Dev Log 12
The past few weeks have been largely focused on player exploration and the open-world environment. The last round of playtesting went well, but it was constrained into the immediate area around Home Base. It's always been the plan to expand the world out to encourage player exploration, looting, and open-world combat.
Also remember that playtesting will start in a few short weeks, so if you are interested in participating be sure to join the Discord channel.
I've made a good dent in the environment work by hammering down some of the shapes of the landscape along with some of the textures used in the terrain. I've added new items that will help early game progression.
The Terrain
The world will be a set of tiled terrain pieces that open up the world to different styles of land. Mountains, valleys, plains, caves, and others will be included randomly around the map. The world will be populated with Legacy Bot Hideout spots, basically, little forts set up by the obsolete robots in an effort to protect themselves and stay relevant on Mars.
Here you will be able to harvest scrap materials and find gizmos and gadgets that can be turned into weapons, robots, machinery, and buildings.
Some still have hostile bots using it as shelter, so explore these areas carefully!
New Plants
Interactable plants have been added to give you more items to pick up while exploring.
These guys specifically contain a significant amount of acid and are great for creating low-grade metal acid batteries. Slap together an enclosure and some terminals, mix in some acid extracted from these plants and you'll be well on your way to set up for your first turrets.
Other plants are to be added too that will contain material to use as fuel or used to help create oxygen back at Home Base.
Hideouts
Lots of hideouts have been created and given a rustified material to make the rest of the world feel cold and abandoned:
Terrain Textures
A few new textures were created as well, giving the new terrain a better look:
Coming Next
As mentioned last time, this round was focused on environment integrations. I think it has gone (and is going) quite well, and there isn't too much left before I jump to adding in the automation, which the main focus of the player experience.
Thanks for all the support! If you want to join us for the next playtest, join the Discord: https://discord.gg/EpmPSmd