LANDNAV - Version 0.01a available now

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

Hey everybody, some of you may know I’m working on a game called Dog Go Run. Well, I found a programmer I can afford hire for that game – which is awesome – but before I dive into a large scope project like that with a new person I wanted to try out a smaller game idea I’ve had for a long time. This game can probably be built in about three months, and then after that I can polish it while working to grow some marketing hype before releasing to the wild.

Anyway, it’s a simulation of the land navigation training I did in the military. It’s going to be 95% authentic. I tweak the rules of the scenario slightly to allow a little more player meta-game strategy and a little less uncertainty, but still, it is going to be a very demanding game. In some ways, almost diametrically opposed to mainstream video game design. So it will be interesting to see what kind of audience appreciates it.

I got some work to do before I get the programmer started, so in the meantime I am working on the few art assets we will need. There is only a single player character, his gear, and a 40km area in the backwoods of southeast united states. For the environment I will likely use a majority of purchased art.

The first thing we have to test is the actual land navigation using compass and map. There is no GPS, because GPS is for small crying babies. If you are going to learn to do land nav, you are going to learn to do it right. Or just quit, okay? I said this is military training. No whining!

So far I have made an accurate compass as well as notepad and pencil.

The last tool player needs is a map, which will be coming a bit later. The map has to be to scale with the 3d terrain. There is a few ways to do that, but I will figure out the best way once I return home in a few weeks. As authenticity is important here, I have to make sure I am using the correct measurement systems so that player can use the exact same methods as in real world. That makes things a little more complicated, but it’s all doable even for a bozo like me. Just takes some patience.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

(using compass to shoot an azimuth)

Whenever I play a new game, I write down the things I don’t like about it. One thing that really bugs me is when a game does not teach you how to play it. That’s not clever, nor does it make an enjoyable challenge. And a lot of times, once you do go through the pains of learning how the game works, then you discover it’s not very nuanced or challenging. It’s like when a girl leads you on and… ah well, you get the point. Lies!

I hope to do something better with this game. The fact is, learning how to conduct land navigation will take hours of step by step, hand-holding instruction. A robust tutorial will be essential, because how many gamers know how to read a military map or triangulate their position by shooting an azimuth?

But following a tutorial in this case shouldn’t be dull. You are learning a real life skill. And you are going to have to apply that skill in a demanding test. Everything you need to know will be taught in a crystal clear way, and you will have plenty of repetition to practice what you are taught. But applying those same skills under time crunch and with many complex factors to gamble is a legit challenge!

For me, that’s where the fun is. You make so many decisions per second, you constantly reevaluate those decisions, and none of them are ever certain. It is a real struggle of what you know, what you think you know, and what you want to believe. It can be a very personal challenge. You might only be walking, but the game is a very intense struggle of decision making that has very little downtime.

Some players will naturally be attracted to the game solely for the theme and authenticity. Among those, only the most hardcore will stick with it when they become hopelessly lost and have no recourse but to manually correct their mistakes. That is a small audience for sure, but I don’t want to grow the audience by compromising the design. If this game is anything less than an authentic simulation, it will become a boring walking simulator. So my challenge then is to sell a really strong hook. Strong enough to motivate an audience to overcome some legit challenge.

The goal of this game is not market success. Primarily this game is a stepping stone towards my larger project, but still I want to take on that challenge of “how do I hook consumers to play something out-of-the-ordinary and then motivate them to overcome a greater challenge than most games offer?”

[iamthwee]

Sounds interesting ‘Firewatch’ uses a navigation system, but its hook is great narrative and artstyle. I was getting into it but lost interest somewhere as I kept tracking from one place to another without figuring out the goal.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@iamthwee

Sounds interesting ‘Firewatch’ uses a navigation system, but its hook is great narrative and artstyle. I was getting into it but lost interest somewhere as I kept tracking from one place to another without figuring out the goal.

I should play Firewatch. I watched their GDC presentations and enjoyed them a lot. For me though, story is never enough of a hook – there has to be really engaging gameplay. That’s the only reason I passed on playing it so far, despite the beautiful style and rave reviews.

[iamthwee]

That’s true, I guess players all individually assess certain aspects differently. For example, I love playing games with puzzles and a great narrative. ‘Fran Bow’ which is a simple point and click game currently holds the title as my best loved game so far.

Designing a game, as you know and are no doubt more competent than me I’m sure, is a complex process. In my opinion, it is more difficult than programming, art design and sound combined.

Getting that sweet spot, where you can entice someone to play is so hard to get right.

I think your main issue is the same as me. You’re going to get enticed with graphics before anything else. This is going to be a problem.

The rules in indie are simple, scope small, have a solid prototype, then run with it.

Do you watch the Extra Credits video? They’re pretty much the gold standard.

Making Your First Game: Minimum Viable Product - Scope Small, Start Right - Extra Credits

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

It’s a great channel. One of those channels I let play in the background while I am doing tedious/mindless work. Always pick up some good nuggets.

It probably looks like I am focused on the graphics first, but that’s only because it’s the only thing I can do right now. I’ve got design written out in detail and have been “playing the game on paper” daily, but the actual prototyping won’t start until I begin working with the programmer. I can do a little of that myself, but it is so slow for me my time is really better spent on the things I can do well and quickly.
I have to go do some work in the next couple weeks, then we will begin prototyping probably after the holidays.

The main thing I try to do at this point is figure out what the right questions to ask are. Starting from, “how do we ensure it is fun?” I break that down into more specifics. It’s only a place to start of course, once we are actually playing something there will be new questions I couldn’t have forethought.

I also have to make sure there is a plan for how all the production will happen. I don’t have to figure everything out but I need to have some idea where workflow might hit a hang up. So I do a bit of exploration into each area and try to discover any problems there might be. After all, in order to play the game we got to be able to make it first.

Since I am sitting around in the meantime, might as well get started on some art. Still, there is prioritization. The first art we need is actually essential for prototyping. Player has to use the compass, notepad, and map from square one – these are things that cannot be substituted with primitives.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

The first goal is to get our core mechanics functional. This means that using map and compass, we should be able to accurately travel from A to B using dead reckoning.

Dead reckoning means that you plot two points on your map, figure out the azimuth between those two points, and then follow that azimuth, keeping count of your pace for the correct distance, to arrive at the correct place. An azimuth is a degree vector. Your compass has 360 degrees, so an azimuth is some degree in relation to north.

Dead reckoning is the toughest method of land navigation. but its the most precise. It requires mathematical precision in your planning. It also requires complete confidence to carry out your plan without deviation!

Another method is called terrain association. This will be more familiar to most people. It means simply that you identify some prominent terrain feature and can confirm it on the map. If you can identify two terrain features, then you can shoot and azimuth to them and deduce your approximate position from the intersection of those two azimuths. Three terrain features and you can make a precise plot of your current position.

In our military training simulation, unfortunately, the confidence that can be gained from terrain association will be hard to find. We are in featureless backwoods of North Carolina - the long leaf pine forest nearby Fort Bragg. It is possible to discern some terrain features, but you gotta be really good at reading a map. Even still, without strong dead reckoning skills and too much reliance on terrain association, you can bet your ass will get lost!

I’ve used terrainparty to pull heightmap data from a 20km area around where I did my land navigation training. I plug that into world machine to generate a terrain. Right now I have not made any adjustments to the raw height data, but I go ahead and set up the world machine project because, after some playtesting, if I determine it is too hard then I can go back and edit the terrain a bit. Perhaps make some features more prominent so that player can catch a break every once in awhile. A hill that is easy to identify. A big cliff. A large flat open area. Things like this can help you confirm that you are going the right way – but, double edge sword – if you misread it can give you false confidence and get you into a lot of trouble.

The next thing we need is a map that accurately represents this terrain. For that there is several methods that could be used. I believe the best on is to render a texture programmatically. This texture draws a contour line of every ten meters of elevation change. This is the basis of a military topographic map. I got the idea for that here:

Turn a Terrain into a Contoured Map

If that doesn’t work, there is some shaders I can make as well.
All I need is the accurate contour lines, and the rest can be filled in in photoshop.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

Okay back in action. Today I have hit my head against a big brick wall many times and rendered it to a fine dust.

Doesn’t look like much but it’s a big step forward for me. I’ve figured out how to output a tiled terrain from World Machine. The entire play area will be a 20km x 20km terrain, but I need to break it into tiles for world streaming (performance). It does take a long time to build and export – longer the more you split the terrain – so for testing I do 5km tiles. The final terrain will be composed of 1km tiles though. (that’s the initial plan anyway.)

Now that I got the terrain workflow figured out, I work on getting a small demo setup so that I can walk the programmer through and help him visualize how the final game is going to operate. Nothing will be functional yet without any scripting, but with some models in place I can give a better idea about how menus will operate and how the game world will be composed.

[iamthwee]

Good to see you still working on this buddy, I got side tracked with study, so I’m kinda done. The WIP section can be a lonely affair as it gets losts in a sea of threads, so it’s hard to stay motivated. But keep going. You always have something interesting to read and btw have a great new year and start to 2020!

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@iamthwee

Good to see you still working on this buddy, I got side tracked with study, so I’m kinda done. The WIP section can be a lonely affair as it gets losts in a sea of threads, so it’s hard to stay motivated. But keep going. You always have something interesting to read and btw have a great new year and start to 2020!

I had to go work for a bit. I hate doing that, but every once in awhile it’s necessary :(.

Mostly I keep the WIP for myself. Lets me use community like a rubber ducky. Anybody getting something from it is big bonus but yeah, probably not realistic to expect much feedback.

Motivation for me is simple. If I don’t stay super busy I get depressed. So I stay busy. The challenge is forcing myself away from work for awhile so I don’t get all cross-eyed and cranky.

I am sure when you say “kinda done” what you mean is, “I took a tactical retreat so that I can overrun the enemy with a fierce surprise attack.”

[iamthwee]

I got stuck writing my own third person controller with 2019.x because the standard template don’t work!! Well, I’m sure I could power through, but I got other shizzle to be getting on with. It’s really difficult to scope small, and I’m already thinking of starting another cyberpunk WIP?!

Take care of yourself dude. Ex vets are prone to mental health issues, as I’m sure you’re aware of, and they like handle stuff by themselves. It’s always good to talk to someone.

[Deckard_89]

What’s the actual goal in this game? Do you just have to reach a certain point on the map - the challenge coming from properly orienting yourself using these skills, or is there also a story - some kind of enemy hunting you or something like that as you try and traverse the terrain? 20km x 20km is pretty big for a game world - should make for a fascinating study of how players truly read their environment though.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@Deckard_89

Funny thing about 20kmx20km, which is in total 400 square kilometers… I just realized that the terrain tiles alone make up 60gb’s of data. So I did a little research. THe hugest AAA games to data don’t come anywhere close to that big. Haha. Well, I’ll have to size it down a bit!

I went ahead and reduced to a ten kilometer area. This is still larger than most AAA open worlds. But the goal in this game is simply land navigation, so it’s not like I am compelled to fill every corner with some unique occurrence. I do, however, want to make lots of uniquely identifiable micro-ecosystems so you aren’t seeing the same crap over and over. But this doesn’t necessarily mean mroe enviroment art assets, it can just be a change in how they are composed and that can make a big difference in how an area feels and plays.

I still keep those extra surrounding terrain tiles though because I can reduce them down for background pieces.

The goal, which I will explain in fuller detail later once I start doing some real marketing, is to find a certain number of Control Points within a time limit. You are given a list of eight digit grid coordinates, and using a map and compass you must find each of these points which is marked by a small metal stake in the ground. The only way to find these metal stakes in the thick backwoods is to use map and compass. It won’t be feasible to find them simply by wandering as there is many stakes and you could mistake the wrong one. This is common military training and also has been turned into a real life sport called “orienteering.”

Besides the time hack, you also have to manage stamina. Thick brush, water, hills – stuff that is a pain in the ass to walk through in real life – all these things become obstacles that use your stamina. So you have to constantly make a calculation of stamina usage versus the time hack. If you push too hard too early, you won’t be able to finish in time.

The story is pretty basic. You are in one of the US armies toughest courses. Only the top 1% are chosen to attend. Among those, most quit before it’s over. From the remaining few only the top finishers are chosen. Land navigation is an essential skill, but in this course it’s the test. If you find enough control points and finish in time, you’ll pass. I also want to play with the idea of encouraging player through challenge (i.e. enticing them to not quit when they become hopelessly lost), because really just persevering is one of the big lessons land navigation has to offer. In the end I may gamify the design a bit to make it more mainstream accessible but at least to begin with I want to see what I can do to motivate players to buckle down and get through the pain the first time.

@iamthwee , thanks for looking out! Yeah I suffered from depression for many years. Still do to some degree but so long as I stay busy working towards my goals nothing gets out of hand. One great thing about this game project is that, in order to re-familiarize myself with the actual practice, I’ll be driving down to the same area I did the training before and doing a bit of it again. Also I take my camera and gather lots of reference photos from the area. So research like this is a great way to get some of the “game dev” done away from the screen. I think going that little extra mile of commitment helps motivate to see a project through too. It’s like a ritual you go through that says, “okay, I’m serious about this because I am traveling to do research.”

[Deckard_89]

Ah, right. I have actually done orienteering in real life as a kid, but on a much (much) smaller scale. In the North Yorkshire countryside in England, we did orienteering competitions during day and night, as part of class away trips. It’s good fun actually (when you’re not dying of dehydration anyway). I can see how a more “extreme” version employed in the military can be a good setting for a game, they’ll definitely be a market for it on Steam I’m sure, as long as it’s well made of course.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@Deckard_89

Ah, right. I have actually done orienteering in real life as a kid, but on a much (much) smaller scale. In the North Yorkshire countryside in England, we did orienteering competitions during day and night, as part of class away trips. It’s good fun actually (when you’re not dying of dehydration anyway). I can see how a more “extreme” version employed in the military can be a good setting for a game, they’ll definitely be a market for it on Steam I’m sure, as long as it’s well made of course.

I hope so!

I don’t have big expectations though as this the first game I am designing and handling all the marketing and publication of. Many mistakes will be made. But it’s a game I want to play, and it’s also going to use a lot of the same skills and techniques my larger projects will require. So mostly I come at this with the goal of educating myself.

If the game does do good though, I’d love to make some more maps for it. I think going through some idyllic english countryside would be really nice. Probably more appropriate for beginners as you can use terrain association a lot more, which is more intuitive than dead reckoning (though easier to get overconfident and make mistakes).

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

Got a few things figured out today.

One, speedTree isn’t going to be viable. There is no reliable way to make alternate models of the same tree derive from the same atlas, and it’s just kind of stupid to have five different variants of a pine tree all calling a separate material. But I found that with a little practice I can make trees just about as fast in Maya anyway. It’s a little more work but being able to package 90% of my vegetation into a single atlas is going to be worthwhile. I’ll only be working with a handful of species so the workload should be pretty manageable.

I also discovered that I will need a couple customized shaders for my trees. Nothing special, I just want something more simple than the speedtree and other default shaders coming in unity, but also need support for instancing and some vertex wind animation. I think I can manage to do this myself with Amplify Shader Editor.

As there is nothing to look at in the game besides the terrain and flora, it needs to be pretty lively and not ugly. There has to be dynamic wind and the leaves need to have some subsurface scattering so they don’t have this ugly shaded look.

So far I have completed my first pass of the terrain, completed the players tools (except map), and figured out how I will make the bulk of the art assets – the vegetation. That should cover most of the straight-up art stuff.

[iamthwee]

I really like the color palette and tone of this. It is coming on nicely. Are you going for a more realistic style?

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

yeah I just do it realistic style. Use up a bunch of enviro assets I’ve collected. I always liked the feel of the original ghost recons so I think I have that in the back of my mind a bit. I chose to make this late fall time because that will make it slightly easier to read terrain and also require less leaf cards :). So double whammy there.

[Deckard_89]

@BIGTIMEMASTER Ah, the original Ghost Recon. A genuine attempt at a playable, authentic military sim, before it became about following floating, ethereal objective markers and posing with beards and tattoos… That you’ve bought with real money.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

haha, yeah… a darn shame. But, perhaps, opportunity.