The Jeweled Tundra

Need to get away from the heat?

Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project

For the past few months, I have been working on The Future Project's second major area. This has meant touching up the visual elements, creating enemy models and animations, and tweaking the map in places. Given the amount of time that has passed, it seemed appropriate to give a nice, meaty update on The Future Project's development so far. And what better way to do that than take you on a tour of the game's snow covered land? First, let's break down what this dev blog is going to go over. First, I'll give you a brief description of the world and what its overall goal is. Once you know the world's goal, you'll then be shown how this affected the map layout. Then we'll talk about some of the enemies you'll encounter here, and also drop some vague hints about what the player will have found during their time in this cold, cold place. Of course, bear in mind that, since the game is still being actively developed, anything in these screenshots are prone to change.

This world is known as Jeweled Tundra, named because of its uncanny resemblance to polished gemstones when viewed from space. But despite its outward beauty, Jeweled Tundra is a hostile place. Unlike the warm earth of Distant Sibling, Jeweled Tundra is incredibly cold. So cold, in fact, that humans could never feasibly live here without man-made shelter. Thankfully, The Future Project isn't about moving humans to another planet, but instead focuses on exploring planets and, perhaps, finding intelligent life. And there's definitely life here, as evidenced by the creatures eager to turn you into a meal. They don't seem particularly eager to communicate, unfortunately. And that's perhaps what this simulation is all about – finding life, but realizing it may not necessarily be ready to talk, if it can communicate intelligently at all. In fact, the lifeforms could be hostile on initial visit, and the sad reality is that the AI has to be ready for that situation.

Hmm...that's a bit dour, isn't it? Maybe it's time to talk about the simulation's design goals. Distant Sibling was a simulation designed to ease the player into the gameplay of The Future Project, with basic platforming, simple obstacles, and easy to understand enemies. It also has a fairly straightforward path to vital upgrades. Jeweled Tundra is where the hand holding begins to stop, putting you in a much bigger world with more things to keep track of. By this time, the game will also know that you have the Strafe and Missile Gun abilities, so the design can open up to accommodate that. This leads into its primary goal, that being to encourage the player to explore more on their own. From the very beginning, players are given a few different paths they can take, and not all of them are the critical path. Still, each path tries to lead to something useful, or at the very least can tease something the player will want to come back to after gaining more abilities.

When you visit this world for the first time, you'll notice that there is a task here that needs performing in order to gain a new ability at the end. Without showing it, there's a creature here that you'll have to push around a bit to in order to trigger this world's boss fight. Remember how I said this world is trying to encourage more exploration? This moving about of the boss character does exactly that! It's the first of what I call “quests” in-game. Each world will have one of these that the player must complete at some point. In the case of Jeweled Tundra, the quest is to get the boss backed into a corner before fighting it and claiming the reward it drops. You'll do this by moving it to various points within Jeweled Tundra, until finally it waits for you at the top of a snow covered plateau. As of this moment, the coding for all this is in place, but I still need to finish putting its animations together along with sound effects. So, rather than show you the bright blue block that's acting as a placeholder model, I'll choose instead to either hold off on showing this thing off, or just let you discover it yourself.

Notice that I said you can climb up to a plateau. Jeweled Tundra is also the world that introduces the concept of “floors” in a world. Distant Sibling has these as well, but you're relegated to the first floor of the world during your initial visit. Here, you're given three different floors to explore, and they can all be accessed on your first visit. The first floor is an icy cave system, and is where you will begin your journey through the Jeweled Tundra. Make your way out and you reach the main landscape, covered in snow. Finally, there's these tall structures that serve as the third floor. Each floor has enemies and obstacles that you won't find in other floors. Outside in the tundra, you're more likely to find bodies of water that remain unfrozen. Meanwhile, the caves consist primarily of a special enemy that waits for you below the ice. Once again, this openness is in service to the idea that the player should begin exploring the world on their own. In doing so, they'll be able to say that they were the ones that discovered all these interesting places, and didn't just let the game tell them where to go.

Obstacles in Jeweled Tundra take on the form of more difficult platforming here. In fact, there's a few areas that have players cross gaps in such a way that they cannot go back, at least not without a fancy new ability. Whether you can or cannot return to where you just were, the game is now asking you to be a little more precise with your jumps. Of course, I'm well aware of how annoying first person platforming can be, so I've made sure that players are allowed some room for error when making their jumps. Another thing to be mindful of are the enemies making life more difficult for you by attacking while you're trying to jump across bottomless pits. Of course, previously acquired abilities are considered when designing these obstacles too. The Strafe ability in particular will really come in handy against an enemy with a surprisingly long range. Missiles, of course, will aid in exploration and dealing with enemies faster.

When creating a new world in The Future Project, I try to create enemies that are distinct. Here, several of the enemies do things that you won't find enemies do anywhere else. I mentioned an enemy earlier that hides underground until you get close, then burrows back up to attack you. After a brief pursuit, it will hide itself back underground and await new prey. These are called Dwellers, and they reside exclusively within the caves of Jeweled Tundra. Outside the caves are Spitters, a penguin-like creature that fires projectiles, and the Frozen Dog, which is almost exactly what it sounds like. The game's first airborne enemy, the Flycicle, circles above the land and drops chunks of ice onto the player. The final enemy, the Ice Clad, is a bear-like creature who, you guessed it, is covered in ice. Like the Horned Rambeast of Distant Sibling, this enemy is protected thanks to the ice covering its body. However, this ice cannot be broken, so head-to-head combat is ill advised. There is, however, an opening on its back that you can fire projectiles into. This is also the enemy that will encourage strafing the most, as the projectiles it fires from its back travel very quickly. Plus, the extra momentum from the strafes should help you get around its large body.

Let's wrap up the tour with a few vague hints about the kinds of abilities you'll find here. One of them should have been obvious to you from the moment you saw this blog. The other will help you get across those large gaps a bit more easily. And that's all the hints I'm going to give you. There's still some parts of this world that need some work, namely the enemy behaviors and boss battle. Meanwhile, I'm also currently improving the visual elements of another world. That process has only just begun though, so it'll probably be a while before I talk about that world. So, to pass the time, the next dev blog will actually take a break from The Future Project and talk about another game. There's a series of blog posts I had started on my old website that I still haven't finished yet. This should help pass the time a bit while I continue work on the remaining enemies and a new world.

Until next time!

-Lance T.