Category Archives: Game Dev
Drowning Dungeons: Quest
Progress on a revamp of our VR Game Drowning Dungeons is currently in progress and we hope to have approval to get the game onto the Oculus Quest 1&2. While the original game was very much a puzzle escape room style game, we are working on extending this to provide more sinister elements and puzzles to stop you from exiting the dungeons. Given the freedom that the quest offers over the Gear VR and a controller, it is our hope to provide a more engrossing and terrifying game for old and new players alike. The game will not be a revamp of the original game, but rather a re-imagining of the game with additional story depth to flesh out what is going on to you while you are in the dungeon. Stay tuned for more updates as we begin to release images and development blogs.
N
Project Mystic Begins
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Unreal so far, and I really enjoy the functionality it provides, however, I’ve come to realize one key concept, I begrudgingly moved away from C++ to C# a good foowee 15 years or so ago, and I really enjoy using it. Hands down it is my go-to language for development. Based on my goals of creating an online multiplayer game currently working under the code name “Project Mystic”, because I haven’t come up with a name yet, I and those aiding in the development of the game will be working within Unity. The goal is to make use of items such as Docker and Kubernetes along the way to create a service which can handle 500 – 1000 concurrent players at a time per world. How many worlds will there be? That is still to be determined. More details to follow in the coming weeks. Please ensure your tray table is secured and your seat is in its full upright position.
The learning continues and decisions need to be made.
Its been awhile since my last post, however, thankfully not too long. I’m working my way through the Unreal Tutorials getting my head around areas of engine and the code base I had not touched before. So my preparation there is going well. I’m currently of two minds for doing artwork, one is to make use of Blender a remarkable 3d Modelling tool along with a decent renderer and other features I’m not likely to need in the short term or Maya which appears to have a more user friendly interface.
My mind is mostly made up based on Budget and ways to reduce overall cost while I’m learning modelling techniques, in the form of going with Blender, I’ve purchased some courses for character modelling and environment modelling in Blender for games, so hopefully, they will aid me in at least putting together some programmer art to get the game moving in the right direction.
The other area where I’ve needed to make choices is the game to focus on, I have a number of game ideas somewhat fleshed out, however, none to a degree I’m fully happy with. One option I’m swaying towards is that Oculus has announced the End of Life for the GO and the GearVR has been “dead” for a while, I’ve always wanted to migrate The Drowning Dungeons back to PC and to a complete and fully functional game that I had always intended to produce. Rather than the chopped down half sucked thing I did put out. Given the large number of changes that would occur here, it would be a re-imagining of the game rather than a reproduction of the Mobile VR version. It might be nice to get it on the quest as well though, so I’ll need to look into that.
As I have gone through and written out this little blog post, I find myself moving towards my goals for the next few months, and for now at least, I will be looking at Blender and re-imagining The Drowning Dungeons for PC VR.
Consistency is key
Go back to the beginning
It has been a while since I’ve spent any time in C++ land, tending to develop exclusively in c# these days with a smattering of js in there when required. So I picked up a few courses from the crew over at Gamedev.tv Their classes lead the learner through the basics and progress beyond that supposedly, so I’m looking forward to checking them out and making progress there.
Work is pretty flat out at the moment with looming deadlines and Covid-19 has had it’s hand in screwing with my mental state, so there will be times where I’ll step away from the code side of things and spend some time figuring out design for the game. The intent being to push my musings, sketches (I’m not an artist, yet) videos or whatever on to the world through this site. And maybe people will find something useful in among my wild ramblings.I hope to be able to wind up doing some live streams on twitch of my development process once I feel confident in doing it in front of people, I always feel like I have all thumbs when people watch me type.
Well thanks for reading this first post and welcome to what I expect will be an interesting journey.
NB