SilviuShader here!
Less than 3 months passed since the last update. Now I don't know about you, but for me it seems like fast progress! Like c'mon!
Progress
To be honest, quite a lot was added/ improved since the previous update. Here are some of the things (and I hope I didn't miss many of them):
New spaceship car model + thrusters
Look at this beauty:
Sexy, isn't it? Will work a bit more on the colors, and the emissive lights of this car, but tbh it's pretty much production-ready.
Focus mode
You know that Subway Surfers video that plays during TikTok videos that helps you focus on the content? What if instead a video, it was actually a game you could play on the PC while doing work?
Well, I implemented just that. Another game mode that creates a small always-on-top window on the right side of the screen where you can play the game (or not) while doing important work on the left side of the screen.
Collisions with the environment
Ok, so these were implemented for a very long time, however they didn't impact gameplay at all since the player couldn't go that far.
Now when the player touches the environment or the sides of the screen the spaceship does a cool little bounce.
Quality of life
Added lots of quality of life improvements, however it would be very difficult for me to add gifs for each one of them so I'll just mention them briefly here:
- Tweaked camera rotation
- The car turns transparent when overlapping with the aim
- Auto-aim
- Indicators and arrows for where enemies are coming from
- Indicators on top of enemies
- Better intersection taking
- Added biome specific music with proper transitions
- Added support for albedo textures
- Added 2D billboards in the game
Caves
Caves? CAVES!
No, they are not the plain old tunnels that I showed in the previous update but reskinned ⁽ᵗʰᵉʸ ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ ᵃʳᵉ⁾.
Different intersections
During Dev.Play and DevKnights playtesting lots of people complained about the intersection paths being the same and having 0 impact on gameplay. Now I added the ability for me to customize how each path behaves when taken.
City
We started working on the city of the game. Firstly we want to have a full gameplay loop in this biome so we can hopefully push towards releasing a public demo, not just showcasing the build at romanian gamedev events.
Secondly, this Steam page is reaaaaaaly outdated since February, and we should really push towards renewing it.
That being said, here's how the city in the game looks so far:
Split-screen multiplayer
Yo, check this out:
This feature is added mostly because I want to make a multiplayer game for the first time. Now, since making it multiplayer over the internet is pretty hard, I'm beginning with baby steps, aka making it split-screen multiplayer.
Next up
We'll continue making the game look good and adding features as we went to update the Steam page (which is old as...), and maybe push towards releasing a public demo at the beginning of 2025.
New team members
Ok, so this is kinda major news. A while back I introduced Asterix on our Discord server as the 3D artist for the game. Well, life happened and Asterix can't really focus on creating content for an indie game right now. However, he is still part of the team, helping us with ideas, advice, and anything of value he can provide.
So who's gonna make the models for this game then? Well, let me introduce you Andreea and Daria (EMotii and Daria respectively on our Discord server)
They already started working on stuff: the blocks and the spaceship car that you see in the gifs above are all made by them. In my opinion their work is amazing and I can already see the game taking shape into what it's supposed to be.
Social media
So far, I've been posting game progress on my personal accounts (SilviuShader), but now that we are a team of 5, we decided to create official pages for the studio.
You can follow us on:
Twitter: @pixelbois_games
Instagram: @pixelbois_games
You can also join our Discord server)!!!
Lately it wasn't so active for multiple reasons. One of them being the lack of progress updates during june and july. That's because I waited until the official introduction of Andreea and Daria before posting anything new, so people know where the new 3D models come from.
About a month ago I asked on a Discord poll if we should organize weekly meets between us (the team members of Pixelbois) and you (the fanbase). The common answer was "yes", so we'll try to do that.
Expect a message from me on the Discord server regarding this. I think we (at least some of us) can manage to join the #talk channel weekly with you guys, so stay tuned for that.
Till next time
That's it for this update. Again, I wanted to make these updates monthly, hopefully it's gonna work starting with september? Time will tell. Thank you for taking the time to follow the progress of the game and of Pixelbois!
