Android mecha open world survival i need lot of input

[DevsGoingViral]

Hello everyone,i’m posting this thread with hope it will be interesting for you to track progress and discuss the project.My goal is high quality content.So fresh crew and fresh project.

Often i see game devs brag about how they setup visuals inside Unity and they post pictures(fb groups and similar),for example terrains and similar(and people mass like it and are very happy with such results) and then i see it and hit myself in forehead because i know it can be much much better(and such screenshot’s doesn’t represent what Unity engine can give us),including how 3D assets can look like and so on,so big words coming: i want to represent Unity engine properly in mind on art style we chasing and platform we will publish and her limitations. So to prevent me doing same and tripping that i’m doing best possible job,here you are people to discuss with me how we can make Unity shine at full max.So be constructive and feel free to say whatever you feel you need to,feel free to be sharp,i don’t expect this to be easy.

In short,gathered talented crew composed from talented people :Zbrush artist,sound engineer,music composer,programmer,generalist/level designer and me(check my content you will find about me) but mainly 3D design.As time passes and content is produced i will showcase their work and “expose” particular person who was in charge for particular asset,i will put additional links to their portfolios so you can check out their work additionally.

Like i said we just started so basically more or less you tracking this project from 0 .I did job on gdd to get us enough info so we can start working so here is first image(one of many to come-i planning to update this regularly with pictures,text,videos of animations and whatever is needed additionally) and image contain one type of high poly enemy creature and starting vehicle/character that player gets as starting point-so it doesn’t have guns,should not look to much powerful so basically with that i’m truing to give player desire to advance and craft better vehicles(we will feature many vehicles of many types/purposes),we also give to player many reasons to exist on map and have desire to make progress so we have layer on top of layer of drive that player gets and i will slowly introduce whole project as time passes:

Both of art you can see are wip and high poly versions.Camera is top down slightly angled not in “god perspective” but not in third person view- i want to avoid looking at distances since it solve lot of optimization problems-after all we pushing this to mobiles(high end devices particularly).We will use latest technologies for texturing and we chase PBR fairly realistic visuals.Year in game not precise but way into future take 500 to 1000 years in consideration,and game happens on distance hostile planet.I know you don’t know at this point to much about game but lets slowly introduce it,right?And lets discuss what can be seen,or more than that if you prefer?

Art creature you can see is work of our ZBrush artist Stefan : https://www.artstation.com/artist/sb-studio

And since i showed two “assets” that will exist inside game i probably should tell you just a little bit more of their purpose(keep in mind it is not convenient to explain everything so i will keep introductions of assets and maybe 5% or so to keep text short just for now and i will reveal more stuff as we progress together here).

Small silly character : was automated utility vehicle(move garbage and such) on large/huge human transport spaceship.It can also be remote controlled.

Creature just one of few more main enemy AI we will have.Highly dangerous,is hunter,can be scared,have animal intelligence,will react to sounds,can influence other creatures of same class but sub-types,is born and developed itself to live on this hostile planet(it is hostile planet even for them).They move slow while listening for movement’s,have few more abilities they use regularly and more which are unlocked even for them.
You will find out about player and game mechanics later on and it will be clear what all of this means.

I will just politely ask you to keep game ideas for yourself since this is already developed idea,story and game mechanics and if someone suggest something and we already have such system inside game it can make both of us uncomfortable and cause maybe even more damage,so pls without such and lets make this clean conversation on what is made and how to improve it but without suggesting story lines and such.

I hope we can make this clean,adult and responsible and have good times together.
Studio don’t lack ideas or game mechanics and reason why i started thread is because i know you people will also care we represent unity engine properly(of course - material for discussion on visuals and scene setup and lighting is to come later on).

[theANMATOR2b]

@DevsGoingViral

I will just politely ask you to keep game ideas for yourself since this is already developed idea,story and game mechanics and if someone suggest something and we already have such system inside game it can make both of us uncomfortable and cause maybe even more damage,so pls without such and lets make this clean conversation

I don’t want to criticize your efforts so far so please take my feedback constructively.
First - this element of your post is kind of ridiculous, because this is a game development forum. This is the exact place to discuss and talk about mechanics, story and ideas. You will no doubt run into issues through your development, and this is the place where you can come to and detail something and get unbiased/unrestrained feedback from other developers who have (developer) interest in the game to give suggestions, provide feedback, check out what you are working on, and to aid in solutions to issues.

With that point out of the way - here is some feedback you might find helpful.

Looks like you are starting out making a common beginner mistake - A LOT (most) beginner developers make.
You have a GDD, and are already off creating time consuming art without putting in any real design time, including extensive prototyping of mechanics you only mention ONCE in the first thread.
Therefore it is easy to conclude there has been no prototyping done on any of the mechanics, only ideas written in a design document.
If there has been prototyping completed on core mechanics - why didn’t you mention any of the mechanics at all in the first post announcing the game? Art without mechanics usually is not a good game. Most people here are interested in how the game plays - so let us know.

The only thing I can gather from the above post is from the title this will be an open world mech game - and you briefly described the camera angle.
Give us some meat! The only thing you are currently showing is the BBQ sauce and garnish that sits atop the meat = the art. Even though I’m an artist and really love to see beautiful art in games - the art is pretty much meaningless and useless without a solid core game worked out to feed the art into.

And please prototype before proceeding to put in extensive time on art. You will eventually find the mechanics you have “designed” in the document will be revised over and over again until they are not what you originally wrote in the document. A lot of art is going to need iteration as well, so it is a good idea to start primitive. The buggy/vehicle model above could really be accomplished with 6-8 combined cubes so prototyping can be iterated on, while the artists are working on finding the sweet spot in the design, that is both optimal as well as looks as good as it can, running on the target platforms.

Last - showing high resolution sculpts is pretty nice for showing off a process, or marketing content, or showing it next to the lower resolution model to show how the normal/spec map was generated. But the most impressive content will be in-game content actually running in engine. However this is probably just a progress shot showing one step in the creation of the creature, so that’s cool.

Just be mindful - if you aren’t - if prototyping of the mechanics has not been given ample due diligence, a lot of effort on art content might be wasted - if certain mechanics written in the design doc are later scrapped when they are finally tested and realized they might not work at all for this game, so the content created for those mechanics are pretty much useless, and that time/effort cost can not be recovered.

Looking forward to your next update.

[PhilippG]

@DevsGoingViral

Hello everyone,i’m posting this thread with hope it will be interesting for you to track progress and discuss the project.My goal is high quality content.So fresh crew and fresh project.

Hello Mika!

First of all, cool 3D art! Your artists seem to have some great talent!

@DevsGoingViral

Often i see game devs brag about how they setup visuals inside Unity and they post pictures(fb groups and similar),for example terrains and similar(and people mass like it and are very happy with such results) and then i see it and hit myself in forehead because i know it can be much much better(and such screenshot’s doesn’t represent what Unity engine can give us),including how 3D assets can look like and so on,so big words coming

I don’t know about these “game devs” you are talking about. Of course, many of the indie devs might not be able to create art on such a high quality level, and maybe there is lack of talent here and there. Here in the forums, you might also often see low quality content, but the main reason for this is we tend to work in a different scope (see @theANMATOR2b s answer) and most of us on low budget. Everyone here is just doing as good as they can, so please be constructive, but be and let be.

@DevsGoingViral

i know you people will also care we represent unity engine properly

Unity is not solely a render engine but a game engine.
You can concentrate on working on art in the first place. And I know, you can create lots of hype with awesome art. But a hyped community will ask what the meat of the game is sooner or later, so be prepared.

Myself, I do also rather want to see the actual game that hides behind the visuals. Just like movies, where I rather like to see a refreshing story than a VFX orgy. Its a matter of taste though.

@DevsGoingViral

I will just politely ask you to keep game ideas for yourself since this is already developed idea,story and game mechanics and if someone suggest something and we already have such system inside game it can make both of us uncomfortable and cause maybe even more damage,so pls without such and lets make this clean conversation on what is made and how to improve it but without suggesting story lines and such.

Your thread title says you need lots of input, but here you exclude any conceptual input? I assume you mean input for the art side then?

[DevsGoingViral]

Hello people.I appreciate you two took your time and managed to start discussion just from basic info i provided.

Like i said we started recently from total 0 and shortly after that i started this thread.As produced material pile up little bit i will regularly update this thread.
My idea for this(i have a wish for this and hope it will work good for you people) section of forum “work in progress” is to kinda make mini series like “TV episodes” where bits of information’s comes with art,video or similar showcase,
and bits of information’s are closely related to showcased material-so we have something to discuss on,and that’s what i will do,hope you will like it overtime.
So “meat” will come in small packages so we can be detailed and discuss small chunks which i hope will benefit you people also if i manage to get them done properly.
Related to that,this thread is compatible with coders,3D designers and any other team positions but i will post particular parts of game development one at the time as they get produced,
as they have sense to me to be showcased.
So further related to that we will eventually hit discussions on systems/game mechanics and much more(technical approach to 3D design/implementations/asset scene optimizations will come soon) where people will get chance to express themselves with feedback however they like.
Maybe i wasn’t clear,i just will not enjoue someone start making me story or similar in front,until we firstly showcase what we planing to do or is already developed.

Thanks theANMATOR2b you are right about GDD and surely it can be problematic.
Yes i started creating publish ready right away models(3D vehicle) because i can(Stefan following directions and have decent freedom on creativity),because of previous works i done which also includes practicing projects inside Unity.
There are to many variables for us to completely 100% agree on tiny details about how to approach game design but we for sure can discuss it and agree on logic,global direction and something that have sense.

Some of variables if you can agree can be: mind set on goals for the project(finish fast?,finish with quality?,genre?,platform? and so on…),number of people inside team and their time and skills,
resourcess(technologies/hardware,software licences and so on…) that team have,dynamic environment(some team members can leave in meanwhile - that’s dynamic environment),particular feature inside genre can be hated that year and influence you project,or seriously maybe not so popular anymore just like that),
and so on to not be boring will stop naming…

So basically based on some personal approach to project and our wishes and personal awareness on what project is in larger scope we can completely separate there,but i can
agree definitely on destructive part that GDD can lead us to if that particular approach doesn’t work for that particular project.So i agree on prototyping(you are very useful there),for things that i’m not sure i prototype them in mind that i want to kick off localized systems to work
inside project really soon(so basically it happens something like this: i’m aware what is kinda “stand alone” system some tiny game mechanics,so whatever it is i will check it and see where we are with that-can be asset from Unity asset store,can be something that i needed to script quickly to prototype,but for example if i already prototype all kind of movements that include Unity wheel physics or similar i don’t need to do same again,i know how it behaves).
For things that i’m already familiar with i start working on polish ready models since i know how i will implement them inside project.
In this project case gdd nor localized units/assets are fixed values so there is no destructive “force” except dynamic tweaks(on both gdd and assets in both directions) as we go and make progress.

For this project i could game design everything to the last bit and i didn’t wanted that to do yet,since as we go i’m sure lot of things will turn out to not be true completely.Also as i model high poly it gives me much more ides then i can throw just like that from my head if we talk about tiny details-and i think that’s highly powerful approach which can provide not only rich visuals(not limited by some potentially false gdd claim) but also influence
greatly game mechanics and more precise gameplay experience for player.So Stefan created this creature on same way-got rough instructions,nailed it(wip is showcased) and have’d his artistic freedom and skills inside his field unlocked which as results for me as i can see have very good results.Further more such creative asset give me more ideas about how to refine creatures and gdd sections,so if we introduce based on his creative design
some new feature to this creature i will update gdd for that creature but also update what else will it influence.SO on this way we will get highly rich content which my mind have no chance of producing it correctly to the tiny bits,which is worse i have many jobs inside team except,technical 3D art,implementations and so on…

Basically what i can produce for this project is : Zbrush art/sculpting,3D models,Texturing,Music,coding in Unity java script,Ui design and more except particles i don’t like working with them - with that i want to say few things,if some team members leave project i am able to continue project and take their positions so this thread will be valid no matter what and will continue.
Obviously they are highly talented and i will prefer them to do what they are doing the best-i can’t match them individually.Also we just gathered recently(in day’s,weeks) and i’m sure they will start producing material as soon as Stefan and me produce enough material for them to start working.-So these kinda of stuff influence also on what i will work on,basically this whole my “speech” will mention many variables that influence on what i’m working on and on which way so to wrap it around i kinda “following the flow”.

To minimize destructive approach like you mentioned,firstly i decided that everything can “breathe-and adapt in both directions”,and second thing is,i decided to split whole GDD into
3 layers.On first can be find lot of data which fills basic info for team members to get know the project as also to be able to at least plan or start working inside their field.
So things like introduction,classifications,overall and mid detailed individual asset explanations can be fount there on first level.
Second level comes(will come) with high detail data on individual assets but as closest prediction as possible.
So second layer will hold enough info so programmer can take values and apply into variables and confirm are they balanced with/by prototyping(like bullet speed,bullet damage,shields and correlation of that and many other things),
So that’s where we will mainly experiment with in-game balance and have results which are actually valid one and not predictions,so such confirmed and final things will end up in third layer(and will actually make the game and compose our scenes) of gdd where we actually get our game on paper as it is inside Unity scenes.
With in mind that i know direction of the game and particular game mechanics that’s enough for me to not do silly things and create assets that doesn’t fit my idea in first place so i don’t see personally to much of destructive force there,and additionally gdd is not ice cold frozen which further makes stuff more possible to be done

I mean…That’s just in short some of my personal thoughts at the moment on replying,we for sure can discuss further about gdd also.
I’m not conditioned by investitors(don’t have them) to strictly follow gdd,neither i restricted team members or me to strictly follow gdd,lets say simply 5 heads are smarter then one definitely.
So yes i’m doing prototyping.But like i said on localized level/asset if i’m not sure about system itself that will work with my 3D asset.So for example recently i tested complex spider leg movements with procedurall leg placement-mech walker,so i can know my 3D model ergonomics/joints,have sense when moving,will parts collide based on previous prototyping and son on…
So like i mention i think at least i did so,i’m financing when i can also i already tested decent number of paid Unity assets(purchased them to speedup development) and decided Unity version where they all can work together,also same Unity vesrion provides what we need.

SO thank you theANMATOR2b for feedback i listened what you have’d to say,you was constructive actually both of you guy’s and i highly appreciate it.

Hello PhilippG ,thank you right away on comment for 3D art,i’m glad you liked it-any particular reason you like it?

Yeah let me explain if i’m able to do so for “rough” part of my thread but it is rough if taken on that way.
Sure we lack time,our timelines when we screenshoot stuff can be different,i’m also on low budget lets say it is zero-but when i start working for someone on 3D design i chip little bit of that as i can and invest into assets,skills are different-yes,scope for sure.
I just wanted to explain why i posted this thread,what inspired me to post this thread,i didn’t needed to do such.
Basically it is hard to explain untill you see it since somethimes it is needed to feel atmosphere of the posts that i notice on random fb game developer groups.
Basically they didn’t do anything bad,far from that,they develop inside Unity and it is contribution on itself,it is someone effort,also our free time is different we can dedicate to assets.
My point is if not maxed out scene is presented as such(try to read me in-between lines here) and post say just for example “realistic visuals,beauty shoot and similar-hope you get point now” and on my miracle people actually can’t believe it is Unity(they expected much worse quality-which is also suprize for me) that kinda,i don’t know
i just don’t feel good about it.For me personally it is like spreading wrong information :S if someone can feel me here :S?I don’t know how to explain it differently.
So basically i want to prevent myself of doing same so here i am to take bullets on every silly thing i do and you know it can be better from inside Unity(doesn’t need to be only visuals).
This is nothing more then personal decision on delivering to players best possible experience,on the way showing this game engine best i can(best we can-whole team).
I will not proclaim myself as protector of the visuals of this game engine xaxaxax(that sound funny to me) neither will ever say this is best it can give since out there someone can do better then me.
What i want to do and i’m hope i explained it is to make high quality content/video game and since i’m using my faw game engine of choice i will feel so good if i performed best possible inside it and results are confirming that,honestly i would feel good because game engine itself and reputation(confirming it),will feel good about
giving players more faith(beside other people who doing that already) into our indie world,will feel good because this game studio and whole crew performed really good.

Yes PhilippG visuals means nothing without proper gameplay experience-afterall that’s what matters for player the most-proven already.
I’m not focusing only on visuals but also with same force on gameplay experience.
For example we claim open world-so he alone means nothing if there is no content inside,also repetitive content is fairly standard for survival games but i want also to deal with it and minimize it as much possible.
You will notice people i talk generally whole time,at least most of the time,that’s because of how i planing to introduce whole project like i mentioned way on the beginning

I think i carefully planned whole storyline,game mechanics,gameplay experience,visuals all together and overtime we will hit the subjects if anyone interested of course and exchange opinions,learn from each other and so on.
There is so much time we have to discuss,this thing will eat time and we have at least one year,over one year of screenshoots and such materials to discuss.
Basically this is PC tittle ported to mobile if you like - that’s how much game mechanics(interesting parts that will influence gameplay experience) this thing will have.
It is singleplayer which simplify stuff a lot specially the coding part!
So PHilippG you have here also person who care a LOT about gameplay experience in mind of game mechanics but not only physics,what to do on map,how i move and such,but also on particle effects,UI usability,sounds and so on.

Let me give example(small sneak peak into my attention to detail about this project),i mentioned sounds:
when many objects are in one place even with culling sounds by priority or other conditions they can sound like rumble
and not to be clear what player listening to so…
Enemy(everything) but let take weapons will play music chords inside their base sound so if bullet is fired he will have particular note.
Not only that here is small mini insight how that will work: Enemy will play sad chords - script will make sure that units which are inside one place get particular notes that makes sad chords.

I hope my answer is also kinda constructive and you did get more info,keep in mind my “TV series :)” where i will introduce stuff as they are made or in progress.

theANMATOR2b this is already long repply so i’m surre you will be thrilled to talk about 3D stuff so i will leave it for some of the next updates,i will be highly technicall and i think you will enjoe it.

I decided sad to kinda give player feel about being attacked-he will experience that on multiple levels-we will have lot of feedback to player to insure proper gameplay experience-so lot of feedback to him,sounds,particles/visual confirmations,UI elements confirmations and so on,our music tracks will change depending on what player globally doing-does he crafting,does he have battle,does he exploring and so on…

So Enemy AI- sad tones.Player gets “cheer/happy” chords when firing weapons so he can feel he doing something positive and can feel it even by listening - it’s not music it is just subtly tonality embedded inside sounds that will work togetherwith other game mechanics together.

Yeah i wanted to type “in need for lot of input” but i’m guess meaning is same-made mistake in thread tittle.

Se you guy’s soon in week or so(in that time i will just have to showcase progress on 3D assets),i think we will move decently until then.If programmer don’t start working soon,as i finish 3D assets/characters i will script mainly movements and some features that are fairly independent on other systems(that maybe come in month from now or around that).
I hope i have’d sense above

We will have proper promotional material and for sure paid marketing,so this is not in that kind of purposes.
Thread is honest as it can be ! \e/ Sorry for mistakes,i’m not native English speaker.

[DevsGoingViral]

Hiya people.We are without programmer so i’m doing that also atm so i’m little bit late with updating thread.
Stefan made small concept piece of his creature for me to texture it later:

High poly is ready,but low poly,rig,animations,texturing is on me so it will come later when i’m done with current jobs.

We work really hard,currently only 2 team members working full time on this and rest of team when they have free time.
In meanwhile i created low poly character,created animations,implemented,scripted.Next to do is basic UI elements and develop local game mechanics for vehicle(some are developed).Bellow is low poly assembled.

Basically these are our raw working mostly wip screenshoots.
Was some emissive test texturing and such:



Some hierarchy setup,my first script for movement,small steps…

Vehicle have rear steer also.As you can see we are using Unity Wheel physics,serving us just fine.

Slobodan,level designer creating our side mission polygons/obstacles as also doing some basic scene composition-prototyping with assets he can find.Assets that he can use inside final game are coming.

joystick you can see is this asset :
Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making It is really easy for implementation we will use also other products from them. As i show pictures with assets i will put links to assets i bought and shortly explain them.

So far i scripted player movement and some basic operations like generator spinning,spoon can be controlled,animations are scripted ,character can attach trailers during runtime by using configurable joint.
I want to take care also of UI system and basic graphics so we can better implement assets and develop interactions with world.After that i will deal with enemy creature Stefan made and show you animations.We have some videos of everything i’m saying,will open our game studio YT channel so we can share some videos during development.

[DevsGoingViral]

This is how it was easy with Joystick asset system,as also on picture you can see KriptoFX that’s are particles system we will use and asset is located : Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making amazing high quality particles effects,and we will continue to use his products.
My scripting is newbie but at least get job done believe me or not xD .
Joystick implementation is actually much simplier then this but i wanted to do some stuff with it.

Attach trailer script- maybe someone find it useful and develop it properly for themselves .

If anyone have comment on how i can improve posting pls let me know \e/ .

[DevsGoingViral]

Yo my people,how you doing ?
These last couple of day’s i really worked hard on making trailer attach thingy much smoother.Other team members worked really hard on their tasks.
As you can see from previous basic script trailer attach was instant(moved instantly into position+worse than that because of my silly OnTriggerEnter function it never reached position properly),which was leading into problems with wheels meshes which get offset because of such violent attach and didn’t looked good anyway.
Now trailer attach overtime and is much better looking-one thing dough with my current setup is : it sleeps after attaching,nothing can wake her up,tried changing physics inside editor,tried to wake it up with inside the code(basically searched lot of Unity forums for different solutions that worked for other people,adding force to it and similar-didn’t worked for me).But,nudging her/trailer with other rigidbody does the job so i wake up her like that-drop invisible cube prefab when attach happens and remove it right after it activate wheels suspension-that does the job.So next thing is to polish trailer attach/detach system and do same system for trailers to be able to attach other trailers.

We moved to Unity version 2017.2.0b2 .Mainly because cinemachine and timeline editor which i truly believe and is fact basically that it can give us triple A feel we want to achieve on final product.
We have some new screenshot’s and YT channel with videos - everything is hard wip,basically we use these videos and screenshot’s inside team to share with other team members so we can give/get feedback from each other.It is not yet to impress anyone-far from that,but i will share it regularly with you people.
Playing around with scene level designer give’d to me(he is working on prototype of one type of side mission’s we will have so we can plan better and make others based on this one,and as i mentioned he’s prototyping with assets he can find until he get real pieces),playing with optimized and improved image/camera effects -post process stack.Was checking hot it works now and so on,since i have over my head amount of job to do invested for now just few minutes into it-shame i know,will get back to it,so looking good for now(we will see what we can use from that stack after we finish video game):

.

Char Trailers

Music you can hear bellow is some old work of sound designer and music composer: https://www.timuramanovaudio.com
Sounds you can hear are just test sounds of sound designer : http://jturner134.wixsite.com/audio

Trailer

Game Footage

Way i’m planing to have rich scene/level with 3D assets is:
currently i’m painting everything on dedicated UV space so after i can cut and make atlases based on our scene composition+gameplay mechanics.Merging/sharing on UV space is between multiple assets is optimization,but not quite in some cases(it is relation between level design and 3D design -technical side of it) since if we have lets say machinery with many parts inside camera view and that’s Atlas1 and we have only one tiny screw somewhere inside camera view and that screw is inside another the Atlas2 we pulled whole PBR texture set(multiple textures) into GPU memory-that’s silly.So how we gonna optimize that is,we will desire specific 3D assets on specific part of the map-priority is good gameplay experience so after we are happy with that and establish whole map like that we can start then merging assets into atlas maps based on which assets are most often showing on map together inside camera view and working good together also adjusting slightly level design especially after atlas maps are made will help this process of optimization of gpu memory mainly.Goal is also to keep number of textures and number of materials low as possible by doing good practice inside 3D design-also not all textures inside one single pbr texture set need to be 2K so this resolution resizing and fine tuning of all atlases will happen on the end/near finish since we will have established camera player movements+cinematics+mixed of both,assets will be merged and it will be easy to see how much we can downsize the resolution of individual textures and not loose visual quality and texel density with in mind of where /how far our cameras are.Less materials will allow Unity engine to batch meshes that use same material-so that’s nice to have . Now related to texture atlases kinda complicated and simple in same time -basically everything is simple but is connected to each other so good optimization can be tricky sometimes,but anyway,related to both meshes and also Texture atlases we don’t want to switch to often between many atlases- we actually want to have them in number low as possible for multiple reasons - triggering garbage collector<keep it low as reasonable to not actually destroy performances+gpu memory ocupation will be expanded and not retracted back,will be empty after textures are unloaded-sure.So it pulls what are 3D assets,how they will be used and how much in numbers and how often-that connects level design,game mechanics,3D assets creation and optimization we need to take care of.So we already doing optimization on 3D assets by taking care of good UV usage by overlaping majority of symetrical surfaces on models that doesn’t require unique details on opposite sides(in same time i know they will be later downsized-planned inside atlas maps so to avoid lines everywhere when mipmaps kicks in i’m leaving enough space between UV islands),also we will accept many useful tips on optimization from many Unity presentations.Also for meshes since we will have mechanical garbage scattered around map(many meshes/pieces) for those that will not move after leve designer place them we will export them as fbx and i will join them into one single mesh-same will happen with large boulders env pieces/rocks -but for pieces like that i will also wield verticles and optimize them further to represent proper highly optimized meshes that totally work for our scene.This types of merging 3D meshed will lead to less verticles,less shadow casters,less mesh renderrers.Also for optimization since we are on mobile and we have mechanical 3D assets and our goal is to have complex mechanical assets means we somethimes can’t avoid to many parts and because of general camera position we can use custom simplified meshes for shadow cast that will simulate many other meshes-lets say static ones if for example merging them is not an option-but most likely it will be.We want also to re-use many times same 3D assets and save like that on computation(cpu and gpu),that will however lead to simple environment that we want to avoid-by cleverly making assets and having atlas maps switch betwwen each other while player moves through the level-that will help us in great deal but also to get diversity and variations on meshes will use simple trick of painting 3D meshes and then doing crazy things inside modelling software with already painted meshes until new variations shows up-in same process inside modelling software not only i can adjust mesh itself but also i kinda can paint them with other parts/faces/poligons from non related meshes by braking them apart and mixing them,merging back together into some new 3D mesh-that means i can cheaply get lot of 3D assets by not increasing number of Atlas maps since parts are already textured.Also if we notice that number of 3D meshes that represent garbage is not enough to populate scene,additionally we will use simple decals that can make huge difference.We will also optimize atlases/textures “on import settings” by turning off writable-i didn’t find turning off mipmaps giving proper visual results so most likely we will not touch it in return to get on gpu memory-but is an option.Our level designer will take care of occlusion culling and will be careful how he use meshes to populate map-so basically he needs to know all 3D assets,their poly count and what 3d designers can do with them.
That’s just little bit on optimization subject,hope someone will take it as useful .In next post i will introduce game way more.

Some more raw in progress videos -wip,trailers are repaired-attaching process-it was corelation of positions of attach point and wheel suspension from what i can tell :

- YouTube

Test rig of Stefan’s high poly creature (https://www.artstation.com/artist/sb-studio), ,low)low poly isn’t finished,nor it is final rig,nor final animations-it’s all test :

TestRig

Some test low poly 4minute “texturing” :

Thats nothing,will texture it properly tomorrow or so.
Decided to test it inside Unity :

Can be final texture for alpha creature type2

Tomorrow will post example setup from inside Unity with particles as video and tell what this thing is inside game.

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Hey peeps we moving slowly with making progress,amount of job is huge as expected,so i’m updating thread as i can(grab little bit of “free” time).Like i promised together with amount of job being done i will slowly introduce the game and individual systems(i hope someone can find understanding that not everything can be told in order to save it for the gameplay) so short game introduction(really stripped out) :

Short Game introduction:
Happening is set in far future on distance hostile alien planet.Conditions are not good for people to live on it and we giving player complex character and goals that will make this survival packed with fun.
Character is inside game mix of Player,spaceship firmware/AI + 2 surprise’s i can’t talk about yet.
Character itself as mix of all above named can take different forms/host different entities from our world.
We giving player multiple reasons to exist on map,layer on top of layer on top of layer which giving whole gameplay sort of purpose to be played at first place(whole game is wrapped into story that player takes part of with gameplay),so this is nothing close to sandbox(gameplay without real in-game purpose or making progress - i personally like sandbox games but this particular game need to be moved far away from sandbox in order to be really good).Once started Player is sucked into story and our small virtual world we created for him and he will have unfinished business until game is completed-so video game has start,progress-achievements inside that virtual world as also end upon all tasks are finished(so yes we have missions and side missions available for player).
Player will get basic vehicle on start of the game(after story introduction) and vehicle will have basic systems that will allow player to jump-start his survival rate and with it he will be able to make basic establishment/base(so yes we will have base management-base management will be really close to strategy type games) that will further allow him to craft dedicated vehicles and mech-a warriors that shine in doing particular tasks all spiced with our weird character entity that i somewhat introduced above.

Terrains/maps
Hand crafted in order to provide player best possible gameplay experience.Every inch is carefully designed in order to fully embrace our game mechanics and force player to choose with what character he play’s depending on the environment/ place on the map he is currently located.Which brings me to stuff that i discussed with our level designer - he will design terrain on such way that player will be able to understand(learn) terrain features and what benefits or danger comes with it - so we want to instruct on natural - intuitive way our player to know the map and not just wonder in randomly designer terrain and feel lost without purpose.
Map size is 2Km x2Km and will expand with updates - brings technical difficulties but nothing scary to not try to do.
Also that size of terrain(rather all 3D and physics assets) will make challenge starting from load time to performances trouble but my idea is to enable only assets that are in player defined range and everything else is disabled - will solve performance problems since physics are turned off until player reach assets position but that brings new trouble = planet is not truly alive in that case,and my goal is that planet breath and lifeforms advance and interact with each other no matter if player is not in range,so we basically want that player encounter real happenings and results of happenings of our AI decisions - and our AI is fairly heavy and complex asset with avoidance and physics so as solution to it lightweight script will be made that will run without physics and will simulate our way more complex AI system.So if player is not in range of some AI enemy our lightweight script simulate world and based on what was happening that moment when player got in range our script will send desired info that particular AI needs in order to work on heavy AI system-so basically does that creature died,is injured,is hungry,have something inside inventory and so on that info will be pulled/given when required to heavy AI system.
Heavy AI System that we will most likely use is : Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making
Terrain will be carefully designer also performance vise and our level designer will need to know about how different assets behave,how much polygons they have,how much textures,how much materials and so on in order to use them vise and optimize performance by just placing proper assets on proper places,of course before that assets will be optimized individually to have only components that they need and nothing more!
We will offer player depending on device performance 2 main camera views(that follow him) that can be tweaked further until player gets perfect perspective that he/she “dreamed about” which with perspective change it changes terrain asset placement/optimization and occlusion culling and such so we all will have on top of everything hard job on tweaking our world to work for both perspectives and their slight tweaks/variations.Camera system is not something to be worried to much(almost none) since cinemachine is masterpiece so all we should care is to get proper shoots with cameras.
Target device graphical engine
Gles 2.0,Gles 3.0 .Priority are high end devices which means all assets are dedicated to it,game for other older devices will be optimized by tweaking tier and graphics quality settings - project is huge on its own and we can’t dedicate time to re-make whole game to look equally good on low end devices(it will require textures to be specially made to look good on particular yet custom written shaders that performs really fast) - so that kinda sucks a lot,but at least i’m thinking at least we allowed them on this way to enjoy game mechanics,story,sounds,music tracks and some visuals.

On image you can see free Unity asset skybox that we are using currently as placeholder : Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making and image above is just me testing some scene/shoot composition to give my level designer some feel about overall direction.There is a lot to be tweaked and repaired.Made that is less then 2 hours including chasing and test image effects that will work on my low end device+ assets implementation and cameras/cinemachine basic setup(was test for obstacle avoidance and such,in same time i was making bunch of builds like crazy and was testing bunch of different quality settings and scene lighting and overall visuals and performance).Even with non optimized assets,high terrain settings,my silly script that are not yet optimized and are inside update function(everything! xaxa) + 3 image effects and full realtime lighting we have totaly playable build on my low end tablet and visuals can be really close to what you see depending on how i setup settings for low end device inside project settings+ we have skybox material from which 2 textures with asteroids have higher resolution of 1K size and other textures of it are reduced.Everything 3D asset you see is 1K complete PBR texture set that using Unity default standard material/shader,there is 4 rocks so thats 4x2 1K textures * 3 material variation for each and it run playable-i was making builds to test it to the max if you can feel me,wanted to see how stupid it can go without optimization-and it can go a lot(keep in mind even my tablet is cheap and low tier device it has 1GB ram+quadcore)+ i made 7 new terrain textures that day so they are all painted into terrain + some older are still somewhere on the map painted,so character is 1K texture set(this time it has albedo,metallic smoothness,normal,emissive compared to rocks that have albedo + normal),same apply for trailer 1K texture set .So all these builds showed me that non optimized scene can run playable even in 3th person with map filled with rock meshes so it gives me good indication that we will have good visuals and good performances with optimized and final scene that will feature mostly 3D assets of decorative nature,we will have off course other stuff added that will push device capabilities.Basically at this point my worry and next task atm is to test particle effects as also to use/create UI elements that are solid to avoid transparency happening and save performances there - which pulls that UI must be carefully designed in order to provide usability,performance and to not obstruct player view on the map all that in mind it is mobile screen and player input is limited,and we have complex systems that need to show stats to player and similar,or be instructed by player and such.I’m doing many jobs so one at the time…Currently i’m working on rest of the animations for creature you saw previously.Soon audio artist will make ambient sounds so we can get better feel about world while working on scene.

Some vehicles player will be able to craft and some that he can’t will be placed on map,we call them lost-found vehicles-totally of abstract type/soft sci-fi style and each will bring something fresh to kinda break linear style/hard sci-fi type of vehicles that player will be able to craft.So game features two type of 3D design style.

[DevsGoingViral]

Some combat vehicle iterations from concepts to final design(at 40% done) done today.

Will have nice animations on weapons and on some body parts.Front part is the fat looking one.That’s dirty quick high poly of course.

[DevsGoingViral]

Here is small update on our game. Terrain is hand painted/made.This is just side mission and demo we making.
We creating our own content for game,including shaders from recently. Terrain is in progress.

Planet/ground will be contrast of “desolated” alien planet and scrap metal and technologies fallen from “the sky”.I will update post when i get time again and showcase more progress.

This is shield in progress.Will have 2 states,solid and energy field,will be mesh animated+ shader vertex animated…Of course shader will animate UV’s and more-will tweak it as i go.

Here is few videos,we testing different stuff:

WeaponAnim2

Prototype_Scene

HitGroundParticle

RockCreatue Example

Weapon2 Video

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Bridgeprops - LevelDesign wip

TestBothWeapons

NewRocksVehicle Electronics Crazy

Testing Particles Visuals

NewHitParticle

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TireSystemVideo

HullBreach

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cannon2

- YouTube

- YouTube

- YouTube

Amb Desert Sand Rover Cannon

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Some shield going on .Shader forge asset used/node based shader creation…

ShieldFinished Video