After some elaboration with my friends, I came to a conclusion that it would be good to have some FAQ and some explanation what actually this game is about and what can you find in the game.
I’ve mention a lot of valuable information in the FAQ section so visit that section if you want to read a lot of brief information on one place. I will mention here those mechanics which could rise a lot of controversy and give you a lot of unknowns.
Do not take this as giving up. It’s more like a vision, something I really want to achieve, but first I need to reach some more important goals which allows me to continue and bring this project into something big.
I’m solo developer now, have no fundings, have literally audience under 100 people, nobody gives a shit about this game and I need to first build a community and get your attention to show you what my goal is and deliver you something nice and enjoyable in terms of a small prototype. After that I will try to get some support and hopefully we will be able to make this thing real and bring it to the final shape.
COOP Multiplayer
My strong vision and passion is to have COOP experience, working multiplayer but this came up with a lot of pitfalls. Networking in games is a complicated topic and you have to know that programming a multiplayer game is completely different point of view. You must think twice more, sometimes three times more because all the key aspects in the game need to be synchronized across the other players.
I have quite a limited source of time and currently I work on SP solution which gives me a more fluent progress and shape of the game. I’m definitely planning to have multiplayer, but I’m just a lone wolf now and need to focus on other aspects of the game.
Open World
This game is not open world. It’s not an open world survival with a 200km square huge map. The plan is to make hand crafted map based on real locations and this map will consist of certain amount of points which will be further randomized. There will be a lot of hand crafted locations with attention on details and after some time, I’ll add new completely randomized levels. In the early phase, some places will be more like a pre-made facilities with a randomized loot and NPCs.
I will use GAIA to create a static world map based on real geographical data and populate this map by custom vegetation, further I will add custom points on the maps which will be dynamically replaced after each start of the game so you could potentially have various encounters whenever you play a new game.
Procedural Generation
There will be certain places and points in the game which will be procedurally generated but do not expect the whole world to be generated on your each playthrough at the current phase of development. It’s a tricky part and you have to cover all the edge cases to have really nice and balanced level design after the generation.
Combat
Combat will be the crucial mechanic in the game and I’m planning to give it a shape soon. This will be definitely processed and you can expect FPS combat, either Third Person view for more cool exploration.
The only thing I’m really concerned is the animation system for the weapons and I’m still figuring out the correct and efficient workflow for my weapon handling. There will be a lot of variants of weapons and that’s the reason why I need a really versatile system for weapon animations.
AI
AI is something I will focus primarily after I figure out the basic movement around the world scene with core mechanics like looting, inventory management, which hopefully be still this year. I’m close to that. And to be more specific about the AI, I will be implementing the GOAP system AI. If you’re completely new here and don’t know what GOAP means, it’s Goal Oriented Action Planning, and was first introduced in F.E.A.R. Stalker series use this AI and also some games like Fallout and DeusEx. If you want to read more about GOAP, visit this page – http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/goap.html
You know what I loved about Fallout and Stalker? The life of the world, I fell always immersed because the people there lived and this is something I want to achieve in my game. I want you to explore and face different situations and encounters whenever you come to the same place in different time.
One time you will be passing a tree line next to the village and you will se a bunch of bandits camping next to the campfire and singing songs, but other day, they might be dead because of the other group of soldiers came through the village and had some cruel situation with them.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is something I love about the RPG games and survival games which put some effort in that. I think the milestone for inventory systems was introduced in the early games like Wasteland or even something earlier but I’m not sure now, and it was Grid Based inventory system. Grid based inventory is a mini game in the game. It’s a Tetris with your equipment. It gives you freedom and possibility to move and manage your stuff in your backpack or pockets.
Nowday, Escape from Tarkov uses this system and does it really well. I wish I could have somehow similar inventory to Tarkov.
And maybe you would wonder, but I have figured out the grid based system thanks to great guy – GregDevStuff who made me to do that and extend it to my needs.
I used this video as a foundation and completely reworked that to this
This solution is unfortunately no-go for the current design of the asset usage and I had to scratch the UI layer. Basically I need to load UI icons dynamically now through Addressables and will use this UI style. (It’s WIP and can be changed)
I hope it’s a bit more clear for now. I will try to put more articles here and on the discord.
And do not forget to share and ask me for whatever you need. I will be glad for any kind of feedback.