Development Summary 2021
Cheers! My name is Dmitry. In our free time me and my friends are developing Drake - a Top-Down Sci-Fi Action RPG in a space western setting!
The New Year is here, holidays gone, and we’ve found out we’ve forgotten to conclude the results of the last year… and even haven’t created any devlog!
We suppose that our real indie-world works like - no post - no work done.
So, the belated RESULTS 2021
To be honest, this word annoys me (results), but self-reflection is a tool to progress!
Long story short: the game is in 3D now, we have defined the core gameplay mechanics, added a lot of assets, begun testing story variations, created a cool teaser and launched a Steam page!
Bye!
Just kidding, please add this game to your wishlist and get back to reading Drake Devlog 2021
Further there might be: a lot of text, devs terminology, pictures, maps, easter eggs, and a few useful links.
Let’s get started!
[h2]Formalization of the game mechanics [/h2]
In 2021 we have finally defined the main theme of the game and how it should look like. We concentrated on the key ideas from quite a wide list of ones:
We have added all those points to the document called Drake Pillars - the basis of building the game. Basically, if you're a small indie or a big not-indie, and making games - I strongly advise you to read about Pillars and Triangles.
Here is the article which inspired me a lot
It will help you to not spray out in different directions and focus on alpha and omega. Our team suffers from this from time to time, basically. So, such document will help us to cut the unnecessary things and cultivate the key ideas.
The way we defined our “Pillars” most likely can’t be considered as ideal, but it helped us concentrate on really important parts of the game. If you are creating your own game - don’t be lazy and define your own Pillars. Those Pillars will help you further at different stages (it doesn’t even matter how finely they’re formulated). All in all, it’s just a text which can be edited and improved with better phrases anytime. The key is to keep the heart of the game in it.
[h2]Moving from 2D to 3D[/h2]
What’s cool about being indie? You can just totally redirect the project (at least at earlier stages) and nobody gets hurt!
Probably, the most important and biggest thing we’ve achieved during the last year - is having remastered everything we did for the last 3 years. We have turned the 2D-sprite top-down shooter into a 3rd dimension one.
Just to have strict vision - a gif “before” and “after”
3D graphics solve many problems with visuals, customization and animations, but require more work with assets. We don’t have any financing, so we solve difficulties with models in different ways. For example, we thought that it would be simple enough to create 3D-models of cavern’s walls using only our own skills (oh, we were so wrong...)
After a few iterations we chose a variant, where we have about 20 different form-pieces. Those pieces were created with a custom-made form-generator and then manually retopped for the game engine. They have one shader, which we can expand further.
We decided to purchase various generic assets like station walls, tables, chairs, boxes, barrels, pipes, etc. from the Unity Asset Store at this stage. Most indies create their whole games using those asset-packs. Such projects may lose their own identity, but can be published really fast!
Anyway, purchasing quite a big asset-pack - be ready that your project will highly expand in its volume.
Another decision was to manually create all the characters, fauna, and other unique elements, for example the rover. All those items are the face of the project and it’s worth investing most resources into this part. I’ll write about this in detail below.
[h2]Characters and planet’s fauna[/h2]
In 2021 our artists team was boosted with the 3D design specialists. After moving to a fully 3D look of the game we also started going deeper into the visual development of the characters, costumes and fauna.
The pipeline for character creation roughly looks like this:
Concept -> 2d Art for dialogues -> Sculpting (Zbrush) -> Retopology (3ds max, blender) -> Painting (Substance) -> Auto Rigging and Basic animations (Mixamo) -> Import to project (Unity)
Automatic Rigging and animations in Mixamo - are quite a weak part which limits us a lot. Skinning contains artifacts and requires some clean-up after the algorithmic approach. That’s required just to avoid stretching of the character parts which are not meant to be stretched. Also animations can work not as expected - probably because of multiple conversions of skeleton and avatars in Unity - and finally we are faced with different artifacts in bone orientation. So, if you plan to use Mixamo for your characters - keep in mind that you won’t get great quality. Except for that quality issues, at the starting stage this method can be quite helpful. It’s a way to liven your character up and check it in a project with less time and actions for further prototyping.
Unfortunately, Mixamo doesn’t work for the bugs (local planet’s fauna), and we have to rig and animate those little guys manually. Crisper - the easiest bug that is already done - its rig and animations were made with Blender. Here, basically, we've invested a lot of resources, but with manual editing that one looks awesome!
[h2]Global map, prototyping and chase mechanic. [/h2]
We have added a global map prototype in the end of 2020. It was required to test the story. We placed a bunch of little text quests at each point on the map as a representation of the story which would happen in that place. This type of testing allowed us to check in game choices, the key flow of the narrative and the degree of broken logic in the storyline if the player skipped some quests for example.
In 2021 we reworked the visuals and playability of this map. Like other game levels, it received another dimension. Currently we’re using TerrainComposer2 - Unity addon, which helps us to create a planet surface on the map in a non-destructive way, meaning we’re still able to move or change something. For example, move a mountain to a man or redirect rivers backward, avoiding redrawing of the whole surface. This add-on is very interesting, but we miss some abilities for procedural approach, functions of erosion (which appeared in standard terrain editor of Unity’s fresh version) and other cool things. Also we're thinking about choosing Houdini to generate a map surface in 2022.
Picture below - just a part of map’s layers in TerrainComposer2, which endlessly are mixing up to a single surface. Those Nodes are just OP!
Also the global map obtained the seeds of the interface. We’ve created a prototype of various UI windows, tested some element placements and data locations, that should help the player on the global map. It became a good starting point for artists and game-designers. Now we want all the mechanics mentioned in the UI to start working (2022 goal?)
Finally, we have finished a big sprint (aka marathon) to create a chasing mechanic, which follows the player, forcing the character to move forward. Also added volumetric clouds to the map, which immediately stole all the GPU resources. (looks like we're creating next-next-gen game)
Arseniy, our lead developer, is very happy about having created the chasing system! Just look into his eyes filled with enthusiastic zeal to solve new challenges!
[h2]Teaser![/h2]
Together with the publishing of the Steam page we wanted to create a short video about our vision of the game in future. We combined "gameplay" parts from existing in-game assets, using the game engine. Introduction and the planet at the end of the video were made in Blender.
At this stage the teaser, most likely, demonstrates our feelings about the game, it’s atmosphere, and emotions. Basically, all game mechanics, locations and events still require a lot of work.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We hope that in 2022 we’ll create a full-fledged gameplay trailer. Actually we’d prefer to publish more videos about the game (but where is our additional 24 hours per day…)
[h2]Music[/h2]
The sound in the teaser and in the game gives a huge boost to the atmosphere. I’d really like to write more about this part of production, but you need to listen! In 2021, the game obtained 3 unique tracks for different situations, and we started integration with FMOD for deeper development of the sound space and music variativity.
We've made a short video about the recording process for the teaser. Kudos to Misha!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We’ll be very grateful for checking out this video and liking it ;) It’s always inspiring!
[h2]Steam Page[/h2]
We have registered a Steam page in the middle of September! In our opinion, it’s a giant step for all humankind those, who do this for the first time.
steam.drake-game.com
Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist, ask your friends, girlfriend, parents, grandma to do the same. It will help us a lot to understand if our way is right and will drastically support us.
That’s a decisive moment for small indie developers. Steam marketplace algorithm requires to see that your game is interesting to players before release date, and it’s very hard to perform this without big investments, marketing company or publisher, even if the game is incredibly brilliant. Most of the super-successful indie projects are well-built from the marketing side or just being a survival bias. It’s very important to remember this and not to leave this sales topic to the latest moment, sentencing yourself “when I’ll finish development - everyone will see it’s beautiness”
I strongly recommend subscribing to Chris Zukowski’s blog - he posts a lot of useful articles regarding marketing: howtomarketagame.com
And also, a friend of mine - Max, who exceedingly helps me with advice and useful connections, mails fresh news about the gaming industry every day: ingamedev.com
[h2]2022 - A way to heaven the Demo[/h2]
We plan to focus on game mechanics and prepare a vertical slice - demo version later this year. There are a lot of interesting activities, festivals and events we plan to participate in further, so hang on!
Sign up to our other social networks (facebook, instagram), Discord server and mailing-not-a-spam list on drake-game.com as most likely you’re intersted in our project!
Let us know in comments how are you about this dimensional changes of the game? Is it for good?
xo xo, hugs and see you soon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJeulanCLB0
The New Year is here, holidays gone, and we’ve found out we’ve forgotten to conclude the results of the last year… and even haven’t created any devlog!
We suppose that our real indie-world works like - no post - no work done.
So, the belated RESULTS 2021
To be honest, this word annoys me (results), but self-reflection is a tool to progress!
Long story short: the game is in 3D now, we have defined the core gameplay mechanics, added a lot of assets, begun testing story variations, created a cool teaser and launched a Steam page!
Bye!
Just kidding, please add this game to your wishlist and get back to reading Drake Devlog 2021
Further there might be: a lot of text, devs terminology, pictures, maps, easter eggs, and a few useful links.
Let’s get started!
[h2]Formalization of the game mechanics [/h2]
In 2021 we have finally defined the main theme of the game and how it should look like. We concentrated on the key ideas from quite a wide list of ones:
- A Story which can be viewed from different angles. We really want to create an interesting and variative story about the brutal world of the future. It will develop around the player, engaging them in studying the world and proposing different options to solve the problems they face.
- Gameplay follows the chosen role. We’d like to provide an ability to select the gameplay style based on personal wishes:
- Use fast and dynamic battle system which depends on player’s reaction to speedrun the game level
- Look for the alternative, slower paced ways, using hacking and solving technical puzzles
- Go deep into the story, talking to other characters, convicting, manipulating and bluffing them
- Use fast and dynamic battle system which depends on player’s reaction to speedrun the game level
- A Sci-Fi dystopian atmosphere. We've chosen a mix of NASA-punk and Space Western as the basis of visual style, music environment and overall aesthetics.
We have added all those points to the document called Drake Pillars - the basis of building the game. Basically, if you're a small indie or a big not-indie, and making games - I strongly advise you to read about Pillars and Triangles.
Here is the article which inspired me a lot
It will help you to not spray out in different directions and focus on alpha and omega. Our team suffers from this from time to time, basically. So, such document will help us to cut the unnecessary things and cultivate the key ideas.
The way we defined our “Pillars” most likely can’t be considered as ideal, but it helped us concentrate on really important parts of the game. If you are creating your own game - don’t be lazy and define your own Pillars. Those Pillars will help you further at different stages (it doesn’t even matter how finely they’re formulated). All in all, it’s just a text which can be edited and improved with better phrases anytime. The key is to keep the heart of the game in it.
[h2]Moving from 2D to 3D[/h2]
What’s cool about being indie? You can just totally redirect the project (at least at earlier stages) and nobody gets hurt!
Probably, the most important and biggest thing we’ve achieved during the last year - is having remastered everything we did for the last 3 years. We have turned the 2D-sprite top-down shooter into a 3rd dimension one.
Just to have strict vision - a gif “before” and “after”
3D graphics solve many problems with visuals, customization and animations, but require more work with assets. We don’t have any financing, so we solve difficulties with models in different ways. For example, we thought that it would be simple enough to create 3D-models of cavern’s walls using only our own skills (oh, we were so wrong...)
After a few iterations we chose a variant, where we have about 20 different form-pieces. Those pieces were created with a custom-made form-generator and then manually retopped for the game engine. They have one shader, which we can expand further.
We decided to purchase various generic assets like station walls, tables, chairs, boxes, barrels, pipes, etc. from the Unity Asset Store at this stage. Most indies create their whole games using those asset-packs. Such projects may lose their own identity, but can be published really fast!
Anyway, purchasing quite a big asset-pack - be ready that your project will highly expand in its volume.
Another decision was to manually create all the characters, fauna, and other unique elements, for example the rover. All those items are the face of the project and it’s worth investing most resources into this part. I’ll write about this in detail below.
[h2]Characters and planet’s fauna[/h2]
In 2021 our artists team was boosted with the 3D design specialists. After moving to a fully 3D look of the game we also started going deeper into the visual development of the characters, costumes and fauna.
The pipeline for character creation roughly looks like this:
Concept -> 2d Art for dialogues -> Sculpting (Zbrush) -> Retopology (3ds max, blender) -> Painting (Substance) -> Auto Rigging and Basic animations (Mixamo) -> Import to project (Unity)
Automatic Rigging and animations in Mixamo - are quite a weak part which limits us a lot. Skinning contains artifacts and requires some clean-up after the algorithmic approach. That’s required just to avoid stretching of the character parts which are not meant to be stretched. Also animations can work not as expected - probably because of multiple conversions of skeleton and avatars in Unity - and finally we are faced with different artifacts in bone orientation. So, if you plan to use Mixamo for your characters - keep in mind that you won’t get great quality. Except for that quality issues, at the starting stage this method can be quite helpful. It’s a way to liven your character up and check it in a project with less time and actions for further prototyping.
Unfortunately, Mixamo doesn’t work for the bugs (local planet’s fauna), and we have to rig and animate those little guys manually. Crisper - the easiest bug that is already done - its rig and animations were made with Blender. Here, basically, we've invested a lot of resources, but with manual editing that one looks awesome!
[h2]Global map, prototyping and chase mechanic. [/h2]
We have added a global map prototype in the end of 2020. It was required to test the story. We placed a bunch of little text quests at each point on the map as a representation of the story which would happen in that place. This type of testing allowed us to check in game choices, the key flow of the narrative and the degree of broken logic in the storyline if the player skipped some quests for example.
In 2021 we reworked the visuals and playability of this map. Like other game levels, it received another dimension. Currently we’re using TerrainComposer2 - Unity addon, which helps us to create a planet surface on the map in a non-destructive way, meaning we’re still able to move or change something. For example, move a mountain to a man or redirect rivers backward, avoiding redrawing of the whole surface. This add-on is very interesting, but we miss some abilities for procedural approach, functions of erosion (which appeared in standard terrain editor of Unity’s fresh version) and other cool things. Also we're thinking about choosing Houdini to generate a map surface in 2022.
Picture below - just a part of map’s layers in TerrainComposer2, which endlessly are mixing up to a single surface. Those Nodes are just OP!
Also the global map obtained the seeds of the interface. We’ve created a prototype of various UI windows, tested some element placements and data locations, that should help the player on the global map. It became a good starting point for artists and game-designers. Now we want all the mechanics mentioned in the UI to start working (2022 goal?)
Finally, we have finished a big sprint (aka marathon) to create a chasing mechanic, which follows the player, forcing the character to move forward. Also added volumetric clouds to the map, which immediately stole all the GPU resources. (looks like we're creating next-next-gen game)
Arseniy, our lead developer, is very happy about having created the chasing system! Just look into his eyes filled with enthusiastic zeal to solve new challenges!
[h2]Teaser![/h2]
Together with the publishing of the Steam page we wanted to create a short video about our vision of the game in future. We combined "gameplay" parts from existing in-game assets, using the game engine. Introduction and the planet at the end of the video were made in Blender.
At this stage the teaser, most likely, demonstrates our feelings about the game, it’s atmosphere, and emotions. Basically, all game mechanics, locations and events still require a lot of work.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We hope that in 2022 we’ll create a full-fledged gameplay trailer. Actually we’d prefer to publish more videos about the game (but where is our additional 24 hours per day…)
[h2]Music[/h2]
The sound in the teaser and in the game gives a huge boost to the atmosphere. I’d really like to write more about this part of production, but you need to listen! In 2021, the game obtained 3 unique tracks for different situations, and we started integration with FMOD for deeper development of the sound space and music variativity.
We've made a short video about the recording process for the teaser. Kudos to Misha!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We’ll be very grateful for checking out this video and liking it ;) It’s always inspiring!
[h2]Steam Page[/h2]
We have registered a Steam page in the middle of September! In our opinion, it’s a giant step for all humankind those, who do this for the first time.
steam.drake-game.com
Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist, ask your friends, girlfriend, parents, grandma to do the same. It will help us a lot to understand if our way is right and will drastically support us.
That’s a decisive moment for small indie developers. Steam marketplace algorithm requires to see that your game is interesting to players before release date, and it’s very hard to perform this without big investments, marketing company or publisher, even if the game is incredibly brilliant. Most of the super-successful indie projects are well-built from the marketing side or just being a survival bias. It’s very important to remember this and not to leave this sales topic to the latest moment, sentencing yourself “when I’ll finish development - everyone will see it’s beautiness”
I strongly recommend subscribing to Chris Zukowski’s blog - he posts a lot of useful articles regarding marketing: howtomarketagame.com
And also, a friend of mine - Max, who exceedingly helps me with advice and useful connections, mails fresh news about the gaming industry every day: ingamedev.com
[h2]2022 - A way to heaven the Demo[/h2]
We plan to focus on game mechanics and prepare a vertical slice - demo version later this year. There are a lot of interesting activities, festivals and events we plan to participate in further, so hang on!
Sign up to our other social networks (facebook, instagram), Discord server and mailing-not-a-spam list on drake-game.com as most likely you’re intersted in our project!
Let us know in comments how are you about this dimensional changes of the game? Is it for good?
xo xo, hugs and see you soon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJeulanCLB0