Greetings!

I have been working on a lot lately. First off, I was attempting to design my rooms to fit the story, but as I began, I quickly realized that my story had many plot holes. So I turned my focus to locating someone to help me rewrite the storyline to fill the gaps. So I have pulled on my brother Daniel into the fold of the game development. He was all too excited to get into the thick of things and quickly helped me fill the gaps and even rewrite some of the storyline to be more believable. The storyline as a whole is still fluid at this time while we work out the details together, but this lead me to broaden my horizon on what kind of interactions I wanted to have implemented into the game.

A story is only as good as it’s teller in my opinion. Sure, excellent writing will take you far, but a written story in a 3 dimensional game only goes so far. The game is my story teller and therefore it needed more interaction and more ways to experience the story.

So I had a discussion with Dan about the tools necessary to create a more fulfilling player experience throughout the story. So we took advantage of the Unity Black Friday asset sale event and got a hold of some key assets to drive the development forward. First of which was swapping out my Realistic FPS Prefab first person controller with the Ultimate First Person Shooter asset to allow for more diversity of other assets. While I thoroughly loved RFPS, UFPS included many more integrated asset possibilities which were already built into the other assets I wanted to use.

Secondly, the Dialogue System For Unity asset was purchased. This asset is a thing of beauty, and it’s support is AMAZING. I got in touch with the developer whom quickly understand my needs for the game I am developing and hooked me up with some “In the works” resources to build a visual inventory system using the asset. He also helped me realize how to use the Dialogue system to create interactive computers! These two things are what I am most excited about in my recent progress. Which leaves the last thing the Dialogue asset has helped me with, reinventing the Audio logs as well as adding Data logs, so now the player can experience the story through listening AND reading. Finding a way to properly add text based storyline to the game was a baffling thing for me, I’m no artist and had no idea where to start. The dialogue system solved all of these issues for me.

We also purchased the Sinuous Sci-Fi Signs asset, which allows me to add graphics to textures, so I can create signs throughout the facility. I have yet work on this portion of the project, so I don’t have a lot to say about it yet, but I’m looking forward to getting it up and running.

Last but not least, the final asset purchased was the Customizable SciFi Holo Interface asset. This was the cream of the crop for the assets I purchased. While the other assets provided structure to my concepts I wanted to create, the Holo asset provided the Graphical User Interface. This asset has allowed me to create visuals for the computers, my inventory system and hopefully soon, door interaction. It looks amazing and is wonderfully customizeable.

So aside from spending lots and lots of money on assets, what have I been doing all this time you might ask? Creating a beautifully interactive and pleasant to look at game!

So without further ado, here’s some shots of what I’ve been working on!

Some sprites I’ve made using still shots and editing of actual ingame models of weaponry for the inventory system

Here’s a shot of the pistol sprite implemented into the inventory

Pistol Sprite

This is the inventory system with the basic design put in place. There is still some layout work and a new coloring scheme to work out. The blocks and such will be removed, more will be added and such.

This is where I started with the inventory system

Here’s a shot of the new Hand Light I’ve added into the game.

Something else I am excited about is the alien growth asset I purchased. This will add a whole other element to the dark side of the game. These shots are merely of sample implementation and in no way represent my end goal use of them.

Here is the interactive computer system in development. This will replace all of the computers in the game, making them all Holographic Interface computers

The game design is derived from a mixture of my gaming history. Alien Trilogy has a big impact on the design as well as Deadspace. I am using these game concepts to derive my own audio, visuals and gameplay to make a whole new game with an enjoyably immersive experience that at the same time will derive some emotional response from the player.

So as you can see, I’ve been hard at work on the game since my last post. I will continue to truck away at the project now.

Thanks for catching up!