Salt Development Blog

First, I think it's important to understand why we chose procedural generation as a way of building the world of Salt. There's a couple reasons why we did this. First, the idea of an infinite world is pretty fun. Especially an infinite world where you sail across an ocean and explore islands. It just seemed to fit this idea, if we could do it correctly. Secondly, it's a great way for us as a small team to create a large amount of content for the player to explore. We only have so much time and resources and so by cutting out having to design each island from the ground up, we were able to create a much larger game than we ever could have otherwise. 

As stated before, an infinite world does not equal infinite fun. We are firm believers that games need to have depth and immersion. We don't want the world of Salt to be uninteresting and overly repetitive. Because of this, we are intentionally implementing certain design mechanics and content to ensure the world has depth and creates a fun and lasting experience. Here are some of the ways we are going to do this: 

Within an open and random world, we also want to have a progressive and structured story. This is something we'll be slowly implementing as the game develops. Having a story that you can figure out adds a lot of depth to the world and gives us the opportunity to create intentionally designed paths of progression within a world that is otherwise random. 

In addition to having an overarching story, you need to have lore. There are reasons you discover what you do in Salt. When you discover ruins for example, there's a reason they are there. You may not know why yet, but having a story and lore will give you the opportunity to figure that out. 

As you adventure across the world of Salt, we want you to constantly be finding things you didn't even know were in the game. This has been an intentional design mechanic on our end and we intend to keep it that way. We often put secrets in Salt and are always adding things to the game that players aren't aware of. There are going to be many places, items, island types, and more that are very rare and difficult to find. Some may be found by chance, while others may require a certain trigger of events. In any rate, there will most likely be secrets you haven't discovered. 

In short, we want to do procedural generation the right way. We are constantly going to be adding in more and places, items, and content to discover and using different design mechanics to keep things fresh, deep, and interesting. 

- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)

I think every game should have a unique 'sound' to the music, while also integrating with the theme of the game. In Salt, I wanted the music to feel epic. I wanted you to feel awesome when you were manning the helm of a big ship crashing through the waves in the open sea. At the same time however, I didn't want the music to be like very other epic orchestra composition you hear. It needed to have a foundation that was different. That foundation ended up being a piano sound. 

In Salt, most of the music you hear will have an underlying piano sound to it. It's heavily laden with reverb and trails off for a while, leaving a melodic undertone behind the strings. This, blended with the more modern orchestra sounds, gives Salt a unique but still epic soundtrack. My overall goal in doing this is so that when you hear the music, you instantly know it's from Salt. 

We like your experiences and 'moments' in Salt to be spread out. A common theme you'll notice in the game is a stretch of relaxation and exploration, followed by intense moments of adventure and challenge. We wanted to ensure this design element translated over into the music as well. For this reason, we chose to keep music somewhat scarce. 

I went back and forth on this design decision for a while. On the one hand, I liked the idea of some melodies playing while you explored islands, but on the other hand I didn't want to over-stimulate the player. I think far too often games have music occurring all the time. And therefore no moments really stand out with the music. 

You'll notice that most of the music that occurs in Salt happens while sailing in the deep ocean. We thought this was a great place to implement the music. It creates an epic feeling when sailing on the big waves and helps as a time passer while traveling long distances. For exploration on islands, we opted to use atmospheric sounds and really immerse the player in the world. 

As with many other mechanics in Salt, music is conditional. Depending on where you are and what you are doing, will determine the type of music that plays. For example, different music will be play depending on whether you are sailing in the day or at night. 

My favorite area to use these conditions on are bosses. When you fight a boss, you will hear specific music for that boss. This music will reflect the nature of the enemy and invoke a certain emotion to go along with it. These sorts of mechanics can also create a "learned response," where the player hears certain music and it instantly brings in a flood of emotion based on their previous encounters. 

As we go forward with Salt, more music and atmospheric sounds will be added into the game, maintaining with our theme of exploration and adventure. 

- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)

Time plays a big role in Salt's environment. Most of the time it's obvious - the sun moves across the sky, day turns to night, and spooky spiders come out to get you. Other times it's more subtle. We want players to feel connected to the passage of time, notice its patterns, and begin to use its subtleties to their advantage.

Yes. Salt will eventually be multiplayer. We love the idea of sailing around the world with your friends and discovering what the different islands have to offer. Salt will definitely be a fun game for multiplayer and though we don't have all the details worked out, we know it will be fun. 

Our first and top priority is to create a fun, immersive, and adventurous single player game that doesn't rely on other players to have fun. This has been the goal from the very beginning. We want there to be plenty of content in the game for you to enjoy with or without other players. For that reason, we are currently focused on adding more content and fleshing out the game a good bit more before we move on to multiplayer. Currently some things we know we want implemented first are settling, more island types, more wildlife and enemies, an overarching story and lore, GUI overhaul, and other improvements and additions. If we were to stop what we were doing right now and focus on adding multiplayer, it would stagnate the content and progress of the game for months on end and that's not something we want to do just yet. 

Because we are planning on doing multiplayer, we are keeping it in mind when we add in new content and mechanics. We look at the single player and multiplayer aspects before we push updates, and we are constantly thinking about how it will work behind the scenes when multiplayer is implemented. This will greatly smooth out the process when the time comes.

The big thing we are focusing on for the next update is what we are calling merchant quests. These will basically be quests that you can pick up from various merchants you find around the world. It will usually involve you getting a certain item for the merchant which may be a challenge to acquire. Once you get the item, you'll be able to turn it in to the merchant for an exclusive item reward that can only be gotten at that merchant. 

This is meant to add a small RPG element into the game. It isn't meant to replace an overarching questline which will come with the game's backstory and development. The main story questline will be more of an emergent storytelling type of mechanic that you choose to pursue on your own. It won't be forced upon you, but it will be there for you to pursue. In the mean time, we figured merchant quests would be a good way to add goals and challenges with good rewards. 

As with any update, merchant quests will be implemented and then added upon in future updates. This means upon the initial update there will be a decent bit of merchant quests and rewards, but that will continue to be expanded upon as the game develops. 

We are very excited to be on Steam and are even more excited to be back working on the game. Let us know what you think about merchant quests and even any ideas you may have for them! 

- Will Sterling (Audio and Game Design)

One of the primary reasons we decided to go for a more simplistic graphical style is simply that we don't have the resources or manpower to create a visually top of the line game. We are only three people, each with our own set of skills. We decided instead to focus on our strengths and put time into making the gameplay fun and creating an exciting and adventurous game. However, graphics were still important to us. 

With the rise in popularity of indie games, we knew we had some leeway with graphics. With the success of Minecraft, it became evident that a lot of players cared more about content and gameplay than they did the graphics. However, this does not mean that players don't care about graphics all. It means that players are more accepting of different graphical styles. As long as the game is cohesive visually and fits the theme of the world, then players will accept it. 

As of right now there are a few different graphic styles that seem to be common in indie games. One of the most popular being 2D pixel art. We knew we wanted to create a 3D open world game and so this was out of the question. The other options were a cube-based world (Minecraft) or a realistic and dark style of game (Day Z) typically used in survival type games. Neither of these seemed to fit our game and we knew there were enough games with these styles out there as it was. 

This is when we decided to go for a colorful and stylized game. We wanted to do something unique though and not have it be completely 'cartoony'. Therefore we decided to do a blend of realism, such as the lighting and some shading, mixed with the colorful stylized visuals you see in the game now. We took a lot of inspiration from Wind Waker and wanted to incorporate that sort of style into our game. It was important that our game stood out graphically, but worked within the confines of our limitations as a small team. We believe we've been mostly successful at this endeavor. 

A common question we get about our game is, "Will the graphics improve?" The answer to this is, yes and no. The graphics will improve within the confines of our stylized graphics theme. However, we are quite happy with the way a large portion of the game looks and there will not a be a 'graphical overhaul.' What you will see will be incremental improvements to various aspects of the game, graphically speaking. For instance, we are currently looking into ways to improve the grass and make it fit better visually into the world. 

Overall we hope that our choice in using stylized graphics in Salt creates a more unique experience and helps you to immerse yourself in the world. 

- Will Sterling (Audio and Game Design)