End of Year Updates
Originally published December 1st, 2020
One more look at what I'm working on before the year ends.
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The year 2020 is (mercifully) coming to a close really soon. With the year's end on the horizon, I thought it'd be a good time to look at where some future games are at in development and bring you, the reader, up to speed. As it turns out, the timing for this is actually pretty good as I just recently hit milestones in both Future and my RPG. The RPG in particular has hit a very important point in development that I'm excited to share with you...which is why I'm saving that for later on in this blog entry. Hey, gotta build up to that climax.
So, let's start with Future. The major milestone here mostly involves visuals and content. In terms of content, a new map has been populated with all relevant gameplay objects such as enemies and platforming objects. This particular map is possibly the largest in the entire game, so getting this laid out was a big step. Of course, there will no doubt be changes to the way an individual enemy behaves, the exact layout of the level, and of course the visuals of the map itself. But by and large, a new area is playable from beginning to end. That only leaves one more major area to work on before all the important levels are playable. After that comes working on some smaller levels and then the game's levels will all be in place, even if it's in an unfinished form.
Certainly the bigger achievement was getting another world's “first pass” visuals together. The last time I showed off an area in any detail was the first one, when I also had worked hard on its first pass visuals. Now, what's going on in Future's second area? As you can no doubt tell from the screenshot, this is the ice level in the game. In some ways, that makes this world easier to visualize. The first area consisted of trees, mountains, pits, and puddles. And that's before we get into any enemy types (which are still a work in progress in the graphics department). Meanwhile, world two is made up of almost nothing but ice and snow.
And yet, crafting this world took almost just as much time as the first. Why is that? The most obvious reason is that the ice world is bigger than the first. Players will start in ice caves, followed by traversing across the “arctic plains” and finally scaling the mountains. There are three sub areas here in this frozen planet as opposed to the first area's two, with the second one being considerably smaller than the first. It's hard to say which of these sub areas took more work, as each had their own interesting challenges to solve. I wanted the caves to have ever so slightly see-through ice, with lots of icy spikes and clumps of snow scattered throughout. Meanwhile, the arctic plains had me using Unreal Engine's landscape tools to sculpt all the world's snow. And I do mean all of the snow. In case the screenshots don't make it clear, this world has a lot of snow.
Size isn't everything though. I also wanted to achieve some effects here that wouldn't be seen in the first world. This of course meant learning lots of new things, such as how to create fog. See, I wanted to create this idea that you're at a fairly high elevation in this world. Thus, in all the world's chasms I set up some fog to help reinforce that you're very high up in this world, and falling would not be a good idea. But the fog is doing more than selling a feeling. It's also a convenient mask that hides the fact that the world is bottomless. I feel like I've said this before somewhere, but game making is sometimes about tricking the player. When playing a game, the four walls that surround a room imply that you're in a fully built building with more rooms to be found. However, it's more likely that the developer just placed a floor and ceiling to avoid allowing the player to peek out into the void. It's a trick, and a good one too because quite frankly the void freaks me out. Now of course, not every game does this. There are some games that do let you explore fully constructed buildings (most open world games come to my mind when I think of this). But in general, games only need to place the minimum amount of objects needed to convince the player they're in a “real” place. Or at least, that's how I would go about it.
Anyway, back to game updates. Future is now going through some developments that will hopefully breath a little life into the look and feel of the game. In the game dev business, this is referred to as “juicing” a game. The goal is to get several elements of the game to a point where I'd be happy to show it off. When that's done, I'm sure you'll be hearing about it. Let's move on to the RPG, which has a very important update of its own. All the game's most important mechanics, from taking turns, giving bosses certain behaviors, and shopping are all in the game. Of course, they're in an extremely unpolished form (I feel like I say this a lot), but they are present and accounted for. This means development will start shifting into polish and creating content for these gameplay elements to show themselves off in. In addition, I've created the necessary assets to craft each of the shop scenes. These visuals, like with Future, will certainly be touched up over time, but each of the shops otherwise has its own distinct look.
I'm not sure that I've really gone over how the game works, have I? Not much more than the absolute basics anyway. Well, allow me to explain. These shops are where the player will purchase upgrades and items, as well as acquire information about the upcoming fight. You have the item shop, which sells your single use items like potions. The blacksmith upgrades your weapons and armor to give your units more health and attack power. Finally, the ability guild teaches your units new abilities as well as upgrades your available “ability points” which is this game's version of mana. There's also an information area where you get information for your next fight, which will help the player inform their purchasing decisions. Finally, if the player is struggling against a certain fight, there will be an option to get extra money by fighting smaller enemies. That money can then be used to get more items and upgrades before taking on the challenging fight again.
Right now the shops have most, if not all of the models the given shop will need. The next stage will involve cleaning up any rough edges and giving the area some additional visuals such as an actual floor and some proper lighting. Of course, characters will need to inhabit these spaces too, so right now I'm learning how to do character modeling. In the meantime, these shops will continue to be occupied by little grey pills. All the screenshots I have posted of this game will be from these shop scenes. Reason for this is because while the mechanics of the game's combat are certainly in place, the advancements are a little harder to convey in screenshots. It's one of those things that would be easier to show off in a video. But, I don't have any plans to make a gameplay video of this game until more character models and other visuals are put in. So you'll have to wait and see how the game will look in action for a while longer.
This doesn't mean I can't explain what the player will do in these combat sections though. Once they've bought everything they want, the player will then start the next battle. Being a “boss rush” type of game, these fights will consist exclusively of boss battles. Now, I won't claim to be a turn based RPG expert, but in my experience with those games boss battles tend to be little more than giant health balloons. However, one game that showed me how interesting and dynamic a turn based boss battle could be was Octopath Traveler. That game follows a lot of the conventional rules of turn based JRPG boss design, but it has some twists that keep the battles lively. Enemies have certain weaknesses that must be exploited in order to “break” them, essentially giving you an extra turn. However, bosses can lock these weaknesses or change them in addition to increasing their defenses or other stats. And that's before we touch on bosses with wild gimmicks such as preventing you from using magical abilities or filling the air with a gas that changes your party's status in some way.
I wanted to inject a bit of that liveliness into my game. To that end, I've set up a system so that I can give a fight all kinds of properties that will hopefully force a player into going through that fight in a particular way. Players will have three units, a Ranger, Warrior, and Mage, and must use their abilities while learning the abilities of the boss to secure victory. In addition the player can access items to use against the enemy or help themselves. My goal is for bosses to change as they go on, keeping the player on their toes. In addition, each new fight should bring something unique to the table whether that be a certain array of attacks or something they do to the battlefield itself. The game is now set up so that I can create almost all of the fights I envision in my head. Any that I can't create now will mostly be a matter of adding properties to a boss template that I've created in code or changing the “base behavior” of the enemy. I'll have to dedicate a future dev blog to getting into the details of how my enemies work in this game.
This might just be the longest dev blog I've ever made, so now is probably a good time to stop. As a little bonus, I have created a gallery at the bottom of this blog showing off all the screenshots posted above as well as some extras. [Note: All images were taken in-engine.] To summarize, a couple worlds in Future have been realized, whether it be in terms of gameplay or visuals. Right now, Future is going through a time of polish where I get a bunch of elements of the game in an ideal state. In addition, the RPG is coming along really well, having all its most important gameplay elements implemented. This will mainly leave creating fights and getting actual visuals into the game. I imagine both games will see a lot of interesting progress in 2021. Until then, I hope that despite some of the troubles of this year that you'll still have a pleasant, safe, and enjoyable holiday, whatever that may be to you.
Until next time!
-Lance T.
Check out all the Infinite Level games!
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Infinite%20Level