January 2023 Progress Report
New year, new progress.
Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project
Happy new year, internet! We all made it through yet another year on this strange blue orb we call home. Pat yourself on the back, you've done good. We've taken a break from talking about The Future Project over the last few months to finish another blog series I had been doing, but now that it's the new year it feels like we should go, you might say, back to the future. To kick things off, I'll be talking about all the progress made in the game's development, from new content in the game to peculiar bugs squashed. Of course, the new content has a lot to do with the game's ending, so I can't say a whole lot about it without spoiling my own game. But I'll try to share what I can.
To start with perhaps the most exciting news, the content for all the main worlds is in place...except for one, but that one is so near completion it might as well be done. This means I've effectively locked down the placement of various upgrades, enemies, obstacles, and more. It should be noted though that some minor elements can still change even at this stage, but that will generally be for balance purposes. For instance, I may swap the locations of two upgrades if I find out a player could get way more one resource over another at a certain point in the game. This also doesn't account for any polish that the different worlds need, be it in visuals or enemy strength. So while the content is there and the game is technically playable up until the final world, there's still plenty of work to be done. Of particular note is the game's fourth major world, arguably the largest one in the game. The difference between this world now and how it was just a few months ago is night and day. A big part of this world will be these special platforming sections that incorporate special obstacles that no other world even replicates. This world's theme gives a lot of opportunities for unique challenges that other worlds simply don't have, so I wanted to do everything I could with it.
All the game's main worlds coming together means I've been able to focus a lot more time on the game's final moments, specifically the final world. I don't consider this area one of the main worlds since it's very linear and has no upgrades or new powers. It's a series of rooms with some enemies here and there along with some special platforming challenges that take all of your abilities into account. Because of how much simpler it is compared to the other worlds in the game, it's come together relatively quickly. In fact, by the time you read this, the only thing missing from it will be the game's final boss and a viewable map. The map won't take long, but the final boss...that's gonna take some work with the idea I have in mind. Sadly, I can't actually tell you about that. What I will tell you though is that the enemies of this final world are more like mini bosses. There's actually not going to be very many of them, but they'll be difficult fights with some interesting quirks to them.
With the exciting news behind us, let's move on to more minor elements. I'm still working on game optimizations in the hopes that the game will be able to run on lots of different computers. This means playing through the different worlds and seeing what areas and actions can cause frame drops. This kind of thing can be pretty tough since it's easy to fall into the "it works on my machine" mentality. Given the fast paced nature of the game's combat, a consistent and preferably high framerate is what will be best for players. Optimization is always a work in progress up until the game's launch, and for some games long after as well. I'm trying my best to avoid being in the "optimize the game after launch" camp. In the meantime, I have added in some new graphics options to both help more players enjoy the game as well as offset any optimization problems missed during development. These are all pretty common graphics options – motion blur intensity, bloom, and anti-aliasing are the additions, added on to a list of other commonly seen graphics options.
Maps also got a big change over the last few months. The image posted above shows two versions of the map of Distant Sibling's first floor. I'm confident you'll be able to spot the difference right away, but in case you can't, the difference is in the "locked wall" indicators. The left image uses only a single line that blends right into the walls. That's fine for areas that need fire to get through, as red stands out really well. But what about the missile and earth locks? I'm willing to bet you can't even see them in the left image unless you squint. Meanwhile, the image on the right is far more readable. For starters, the colors have been made much brighter, with the missile and earth locks given a whole new color entirely. That's already a big help for the eyes, but then you also have the locked portions sticking out into the rooms they can be broken from, making them stand out more. It's also great for any rooms where a wall can only be broken from one side.
Why did I use the old design for so long? It's a combination of being used to it and knowing that it would take time to properly update the map visuals. I think I subconsciously kept thinking that I could use the ability to zoom in on a map to get around any reading difficulties, but that's clearly a band-aid fix. As for the time issue, I could be charitable with myself and say that my focus was on content, which isn't a lie. I have been pushing to get content in place these past few months. But I think I ultimately got intimidated by the work coming up and just kept putting it off. It's not a great reason, but we've all been in situations where we know something is going to be time consuming and keep saving it for another day. Thankfully, the task wasn't quite the time sink I thought it would be. According to my dev log, I only spent a few days going through files, updating the maps, and then updating the files in engine to finish the change. If I didn't work a full time job, that probably could have been done in one or two days. So I overestimated the workload in the end, a rarity for me. There's probably a lesson in that somewhere.
Unfortunately, I don't have any particularly interesting bug stories. However, I did do some balance adjustments to prevent amusing scenarios, so I suppose that's worth talking about. One of the abilities you get in the game is the ability to summon a pillar of earth, effectively making your own platform on the spot. What I did not account for in the moment was the ability to spam this move until you could go anywhere, even outside the bounds of the game world. Well, that would obviously be bad for, well, everything, so I put in a hard limit on how far you can go with this. I still wanted to give it enough utility to allow for potential sequence breaks and clever combat setups, but you shouldn't be able to scale a mountain with this one move, you know? Another small adjustment I made was a new attack for one of the bosses in the game. During a playtest with another person, I noticed they kept trying to walk right up to the boss and fire at it point blank. This almost works, since it did allow the player to completely dodge some attacks, but then they get hit by others that they simply can't see coming because of how close they got. Thus, I created a new attack that pushes the player away if they get too close, and does a moderate amount of damage as well. Players who try to get too close to this boss will learn the hard way why you don't do that. The Future Project is very much a game that encourages experimentation, but nobody says that experimentation can't lead to taking some damage once in a while.
I'll hopefully be talking about it more in the coming weeks, but the next couple months is about to get incredibly busy for me and The Future Project. It's not because I'm about to release the game, but what's coming will be playing a big role in that. That will make more sense in time. For now though, I've got a final boss to begin working on alongside some other finishing touches to pre-existing worlds. Then it will be all about that polish and bug fixing! But, one step at a time of course. Truth be told, given where I'm at in development, I don't know how much I'll be able to share in the next progress report, but I'll still plan on having one after some time. Look forward to seeing you there!
Until next time!
-Lance T.