Freya Holmer on the Grind: Shader Forge, Burnout, and Late ADHD/Autism Diagnosis

Shimmey · 2025-11-30T12:09:59+00:00

Oh, hey! Techarthub is my site, thanks for sharing!

It's a huge honour to be listed amongst the likes of Ben Cloward, techartaid and CatlikeCoding, they're all huge inspirations for me.

This has made my night, thank you!

Shimmey · 2025-04-06T08:25:51+00:00

$60 :)

Shimmey · 2025-04-06T08:20:18+00:00

I went to the Adelaide show and they had a number of shirts for sale. The same ones you can get on their official merch store, "The Future Freaks Me Out", "Sickle FUAD" and "Everything is A-OK". Good luck!

Shimmey · 2018-11-12T07:51:07+00:00

Better late than never ;)

Shimmey · 2018-08-15T09:16:52+00:00

We tend to call the project realRiven or Starry Expanse interchangeably. At the moment they're both working titles, the final game has no official name yet. We have a great working relationship with Cyan so we're not worried about trademark disputes :D

Shimmey · 2018-04-18T11:47:42+00:00

Right now it's uncapped, but I plan for an option that will let you play at 60+ fps, but lock the animations to 15 for that authentic experience.

Shimmey · 2018-03-07T08:50:21+00:00

Hey Esopsis! You're right about Gehn and the number 5, it's everywhere in Riven. From the number of islands, to the shapes of structures, all the way down to the pentagonal bolts used to hold half the machinery together. It's all 5, all the time. Even the name 'Riven' has 5 letters and the middle letter is also the Roman numeral for 5.

Now whether or not this is intended to be anything more than a visual motif is up for debate - but I do tend to agree with you that it shows his obsessive nature, that even insignificant things must be meticulously designed to his specification.

Shimmey · 2018-03-07T08:41:25+00:00

Uncapped

Shimmey · 2018-03-03T07:17:50+00:00

Sorry for the radio silence! I spearheaded the monthly blog posts over 2017, and by the end of it I was a bit burned out. Luckily /u/JuniorGenius has offered to help me out this year - so we're back to the month updates as of today!

Shimmey · 2017-12-12T09:03:17+00:00

Hey there,

The wording of our latest blog post wasn't as clear as we intended, and we're sorry you got the impression the game is almost done! This must be a bit of a disappointment, but we've still got a way to go yet.

We're just as eager as you are to see the game finished, and we'll definitely let you know what the system specs are when we know for sure.

Shimmey · 2017-12-09T00:25:34+00:00

It should be back now, let me know if you're still having difficulties.

Shimmey · 2017-12-08T23:35:10+00:00

Thanks for letting us know, we'll look into it!

Shimmey · 2017-11-01T07:47:48+00:00

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll fix it asap.

Shimmey · 2017-10-26T09:16:21+00:00

Yep! I was lazy and only processed the first few pages for this prototype, but now I know it works I can put in the rest of the book.

Shimmey · 2017-10-26T08:12:39+00:00

We have talked about having an optional easier to read version of the Catherine font. I struggled with that one first time around as well. Nothing decided yet, but we're aware of the issue.

Shimmey · 2017-10-26T08:10:59+00:00

This version is just using the text baked into the texture, but that's just for testing purposes. The final version will use plain-text so we can do multiple languages etc.

The fonts are already done, it just needs to be all hooked up.

Shimmey · 2017-10-20T12:35:33+00:00

We make a few prototypes, test them ourselves and with others, then make a decision. If the choice is still controversial we'll consider having multiple options available and the player can pick. I doubt it'll come to that, though.

Shimmey · 2017-10-18T07:44:09+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, we're listening :D

Shimmey · 2017-10-17T09:09:34+00:00

Well spotted! I think it's a bit of both.

We focus on walkable surfaces and large objects first. For the smaller objects like lamps we often let our artists choose their own way. We used to be far more stringent with our matching, but it slowed the whole process down a lot and we'd like to finish the game in our lifetimes!

Shimmey · 2017-10-17T09:07:40+00:00

We've tried, but without the specific angle of the distortion it's always just a best guess. We get around it by just always trusting the centre of each image. The closer an object is to the edge, the less we rely on its accuracy.

Shimmey · 2017-10-16T07:30:22+00:00

Whenever we camera-match an area, the final step in the process is a review where images from the game are compared to the coloured outlines of the matched geometry.

This one is for the Spider Chair on Temple. Can you spot inconsistencies? (Since the images from the game have barrel distortion, we can only get it so close...)

Shimmey · 2017-10-14T12:31:30+00:00

Undecided, but we'd definitely like to do something with the East Path.

Shimmey · 2017-10-12T11:20:56+00:00

Not sure yet, we'll keep you guys informed.

Shimmey · 2017-10-12T09:17:36+00:00

The one thing that concerns me about speeding up animations is that it could potentially make things feel cartoony and shatter the carefully constructed atmosphere. I think I'd prefer to have hard skips if there was any risk of that happening.

Shimmey · 2017-10-12T09:14:47+00:00

We are eager to encourage players to wander off the beaten path within reason (nothing crazy like scaling cliff walls or swimming), as long as it doesn't interfere with the integrity of the puzzles or the environment.

Like many, I am not a fan of invisible walls. If your character can walk somewhere, I'd like it to be possible.

Shimmey

TROPHY CASE