[UE4] Simulacra - Twin stick exploration game
Hey all!
I've started working on a twin stick exploration game in UE4 for fun and wanted to start sharing it as soon as possible to get as much community input as possible.
The game is very early in development but I am shooting for something that feels like a hybrid of This War of Mine and Super Metroid with a dash of Xcom (In overall vibe, not necessarily gameplay).
I would absolutely love any feedback that people might have and will be aiming to update often so that ideally the community's voice has a direct impact on development. I'm trying to be as creative in this regard so things are fun an iterative for everyone. An example is I have started prototyping the strategy layer of the game in text adventure form as this is a good fit for how it will appear eventually in game. It also means people can play it directly in their browsers and I can make rapid changes.
Thanks for taking a read through! Any and all feedback is welcome!
- CJ
http://joscelinfrost.blogspot.com/
I've started working on a twin stick exploration game in UE4 for fun and wanted to start sharing it as soon as possible to get as much community input as possible.
The game is very early in development but I am shooting for something that feels like a hybrid of This War of Mine and Super Metroid with a dash of Xcom (In overall vibe, not necessarily gameplay).
I would absolutely love any feedback that people might have and will be aiming to update often so that ideally the community's voice has a direct impact on development. I'm trying to be as creative in this regard so things are fun an iterative for everyone. An example is I have started prototyping the strategy layer of the game in text adventure form as this is a good fit for how it will appear eventually in game. It also means people can play it directly in their browsers and I can make rapid changes.
Thanks for taking a read through! Any and all feedback is welcome!
- CJ
http://joscelinfrost.blogspot.com/
Replies
But judging by the screenshot move up the name a little bit as the 'y' in Evelyn is covered and might cause some issues for other words if there would be any. Also the level '2' , the 2 is quite dark and hard to read.
Since your mentioend it's really early in development , it's probably just a makeshift UI but I don't know.
Hope this helps somewhat.
And yeah, you are definitely right that the UI is very temporary. At least for now the player character's name is fixed but may change due to possessing other characters, I'll still change that for visual clarity. Same goes for the level number.
Eric - Thanks for doing that, I wasn't sure where game dev oriented content should go.
Thanks for the feedback! - CJ
http://joscelinfrost.blogspot.com/2015/10/friday-wrapup-first-edition.html
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
Happy Halloween everybody!
This week didn't quite go as planned but still managed to make some progress here and there. The barrier of course was my storage hard drive dying on me, but fortunately I already have a replacement installed and a couple week old backup of the data restored. I did end up sending out the dead drive for data recover, we will see how that goes. So in the meantime I am switching over to parallel tasks that won't require ugly reintegration should I get the data back in a usable form.
So this week was mainly:
Please take a look at the text game and leave feedback and thoughts. The game is a lot cleaner now, and though it still doesn't have much in the way of player choice, it is getting closer to a rough "alpha" state.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/video-tutorial-on-baking-perfect-normal-maps-in-substance-designer-5
I'll probably be making a few variants of it for areas in the game but am definitely happy with the progress. Some of the other assets are a bit more complex but will post them as I make progress. All thoughts are welcome, more game info on the blog if you are curious.
Thanks! - CJ
More info on her on my blog here if you are curious.
Thanks all!
- CJ
This week was a fun one for me as I had a bit more time to delve into the game than usual. The two things I chose to focus on were artistic process and management design (more on the design on the blog).
I've always been a bit fan of workflow improvement and optimization and was really inspired by Michael Pavlovich's GDC talk "Blurring the Separation Between Concept and Production." This led me to try out a new twist on my modelling process with the intent of getting things in engine faster. In general it is:
There are still a lot of steps I would like to streamline and automate more but I really like this process because it means in a very small time I can go from high poly to having something in engine that I can actually look at. Where this really shines is the fact that I can go back to any step in the process, refine something, and everything will update with very little to no effort.
Using the above process I made this crate, medical tub, and partition curtain. I'd like for everything to feel almost like a handpainted miniature, very tangible when I'm done so they all were piped through the same slightly dirty clay substance for now. I will be doing more of this work to flesh out the other models in the base before refining anymore textures too much so the area feels more lived in and less empty.
Also, I also sat in on the weekly Unreal Engine twitch stream. This week they talked about developing the characters for Paragon and rendering challenges. Lots of fun to watch and interesting to hear them talk about some of the more technical aspects and developments. New upcoming tech includes:
*Above character are from Paragon, not made at all by me!*
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! - CJ
This week I had quite a bit of fun digging into Plant Factory to author some new plants. I'm also trying out a gradient mapping technique for coloring the plants in engine so I can hopefully both balance the color of each environment and also get lots of good variety out of each asset.
Happy holidays! - CJ