HYPERTEC 🚀

[backyardgiant-blog]

18th December | Sprint 12

Things are definitely starting to wrap up around here, so we’re mainly just working on some last minute bits and bobs to make the game feel a little more polished and complete for our main deadline on the 8th Jan.

Tutorial

At most of our usability session to date, we’ve had little reference sheets with the controls on as well as just hanging around to remind people how to play the game. To help with this we’ve added a simple text tutorial at the start of the game to guide players through the basic movement controls.

Warnings

We’ve added a couple of game wide systems recently, just to more easily convey information to the player. The first of these is a warnings system, to alert the player of something negative or dangerous.

Alerts

The alerts are a similar system to the warnings, being accessible from everywhere in the game, which will provide the player with updates. An example of this could be when you pick up an item.

New Game Page

And finally - we’ve added a game page to the website for HYPERTEC! It will contain some footage, and links out to the presskit and other documentation once that’s all set up. Here’s a link

http://backyardgiant.co.uk/hypertec.html

Extras!

Couple extra bits:

Enemies are now more readily available

Engines now spawn with the correct stats based on faction

New asteroid models added

Until next time!

[backyardgiant-blog]

11th December | Sprint 11

Bit late on the update this week - but we’ve still been working hard! With usability sessions happening and getting ready for the holidays, it’s certainly been busy.

Damage Smoke and Hit Explosions

In order to make the combat feel a little more satisfying, and to be able to keep track of which enemies you’ve hit so far, we added little smoke trails to enemies. As they take more health damage, more smoke is emitted from them! This felt great almost immediately, so we knew we were onto something good. As a part of this, we also added little explosions to the bullet collisions to add a little more weight.

Friendly Ships

Users reported that when you chose a faction, it wasn’t necessarily clear when they came across that faction in the world. To counter this we have added a different colour of hit marker. In addition when you take a shot, you receive a warning that you are firing on friendlies. Finally the normal lock on system is turned off which makes it harder to shoot at them.

Quest Beacon

Rather than just starting the player off with the quest, or having a white cube give the quest, we now have a nice model for the quest beacon and a prompt that details the quest.

Player Tracker

One of the coolest things worked on this week was a display to see where players were travelling and where they were fighting. Each line represents a specific user (we had 4 set up during the usability session) and each red cube signifies a location where the player took damage. This system was live updating, and should provide some really interesting insights into players movement!

Until next time!

[backyardgiant-blog]

4th December | Sprint 10

The 4th was a big deadline for us - with lots of bug fixes and feature additions. It marks the end of our MVP phase so at this point all the major parts of the game are in place and functional, ready for expansion.

First off, we’ve got models for all three faction ships now! I’ll include a video for each and also write up a bit of lore for each one.

ASC (Automated Support and Construction)

An automated fleet of construction vehicles, these weaponized workhorses can deal damage as well as they can take it.

The ASC is a fleet of largely unmanned construction vessels. They are built to be the workhorse in any major operation, ferrying components and tools to and from the build site. Most vessels are built so they do not require a human occupant, although most have space for a pilot if required. A small group of rebels who worked for ASC have set up the remaining fleet of construction vehicles to fortify certain sectors and equipped them with weapons to fend off any newcomers.

Exploratory Coalition

Specialising in exploration and long distance travel, these customised ships are a favourite for quick transport and mapping. Rapid movement and fast fire rates are their most notable qualities.

The ExCo is a coming together of initially volunteers and then hired individuals who owned vessels capable of long distance travel and communication. Their main purpose was mapping and long distance exploration, but due to their individual nature it was a fairly natural progression to them becoming rapid messengers and small item fast delivery. 

There is a great deal of customisation that happens within the bounds of the ExCo, since ships that are heavily modified will generally function better for the specific purpose and therefore get more contracts. People take great pride in their ships. Trucker culture!

Syndicate of Trade and Pay

Money, power, the syndicate collects it all. Their ships are sleek, refined and definitely not cheap. Their weaponry focuses on efficient and accurate long range combat.

The syndicate started as a collection of individuals who were the leaders of the various trade companies who operated under the HYPERTEC banner. As the companies grew in power and wealth, they took a larger and larger interest in controlling the companies wealth and wealth distribution. The leading individuals in the syndicate are in constant turmoil, each replacing the next as they are deemed ineffective or outdated. For the most part their arrangements worked for the company and people were content, however over time the deals became less favourable. The syndicate was part of the main reason for the rift in the company.

Their ships are sleek and clean, representative of their wealth.

Inventory Updates

The inventory has seen a couple of improvements here - the main two being new thumbnails to better show off the weapon you’re equipping and a nice material preview for whatever item you’re currently looking at.

Combat Overview

Here’s a look at combat as it stands right now - notice the new health bars centralised so they’re easier to see. 

Aaand that’s the video limit! There’s a couple more bits like improved environment generation and a whole pile of bug fixes. 

Until next week!

[backyardgiant-blog]

27th November | Sprint 9

This has been a pretty intense week! It’s been a lot of responding to feedback from our most recent usability session and also preparing features for the next one. The goal is to have the majority of our base line features implemented by the 4th December - so better get working!

Hit Markers

This is a pretty small addition but one that packs quite a punch. It makes the shooting feel so much more impactful and enjoyable, just by getting that confirmation that your hit has landed.

Health

Finally, a health bar! The player can now take damage from getting shot by the enemies. If they are out of combat for a set amount of time (currently 2 seconds) then the health regenerates so you can get straight back into the action.

Engine Warning

A few players during our usability session didn’t seem to notice initially that they had no engine equipped, or subsequently that they needed to pick one up. To counter that we have added a warning to the screen which informs the player when they don’t have one equipped.

Quest UI

Up to this point the player has always just spawned with a quest already active - this task allows them to find a quest giving beacon, read about the quest and then accept it. This activates the quest and lets them complete it.

Updated Website

We have also been working on updating our team mini site with some details, and embedding this very blog! Check it out here 

[backyardgiant-blog]

20th November | Sprint 8

This sprint has seen the addition of a number of features that we have been thinking about for a while and are finally starting to make the game feel a little more complete. The main points we were trying to hit here are saving/loading and more of a gameplay loop that can be completed.

Combat + Behavior Trees

The enemies have had the ability to attack the player for a while now, but only by activating it manually. This job was to make them feel more alive, and allow them to properly transition between states in the behavior tree. The enemies can swap between various combat states and then wander when they are out of range.

Quest System UI

The main form of progression in the game for now will be the act of completing quests - here is a sample of the UI for when you finish a quest that was to kill15 enemies!

Equippable Engines

You can finally equip engines! Up to this point we had just been starting the player off with an engine, but now you can choose. Currently this doesn’t have any stats associated with it - but that’s not far off!

Saving + Loading

Saving and loading the game is pretty important, and we’ve got it in now for everything in the game so far! This will hopefully make it much easier to add the ability save other things in future, since it’s just additions to the framework.

Also shown in the above video is a bit of navigation around the menus, and how you will access different saves in the game.

Until next week!

[backyardgiant-blog]

13th November | Sprint 7

This sprint was mainly just responding to the usability data we got last week! I’ll show off a couple of the easier to record things below..

Shot Colour

Super simple one, but we’ve had the nice emissive textures on our guns for a while. These are designed to look like energy reserves and so we’ve coloured the bullets to match!

Stats in UI

All the weapons stats are now randomly generated and are reflected in the UI, as well as how they compare to your worst weapon! This really helps to add some motivation to the game so far - you’re looking for better guns.

Main Menu

And finally, here is the current main menu. We think it looks really clean and matches all the theming so far really nicely. The audio settings all work and saving/loading is super close to being completed.

That’s it for this week - we did a lot more than is in these videos, but some of it isn’t very visual. Some other things we sorted out is some UI bugs with the inventory, tweaking some values here and there as well as adjusting the sound played by guns based on their fire rate.

Until next time!

[backyardgiant-blog]

6th November | Sprint 6

This week was one of our first formal deadlines for this project! We needed to deliver a short pitch and then get people to have a go on the game. We got a ton of really useful feedback and also some great usability results.

It’s been a bit of a mad rush in terms of development this week (especially the last few days!) but here are some samples of what we’ve added.

Audio

This is the most up to date demo of our audio so far! Loads of layers of audio with the engines really make them feel powerful.

Modular Ship Improvements

This weekend marked quite a few hidden away improvements with how we’re handling the players modular weapons. This video shows off some UI changes in that scene, as well as the fact that you can now actually equip the guns you select! Keep an eye out for the end of that video, you might spot one of the great explosions made by Griff!

Enemy Weapon Spawns

This video was originally showing off our enemies wandering around the world a bit - but it also shows off the fact that they can spawn with and carry their own weapons! This uses the procedural weapon system that’s already in the game. They can also drop their own weapons, ready for you to plug in and use.

Until next time!

[backyardgiant-blog]

30th October | Sprint 5

This week has been focussed on getting some more of the main game elements nailed down - let’s get into them!

Also, please ignore the fact that the ship is just a weird floating body - just imagine some massive badass guns attached...

Enemy Movement

The other ships in the scene now have a little intelligence! They look pretty cool just pootling around the world.

Enemy Shooting

As a part of the enemies movement behaviour, they can also now take pot shots at the player, as well as target them and chase them down.

Modular Ship

Here is an early look at the screen whch will let players equip all the wild and wacky weapons that they find floating around in space.

New Engines

And finally for this week, some new engines! We showed off the particle effects before - but now thy work even better and are much more adaptable so we can have all kinds of unique engine effects.

[backyardgiant-blog]

23rd October | Sprint 3 & 4

Since the last post, we have all finished our reports, handed them in, AND been to EGX2019! It’s been a busy two weeks, and we have a lot of cool things to show off!

New Ship Design

Firstly, a new ship! This ship will feature in the construction faction, and will be the first ship we use for target practice and shooting testing.

Loot Detection

First mechanic update is on the HUD! Not only have we refined the enemy detection, we have also added loot displays that pop up when you find something floating in space! This display shows all of the key stats about the item, such as damage, fire rate, reload speed etc.  This HUD update lets you pickup the item, scan the item, or destroy it. Our procedural weapon generation will mean there will be a LOT of items to sort through, so this helps a lot.

Shooting + Auto Aim

Second big mechanic update is that we’ve now added shooting! After a bit of target practice with the new 8uM-b1E ship, it was clear that aiming needed to have some element of automatic aiming, visible in the video below. Future updates will make locking on much more intuitive, however the basis is there, and hitting your target is much more achievable!

Engine Particle Effects

This addition is more cosmetic than function, but it does look really cool. As you can see from the engine strapped onto the side of this ship, we now have particle and lighting effects that react to the engine power!

Behind-the-scenes

On top of all of these, we’ve made a few changes that don’t yet have any visuals! There is the beginnings of a quest system, a decent chunk done of the modular system, and lots of sounds sourced ready for implementation in the next sprint!

Hopefully all of these will be featured in the next devlog, fully implemented into the game!

EGX 2019

EGX2019 was an absolute blast, we met some really great people, and played some super fun games. If you’re interested in what we got up to, I amalgamated all of it into a twitter moment, available here!

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1185506181969829889

This week was full of fun updates, and it’s really fun to see the game come together as we add more and more. Stay tuned on twitter, the best source of our updates!

[backyardgiant-blog]

9th October | Sprint 2

This was a week of a couple nice tweaks, but mostyle report writing! As a part of this module we each have to pick a topic and write an academic style paper detailing our findings. The intention here was to use our research to influence the main project!

Space Dust

One of the main pieces of feedback that we recieved from coursemates was that there needed to be some indication of which way you were travelling, because there is so much drift compared to a normal flight simulator. Our solution was to render some space dust in front of the camera, which moves nicely past the screen and gives a really strong indication of both speed and direction.

Engine Boost

One idea which we had since the beginning was the idea that the player would have the ability to completely shut off all power to the engine. This would allow them to do some more interesting drifts and moves since the ship would be in completely zero gravity while the engine is off. One move that seemed particularly cool was the ability to shut the engine off, spin round and boost away by powering up the engine to full really quickly. The video below is an early demonstration of this boost.

Enemy UI Indicators

Also during this week, we’re getting ever closer to implementing actual combat! First on that list was getting some nice UI so tracking enemies as they’re whizzing by at high speed was just a little easier.

Until our papers are due in, development might be a little slower. Also, we’re going to EGX next week!

[backyardgiant-blog]

2nd October | Sprint 1

After our first solid week of work on the new game, we’ve really started to get a handle on the kind of game we are making and where our priorities lie. I am hoping to write one these developer posts every week for those who are interested in our activity in a bit more detail.

Initial Flight testing

the video below shows our very first exploration in to how the movement for this game might work. It was really simple, didn’t feel great and looked...uninspiring. But there was something to work with, and we knew it would be fun.

Slow Mo!

In this phase we also added a slow motion feature. Not super useful at this point I hear you say? Well... maybe. But it was a fun time and has the side effect of meaning we are going to be able to get some really good gifs and videos for these posts and for our social media. In the game it will be used down the line for adding impact to certain effects and actions.

Lights, Camera, Action!

At the end of this week we had hoped to get some of our coursemates to play the game and give us some feedback on the flight systems. People like to play things that look nice, so we added some visuals. The ship and asteroids were made in magica voxel (this is what we are planning to use for all assets in the game). 

Usability

For our usability testing we put together a simple course that people could fly around. This gave us an accuracy vlue for each player as well as a time. What was more important here however was their verbal feedback - we got loads of good stuff! We will be working some of that feedback into the upcoming phases. Below is a video of the view we had while people were going round the course.

On to phase 2!

Next phase some of the game play elements will really start coming together - shooting and the modular ships are both planned to be started during the upcoming weeks, can’t wait to share!