Games [WIP] 2-weeks-alpha, 1-month-beta

Hello everyone!

As it stays in the topic, we are starting our personal challenge of making a small game in just one month.
The explanations and reasoning are in video:

The goal is to submit beta to Steam by 17th of September (2017).
Secondary goal - to make an alpha in 2 weeks.
Further details - in future development log.

We hope that our success (should be success, right? ) inspires all of you - our collegues and fellas!

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UPD:
Devlog #1 - Day 1 and 2:

Devlog #2 - Day 3 and 4:

Devlog #3 - Day 5 and 6:

Devlog #4 - Day 14:

 

Once your game is on steam and you sold a few, maybe you can also tell us how accurate the steamspy numbers are! I did ask a few people in the past and the numbers seems to be pretty accurate.
How ever.. i am really looking forward to your challenge experience and your videos in the next few weeks.. and hope of course that your project is a success!

 

We will gladly share the numbers, since we see no reason to hide it. Especially if anyone can see them on SteamSpy and make the math =)

Tomorrow we should have something to show.
Thank you for your support, Mortos

 

Interesting, will follow your progress! Good luck with your project!

 

Well thats the point.. steamspy is just a sample with some math behind it to create an estimation.. its not clear how accurate this numbers are. They seem to be a very good estimation, but with more samples we will know more

 

Hello everyone!
Days 1 and 2 of our contest passed, and here are deliverables:

In short:
- Established level creation pipeline
- made terrain and monster shaders
- coded save/load system and global map
- coded preliminary physics
- coded preliminary mechanincs

As I'm only now finishing GDD, we haven't been working on combat itself, but now starting. Next update - Tuesday.

 

Thank you Phillipp! It's great to have other devs' support!
Also your project looks very technical - I was amazed with your dynamic light-cookie solution! Will look at your thread as well!

Totally agree, I also wondered how accurate those numbers are. We'll see in autumn.

 

Thank you Kirill! Yes, the project got pretty technical, I just enjoy tinkering I guess I will actually likely drop the light-cookie solution when I get hands on a dynamic GI solution, as the visual qualitiy with just a directional light from above is quite poor unfortunatly. Either there will be something Unity built in for me in the future, but otherwise I'm hoping for HXGI to be released in time: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/hxgi-realtime-dynamic-gi.472486/

You got a good pace, keep it up!

 

Hello everyone!

Devlog #2 arrived!
Here is the video:

Deliverables of Days 3 and 4:
- 1st set of enemies
- 1st playable map
- spawning system
- enemies' movement towards player
- shooting
- dying

Next Devlog - Thursday, 24 Aug

 

Thanks once again.
And the link was very interesting, I would use this in my client's project!

 

Hi everyone!

Devlog #3 arrived:

In short:
- camera motion
- animations implemented
- general architectural preparations
- shader for player's ship
- several ship's sections

Having crazy time of our life, but still enjoying and doing best to be in time!

 

Looking good so far!
Other then posting here in the forum, are you guys already doing some advertisement for the game?

 

Hi everyone.

First of all, thank you all for your support - you probably know how it is important for devs to feel their product is interesting for someone.

Secondly, we had a short discussion with our team and decided that posting a video each 2 days is not very cool:
1) Usually there is very little to show since last video, at least at current stage of development, when we don't just insert art, but actually adjust it to our needs
2) We often have stuff we are working on at disassembled state, and making it ready for video distracts the pipeline
3) In general, over-rushing can hurt architecture.

So all in all, we will post videos when we are ready to show something descent, and also we won't rush for alpha (which was planned in 2 days) - but rather focus on clear architecture and system that will allow us to fulfill our main goal (beta on 17th of Sept) in time.

Meanwhile, here is our ship's central section:
https://prnt.sc/ge6jsw
http://prntscr.com/ge6oku
(sorry, inserting images doesn't work for some reason)



- to this section all other sections will be attached.

Hope, you like it.
And hope we'll have a video by the end of this week.

 

Hi mortos.

We surely understand the imptortance of having some media coverage, but I think it is a bit early to show anything.
I mean, we only have few screenshots and a message "FTL meets Tower Defense!".
Yes, that message on its own is rather cool, but we need to support it with some video, and then again, again and so on - you need to constantly warm up the hype around your game, otherwise people will forget about it fast.

But that is my, non-expert point of view. What are your thoughts?

 

I never published anything or did some kind of marketing, so I wouldnt know. Since this is not just we are making a project thing... its an experiment that will help other developers too, I think it deserves a little bit more light and visibility then just the forum post here. After all, the data that comes out of this experiment ist valuable for the whole gameDev community and not just unity members.
Again, I never did any marketing and I have no idea how easy or hard it is, but I think a few blogs could write a small article about this project just to make it more accessible to more developers out there.. and thats kinda marketing too

Also.. .WHERE IS THE DEVLOG?????

 

Hey all, we're alive!

Devlog #4 video:

Deliverables of Days 14 in words:
- portal's stencil shader
- demons' death shader
- demons' spawn and death procedure
- ghost shader
- preliminary HUD
- towers
- towers abilities
- other stuff that is not ready for demonstration or that I've forgotten

 

Well, maybe you are right, and people care (though it is not so obvious ). Maybe I will post something to Gamasutra-like sites (though I know rather few of them) - but I guess this is really important right now.
I believe the most important piece of this experiment will be the conclusion about our vision on how to make game fast. But for that we need to indeed make it fast
6-8 weeks will still be fast for me - but if it goes beyond that, I don't really see this experiment showing any significant results

 

I was just talking about this subject in another thread in General Discussion not that long ago. I agree completely with your reasoning.

Your project seems to be coming along great! Looking very good!

Wish you all the best of luck!

 

Thank you very much for your support, GarBenjamin
Also the thread you were refering to is also interesting and useful.

 

No problem. I'm glad to see someone bringing a business sense to their project. I'll buy it at release just to support you having the grit to work like madmen completing a quality (looks like it will be) game in 8 weeks or less and doing so publicly.

 

Thanks a lot, man, I appreciate it a lot.
Let me know if I can support you in return - I do this once a while