theaaronstory

[theaaronstory]

Newsletter-ish

Back to the long form of blogging this time, talking about my current progress with procgen, and more importantly about values in gaming as it keeps popping up on my radar. Enjoy!

[theaaronstory]

Build update

A new build has been released, mixed in with some casual blogging about how things are going, so expect a little bit more out of this one, and not just a quick list of things. Cheers!

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How deep are we?

Decided to add passive sonar to the control panel and removed some of the unused gadgets to show what's beneath the sub. It's just a small counter to tell if we're about to hit something or not. Tells depth otherwise.

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Harmless sparks

At some point running into electricity will hurt. The meantime we've got this. And a neat way of supercharging the batteries, or melt down the engine fast. Whichever way you choose. Probably both.

More info as the project develops.

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Demo release

There's been a new build update, with the optional extra of having a comparable Demo Snapshot released, which allows you to try out the game for Free! More in the devlog linked below:

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Some SFX in the works

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Build update: Let there be darkness!

New build update! As shown in the previous post, going dark is now included in the live build, as well as a bunch of other things/improvements. More in the short devlog linked below:

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"Houston, we've had a problem here,"

Now there's water dripping from the ceiling and the lights can go out as well!

Just some things currently being worked on.

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New build update

After releasing the new trailer, the build was also updated to better mach what's been seen there. See changelog for more.

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New trailer for the game

The landing page for the game was lacking a proper trailer from day one, so I spent some time fixing that. Hoping that this video better conveys the massage of DSC. Enjoy!

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On the subject of reusing assets

Up until now, all assets in game were made bespoke from scratch. However, working on the batteries presented a unique opportunity to ease the workload. A short devlog on the matter!

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Devlog about the launch

Some quick thoughts about the EA release and the road that lead us here:

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Gameplay sample

And here's what it looks like in action so far.

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Launch it is!

So the last 2 days were spent on fixing bugs, to make the build more stable and work with the latest stuff (more or less). Suppose this is the gentlest of launches of any game, as mentioned last time. More news will come as it develops!

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WIP of the battery inspection

A tiny addition to the raster to make the ship move and function. Still not complete, but thought to share it at this stage!

In other news, probably there won't be a Steam release as publishers couldn't bother themselves, which is disappointing. Thus a soft launch on Itch.io as an Early Access titles might be a thing next week. Even thought it's like 2 months away from completion (give or take). Sigh!

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Working on something a bit more interesting

Been challenging few weeks whilst working on some fake physics for the game. The entire system was scrapped multiple times, like 4-5 at least, in order to make it work and have some decent FPS by the end. Still WIP but we now have collisions and rotations. Today I Learned that camera shake/rotation translates poorly to a video. For some reason you need to be spatially aware, as in game yourself, to be able to tell the difference in elevation/rotation. Otherwise it looks as if nothing is wrong and out of order. So I've also added an inclinometer for this very reason.

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Smashing some wooden crates

After fixing up some stuff and making the game even better, some time was spent animating the destruction of the wooden crates as they simply disappeared before. All is hand made and manually animated (no physics simulation was involved for the curious), and you'll find some BTS footage of the process as well below: