Dev Blog 1

Development Blog 1 - Hello!

The goal here is to provide deeper information about specific aspects of the game features or development process.  I’ll figure out the frequency as I go.  Most of my work on this game happens in the evenings and weekends so it may change over time. This first post will go into why I’m making this game, so here we go.

Development started back in 2019. I’ve been working as a game dev for about 12 years now.  During that time I’ve worked on tiny mobile projects up to massive VR games and simulators.  My personal projects have always been on the smaller or mobile side.  But this time I wanted to do something larger, something I would actually find fun enough to play when I wasn’t working.

I started looking around for inspiration.  I’ve really enjoyed playing retro style games like Project Warlock, Ion Fury, and Legend of Grimrock.  Growing up I played Ghost Recon, Chrome, I.G.I and of course the Delta Force games.  So I decided to make a game that combined some of my favorite parts of those games.

Sitting down I started collecting a feature list.  Keeping the focus narrow and the scope in line is important if I ever wanted to actually finish this game on my own.  I was working on a multiplayer game as my day job, so I did not add that.  Future iterations may have it but I wanted to focus on the single player mechanics.  I narrowed the list down to large,open environments, a detailed inventory system, a mix of environments, large number of enemies on the map, and of course the retro style graphics.

I bought a few basic assets off the Unity store (it’s easier to get started with some actual assets in the project); a character, some weapons, and I installed Rewired for input.  After setting up a basic character controller, modeling a weapon where I tried to make it look retro, I had to decide on the first full feature.  

I hate working on UI, so I started with the inventory screen to get it out of the way.  It took a couple weeks of work to end up with a pretty solid system that is still used for the most part.  I’ve actually removed features over time such as rotating items and stacking.

Here’s a couple screenshots from those early days.

Thanks for reading through!  Next time I’ll talk about the early weapons.