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Summary of the project -
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Player is put in charge/control of tiny Utility robot(that has lot of character/personality and mind on his own) set on desolated alien planet where they need to learn working together in order not just to survive but to fix the previous failed planet terraforming mission made by both the humans and robots. (story-driven single-player open world survival).
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Visual media to showcase your project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEMLagzVcqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n444wFkqgmE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIrPXB6KwM0 -
Resources:
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I don’t have any at this moment since i am in earliest stages of development, and i am focused on developing main character game mechanics.
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Latest Updates:
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Sandstorm system
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Tutorial system done
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Seamless custom camera to camera transition system
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Character movement re-hauled for smooth gameplay experience
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Character will slow down softly before hitting obstacles
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Custom Player input system
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Day-night cycle
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Solar panel mechanics
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Battery storage mechanics
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Main hangar
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Storage building
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Discover and name planet resources
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Save-load system for resources
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Character personal storage
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Auto aim at resources and auto decision for exploring or mining them based on saved data
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Game Feature List:
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Alien world exploration: [map/navigation, planet surface features, plants, ores, liquids, insects, electromagnetics, gravity, gases, tectonics, weather conditions, other life forms, story, item crafting learning]
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Survival: fighting and learning planet features, gathering resources and making various drive-able machines that can tackle different challenges.
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Vibe: with main character personality(that has mind on her own) and can get tantrums among many other reactions and take over player controls for brief period of time. Make a friendship-know the machine, learn how it did manage to survive many years on this planet while all other specialised machines failed.
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Craft: half products, products and complete assemblies
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Roadmap for the project:
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Final outcome should be the great but unique gameplay experience, it is about the planet exploration but on many levels as obvious from game feature list and mapping all those things basically so you can get slowly the idea why previous mission failed and the more you explore and learn the better chances you have to survive and fix the previous mistakes.
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- number1 get all of the main character abilities done - in progress
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number2 get all of the planet resources done - in progress
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number3 save-load system(for resources) - done
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number4 inventory- in progress
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number5 base items and buildings 3D models - in progress
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number6 base buildings functionality - in progress
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number7 rocks - on hold
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number8 plants - on hold
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number9 other vehicles and proper/tools - on hold
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number10 terrain - on hold
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number11 landscape features - on hold
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number12 crafting - in progress
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number13 planet resources distribution and logic - on hold
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number14 npc - on hold
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number15 story interaction - on hold
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Base management (placing, selections, upgrades, notifications) - in progress
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Feedback:
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Any feedback is welcome as long as it is constructive.
And i have this rough into-draft thats super boring and long but is a decent placeholder for now. As i develop the environment of the game world i will swap the intro visuals with it and tighten up things:
Working on planet Resources logic (destruction, item resource data, sounds and such…)
Currently testing if initial resources work correctly.
Resources scripted so that i can do the level design and rescale them as i like and the resource amount that item have will update proportional with the item physical size with some randomness involved as also that is based on my desired input values for this resource. Voltara(planet) is close to pulsar star so periodically all of the resources get the boost in amount they can give to player. As also as player discovers new items be it a resource or anything else he can name them per his liking. So i have simple script so far dealing with all those things.
Working on main character storage component(these are interchangeable boxes that can change the robot functionalities, every box can bring something new such as : weather station, storage, drones, extending battery and other) and these plug in the back of the robot.
Same storage thing but from within the Unity and i am planning storage to pop little bit backward once it is full of resources, that way emissive light array will be visible and give clear indication to the player, next to UI notification.
Storage is scripted, but will wrap it up tonight with few more asset mechanics added to it.
Did manage to get some time again to work on this game, continuing development with creation of some of the buildings that will exist in the game since i want to develop now base management mechanics and i like to have actual assets done before coding anything.
After 5 months of pause, I am back developing this project. 5th day of work and I am advancing some of the base buildings functionalities(beside creating 3D art). All around, the work is about inventory system, save/load, resource transfer from player to storage and storage upgrades and i will see on the line what kind of interesting game mechanics i can place into these 2 buildings. Over next few days number of buildings and base game mechanics will grow. Hoping to create something interesting for the Player. As my scripting is not on the stronger set of skills i will try to make up with tech3D art and eye candy. Some preview of the crude “game”/rather asset mechanics : Z-O-N-E video
New video of base functionalities. Mainly, since i am into electronics i decided to use my knowledge to try and see what kind of gameplay i can get from it. Base can be powered from many types of power sources from renewables up to exotic(imaginary), each will provide particular voltage potential and current(Amps) which allows me to introduce more base items such as buck-boost converters and power regulation. I am having in mind these are mobile users and that simplicity is mandatory hence i will have simple UI showing/hinting how close the incoming electricity is to desired building electricity requirements however once the user wants to access precise electrical measurements he can do it. So that is what i will be developing next few days together with buck-boost and power regulators 3D assets. Currently working on renewables power sources (scripts/shaders,3D). Game world is in far future so these solar panels capture photons but also capture any charged particle that hits them - this will allow player to be creative and “abuse” some of the world items be it a machine or an exotic ore in order to power the panels. They will automatically rotate towards the object that has the most power radiating from itself (photons or charged particles/radiation).
New video, some of the progress includes 3D asset creation such as solar panel and battery, animations, implementations, shaders, new code functionalities and huge refactoring of the old code/ better suited to be said is a new code for the character movement that is performant(basically was hunting for a lot of performance issues related to the code, and hunted down few things such as some of the old functions, one joystick asset from asset store was killing my game as soon as it is touched, and so forth, still optimising my old scripts), but now character movement is really nice to play with and is intuitive to drive, as also i added feature where character can slow down before hitting the obstacles since i am not using Unity physics for its movement. Planning also to ditch virtual machine cams as they are heavy for my taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPzrR_gp42g
Few weeks into development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awugvb4E9Ug
Another few days has gone, here are latest updates:
*developed custom camera to camera seamless transition
*ghost shaders for representing base props that need to be crafted
*Some initial base layout and terrain started being created
- Made changes to resource destruction
- Removed all of the buttons from screen for scanning and mining the resources
Upcoming: Initial gameplay tutorial (basic game mechanics introduction to player) together with initial simplified crafting system to give the player easy start (bring all of the required resources to the position of the ghost base prop and it is crafted), as also world-space indicators around the players character.
Managing to make progress while in-between freelance jobs (developed camera system, sandstorm system, planet dynamics and UI notifications, global and local planet zones that influence the character and few more things) https://youtu.be/YEMLagzVcqk
looks good man, i have never been a fan of the top-down camera view though, it does have that lonely technological feel though, i like it, i would give him all sorts of tools and gismos to interact and analyze the environment around him.
Thank you, my friend! I wanted to capture that “lonely tech” vibe, and I’m glad you can feel it. The home base area will have a desolate, hostile desert atmosphere contrasted with advanced technology. My goal is to make the player feel a desire to venture away from the base. As you move further out, the planet becomes richer and more dynamic, and you’ll be able to bring tech with you , like machines to drive or gadgets. Over time, you’ll learn which tech works best in different Planet zones.
Gene, the utility robot, can handle a variety of tasks, including inspection, drilling, and even some combat, but she’s not specialized. For specific tasks like fast travel, heavy combat, or deeper exploration, you’ll need dedicated machines, which you’ll craft. These machines will allow you to explore previously inaccessible parts of the map. In a few weeks, I’ll make significant progress on the planet’s design, so I can start introducing more gadgets and machines.
As for the camera(me personally liking first person-third person as also), I’ve decided to go with a hybrid third-person/top-down perspective. This view speeds up level design and improves performance by limiting the number of visible objects at any given time without tedious and highly tech map/world asset setup. I will work more on camera i think if it is dynamic and smart(so it can zoom out and in and more/rotate based on various game mechanics) it would be much better then just almost static top-down, but for now i just developed camera behaviour that allows me testing other game mechanics since i was bored looking at camera that was not scripted and slammed into characters top parent heheheh. Once i develop (to be fair there is huge amount of game mechanics to develop still, im still in the early start of development) few more systems i will see if i can do something better with camera, thank you for feedback, appreciated!