From Orbit Dev Build - June 12, 2016

In the first part of this post I gave a general introduction to the project, and here I just want to give a quick rundown of all of the things that have been completed so far.

Year 0

I’ve actually been working on the project slowly on the side for some time, what did I get done during that time?

Late 2016 / Phase 1

From Orbit Dev Build - July 16, 2016

Focus: Unity project and basic gameplay setup with programmer art

  • Player and enemy units in game
  • Unit selection and camera control
  • Basic enemy behaviour
  • Player agent mode switching: Defender, Medic, Engineer, Harvester
  • Harvestable resources
  • Unit construction (turret, auto-harvester)
  • Integrate Fabric Audio library, test sounds/music
  • HUD displays resources, health bars, unit and ship control buttons
  • Hex terrain generation
  • Win/lose conditions, ship evacuate/launch
  • Restart/Next level

Early 2017 / Phase 2

From Orbit Dev Build - Jan 5, 2017

Focus: Kick off audio and music, and do a visual upgrade from programmer art, to a first pass of “real” art.

  • Character and other design concepts by Jesse
  • Carl started on desert music
  • First pass at desert environment and decor models
  • Fog of War first pass, programmer art block in
  • Fog of War second pass, shader
  • Main menu and pause menu
  • Models
    • Generic player unit, walk, idle animations
    • Landing ship model
    • Turret model / aiming
    • Harvester model / aiming
    • Beetler enemy model, walk, idle animations
  • Replace Fabric Audio with FMOD

I also incorporated Tentacle Head Games!

Month 1 / Phase 3

From Orbit Dev Build - Jan 16, 2017

Starting on April 16, I’ve been taking a break from my day job to work on From Orbit full time. One month in, how is that going?

My two part focus

  1. Going wide, getting all the parts of the game in place, even if there isn’t much there yet.
  • overworld level select > land > play > takeoff > summary > shop/upgrades
  • Music ongoing
  • Kick off sound FX
  1. Lifting up the visual quality to a level I can start showing a few things off.
  • Continue visual refinement of characters
  • Begin visual effects (particles, beams, explosions, etc)

There are a lot of little steps in there but broadly what I’ve done so far:

  • Screens
    • end level summary
    • overworld stubbed in
  • Visual / Particle effects
    • blaster
    • heal, harvest, construct
    • rocket landing / liftoff
  • Animations
    • rocket landing / liftoff
    • enemy taunt and melee swipe
    • pistol aim
    • heal / omnitool use
  • Models
    • enemy den
    • turret
    • pistols
    • unit modes (this is a big one!)
      • medic
      • defender
      • harvester
      • engineer
  • Audio
    • Carl has refined the desert theme quite a bit, and it’s sounding great!
    • Matt has started setting up the FMOD project for sound effects

From Orbit Dev Build - May 12, 2017

But there are still some more things I want to do before I call Phase 3 complete…

  • unique construction and harvesting animations
  • player unit attack recoil
  • unique construction and harvesting visual effects
  • rebuild auto-harvester model
  • enemy melee attack particle effect pizzazz
  • ground effects (unit selections, path markers, etc.)
  • first sound effects in game

Priorities change so some of the things on that list might be put off until later milestones, but so far things are looking good for being about where I had hoped to be at this time.

There’s still a long way to go!