First of all, I apologize to all of you for the lack of communication in 2025 and 2026. The old me who was eager to share any sneak peeks or videos back at the start of the project really needs to get back here! Several things have changed since the end of last year regarding the development and I'll explain more below! Overall, the goal is to get back to a regular posting here and on socials, in order to show the progress on the game and give a better idea of the road map. The community has been really patient and understanding so far but it's time for me to step up and be more communicative about the news, sneak peeks and updates for the game. We are planning to post a roadmap of our own making to show what are our next plans for 2026.
Onboarding of my friend Damien on the project & being full time on the game to speed up the development of the game.
Beginning of last year, I realized that both my progress and moral were hindered by the fact that being solo was starting to be overwhelming for me. Especially mentally. When accounting for the increasing ambition I have for the game. I started to spiral into procrastination on communication and drowned into starting new stuff without going deep enough to show things that could be noteworthy.
That’s when we started to discuss an association with one of my long-time best friends I’ve known for 33 years. We know each other really well and knew we could speak the truth and communicate easily, without fluff or rounding the edge. I also discussed the game a lot with him during the past years and could see that he was really invested and eager with concepts, optimization and the way to code different things. Back then, we discussed the idea of creating a game together someday but it still looked like wishful thinking, kind of like a far dream.
Finally, in September 2025, we both realized that we were ultra motivated to actually do it together and that it would be a huge mental boost for both of us in our daily tasks. We decided to take the leap and I moved back close to my hometown where my friend lived in order to be able to work together every day. We started to work on creating a company for our new-born studio of 2 people and iron-out all the things that need to be done legally and contractually.
Being two as been a tremendous help so far, especially for my mental health. Being able to share ideas and concept directly with someone on the spot has been a life-changer and is so motivating.
Game development & progress
Rewriting code to be modular, data oriented and adapted to a team of two.
One thing I overlooked while working solo so far is that the code needed to be written in a way that respect design pattern. This is what allows flexibility, modularity and scaling. Something that can be edited at any instant without breaking other part of the elements. To do so, Damien is helping me on that.
What we did is that we started rewriting everything with modular code components that are data-oriented so that it will be possible to work together and also add stuff later on in the game in a much easier manner. For instance, if we want to add a new build part, a new weapon or any new mechanic, it will be way better to work with our new system.
Optimization of shaders and draw calls
Since the beginning of the project, I’ve made it a point of honor that the game would be as performant and optimized as possible, for the sake of good graphics and framerate. Dealing with a game that wants to be realistic and in which players can build as many stuff as they want, it’s a real challenge to understand how to handle the best way to generate many objects on screen without the computer dying or stalling.
To do so, we’ve been studying (and still are) a specific Unreal Engine plugin that allows to optimize every actor and object present in the game, as well as their materials (the textures associated to the object). This plugin is efficient but has been rather complicated to understand fully and to adapt to our specific case.
Art style & Lighting
I’ve spent quite some time the past year to really tackle the art style and the choice of the potential final assets that would populate the world of Derelicts. Foliage, buildings, abandoned vehicles, trashes & debris that will add a lot of details and substance to the narrative level design of our map. Below, I’m showing some of the contenders that I’ve been selected and that will probably be modified to homogenize the textures.
I’ve also experimented the different possibility of the lighting and tweaking the global illumination method of Lumen in order to have a more performant render that is not too demanding on PC. Below are some comparisons of before and after of some experimental scenes. Below, you can see that the lighting indoors is much darker and creepy with the Lumen global illumination method (Picture 1) compared to without Global Illumination (Picture 2). Tweaking the engine to get good visuals vs performance is something that is ongoing and more tests will be necessary down the line as well.
TESTS WITH GLOBAL ILLUMATION (Better lighting indoors):
TESTS WITHOUT GLOBAL ILLUMATION (Lighting is worst for interiors):
Building system concepts
With Damien joining the team, we’ve been brainstorming the building system of Derelicts even more. The following points have been things that we’ve been working on:
Addition of pillars: Having a system of placing pillars in bases if the ceilings are 2 or 3 cells away from a supporting wall. This will avoid a case where players can build an infinity of ceiling in a line without having any support. This will also allow players to place pillars to build elevated balconies.
Log flumes optimization: Until now, our log flumes were created with a system of spline and elongated meshes. This is great but not optimized at all. We decided to go for a system of predefined meshes that will adapt the angles of the flumes for the turns, so that the player can still freely place them and that we can avoid having performance problems if many flumes are created on the map. This system will be much more complicated to handle but it’s a huge win in the long run for the game.
Inventory development: I’ve been working and tweaking the way the inventory work in order to have in working in 3D (like in the style of the Forest) and in a modular way in the code to facilitate future additions of systems later on.
Thank you for reading and I wish you all a great week. We are planning to share content at least weekly from now on, even for the time when we are working on dull codes. This way, it will allow us to show that the project is still very much alive and that it's progressing in the right direction!
Take care,
Romain & Damien