. It will be either positive or negative and will fluctuate depending on your actions. Days and nights also play a part in the bonuses or penalties assigned. This may sound a bit confusing, so we’ll show you an example:

A day patronised by Tlazōlteōtl, a Jaguar god (responsible in mythology for things such as vice, lust, desire and love will bring one of two effects. If the relationship with the god is positive, he will decrease the blood consumption. If it’s negative, he will increase blood consumption. A night of the patron god will cause different events. A positive relationship will bring no effects, while a negative one will cause an increase in the number of snakes catching fish - it will have the possibility to render your fishermen useless for a while.





[h2]You better stay on their good side[/h2]
How do you influence the relationships between your population and the gods? It will depend on Grace which we’ll talk about in the future. However, maintaining a positive relationship will be of great importance, as there will be another mechanic tied to it.

Disasters can often be rationalised or explained in the modern world. This wasn’t the case in the past and because of this, if you have a negative relationship with a god, it can cause one. Flooding, sickness, destruction of a building, fires and heaps more - anything’s a fair game. This is quite a big topic, we’ll talk about it in the future as well.


[h2]The influence on the gameplay[/h2]
The reason why we decided to incorporate this intricate calendar is because this is a great way of introducing more factors to consider. Certain gods will provide great buffs, while others will have to be catered to in order to avoid crises. The development of the city will also be partly dependent on this mechanic, as placing a, say, water beacon right after it was supposed to obtain a boost due to the calendar will not be optimal. The calendar will also provide another facet for cranking out the most from your city - whether you’ll be trying to take action and build Tenochtitlan in a way that will be safe, or whether you’ll opt for maximising certain benefits while dealing with catastrophes will be up to you!



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Expanding your empire will be an important part of the game… And we hope to present it to you soon. What’s going to be just as crucial is maintaining and development of said lands. Here’s where beacons will come in handy. In this devlog, we’ll explain what types of beacons there are and will talk shortly about their uses.

[h2]Beacons as a whole
[/h2]What’s a beacon? It’s a structure that you’ll be able to erect on the map. It will generate a zone around it and within this zone, you’ll be able to reap some sort of benefit. We’ll have 4 types of beacons, three of which are already finished:

• Blood Beacon,
  
• Flower Beacon,
  
• Water Beacon,
  
• and the yet unfinished Productivity Beacon.
  

All of the beacons will require obsidian to be built. It’s going to be a rather scarce resource and you’ll also need it for developing technology. You’ll be presented with a dilemma - what to invest it in?
We also need to state one thing - two of the beacons will be tied to two mechanics we haven’t talked about yet. The Aztec Calendar and the relationship between you and the gods. Therefore, we’ll be mentioning these aspects, but will not reveal any details about what circumstances will have to be met to use them in your favour. We’ll cover these mechanics in a future devlog.

[h2]Blood Beacon
[/h2]
It’s mostly meant for expanding the Blood Zone. In simple terms - placing one will grant you an opportunity to expand your city’s boundaries. They’ll need to be built outside of the Blood Zone but remain in contact with it. This will be absolutely crucial when it comes to acquiring new lands (on a micro scale) and having access to previously untapped resources. You’ll most likely want to place them near the current boundaries of Tenochtitlan… And remember about “supplying fuel” to them.

[h2]Flower Beacon
[/h2]
The way this one operates is more complicated than the blood beacon. It’s tied to the Aztec Calendar and your relationship with the gods (two aforementioned mechanics). These mechanics demand a separate devlog, but long story short - if your relationship is good, the houses (and their respective inhabitants) will provide more currency for your treasury and will be more loyal. The beacon will also, under some circumstances, have enhanced range and will double the provided bonuses.

[h2]Water Beacon
[/h2]
Just like the Flower Beacon, this one’s tied to the relationship between you and the gods and to the calendar. It’s supposed to increase the productivity of chinampas (farms) and fisheries. Just like the Flower Beacon, it will provide twice as many benefits when certain circumstances are met.

[h2]Productivity Beacon
[/h2]While it’s not ready yet, we expect to have a 4th type of beacon. It’s expected to provide bonuses for some types of buildings, but that’s about all we can say about it at the moment.
[h2]Conclusion
[/h2]The existence of beacons will provide many opportunities to make your iteration of Tenochtitlan flourish. On the other hand, you'll be faced with dilemmas of an economic nature - will you opt for a powerful structure that will influence a part of your city, or will you prefer developing technology? The decision will be yours to make.
Take care, talk to you soon!

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Games, as a whole, are quite complex. This means that we’ve been hard at work for the last few months focusing on a number of things that are crucial. And very technical. As we live in an age in which some think a 10-hour-long game weighing more than 250 GB is acceptable, we want to make a statement. It is not. We’ve been working hard on limiting and optimising the game. The other thing is that we adjusted the game’s architecture to allow easier work on it.


[h2]Modules[/h2]

One of the huge things that we introduced into the game is the modules. In tech speech - we will be able to create assets and code and add it into the engine which serves as a backbone for the game. What does it mean for you, the player? You’ll be able to get patches, fixes and new content of high quality and the game will also be more stable and easier to update if a need arises. So, more content, more things to do in the game and more fun. Aside from that, there’s also a possibility to support user-made content (mods), but we haven’t yet decided if we’ll introduce such a feature into the game.



This solution also helps us with management and work. It’s all going to be streamlined and easy to plan. It may seem a bit mundane, but at its core it’s necessary. We want to release the game as soon as possible and being more efficient will only help with the delivery.


[h2]Optimisation[/h2]

Making the game run flawlessly demands a lot of time and work. Because of this, we decided to focus on this aspect relatively early in the development process. We’ll go over some methods we implemented and what they mean in practice.



The first thing was reviewing the 3D models. Some of them might’ve had parts of them hidden underground, clipping through the ground. And it would consume the resources to render these invisible parts. Having learned which ones may cause such a thing to happen, we took them and “trimmed” these invisible polygons off. Because of this, your computer will be able to render what’s actually seen.

The next big thing are LODs, also known as low-poly models. When the camera is far away, you won’t be able to see the more intricate details of some 3D models. So, we will swap them for their less-detailed counterparts, seamlessly switching between hi-and low poly models. This method serves the same purpose as the one above - why would you want to have your computer render something that you won’t be able to see? It’s a well-known way of optimisation and it’s an industry standard.

Not to boast too much about our ingenuity, but we used a pretty clever technique when it comes to textures. Normally, a texture for each model is placed in a separate file. We opted to add all of the textures to one file. This does two things: it decreases the amount of RAM used from about 500 MB to 5 MB and it also allows your GPU to work more efficiently, as it only uses a single file for textures. We also worked hard on managing the processes the game needs to run in order to further reduce the amount of RAM used. All of this is to make it run better.



What we aim to achieve is to have the game run smoothly on GeForce 1XXX GTX cards at low details and we’re quite happy with what we’ve achieved so far.


[h2]A big thing for the future
[/h2]
Aside from all this fancy but not the most exciting work we’ve done, there’s also a huge feature that we hope to present to you sometime in the future. It pertains to expansion and conquest. We still have a lot to do with it, so we’ll cover it sometime in the future. However, it will be one of the most crucial parts of the game.



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Behind each game stands a team. We present to you an interview today. It's done with Kinga Dąbrowska, one of the 3D graphic designers who work on Aztecs: The Last Sun. She tells you about the work on the game, what she's responsible for, the techniques she uses and her biggest accomplishments. Also, a lot of lovely GIFs and images from the game. Let's go!

[h2]Kinga Dąbrowska - 3D graphic designer[/h2]
What do you do in the project and how long have you been a part of it?

Hi everyone! I’m a 3D graphic designer and I mostly deal with creating landscapes, as I’m an environment artist. My job revolves around designing buildings, plants and all the stuff related to them. Aside from this, I also implement these assets into the game and prepare them for coding. I’ve been a part of Aztecs: The Last Sun since the very beginning of the project.
How long does it take to make a single asset?

Oh my, there’s no general way to say that. Each model is different, so it calls for different measures, methods and approach - a separate estimation is needed for all of the assets. Making 3D models isn’t only about creating a shape, but textures too. The research also takes usually quite a lot of time as well. Making a single building from scratch can take even up to 2 days.
What techniques do you use to create the models?

The main technique’s called “trim sheets”.It’s very important from the performance point of view. We create a PNG file that isn’t very cumbersome for the graphics card and we use it to put texture to even more than 100 buildings, or huge amounts of foliage and surroundings. Thanks to this method we can save time and add more details at once.
Where do you find the reference material?

I use many different sources - from Pinterest, through photos to books about the Aztec history and culture. We scour the internet, while also adding a little bit of our own artistic flair.
How important is it to stick to the reference material?

It’s crucial in this project. We do our best to stay true to the Aztec culture and architecture. We avoid placing tools that they didn’t use or materials that they had either no access to or didn’t process. In the case of buildings, we tend to stick to the forms and shapes they actually used. However, we don’t aim for absolute realism. The employment of magic and supernatural in the game gives us a reason to opt for occasionally wilder designs or colours that aren’t the most accurate but look great. Still, we must not get carried away too much!


What’s more important - the artistic vision or the realism?

The balance. Sure, we are making a game and it’s meant to be entertaining. While opting for ultimate realism would be a decent idea, people want to play, not watch a documentary. And here comes the artistic vision. We’ll drop a number of eye candies and vibrant colours to break up the browns, greens, blues and greys of real life. As mentioned earlier, we can’t get too carried away with our own ideas, so we’ll present a world that is quite similar to ours, but lively and entertaining at the same time.
Let’s talk about plants, as you mentioned them earlier and we haven’t had an opportunity to delve into them.

Working on foliage has been a tremendous challenge. At first, I wondered how to make them appealing, but it turned out that optimisation was the biggest issue. I’ve spent countless hours side by side with Krzysztof, the leader of the programming team. We worked, we discussed and we argued about each polygon and detail until we reached the level of looks that is satisfying, while also maintaining good performance. The techniques we have developed allowed us to render heaps of lush greenery and I’m very proud of that.
Speaking about pride - what was the most satisfying thing you’ve done for Aztecs: The Last Sun?

As I put my heart into each task, it’s hard to point out a single one. My favourites, though, have to be the floating farm or chantli, an Aztec house. What I’m really proud of is the overall amount of work. The way the models and the general looks work in the game’s engine is astonishing and this is something that makes me go “wow”.


That was a fun read, wasn't it? And all the eye candy in this devlog was something special! Thanks for being with us, see you soon!

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