Beginning of March Sprint

Happy Friday!

March is definitely going to be a busy month, I'm flying to San Francisco to go to GDC and taking care of a bunch of other things. That being said I still loaded up the schedule as much as I felt comfortable with for this sprint.

The emphasis this month is on getting more content in and hooked up, to put the systems and mechanics to the test and really flesh out the game. Paired with that are some possible work flow improvements, more on that below.

I decided to forgo a build release today, I'm hoping to get a bit more of the work from last months sprint properly integrated into the flow of the game, rather than just working in a test scenario. To give a bit of insight into the construction of the game and keep releases varied and fun, I recorded a short tutorial video. It covers the use of variation "seeds" in the game to produce predictable procedural content. This was largely inspired by No Man's Sky which uses this idea to grow full planets, my hope is to use it to randomize locations and missions. Ideally when you start the game, maps with have their encampments and other such things randomized, so each play through is fresh and interesting, but you can learn the lay of the land in each run of the game. Let me know what you think and if there are any topics you would like to see in future videos.

As I am trying to flesh out more content for this sprint, I have started developing the shoreline map beyond just a placeholder space so it can continue to develop in parallel to the main wilderness map. In order to give future maps a jump start I have started trying out using World Machine to generate new layouts. From world machine I can easily shift large landmass around and try out many options quickly, generating all of the height maps to sculpt and paint the landscape. I don't intend to push this all the way to completion, just to get a loose sense of the space and layout. It will also make it easier to generate similar maps that are meant to share the same biome. I have yet to try the Open World tools developed for the UE4 Kite demo but am hoping I can use those as the next stage to "grow" various foliage around the map. Hopefully these tools together will allow me to get new maps up and running faster so I can focus on the local gameplay and storytelling.

Shoreline map, with loose red circles to indicate possible encampment locations

 Next on the agenda is character art! One of the large missing components of the current pipeline is character art and animation. So I'm trying to rectify that by starting to model the main character and look into rigging options. The render below is the VERY early hi-poly model, which has most of the larger elements blocked out but little to no detail and still missing a lot of the connecting pieces. The most developed elements are the cloth torso and arms, I altered a base model and draped it using Marvelous Designer, pulling it back into Zbrush for cleanup. Still a long way to go on it but happy with it as a start.

WIP "Medical Frame"

Have a great weekend everyone! - CJ

Sprint Report - Hacking and Base Economy

Hey all!

This weekend marks the end of this month's sprint which has been quite successful in my opinion. The focus of the month was gameplay, focusing on two of the main pillars of the game. Hacking gameplay was one, trying to clarify and make interesting opportunities for the player to leverage during combat. Two, was starting to build the foundation of the base management and player upgrades.

So the changes were, in no particular order:

• Basic Management Economy - Foundation of the management system, more info below.
• Flash Shield - Augmentation to the dodge ability, gives the player a temporary damage reduction for a moment or two. Will most likely be split into two different effects, a small reduction while dodging, a larger reduction if used standing still.
• Performance Diagnostics - Figured out some of the larger taxation on performance and either removed or improved.
• Hacking Feedback - Better visual player feedback for hacking with color state changes in all hack-able items.
• Settings and Adjustments - Implemented a simple settings menu bought from the marketplace that allows for adjustment of video and audio settings. Currently the only fully working options are the video resolution options and the various audio sliders, but more gameplay options and other settings will be implemented as the project progresses.
• Menu and Framework - Dynamic menu framework created and implemented for most menus. Allows for better menu functionality and much more easy to maintain on the back end.
• Balancing Improvements - Retooled all enemy blueprints to pull vital statistics from central data table, allowing for easier balancing.
• Munitions Overload - Explosive "barrels" now will trigger a timed detonation after taking a certain amount of damage, or after the player has hacked them to cause the overload.
• Turret Charming - Reworked turrets to accept multiple target types instead of being hard-coded to the player. Hacking turrets now makes them fire on the enemy as expected rather than the previous temporary version of simply blowing up.
• Blueprint Cleanup - Maintenance and cleanup of blueprints to make them easier to work with and accessible should the project ever have more of a team than just myself.

A quick note on the management economy, I really didn't want a complex system at all, only to afford the player opportunity for some engaging and meaningful decisions. As an extension of that, I'm hoping that it will also give a ground for the NPC's to "play" in, adding life and variety to themselves and the base.

Running the base, you have three main concerns:

1. Energy - To run the machines
2. Food - To feed the dwellers working in the base
3. Defense - To protect your base and its denizens from outside forces

Everyday, any dwellers assigned will produce a certain amount of their associated good. Any costs will be subtracted, dwellers working to produce energy will need food, and vice versa for food producers. Excess will be converted into a smaller amount of the shelf stable version, food to supplies, energy to fuel. That way any day that doesn't have enough produce to meet its demands can use the base's stores but is an incentive to plan ahead as it isn't as efficient. Defense simply produces the primary value used to decide what happens in an external event, enemy or otherwise. Fuel and Supply are the primary ingredients in trade and upgrades so the player needs to balance their needs against that of the base.

For the broader economy, fictionally speaking there is no money to speak of on this planet that is meaningful to the main populace, so the only currency is influence. The more goods and services you provide to the local populace, the more they trust and are willing to work with you. With some influence you can ask for help in the form of dwellers, intelligence, other goods, and they will happily provide you with it to a point before your influence degrades. This may be a money with a direct 1 to 1 transaction, or a more organic threshold, I'm not sure yet.

I hope the above breakdown of the economy makes sense and is interesting, I put a lot of thought into it and hope that it will support a lot of nuanced player choice and expression while avoiding unnecessary complexity. Any thoughts or comments are of course welcome!

Over the next few days I will be blocking out work for the upcoming month's sprint. I have a working list of ideas but I think the focus will simply be fleshing out more content in the game, using the systems and gameplay that is already implemented and really putting it to work. Off the top of my head, the highest priority there will be the main wilderness map, trying to push each encounter so they are as engaging as possible. Secondary to that would probably be a working layout of the shoreline map, seeing if the gameplay transitions well to a completely different biome and if there any opportunities to vary the gameplay even more on an environment scale. This could be thick fog that sometimes obscure the enemy, poison water, subterranean enemies that pop out of the sand, who knows!

Thanks very much for your time, if you haven't already tried downloading last week's build please do so and leave me some feedback, and have a great weekend! - CJ

Quick post Valentine's update!

Hey all!

Sorry for missing the Friday update, honestly I was sick and just didn't have the energy to do it. However I'm feeling much better now and made a good amount of progress last week.

Like I mentioned in the sprint summary, I have blocked out all of this month's work in HacknPlan (which I love btw). As part of the gameplay focus of the month I worked on and completed:

• Hacking Readability - Most of the hacking was already working but didn't have very good visual feedback of the state change. All hackable objects now have a visible change, whether it is a glowing orb changing colors or immediately catching fire :)
• Turret hacking - Reworked turret "AI" so it would be flexible enough to support different targets. Hacking the turrets now switch them over to your side, firing on your enemies.
• Munitions overload - The game's version of exploding barrels are munitions containers, which are lightly armored but will catch fire and explode after enough damage. Hacking can bypass that and trigger their fuses immediately. 
• Menu and Upgrade framework - The game now has dynamic menu's which means that as more of the management and base building framework is built and played with, it will update automatically. The map selection screen has updated accordingly.

I've also been working on the paper version of the management and though I'm getting to be pretty happy with some of the higher level concepts, they need a touch more time to stew before they are prototyped. Hopefully they will make it in soon as they are the last real large chunk of framework missing from the game.

Have a great week all! - CJ

Friday Wrapup! Sprint finish Edition

Hey all!

Its been quite a successful month of progress on the game, lots of work has been added and exciting progress made (at least for me.) The dev diaries have also been going quite well and I've enjoyed making them. Especially as work progresses I will most likely dive into specifics on some, doing tutorials or other content to break things up to keep things fun and interesting.
This week marks the end of the sprint as I mentioned. I tried to get any larger changes done early in the week so I can focus on play testing and fixing any problems with the build to get a nice solid release ready for next week. Work this week included:

• More complete decoration pass on Wilderness map
• Rebuilt resource gathering blueprint functionality to work based on game instance, allows for better persistence and access (previously based in character).
• Initial work on getting controller support for UMG menus (currently only works on main menu, will expand to others once I can better package it up and make it easy to maintain)
• Main map UI and workbench accurately track resources
• Started testing of dynamic menus

The testing of dynamic menus ties into my goals for the next sprint. My high level goals are to focus on the gameplay by A. creating a paper test of the design layer of the game and B. developing the UI framework needed to support the design layer. By focusing on these goals I should be able to get a more complete representation of the intended game as a whole and be able to develop it much more evenly.

Have a great weekend!  - CJ

Start of more "high desert" areas.

Small lighting and decorative revisions

Friday Wrapup! Moving Edition

Hey all!

Keeping things short today as I am in the middle of moving. This week was a good one as it started with the release of the playable build and was followed shortly by the associated inaugural dev diary. I'm making good progress on this month's sprint tasks which mainly comprised are mainly comprised of getting quick functional models into both the Base and Wilderness maps. Hopefully I will have more finished and a few gameplay improvements for next week.

Thanks! - CJ

Dev Diary #1

Hey All!

First dev diary is up on youtube! It a little rough around the edges and I need to remove "um" from my vocabulary but is at least a decent start. As always feel free to leave comments or suggestions.

Enjoy! - CJ

Build Release!

Hey All!

I finally worked through my internet issues and have a new build ready!
The previous builds were kind of testing grounds to figure out the process, but I am looking at this build as a starting point, a version one if you will.
A few of you were running into issues with Mega, so I decided to also upload the build to IndieDB, hopefully that will make access easier.
As always I am very welcoming of any feedback you might have, don't hesitate to pass it along.

Moving forward I am outlining sprints to keep myself on track and making good forward progress. The current sprint is a rough proxy complete version of both the Base and Wilderness maps. In addition I am trying to refine some of the action portions of the game and implementing more of the "speed hacking" done in the character's phantom form. The deadline for this sprint is the end of the month and will probably keep on a roughly monthly deadline for future sprints.

In addition to the biweekly builds I will start posting short developer diary type videos to hopefully keep the game's progress nice and accessible to all.

Thanks! - CJ

Mega
IndieDB

Slight Delay

Sorry for the slight delay, I have a build all ready and packaged up but am running into some intermittent internet issues that are making the uploading a bit difficult. I will keep you posted when it is ready and will try posting it also to IndieDB as an alternative to anyone that is having issues with Mega.

Thanks for the patience! - CJ

Post Holiday Greetings!

Happy post holidays!

Hope everyone had a good holiday and new year's time. Mine was quite good, though with a few bumps that I won't go into.

Game progress has been excellent, all the progress that was lost in the hard drive failure has either been recovered in some form or redone. I also finally figured out a very long running problem that was preventing development of one of the game's core features. Not to be too cryptic, but I'll devote a post to it soon to elaborate more on my intentions for it.

So after an unfortunately long time I am back on a regular build schedule and am bug fixing and playtesting a new build for release on friday. Thanks for your patience! - CJ

Introducing: Evelyn

Hey all!

Hope everyone had a good nice Thanksgiving and are gearing up well for the upcoming holidays. With the hard drive debacle finally behind us, I have been making good headway on rebuilding the lost work and pushing forward with new additions. A new build should be coming shortly but due to the setback I would like to take a little time to fully playtest the game and make sure it is as functional as the previous build before putting out a new one. I'm shooting for next week assuming everything is relatively stable. Again, I apologize for the holdup.

In the meantime I have been working hard on designing the main character for the game. Though I'm sure it will change and evolve over time, I'm proud of the way the design turned out. So may I introduce you to the protagonist for Simulacra, a VI by the name of Evelyn.

Evelyn is a virtual intelligence in charge of the medical facility that the game's main base of operations. As such she is able to possess and puppeteer different machines, computers, etc. Her main form is that of a basic medical frame, designed for basic surgical and caring needs. I wanted her body to primarily represent an intent to help/rescue as that is a big theme in the game, and also didn't want it to read as a cyborg or human hybrid but as an advanced machine. Some touchstones of her design:

• Medical color scheme and materials.
•  Monitor for face represents both corporate culture and virtual being inside, not a fancy helmet.
• Fiber optic hair wraps around and connects information to all parts of the body.
• Machined legs informed by climbing prosthesis, support industrial design.

Please let me know what you think as well as what you would most like to see next. I've updated the poll with a few options for concept design after the game is back up and running at full steam.

Thanks all!

- CJ

Ah the wonders of technology!

Hey all!

So unfortunately I had one of those inevitable tech mishaps that happens periodically to all of us, namely, my hard drive died. This shouldn't be too terrible in theory as I believe I backed up all my files pretty recently but there is definitely going to be some lost work. Hopefully I can get back up to speed or at least switch gears and post some good content this week but forgive me if it doesn't happen.
Fortunately I already have a new replacement drive installed and working so fingers crossed this will just be a small hiccup.
So if you are reading this, go back up your data! :D

- CJ

*Update*

Computer is at least back up and running, and have recovered a majority of the data from backup, though it is at least a couple weeks old if not more. So definitely some work lost but I'm at least happy that I have a working version of the game and such. Will probably bring in the drive to see if the remaining work can be recovered but I'm dubious.

Friday Wrapup! first edition

Hey all!

This week was an exciting one for me, to finally have the game shared with the public is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I will try to do these weekly wrap ups to share any progress from the week, and it will also help me to stick to a bi-weekly build release. Look forward to a new build next week!

This week mainly consisted of:

• General - Getting the game posted and setting up a few main threads to share it (Polycount, IndieDB)
• Art - Greyblock modelling for base architecture and some initial texture and material work.
• Design - Minor work on Design Test text adventure. New version posted on the game page.
• Design - Cleanup and rework of design doc to prepare for next steps.

The main focus this week was Art, specifically for the game's base of operations. The location is intended to be a semi-derelict medical facility/bunker. I greyblocked (rough un-textured proxy) models for the various areas and started doing test decoration of the spaces. The current idea is to have four main sections; Clinic, Fabrication/Engineering, Lab, Bunks/Dorm. The layout is still quite temporary, it still needs to be informed by the design and narrative needs of the space but that being said I'm still happy with it as a start. I continue to enjoy making "smart" art using UE4's blueprints, using procedural rules to make it faster and easier for me to decorate.

For example, a simple blueprint that stacks a randomized number of crates on top of each other, randomly rotates each in 90 degree increments to break up the faces, then offsets and rotates by a couple of degrees for a more naturalistic final look. A pretty simple example but hopefully gets the idea across.

If you haven't already, please download and play the main game from the game page, or if you are short on time, take a look at the design text adventure.

Have a great weekend!

- CJ

Some of the greyblock models created for the base.

Slightly revised clinic with vertex painted sand and a few models slapped in.

Updated base with vertex paint and a few of the new models. Still needs actual decoration pass.

Game is live!

The game is finally ready and available on the game page!

There are assured to be a lot of problems but I am quite happy to be finally sharing this with everyone. Definitely looking forward to all of your thoughts and feedback.

You will notice on the game page that there are two links posted, one for the main game, and one for a design test. The intention for the design test is to use a "cheap" fast method like a text based game to iterate on the narrative/strategy layer of the game. Then once it is sufficiently robust, to integrate it into the main game for a more complete balanced experience.

Enjoy!

- CJ

QWOP feels like Simulacra's spirit game at times :D

Innaugural Post

Hey all!

My name is CJ, an Environment Modeler/Tech artist. I'm working on a game in Unreal Engine 4 in my spare time and it has reached a point that I would like to start sharing it with the world. My intention for this blog is to publicly continue its development and hopefully give a voice to anyone interested. It is made for fun, and made to be fun so I am eagerly looking forward to your thoughts.

In a brief nutshell I would currently describe the game as:
Futuristic Robin Hood, with nimble, smart, twin-stick shooter style gameplay.
Its not the best encapsulation of the idea, but the core experience pillars are:

• Experience being a robin hood style figure, fighting for the little guy
• Rich, convincing world to explore
• Clean, thinking on your toes combat
• Rewarding character and environment development

I'll get more into the influences at a later time but is fairly eclectic in its inspiration, from the action and fun of older titles like Super Metroid, to more modern titles with a sense of community, such as This War of Mine. 

I am in the process of figuring out the best sharing platform that I can upload it to and will be editing this post until I feel it is a good solid starting point. Once that is complete I will be posting periodically with game updates, polls and whatever organically comes up in the process. Over its development thus far I have kept to a pretty regular two week spread for each build of the game but that will naturally expand and contract. If real life gets in the way I will at least try to put something out whether it is a bit of fiction or otherwise to minimize the amount of radio silence.

*The game is now live, check it out on the game page!*

Thanks all for your time, hope to see you again soon!

- CJ

Small native encampment by the river's edge.

Out exploring the wilds.

Laser battle with the basic enemies.