Strange Seed News

Happy Labor Day everyone! In August we began kicking the tires on some existing systems, making sure the foundation is solid going into the second half of developing Strange Seed.

Here are some of the major tasks we completed:

• New player/enemy creatures: pig and failed evolve slimes (enemy only)
  

• Added NavMesh-based enemy AI / navigation and more AI behaviors
  
• Improved the look and timing of ranged and area attacks
  
• Exhaustively investigated various potential refactorings to our ground collision system
  
• Completely revised and replaced our evolution UI and HUD styling
  
• Studied performance: on most of our dev machines, the game runs at 60fps or well above that, but on a couple older laptops, it’s experiencing drops under 30fps; this appears to be mainly an issue with draw calls, which means it’s very solvable by offering alternate performance options for lower-end machines
  
• Evaluated and tested various occlusion and frustrum culling methods to get higher FPS across all devices
  

Overall I’m pretty happy with the results of our refactoring and reevaluation of the core systems. In early August I found myself feeling semi-panicked about the quality of collisions in the game — not based so much on anything that was actually going wrong, but more on what might go wrong in the future. (Hey, I just get nervous sometimes, alright!?)

As a result, I got together with my engineer Felix and we evaluated a bunch of potential options. First, for the ground collisions, we considered replacing an existing torso-based system with a per-foot system, which would also change up how we did walk and run animations.

In the end we got together with our artist, Jhulian, and did a team evaluation of the old system versus the new idea. And as a group we decided… our existing system is actually the best option! This might sound like a story that goes nowhere (hah) but for me, it was a great moment; it means we’re on the right track.

We actually did end up changing the attack collision system, to use primitive colliders (mainly capsules and spheres) to register combat hits. That’s a fairly standard system for 3d games and for us, it worked perfectly from the first test.



As a last word, when I was writing this post I realized that a comic from a book on gamedev (by Matt Hackett) described this month perfectly:



We clearly spent August in the Slog Swamp — except for Jhulian, who spent half his time on Content Mountain. Our team has been working together for years now with various finished projects under our belts, so the Swamp isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it used to be. It’s actually a fairly satisfying place, when you manage to make some progress.

See you next month!

This month we made a ton of progress on the fine details of the creature system — including special poses like climbing, tweaking odd size and part combinations, fixing physics issues, and improving combat.

Going into August, we’ll continue making some improvements to the character rig and ground collision. Polishing these was initially planned for later; however, to ensure that we deliver a great demo, we’ve moved them up.

[h2]Finished in July:
[/h2]

• New creatures: geoduck and monkey (both ranged attackers)
  
• Special setup for ranged attacks: rules around attacking near / far, attacking slanted surfaces like cliffs, and projectile trails
  
• Switched up how we detect hits to be much more accurate
  
• Fixed wing rotation to avoid clipping through torso
  
• New attack VFX for all creatures (we switched from animations to a Trail Renderer)
  
• Allowed arms or legs to ragdoll if they can’t reach the ground… by the way, this is hilarious:
  
• Enemies: Fixed various navigation and behavior errors
  
• Enemies: No more insta-aggroing the entire zone, and reset properly on player death
  
• Enemies: Added combat music! Thanks to Donahue Industries for that.
  
• Player creature: Added a summed stats panel to the evolve UI
  
• Player creature: Fixed how some parts display in the UI
  
• Player creature: Drowning when underwater
  

[h2]Coming up in August (partial list):[/h2]

• Updates to rig and collision (already mentioned above)
  
• Complete UI overhaul to replace our initial placeholders
  
• Nailing down combat stats for initial creatures and enemies
  
• Improving on ranged enemy attacks (melee comes first in this game, but ranged weapons do exist!)
  

See you for the next update!

Hi there! We’re a team of 3 indie devs — Chris (me), Jhulian and Felix — that believes the idea of creature evolution has never gotten the respect it deserves.

For me, the best game ever in the genre is E.V.O.: Search for Eden, an old SNES game. I highly recommend that everyone who enjoys classic games go play it. But the name that most people recognize is Spore.

Unfortunately, Spore bombed hard on release and that was mostly the end of the genre.

So indies need to save the day! Can we? Well, we’re trying. Here’s a FAQ about us.

[h3]Why build it?[/h3]
Because creature evolution could be f%#ing amazing...

...but post-Spore, every other big company has avoided it like the plague.

[h3]What is it?[/h3]
Strange Seed is an RPG, not a simulator! We want evolves to actually do something. Both make numbers bigger (an RPG classic) and function uniquely in the game world, adding a Metroidvania-style component to world traversal. For instance:

• Wings give you real flight abilities
  
• Tiny creatures can crawl into holes
  
• A big head with horns can break down barriers
  
• Predator eyes can see in the dark or infrared
  
• Chunky claws can dig
  
• A long neck or tongue can reach things
  

[h3]But I want a simulation game![/h3]
Great! There are some amazing evolution simulator games either in development or out already. Adapt and Elysian Eclipse are in the works. Thrive, Niche and The Sapling are out on Steam. If you’re developing or know another feel free to do some self-promo and comment it, or say hi.

Uh, can we go back to talking about Strange Seed now?

[h3]Fine… if it’s an RPG, what game is it most like?[/h3]
Tough question, and it’s something we think about constantly! Based on these points:

• An inventory and treasure collection mechanics
  
• Mostly melee-range combat
  
• Some, but not a lot, of dialogue
  

The answer would be… Dark Souls? But there aren’t a ton of melee 3D RPGs, of which vanishingly few use non-humanoid characters, so it’s a really imperfect comparison. We’re also FFXIV enjoyers over here, and you’ll see hints of that in the combat system.

[h3]What about the creature customization, can I build anything I want?[/h3]
We chose a different system that we think has its own unique strengths.

Spore and most 3D evolution simulators make use of parts that are sometimes called “metaballs”. This is basically like a blob of Play-Doh that needs to be stretched and shaped. Then fully procedural animations (i.e. just based on math) take care of stuff like walking and attacking. It’s an amazing innovation that results in interestingly weird looking creatures. BUT, there are a few drawbacks. For instance, it usually takes an expert or really dedicated user to make a Spore creature look like a real-world creature. (To see what it takes, you can find some interesting, but long, videos on YouTube about creating a dragon or Pokemon from Spore parts.)

We’re starting from a very different direction: our game is full of real world creatures like pigs, seagulls, weasels, etc, and things like long-extinct giant insects and dinosaurs… plus our starting blob of DNA (the Seed from the title). In short, mostly real creatures with very defined shapes. We think the results of using these parts are really satisfying in a way that’s quickly difficult to achieve with metaballs or similar systems. (Fans of E.V.O. will know what we’re talking about here.)



Animation is also a strength of our system. Like Spore we use inverse kinematic animations, but we do ours in a more traditional hand-animated way that results in an animation set PER creature, which can then be freely used on any other creature in the game (e.g. making a deer hop like a frog). Ultimately Spore had relatively few full animation sets; we’ll have dozens.

[h3]Hey, didn’t you guys make an evolution game before?[/h3]
Yup. We made a 2D platformer called Miscreation that’s here on Steam. A lot of people really liked it. Unfortunately it was an early effort for our team and plagued by bugs.

Our big mistake with Miscreation was developing the entire game and dropping it on Steam with only internal bug testing and feedback.

With Strange Seed we’re going to release a demo as early as possible, and get as much of the game into people’s hands to play with and test as possible, a LONG time before release. If you want to help as a front-line tester please drop us a message!

[h3]When will Strange Seed be out?[/h3]
Not for a while! We began in Jan-Feb 2023 and spent a while just nailing down the evolve system. Then we started on combat, UIs, some world building… but even a lot of what is currently on our Steam page is not final.

We’ll probably be able to release around mid-2024. As for an initial demo, we’re aiming for Fall 2023.

[h3]Got a roadmap?[/h3]
Here’s a summary of what we’re working on in the next 2 months:

• Combat system improvements and polish
  
• Aesthetics: live-swapping skins and animation sets
  
• Part upgrade mini-game (the lab mechanic)
  
• Creature construction polish
  

We’ll keep posting updates on at least a monthly basis with where we are on the roadmap and what’s next.

[h3]This was too long![/h3]
I know, I’m sorry, this game is my life right now so I’m a bit obsessive. Thanks for making it to the end!