Before Exit: Supermarket News

[h2]Hello again everyone![/h2]

[h3]Every game starts with a concept,
[/h3]
which must be expressed with a certain art style. In the modern game dev industry, you can see that even indie studios can produce beautiful games with thoughtful gameplay - look at Hades 2 and Balatro from this year's launches, for example! 

But still, those games were produced by relatively big teams either creator alone made the game himself, which gave him freedom in fine-tuning his creation.

We, on the other hand, are trying to create something in a limited time, with a team that previously worked in different technologies and engine, with limited resources. Great.

Fortunately, there are places for creators like us, where we can find art which accelerate our work!

[h3]ASSET STORES...[/h3]

...such as Unity or Unreal one. Our supermarket location is a perfect example of such a thing, where first day we had the almost perfect location for our game, which we began to tweak to fit our needs. We don’t have much 3D workforce, so assets from this pack were a handful. The whole atmosphere of the supermarket also fit our concept, so it needed only little changes to distinguish it from the base one.

We have started slow and easy, from changing 2D assets and textures around the supermarket.








Those are small changes that still can affect the overall reception of the level and we will continue to do that which Ill present to you with pleasure in future progress devlogs.

And remember doors from our previous devlog? One day it will work the way we want it to, but unfortunately, it is not that day yet.



[h3]That's it for the day, thanks everyone and stay tuned for more content![/h3]

[h3]Doors have always been a challenge for game designers.[/h3]

Our first approach to door design took place in Electrician Simulator, our previous project. Players cannot expect what will happen after interacting with doors unlike real life - Will it open outwards or inwards? Outwards would be perfect for every door because it is the easiest scenario. But what if doors are opened inwards of the player? Sometimes it will bump up the player and push him away, or mess up with the camera. Maybe we should play an animation of opening doors? What if the player stays too close for doors when closing them, should we push him, or should doors stop closing?

[h2]SO MANY QUESTIONS.[/h2]



In the Electrician Simulator, we casually approached this problem - Every door opened outwards from the player, it solved the problem of awkward camera movement or the player being pushed away. Here, we choose a similar approach, but we are building Before Exit on a different game engine than Electrician Simulator so… that brings a new set of problems we haven’t encountered before.

Getting stuck between walls and doors, or doors that open inwards no matter what is just the tip of the iceberg. But we are working hard to solve every problem ASAP!



We have already teased things on our X.com profile, but thanks to wonderful Unreal technology we are planning to add human characters to our game! We don’t have much experience with people, because it is really difficult to make them right and give them proper life, so they don't look like puppets.

We have worked with animated people and rigged models in the past but never managed to do it right. In the Electrician Simulator, we lacked experience and decided that the game would play better without them, but the levels and world always felt kind of empty without them. Now, on a smaller scale, we can experiment and try with them!



[h3]Thats all for today, Stay Tuned![/h3]

[h2]Hello customers![/h2]

[h3]This week I have another batch of stories from the development of our game![/h3]



We have added fireworks! Although we don't have anything to celebrate, fireworks are always fun.

[h3]Tilting problem.[/h3]

We are implementing more and more stuff, if you follow our devlogs you probably noticed that we have Shopping Carts. These bad boys are the first vehicle that we managed to add to the game and well, those are not perfect.



A tilted camera like that is not what We wanted! But that was just another day in the office, bugs like that will probably haunt us till release day.

The player's office at the back of the Supermarket does not play a significant role right now other than being a spawn point for the player. Nevertheless, you can hold up a bunch of shopping carts there and save them from greedy customers.




[h3]Who let the trash out?[/h3]

The last thing was added way back at the beginning of development but I'm never bored of it - throwing trash in the garbage bins. The twist is, Instead of a direct approach, you can throw from the very end of the store!



You can almost forget that you have work to do! I can’t wait to see all those epic throws and trickshots done by the community.

[h3] That's all for today, Stay Tuned![/h3]

Last week We showed you some mechanics that we created to prepare scenarios inside the shop which player will complete. This time We want to show you those mechanics in-game where we already implemented them into a supermarket level.

[h2]Let’s dive in![/h2]

[h3]First one are fridges! [/h3]

Customers unfortunately happen to leave refrigerator doors open, which unfortunately costs a bit. Be sure to close all doors before leaving the store.

https://streamable.com/mpg4ce


In this example VFX got a little bit broken, but quick fix from Piotr and everything is back to normal:

https://streamable.com/dvljyy


Putting shopping carts in place is much more interesting in a finished supermarket than in a debug location. And it brings back memories of de_lidl with the boys.

https://streamable.com/4favqj


There are also fruits whose time has passed. For the time being, the most interesting way to dispose of them is by smashing them against a hard surface, but we will make sure to get rid of them in a more humane way as well.

https://streamable.com/bj4z5j


Lastly, a quick look at the supermarket warehouse, the depot from where the player will start and organize his work.



That’s all for today, thanks for all interactions, till the next one!

Before we begin today’s devlog, there is a quick look at our Main Menu!



Of course, it’s still mostly WIP since the scene behind Menus is not ready but we have begun work on this part of the game and wanted to share that.

[h2]Let’s focus on the job.[/h2]

In our first devlog (you can read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2983730/view/4146206839075089789?l=english) we write about our inspiration for the game and ideas for the gameplay. Today we will talk about the first mechanics that are coming into the game and how it all slowly comes together.

We want to build our game around scenarios that will take place before the player's eponymous exit from work. We won't present the player with a given scenario, he will have to figure out what needs to be done by contextualizing environmental clues like stains on the floor or scattered objects. Each completed scenario leads to the next one.

Today I want to show you the first simple mechanics that will allow us to build the mentioned scenarios.

[h2]Daily routines.[/h2]

Our first mechanic was fundamental - throwing out bottles and trash that was lying around the shop. We figured that disappearing items on contact with the trashcan isn’t saying enough so we gave it little feedback on when the item is correctly thrown out:



Another mechanic we are working on is the responsive rendering of shopping carts into place. Customers like to leave them in very non-obvious places, so one of the player's tasks will be to put them back in place.



The last thing I want to show today is playing with physics in order to create fun mechanics for restocking store shelves.



Thats all for today, Stay Tuned!