This month, our journey through the cosmos of Hostile Mars took us deep into the design and rhythm of the game's universe. We've made significant strides in the storyline, revamping the majority of our bots to align with the evolving narrative theme, while also refining key gameplay mechanics to enhance player engagement and progression.
We're thrilled to announce the expansion of our creative crew with the addition of an Art Director, VFX Artist, UI Technical Artist, and Environment Prop Modeler. Brace yourselves for a visual revolution in the updates to come!
Chain Lightning Trap
This trap hits nearby robots with lightning that chains to other nearby bots. This can cause a chain reaction throughout the entire wave!
Turret System Performance
The new enemy system is in a good place; it was time to spread the refactoring love to the turret system as well. This task was completed much faster because the design is very similar to that of the agents. Nearly all the turret code is now parallelized and has been largely optimized, making it simpler to extend and create new kinds of turrets.
Wildlife
During the exploration of the open world, the player will encounter bots, mostly enemies. We created a highly customizable system to define encounters and how they happen. This example has a small group of enemies spawning near the player on a timer, but the system can allow for much more variation in when: triggering an encounter each time a bullet is fired, continuously while an alarm is triggered, etc., and in what: calling reinforcements if the enemies stay alive for too long, trapping the player with status effects or props, or even creating full-on mini-waves!
Map
This month, we started our first iteration of a Map System for Hostile Mars, so please forgive the programmer art. Mars will feature many different points of interest for the player to discover and explore. The map will assist them in navigating their way around and serve as a resource where players can view specific information about POIs they have already discovered without having to travel back to those POIs. For example, they can see the repair cost of a distant signal generator.
Models
Laser Turret
Chain Lightning Trap
Bomb Trap
Combining Robot
Concept Work
Turrets
Robots
Early exploration of the Foreman Defense Unit (DFU)
This robust observer controls and defends the workers during their mining operations.
The Surveyor drone is the front-line explorer of Hostile Mars. Their task is to burrow down into the Martian regolith using the SFR (sub field radar) they can detect all nearby ores, and notify the local FDU for collection.
Mining Laser Droid used for close-quarters surface precision cutting and mining.
And a Resource Transport Bot to carry valuable materials around the surface.
That's it for this dev log. If you want to keep up with development, join us on Discord:
https://discord.gg/Xd88eF8Teg
Take Care,
-HM Team