Game Dev Diary — Dec. 13, 2021 — Jason Tennent
I hope you’ve all been enjoying your advent calendars so far. I managed to find an advent calendar of the best chocolate, Toblerone. Yes it is — your argument is invalid.
This may be the last dev diary of this year as the development team will be on holiday during the Christmas period and the internal team will work on what & when we can during the festive break.
For the past two weeks, we’ve been getting some footage together to show a little video on how the MODEX weight affects your movement. Unfortunately, there have been some gremlins in the code. When we resolved one another would pop up, sharp teeth and all. This is part of game development, especially when you have numerous systems affecting each other.
In the meantime, we’ll go over our progress across the design, programming, and art of Project Quantum.
Design:
- The ceaseless task of bug testing
- Playtest map iterations
- Initial Spear testing
- Task creation and guidance
Simply putting the work Magnus and I do into just the ‘Design’ umbrella is rather reductive but let’s keep it focussed.
Multiplayer playtesting
We’re getting closer to being able to host multiplayer games and have the basics of a multiplayer session in place, shooting/movement/dying and looting.
We’ve been making a playtest environment that mimics the types of areas players may find themselves in. The layout of this playtest space is more or less complete and we’ve sent the level to a lighting artist to make everything look and feel delicious. We could do this fairly well ourselves but there’s a reason ‘Lighting Art’ is an entire discipline in itself.
Our first modelled melee weapon is now implemented, the trusty Spear.
The player can hold the attack key and charge the spear up, this causes the spear to do more damage and lunges the player forward ‘X’ distance depending on the time held up to a maximum.
It’s been a lot of fun to play around with however it has gremlins of its own. Most notably being able to use it to fly great distances with one swing. Sounds crazy, and it is, but let's break it down.
At the moment, no friction is applied while the player is classed as ‘Falling’. This means you can charge the Spear, walk off an edge, release the spear and be propelled into the stratosphere. Hilarious and has made for some excellent internal gifs but less useful for gameplay.
So the task for the Spear is to have both air friction and gravity rapidly interpolated up giving the player a nice initial thrust and a slow but almost immediate (after the apex) descent.
Programming:
- Animation implementation
- Inventory refactoring
- Slide rework
- Mantle Fixes
Player-State Animations
As we have a dedicated animator on board, the task of animation implementation will be a continuous process for our programmers.
Right now we’ve focussed on getting the various animations for the various states the player can be implemented in. The four different states a player can be in is: Fit, Wounded, Unconscious and Dead.
‘Fit’ is the default player state and the one that players will be in the vast majority of the time.
‘Wounded’ is when the player is downed having been reduced to zero hit points. While Wounded the player can crawl, shoot with limited functionality, and will not bleed out, but will bleed in.
So the wounded player can defend themselves in this reduced state and try to survive long enough to pick themselves back up.
‘Unconscious’ is when the player reaches zero hit points while in the Wounded state and are revivable by squadmates, they now lose control of their player character and can be executed by enemy Seekers/creatures to be put down for good, Dead.
Once ‘Dead’ the player is out for good.
Each of these states needs both a First and Third Person animation set as well as transitory animations up and down the sequence of states. That’s a lot of animations but as we continue to implement our own assets it continues to make us smile more and more.
Optimisation, optimisation, optimisation
‘Refactoring’ is a development term that defines the task of going back over your code to optimise it, to trim any unnecessary elements that are either redundant and/or could be vastly simplified. This is a monotonous and cyclical task but the more optimised a system is the better it communicates with corresponding systems and the easier it is for other programmers or Designers to decipher the code.
Gremlin whack-a-mole
The ‘Slide’ and ‘Mantle’ functions have been the aforementioned gremlins and given these would feature quite heavily in our little movement showcase, it’s rather important to get them to a stable state. If you imagine a cartoon character fixing one burst pipe and then another bursting that’s kind of what it's been like, a little frustrating but it can be the unavoidable devil sometimes with game dev.
Art:
- Player state animations
- Spear modelling and texturing
- Preliminary work on SMG model
- Camera bone rework
Weapon design and user-experience
The rate our animator has been working at is stupendously commendable, getting animations through the pipeline quickly, efficiently all the while taking on some feedback and actioning it.
On top of the player state animations, they’re also focusing on grenade throwing animations and weapon animations to give our weapons a little more crunch — a little more feel.
Saying that though, these are first passes and will be reworked further down the line to generate a greater experience across all elements and really unify the game-feel.
In continuity with our ‘mod-shop’ theming our 3D artist has drafted the initial spear design, with our guidance and feedback. We’re kind of in love with this. The scissor design and vent give a really nice feel to that modified nature without it feeling like a rejected entry from the long lost TV show Scrapheap Challenge.
This will be key for all the other elements of the project. As you may have guessed, in conjunction with the charge function of the spear this scissor mechanism will extend outward for a fairly vicious blow.
Telegraphing movements for better game balance
The vent in the centre also plays a key part in visually showing how much the spear has charged up.
The vent will bloom with fiery blue light the longer the spear is charged up. These are little things we need to consider when designing an item. Not just “Does it look cool?” but “Does it look cool and telegraph what we need it to?”
If this is the last Dev Diary of the year then let me take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and have a very merry festive period whatever you celebrate.
Roll on 2022 and thanks for reading,
Jason Tennent, Design Director
If you’d like to join the development conversation, learn more about our project, or join the community, I’d like to welcome you to our Discord here.
