In this series of devlogs I'll be sharing old work-in-progress posts from the long-running OVRLRD thread on knockout.chat, as a peek into the development process.
DEVLOG: 4 APRIL 2023
I'm trying to polish things up nicely for the demo release this month - it's gonna be tight especially since I need to leave time to make sure the steam build goes through, but there are some pain points that really need addressing first. I'll be doing one more playtest build before the demo goes up, and before then I want to get a couple more balance and bugfix patches in. The one big task left is to make sure every mission currently in the game has a proper briefing, debriefing and dialogue.
The current briefing system (all lurid holograms and massive floating UI elements) is kinda cool but I've fallen out of love with it in a big way. Shrinking down the mission terrain and whacking a shader on it is simple in theory, but has a bunch of gotchas and is honestly a really annoying workflow. Plus it's kinda charmless once you've seen it once or twice, and I'm not a good enough tech artist to make it visually compelling and readable enough.
Plus, there aren't big scifi holograms anywhere else in the game. Why would the briefings take place in cyberspace when everything else is so grubby and tactile? So I chucked it out and I'm quickly re-doing the briefings like this:
[video]https://i.imgur.com/P6o175l.mp4[/video]
I knew I'd made the right choice when the briefing timed out and threw me into the hangar scene because I'd spent too long playing with the miniatures. Plus drawing a map in paint.NET and scribbling all over it is much more creatively fulfilling than sticking endless glowy effects on a hologram material.
UPDATE FROM THE PRESENT DAY:
This turned out to be a great decision. I ended up doing some more work on the terrain shader anyway, adding a 'cartography' parameter that posterizes all the colours (i.e. rounds them up or down to the nearest low-bit equivalent). Then I take a screenshot of it from above with an orthographic perspective, to create something that looks like an old ordnance survey map:
Then I go into paint.NET again (the solo dev's friend) and paint over it with geometric shapes approximating areas of forest, water and buildings, then go over it again in another layer with bright marker colours to show the areas of interest for that mission:
It doesn't look like much when you lay it out like that, but in the briefing room, with proper lighting and normal mapping to make it seem like a map table, it looks pretty convincing! Plus the screenshot method saves a lot of time mucking around trying to draw (I can't draw).
What do you think?
SMALL NEWS UPDATE:
As for news - OVRLRD will be participating in Steam Next Fest later this month! Keep your eyes peeled for livestream announcements and a decent-sized pre-Fest patch coming soon.
If you want to see your favourite VR streamer get their hands on the game, this is a great time to post in their Discord or message them to let them know you want to see it!
That's all for now, see you in the field soon, operator.
-nige