LIGHTBOUND

LIGHTBOUND: THE LONG WAKE

A fan-made Destiny demake by William Worth. Free, made out of love for Destiny, and not affiliated with or endorsed by Bungie.

A hundred years ago the lights went out on the Rustfields. The colony ship Longhaul never flew, salvage crews turned into raiders, and the watch machines turned on their makers. Now the one fire keeping something asleep under Rocket Row is going out, and the Gloam have started to sing. A Wisp, sifting the dark of a frozen hangar, finds a spark: you.

What's in it

- An original campaign, The Long Wake: 8 missions told through in-engine cutscenes.

- The loot: weapons roll random perks (over 88 million possible rolls), plus god rolls to chase, pinnacle weapons,

  armour sets, and 29 exotics that each fire their own way.

- Boss fights built around mechanics: light the lanterns, answer the song, break the shields, cut the feeds.

- A world of 10 regions around Hearth Outpost, with public events, patrols, bounties, vendors and a war between two

  alien armies on the Southern Frontier.

- Skiffs to ride, and a Skiff race.

- Exotic quests, puzzles and Undercroft dungeons.

- A soundtrack of 36 songs.

Controls: Destiny 2's PC defaults.

- WASD to move, the mouse to aim and fire, right mouse to aim down sights.

- 1/2/3 to switch weapons, Q grenade, F super, C melee, V dodge, E to interact.

- TAB to deploy the Wisp, M for the Director, I for your character.

- Every key can be rebound in Settings > KEYS. Controllers work too.

Saves 

are kept in your browser. Clearing your browser's site data for itch.io deletes them. Use the fullscreen

button at the bottom right of the game for the best view.

DEV LOG 1: 

 

[AI DISCLOSURE]

First of all I would like to formally apologize for not stating here in the post originally that AI tooling was in fact involved in the making of this project. When i initially published the itch page I was especially careful to check every disclosure box they had available(art, audio, code, Sounds, Text). Unfortunately I have now found that the way in which itch displays this information is more difficult to find than i initially thought. This was my first time using itch and when I had looked initially I saw you could sort by games which Used or did not Use AI so my assumption was that it would be more front and center. If you went to play the game expecting a game 100% removed from AI and felt like you were deceived or unintentionally misinformed that is on me and I apologize for the miscommunication.

For clarity on the exact pipeline I used to produce the game:

Code: I designed and programmed the fundamental and foundational architecture of the engine as well as the state machines and core combat loops. From there, I used a local AI programming agent to help refactor modules, resolve bugs, bottlenecks, frame timing inefficiencies, and Tune/optimize weapon and encounter math to try and create a mathematically balanced sandbox.

Art and Audio: I'm working on a student budget and do not have the funds nor the connections to hire/work with a spriter. I have some prior work with basic pixel spiriting from hobbyist Terraria Modding. However, I am not capable of animating pixel sprites and i typically prefer to start from a base(in terraria I would take existing sprites and make heavy modifications using their already laid out perspective and angles.) In Lightbound, I used opensource local image generation models (along with a suite of proprietary pixel art tooling and cleaning packages that I have spent many additional months developing which allow the distillation and exact downscaling math required for turning non pixel art generated images into exact accurate pixel art. I used these to create rough base sprites and then followed that up with hours of manual cleanup for frames, palette matching, aligning animation sheets, and targeted pixel edits. Pixel art is far from my most sharpened skill and it definitely shows in a multitude of places within the game.

My goal was to use these tools as prototyping and scaffolding to put together an ambitious and mechanically dense fan interpretation/spin of the destiny franchise for free. I purposefully opted out of asking for money as well as donations for both legal purposes as well as personal beliefs. I did not want my game competing with handcrafted indie games on the market. I would much rather you guys go and buy other peoples games and support the artists of other popular game projects. My intention with this project was not to deceive or mislead anyone into playing this game. As a developer and musician, I have no vendetta against those who wish to pass on any project using AI for any reason. If the way in which AI was used in this project does not match your personal media consumption preferences I completely understand. For anyone who still wants to test this combat sandbox and give it a shot I hope you enjoy the build.

Hi William! Love LIGHTBOUND, it's a great love letter to Destiny. I made a fan database for the game, inspired by light.gg: every weapon type with its full perk pool, all god rolls and which weapons can roll them, exotics, armor sets and collectibles. All data and art are credited to you under CC BY-NC-SA. It's non-commercial. Can I send you the link? If you have an email or Discord, I'd rather send it privately.

Hey! I sent you an email yesterday with the link, but it might have ended up in spam. Could you check it when you get a chance? Subject: LIGHTBOUND fan site