The development of Synthetic Selection (Offboard)

Hello everyone, I hope you were having a great holiday!
This post is about an unfinished project I shipped from 2019-2023 called Project Synthetic Selection, some of you may have heard it or seen some concept clips about giant-lowpoly-white-creatures-combat-with-particles-flying-around scenes in an default Unreal engine sky dome, yes that was us.
In this post I, as one and the only artist in this project, will present you a corner of the whole iceberg of what we have done to explore procedural animation with the simplest forms and what the game look like today.
Thank you for spending your time to read our long story :D
The game now is still under development by Makan Gilani and is very different from what we had planned in the beginning, here is the official account and contact for the project: https://x.com/Makan_Gilani
The latest videos of the game today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXzOuc9UWo&t=86s

Personal reworks based on the first couple character designs

Content below

The exciting combat happened in the first and the last parts of this clip is the first ever playable demo we had for the project.
The demo featured a lot of technique we had in the past years such as procedual animated creatures and vehicles...

The Scavengers and the Queen.
Main fauna lives in the The Vines, the Scavengers patrol around the Queen provide food and protections

Mule, first vehicle we designed to adapt complicate terrains. It carries 2 weapon slots and 2 grabbling hooks can be swapped as needed.

UIs for the Mule

NUE is a dragon creature we developed based on a Japanese Yaokai with the same name, we made it a 3D printer dragon who can print different creations with bit from his tail. The design was very doable, but technique issues says otherwise.

Game mode. The creature features the head of monkey, body of tiger and tail of snake, but we made the design more western dragon-like under the project directer's favour.

Main printing attacks for NUE. we only tested 2 types of printing attacks due to deadline issue.

Original designs. You can see the creature was very beast-like and print wings for different combat pace.

Combat design. The NUE prints different types of attacks mimicking ancient Chinese hand writing strokes and Japanese Ukiyo-e.

Meteor attacks and collectables(abandoned).

Early concepts

Environment static assets for NUE arena

Environment sketches for NUE arena

This is the first official functional creature we ever made, it shows high adaptable and flexible movement among the structures, which create great chasing combat in gameplay...

In the original design Tetrad can also control particles around his body to form projectiles and shields apart from procedural claw smashes.

Tetrad can also grow more than 4 limbs for more environment adapting transformations.

Moving patterns and behaviours.

Other patterns and behaviours.

Post Tetrad design: This one was another attempt 2 years after the Tetrad was made. We gathered the techniques we accomplished and integrate into a ball creature. This creature is more environment adapting and lethal than Tetrad. (Aborted)

Body pieces with different colour patterns indicate different moods and anticipations to different attacks.

Attack and ability patterns for this creature.

Patterns and body pieces for this creature.

More tentacle and particle ideas explored after Tetrad.

Body feature and some attack patterns for this creature.

Body form and gameplay related features.

More attempts we did after the Tetrad (Aborted)

Combination ideas of particle procedural animations and the original (white creatures), aborted.

The Prison, a desert map we designed that contains procedural animated moveable cubic structures. This was also the first map we wanted to involve player camping and creation functions.

Jailer, main fauna that habit in the Prison, always move in packs of 3, can be transformed into a spindle shape, rolling with high speed or free fall from platforms. (Finished in engine but not programmed due to technique issue.

Warden, the boss creature of the prison map. This one was planned ahead as traditional rigged creature with some procedural animated attacks after we have more matured developing team.

Monolith and Golems that can be found in the Prison.

This is the most recent update,2 years after I departed from the team. You can see the game is very different from what we have planned in the past, I hope we can somewhat see it got fully developed in the near future.

A couple more attempts we did after the first 2.5 years failed impress further supports, to me back then it has became more of a side co-operated art project instead of a major game project, and my major task is provide more ideas to assist in general.

Wild life packs I created with existing pieces, most are not moveable only provide the fauna ideas.

Bugs

Bugs and giants

Some early concepts I did in the very beginning of the project, back then we had no idea how much we could accomplish and how much more we could not.

Early sketches for different creatures. I took tons of inspirations from Horizon for creature assembling ideas.

Mimic. This is the first creature we ever decided to create with full particles/bits, we got a lot of inspirations from Returnal and latest UE5 particle technique, but aborted in the end.

Anthill, the environment we designed for Mimic, mainly formed by platforms, players use grapples to move between them.

Environment hazard for the Anthill.

Early concepts for character presets. Characters are the least concern in the final developed game because, players can use imaginations to fully customise their character once they acquire and create different "genes" from the world as they explore.

Early rough sketches for different possible character.

Weapon sketches.

As we planned the game was never about slash and kill but how the players engage, explore and interact with the strange world we present to you, and finally develop and make your own legend.

We provide examples of different tools to inspire player for future creations to solve each different problems they encounter in Synthetic Selection.

Coffin. The core portable player avatar customising and respawning system that can be fit into different sized of mid-large vehicle creations.

We literally planned to make the player a "Technomancer" who can do all kinds of magic tricks with their imaginations.

The portable 3D printer we provide for the player to print different tools anywhere, anytime. All tools can be customised with different modules.

Some thumbnails for all kinds of stuffs that may appear in the future.

Some thumbnails and illustrations for all kinds of stuffs that may appear in the future.