Aaaand we're back!
So for those of you who don't know, life has decided to suplex me down a staircase and then springboard me onto a bed of nails. I won't get into the details, but it has been a bit on the rough side for sure. Despite all of that, though, I (and others) have managed to make some pretty decent progress on GTTOD. I feel like now that things are starting to really ramp back up it would be a good time to do one of these! If you've followed the project at all, you'll probably remember that I used to make these massive posts showing all my progress off whenever updates would start to drag on a bit, so since this is pretty much Exhibit A of an update taking too long, I think it's probably...fitting...
Well, anyway, this whole update cycle for The Dark Down Under has pretty much been divided into three segments:
- Pre-Recovery Progress
- Mid-Recovery Progress
- Post-Recovery Progress
Today's post is going to be going over the top two. Basically, what did I get done while the world was caving in as well as what did I get done while I was piecing it back together. Should be pretty interesting one way or another.
Anyway, without further ado, here is
Development Progress!
What a great way to start this off. Fuck that timing worked out perfectly.
The reason why the Infantry is dancing around is because Krev and I (90% Krev, 10% I) went through and redid the rigs and models for pretty much every single enemy. Basically, the enemies before were just a bunch of pieces stapled and parented to an invisible rig because I was lazy. That basically meant that each enemy had like 20 objects on them, and when you put like 30 enemies on screen at any given time, you've got an average of about 15 Million moving pieces all getting animated at once.
That's not good. Very bad for performance.
What we ended up doing was giving the enemies that we could humanoid rigs, and I spent some time reanimating a few enemies as well as getting them new animation sets from around the internet. So, next time you see most of the enemies, they're gonna move and animate a bit differently.
Next up, Apsel and I worked on a little scene to test out a 2D animated trailer (like the Hades one). We wanted to give the animator a really good reference to base it off of, so this is what we came up with!
The big thing after that was announcing that GTTOD would eventually be getting a reworked and fully dynamic soundtrack. This has been really slow moving (as has everything during the Pre-Recovery Phase), so I don't have too much more to show off here - but hopefully soon the ball will continue rolling in this area.
Next up, I finally started making tile sets and rooms for the new dungeons. Basically, Dungeons are optional bonus levels you can find in random levels that will take you into the heart of The Shatter. Here, you'll go room by room clearing enemies to reach an end zone. Survive that, and you'll walk out of that place with a fancy new Ultimate Ability.
Along with my new character controller, I finally began testing out Multiplayer support in my test environment. You'll be seeing this area a lot in this post, so I want to explain it now:
My Test Environment is a secondary project I have where I test out ideas for GTTOD and other games. Obviously the main one is GTTOD, but you will notice other distinct art styles and mechanics in the GIFs and screenshots following. I like to keep the style of my Test Environment separate from the style I use for GTTOD as a visual and mental refresher. It's hard looking at Neon all day long, so sometimes I like to spruce it up a bit.
ANYWAY, Multiplayer.
GTTOD multiplayer would most likely be a post-release feature. If the game sells well enough and is worth it, I'd like to go back through and make a GTTOD 2.0 release. Basically it'd be converting the game over to my new character and weapon controllers, doing some last moment tweaks to gameplay that I never had time to do, adding in a lot of things like level editor and mod support, and yes, co-op gameplay. I'd probably treat it kinda like Risk of Rain 2 and make it scale difficulty with how many players you have in a game.
That's way way way way down the road though, and very very hypothetical. So, stay tuned for more.
It's not an Alternator. Stop it.
So, this is kinda where the Pre-Recovery phase ends. While that may sound like a good thing, I actually found this phase much easier than the next. When I was living out of a hotel, sure, I was miserable - but I was able to escape a lot of the realities of my life with work. Once I had to confront all of that, however, things MASSIVELY slowed down. So, from here on out, you're gonna see a lot more of Krev than you will of me. He kind of went through his own little recovery phase, and his was far more productive than mine.
Anyway, this was a neat little concept art piece that turned into the one and only gun you'll be using in the Free To Play Prequel, Lost in Reflection. Progress on that has been slow but steady, and you'll see quite a bit more of that in my Test Environment progress.
Okay, moving on...
Okay I'm just going to slap all of these screenshots in here and explain them at the bottom.
Yeah he did it anyway
Whew, lad. Okay so as you can see Krev kinda went fucking nuts at some point. He pretty much went in and just redid all the models that were old or subpar (so...my models...no hard feelings). As far as I know I think he still wants to do a few more, but for the time being work on the art side of GTTOD has been paused while I try and get my life together some more.
These new models, in my opinion, are so good that I would like to not only rework a lot of the sandbox around it, but also reanimate some of the models that I think could use some more attention. I'll talk more about that further down below. Either way, Krev did a TON of incredible work on these models, and I'm really really excited to get them in game whenever the time comes where that's possible.
Okay, this has pretty much been my project since the Mid-Recovery phase started. The early game. Right now I think one of the biggest issues GTTOD has is the first 30 minutes. Once you get going and the gameplay starts popping off, I feel like GTTOD is at its best - but GETTING to that point is the struggle. You have to set through a kind of cumbersome main menu, spawn into an empty, ugly HUB, walk all the way to the end to do a meaningless action to start the game, play through a kind of boring tutorial / loading zone, and THEN you're in the game.
BUT, when you get in the game, you always start on The Upper Abyss. I love that level, truly. I think it is really nicely balanced and is a good way to start a run. It's straightforward, good looking, and otherwise a great place to start. HOWEVER, I do think that it's a far cry from being worth the trouble of going through the first 5 minutes in an early run. It's just not a good start to a game that otherwise is aiming to redefine indie FPS movement shooters.
To me, this is the absolute biggest issue in GTTOD - and is something I am spending a lot of time on.
I started by first making a whole new cutscene and interactions system. This is a from-scratch system that allows me to take control away from the player and smoothly fade them in and out of gameplay and cinematic sequences. This means I can do some really cool things like interactive cutscenes and full on narrative sequences, to stupid shit like fishing and sitting on a bench because someone asked for that in my Discord and I was dumb enough to say "Sure fuck it why not they'll probably get a kick out of that".
Next I started toying around with a far quicker and less cumbersome menu concept. I want it to be quick - in and out. I think this is going to function far more like a traditional title screen rather than a whole ass menu. Basically, you have one button..."PLAY". On the right and left side of that button are selectors that allow you to adjust HOW you play. At first this will include "PLAY" and "QUICK PLAY", but eventually will likely include things like a level editor and maybe some other special modes for things like holiday events and what-not.
Clicking "QUICK PLAY" will pull up the Starter Cards selection screen, you'll pick your card, adjust your settings, and then you'll be immediately transported into The Mausoleum (past the HUB as well as the mechanical tutorials). You can then walk right through the door and enter the first level without any hassle.
Clicking "PLAY", however, will bring you into the new HUB I've been working on. This HUB has been redesigned and adjusted to be much quicker and more enjoyable to navigate while also having more room to actually do things in, such as...
Fishing. Yeah, I dunno.
Anyway, the game will open up with a quick (and skippable) cutscene of your character standing up out of the water. From there, you can travel to the item shop, change your starter card, fish, choose to go to the arenas, fall into the dungeons, enter The Shatter, OR...
-you can use the Cartographer to plan your route to The Summit. This basically allows you to select what levels you're going to play in your run. These levels will also be affected by the seed system in the main menu, too. This gives you more control than ever to pick and choose how you want your game to play.
Well, I'm finally settled down a bit and things are starting to look up. I'm working a lot in my test environment and looking forward to letting people play it. I have a lot of big plans coming up, and so I'm gonna list a few things that are on the docket for the next few weeks:
Public Stuff:
- Pre-Update public testing
- New gameplay footage and trailers
- Another Q&A after The Dark Down Under releases
Patreon Stuff:
So, I am going to be reopening my Patreon soon. I closed it down about two and a half years ago because I simply felt like I was robbing people of their money. I wasn't great at managing it, and I didn't think I had anything cool enough to offer to make it worth it.
That, however, has changed.
The Patreon will be reopening soon, and in it will be a bunch of cool stuff to try out. I kinda wanna make the Patreon kind of like a playground for people who want to support me. I just want to to give and put into it as much as I possibly can to make it worth it - and I think I have a lot of cool stuff ready to go into it now to accomplish that.
- Full access to my test environment including side projects and fun little test scenes I've made over the years
- Early multiplayer testing
- Access to the GTTOD devbranch with a new update on it focusing on testing the Dungeons and HUB.
- Access to the test area of Lost in Reflection as well as a performance and art test scene
- Early access to all upcoming videos like trailers, gameplay showcases, and more
- Probably more that I am forgetting since I had it all written down at some point but have since forgotten
Anyway, that's where I'm calling this one. I left off a LOT of stuff, including pretty much everything from my Test Environment. If you're interested in seeing that stuff, you can come to my Discord server - or you can just click these links down here that I was too lazy to turn into GIFs:
https://gfycat.com/adeptbigfish
https://gfycat.com/disgustingclumsyeastsiberianlaika
https://gfycat.com/detailedhalfairedaleterrier
https://gfycat.com/icyunevenhippopotamus
Anyhoo, sorry for the long wait on this whole update. I know it has probably been really frustrating and annoying, but the only thing I can promise you is that I'll wake up every day and try my best. That much is certain.
I'll see you guys around! Don't forget you can always come and chat with me in my Discord server, follow me on Twitter for my stupid takes on life as a game developer, or subscribe to my YT channel to see the big stuff in my game development projects.