The weekly SitRep will be a bit later this week as we’ll be demoing our game at Gamebridge (https://www.facebook.com/gamebridge) in Middlesbrough tomorrow. This will be one of the first times we’ve shown the game to anyone so we are pretty excited!
I’m moving the SitReps to Fridays from now on as it will be easier to include updates of events that happen in weekdays, such as this one. This Friday we will have a few new cool things to show from Daedalus as well as plenty of stuff from Gamebridge.
In the mean time, here’s an (almost) looping gif of the current main menu that just missed inclusion the last SitRep:
This is the first of a weekly update detailing the state of the current build and changes that have been made since last week. It’s early days at the moment but the game is in a basic enough form to start showing what we currently have:
Player Controlled Quadcopter
My main focus at the moment is creating a Quadcopter that feels intuitive and fun to fly. I’ve also added a first person camera to help in tight spaces, or for edging around blind corners. Whilst the default camera is third person, players can play the whole game in first person if they prefer it, it is definately useful as shown below:
First Person is now an option for those moments when a third person camera isn’t as useful
Hacking
We’ve also added a remote hacking ability to the drone. If the player aims at a camera in a given range (as long as it hasn’t detected the player) it can be hacked and disabled for a short period. Hacking will form a major part of the game as the drone has no offensive weapons. This will cover cameras, terminals for lasers/doors/lifts etc, and computers (for accessing information/emails/passwords):
The player has hacked a camera, stopping it’s movement and disabling it’s vision (represented by the laser)
Surveillance Cameras
In addition to hacking, Tim has refined the camera behavior and tweaked it so it follows the player more accurately, returns to it’s rotation after losing the player, as well as several performance optimizations.
Cameras can be hacked to turn them off for a short period, but this means getting in close without being detected
Objectives
We have a basic form of objective marker at the moment, if the player collects them all in a specific order without being detected for too long, it’s mission accomplished. We aim to flesh this out to include hack objectives and objectives that cannot be completed while the base is on alert.
The cone is an objective, the red colour indicates it is currently unavailable to complete
Laser Triplines
We have a very basic laser tripline in at the moment that will fail the mission if the player touches them. This will be expanded to group them with a terminal which can be hacked to disable the lasers. It is possible to nudge objects between the lasers to disrupt them, allowing the player to fly through without setting off an alarm.
We will eventually set up complex moving laser patterns, and link specific cameras to be triggered by the laser grid. So in the example below, the camera would look at the player if they tripped the lasers:
More to follow throughout the week…
Thanks for checking the game out! It’s all very bare-bones at the moment but things are progressing well. There will be an update like this every Wednesday (provided I am available to update the blog), so stay tuned for more developments.
So, after a longer wait than I first promised, I can finally reveal some information and screenshots of our new project, Daedalus!
Daedalus is a third person flying/stealth game, which sees players take control of a special stealth Quadcopter as they infiltrate hostile areas. The player will need to master both piloting and stealth skills to tackle a variety of challenging missions that would be impossible for a human being to accomplish. Daedalus is developed by Prospect Games, using the very shiny Unreal 4.
We aim to create a singleplayer campaign, a few cool multiplayer modes and maybe some custom missions/challenge maps if we are able. We want to inform and involve people in this project from the beginning as it allows us to craft the game more precisely to what people want as well as what we think is cool, so we’re eager to hear from you all!
Environments will at first seem daunting, but a skilled pilot can always find a way through
Player has been detected by a camera in the challenge map.
I’m a huge fan of the stealth genre and have always wanted to make a stealth game, so I’m excited to hear what people think of the concept and what they would like to see and play in the finished thing. It’s very early days (it’s about a month since I left my job at Codemasters for the indie life) but we’re starting to get into the swing of things and hopefully that means more frequent updates, images, videos and playable builds.
When I originally pitched the concept to Andrew it was going to be a side scrolling flying game with stealth elements (think Flappy Bird, except when you crash you can be heard). This evolved into a side scrolling quad copter stealth game with hacking elements (sort of in the same vein as Gunpoint), until we looked into Unity and Unreal 4, at which point we decided to make it 3D and follow a more “Splinter Cell meets Descent” vibe. My role in the project is a programmer/designer, and providing occasional art where needed. One of the things I’m most excited about is learning more about the various fields of game development I know nothing about (mainly every aspect).
EVIL GAMES 