A Shocking Cool Time
BLOG ENTRY 20 - 2.04.2021
I had not realized I had skipped on 2 posts. Whoops. Sorry. I’ve been rather busy and actually have a bunch of stuff to report. I don’t even know where to begin ‘cause it’s all really cool, but by far the coolest is the concept art for our flagship vessel. Home away from home and where the player will spend a lot of their off time.
DESIGN
Valkyrie Concept Art by Vitaliy Ostashchenko
This beautiful fucking ship has been in the works for about 3 years. Ever since we barely started thinking about the possibilities of what type of game we could make, The Valkyrie has been at the center of our game. The concept of a medical combat vessel with high mobility really resonated with us. Growing up with shows like Star Trek: Next Generation and Voyager, Firefly, Babylon 5, just all things Sci-fi, I’ve always liked smaller vessels instead of the giant war cruiser type of ships.
Maybe it’s the underdog narrative of the crews in these smaller scrappier ships, or just the idea that I wouldn’t wanna be stuck on a giant obvious target, but I’ve really fallen in love with the concept of the Valkyrie. Seeing the ship outside of my head after all these years really is a hard feeling to describe, It’s been quite a ride to get here, and there’s still a long way to go.
The artist who we commissioned was great to work with. If you’ve got a sci-fi concept you want to get done Valahor is your man. I’d been following his ship designs for a while and having him work on the Valkyrie was a pretty cool experience. When you have a concept in your head some things can get blurry or muddy. He was able to give clarity to a lot of the finer details that can get lost when working with concepts like the weapons and shield design were his ideas.
We’re going to be working on the interior where the player will actually hang out, we just gotta make sure that we balance things out between Aesthetic, Narrative and Level Design. Trust me, It’s a lot harder than you’d think. Once we do we’ll try to work with him again so we can show off the crew quarters, armory and bridge. There’s still a lot of the Valkyrie to see.
WEAPONS GAMEPLAY
Prototype Rifle Placeholder - Free UE4 Marketplace Content
The next big thing I’ve been working on is a weapon with a functioning alternate fire mode. This rifle has been on paper design for a while as well, so actually getting it working was quite a milestone for me as well. I can’t upload the video here for whatever reason but here is a tasty gif of the Prototype Rifle
Primary Fire - Shock Rifle
Secondary Fire - Frost Shotgun
I was able to implement a different sound for each firing mode as well as play a cool sound when switching between regular and alt fire. I’m bummed I couldn’t upload the video but I’ll post it on my Twitter Account with this blog post share. Some of my finest work yet and it really represents what I want to do with the game.
I actually made this in a very hacky way and need to make a proper workflow because making individual weapons is gonna take a bunch of time If I keep doing them this way. I think for prototyping elements and weapon effects I think I’ll continue working this way for a bit just to get that proof of concept done. Once I’ve got that done I’ll start setting up some proper code to get weapon spawning and loot to function correctly.
GLOBAL GAME JAM 2021
Another thing I did this past week was Participate in the Global Game Jam 2021. I didn’t finish my project in time because I misread the delivery date. I could have sworn it was Feb 1st but I was a day late… Literally. However I had a lot of fun considering I was able to make a bunch of functions and skills working, I also got multiplayer working really well on both controller and keyboard. I don’t have a gif of that in Action but here’s a cool screenshot.
Global Game Jam 2021 - Theme: Lost & Found
I was able to implement a Double Jump, Dash and Wall Slide in a couple of days. It really boosted my confidence as a coder. It wasn’t clean and it wasn’t optimal, but it worked. I think I’m finally understanding the quick and dirty prototyping method. I’ve been too focused on learning best practices that I’ve slowed down my own progress. Sometimes you just got to hack it together with spaghetti code.
Once I do a couple of levels for some low pressure level design practice and package it I’ll share it on Itch.io. It was a fun idea and I’m happy I got to participate in the Jam. I think I’ll start joining more jams for that creative rush. I just didn’t think I’d be able to get anything done before. Now I’m a little more confident. so… why not?
In any case. Progress has been done in the past couple of weeks. Concepts are coalescing into reality and I couldn’t be happier. I hope I can keep finishing things to clear my head. The less I have to keep in my memory banks the easier I can work. I’m not a robot but goddamn if that isn’t how my brain works. Beep Boop Sucka.
Wired and/or Chilled
Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar
Game Designer
Plasmapunk Studios