Building Worlds: How Engineers Shape Elysium’s Tools and Systems

Happy Friday, Elysians! ✨

In today’s Dev Spotlight, we sat down with Alex DM, one of the engineers who helped bring the world of Elysium to life. From crafting the tools our designers use to building the systems that shape the islands themselves, Alex plays a crucial role in shaping the game. Join us as we explore his journey into game development, his approach to collaboration, and the moments that make all the challenges worthwhile. Plus, we’ll share some funny throwback clips from earlier stages of the project.

Alex’s Journey Through Game Development

“I Implemented Horses” (May, 2023)

From an early age, Alex knew he wanted to make video games as a career. That passion led him to study video game development at university which set a foundation for a career built around creativity and technical problem solving. His journey into the industry started with an internship at USA Today, working alongside our very own producer and co-founder, Ray, on interactive 3D news coverage. From there, he went to intern at Disney where he developed VR tools for animation. When Ray left to help found Loric, Alex wasn’t far behind.

Keeping Everything Running in Collaboration

Steam post image

“my character is feelin the groove”

Alex jokingly describes himself as the “least focused engineer” when it comes to task management. Rather than following a steady flow of tasks, his work revolves around building tools for the designers and artists as he’s constantly bouncing around wherever he’s needed most to make sure other team members are equipped with the right tools. Ultimately, his day-to-day focus is on keeping the team moving forward and making sure they are all supported. Fortunately for him, his most common collaborators are our Environment Artist, Alexander, and Game Designer, Mav. He says they both have a strong technical foundation, which makes communication easier and more productive. Ideas are generally approached with flexibility as they bounce ideas off each other. If something doesn’t work technically, there is that willingness to adapt and find alternatives that still capture the original vision.

The Invisible Work of World Building

One of Alex’s biggest contributions to the game isn’t something players will directly see. It’s actually the tools the designers use that make building the world possible.

Alex developed a POI creator inside Unity, which allows artists and designers to build locations like houses, beaches, and plateaus and define how these terrains intersect. From there, the system branches in two directions: First, the voxel engine (written by CTO Colin!) converts mathematical representation of islands into meshes that Unity can use for physics and rendering. These are then decorated by the designers, for example, placing trees or other details. Alternatively, locations can be generated programmatically by designating functions and formulas. For example, archipelagos are composed of clusters, which are made up of islands, and these islands are made up of land masses smushed together. These are all intersected in ways that make sense and feel natural. The game’s procedural generation is built on layered systems that all interact with each other, operating in a hierarchy. The system balances structure and randomness to keep the world interesting and visually engaging without it feeling repetitive, while still giving designers complete control over it to create diverse environments. Many of these systems intersect at various points. For example, regions are composed of multiple biomes, which are further composed of different sub-biomes that can either be shared across different biomes or used exclusively within a single one. This layered structure helps organize the world while also allowing our game systems to decide what monsters spawn, what sound effects are being played, what trees or resource nodes are allowed to spawn, and more! The same base islands can be reused across different biome types like the wastelands and void clusters, while still feeling distinct. This makes proper tagging (ex. Arid islands, cliff) essential to ensure both consistency and variety across the experience. It’s a complex hierarchy, but is designed to make the world feel cohesive rather than random.

When “Simple” Gets Complicated

Not every feature goes according to plan sometimes though! The one feature that stands out are the clouds. They look great now but it took a bit of tweaking to get it to work. Fully simulated volumetric clouds were an option, but our world has a ton of beautiful VFX all competing for your GPU’s attention. To save some budget for the grass, waves, and sand, we came up with a unique, more performant render feature where clouds get rendered in a prepass, distorted, and composited back in. What we thought would take about two weeks ended up taking closer to five. It can be frustrating watching a small feature stretch beyond its original scope, but when everything finally clicks and the result feels and looks right, it’s a reminder that the time and effort wasn’t wasted. In the end, Alex was able to give designers the right tools to get that cloud density just right, and now it’s a beloved visual detail players love!

Weirdest Bug? Sneak Peeks?

"Hey team, turret development is going well"

At one point while working on turrets, an airship about 100 feet away somehow became parented to the turret. So when the turret rotated, the entire airship spun with it - at full speed. That was definitely.. not intended.

"I have a proposal for a rare spawn"

Additionally, Alex recalls a funny moment early on with a giant goat in a demo. It was scaled way up and it walked through the clouds which sparked the idea that scaling objects dramatically had a lot of potential to be really fun and visually striking.

Building Systems for the Future

"Tony Herons Pro Skater 4"

The hardest system to get right was world generation.

This system was rebuilt five or six times from scratch with completely different approaches each time. Long island chains, inverted cones, spokes on a wheel - you name it.

The hardest part wasn’t just making it work, but making it feel right, so that progression feels sensible, resource availability is balanced, and ensuring there is proper spacing between islands. All in all, it has to maintain a delicate balance so players feel guided without being constrained.

With a rough launch, there was a lot of discussion surrounding the bugs and stability of the game. However, a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done. All the tools built, especially on the POI creator and world generation system, help make it possible now to create so much content much faster and more reliably. It feels like we've gotten over that initial hurdle, and are now in a good position to expand and build in ways that weren’t possible before - so now it’s nothing but smooth sailing to build as many diverse islands and tools!

“We’ve trudged through all the waist deep mud and now we’re out sprinting.”

- Alex

The Road Ahead

"goat"

For Alex, game development isn’t linear. Simple ideas can quickly evolve into complex challenges that require patience, iterations, and constant problem solving. But that process is what makes all of this meaningful and helps the team progress together to create a game that feels right.

The overall atmosphere when everything comes together is especially striking: the ground materials, the fields of grass at Arid Islands, the shaders, the skybox, the day-night cycles; they’re all interconnected. Standing on an island and looking out across the world and seeing the lighting, shadows, and environment working together is truly a moment Alex is proud of. The map itself also has this magical, almost mystical quality that really captures the spirit of the game. Working with the team has also pushed Alex to become a more organized engineer as he now writes cleaner, more efficient code and tackles tasks promptly. If something takes two minutes, just do it! “If it’s going to take two minutes, rather than using that as justification to put it off, use it as justification to put it in. Especially with a small team and quick turnaround times, it might feel tempting to say “Oh maybe they just won’t need that,” but that might be the reason the feature gets thrown away or we go in a different direction because it feels incomplete.”

• Alex

With strong foundations and systems in place and a great set of tools, Alex sees the road ahead as an opportunity to create faster and more efficiently than ever before. Past challenges have shaped the game into what it is today, and what comes next is all about expanding that vision, improving features, and sharing the joy we experience from building the game with our players.

Our Community

If you’d like to be a part of the process, join our Discord! Your feedback and ideas directly help shape the direction of Echoes of Elysium. Many of the improvements we make come from conversations with real players like you. Or if you’re just looking to chill and play the game with others, that’s always welcome too. We host regular community game nights and would love to have you be part of the journey!

✨ Join here: https://discord.gg/loricgames

In our most recent community game nights, our members came together to build a ship:

"The Lionfish"

• InverseHellShadowz and Ravenhollow242 (Also known as: Sir Lionfish of the Floating Airship)

And another night, the challenge was to take a funny screenshot with the group!

"Stacking"

• JD (Hugger), The Krakken, InverseHellShadowz (ft. Michelle AFK at the ship)

As always, thank you for all the support; please keep the suggestions and reports coming. We're listening and there's so much more to come, so stay tuned for future updates!

Until next time,

-Team Loric 🧡