Since probably mostly devs come here, the technical stuff I’ve done for the game so far is this:
This is faked lighting per quad, using Pivot Painter 2.0. It’s actually combined with a matcap shader that doesn’t use quad normals yet, but that’s the next thing I’m going to do.
The colors are mostly gradients mixed in with noise. I also have fake distance fog that fades in using noise in order to actually emphasize the quads instead of hiding them.
Finally, since the game is tile based, everything is displaced using 3D noise in order to break up repetition, and this is seamlessly tiled and controllable in local space.
I’ve been at this in my spare time for a very long time, but I’m finally approaching a place where the game looks and controls the way I want, and now comes the very long content and AI slog.
I see that Beneath the Floating Gates has been a work-in-progress for a while. Thank you so much for sharing some of the technical behind-the-scenes building blocks!
Would you mind telling us the premise of your tile-based CRPG? What’s the backstory of your game?
There’s a very long thread here, but a summary as of now is:
“At the heat death of the universe, a four dimensional race of aliens have gathered specimens from doomed species throughout history on an ark ship and thrown them into a hotpot environment for studying. You find yourself in the human colony, with other humans kidnapped from various cultures and points in time, and have to figure out a way to survive. Throughout the game you work towards reshaping the power structures within your colony, and later also the colonies of other species, perhaps the entire ark, or even find a way back home… if it still exists.”
The first episode I’m working on just focuses on the survival aspect. It’s a text book case of “what not to do for your first game”, but I’m still at it… A single person made the archetype of this game back in 1983 in one year (as their second game), so I figure that with all the modern tools available these days, I should be able to complete something similar within at least the decade…
Thank you so much for sharing the concept for Beneath the Floating Gates! I really like the concept and the idea of a new spiritual interpretation of the game’s predecessor!
I have a few questions, if you don’t mind. What caused the universe’s heat death? Do the four dimensional aliens have a creator? Have humans evolved to exist in the fourth dimension, or have the aliens long since adapted a way to present themselves in the third dimension in order for humans to view them? Are there other dimensions? Do the aliens have a hierarchy amongst themselves that would give the humans an advantage to takeover?
On the technical side, what encouraged the move from Unity to the Unreal Engine? As a player, will a scripted dialogue exist between the player and any NPCs?
Thank you for the bonus wiggle! LOL! I look forward to your response!
Not at all. However, those questions aren’t the focus of this first game (what I described was the end-game, so to speak). Beneath the Floating Gates will focus on what lies beneath the human colony. The game starts out with the player appearing through a “floating gate” inside the palace of the human colony, disturbing a secret meeting that gets them thrown into prison. An event breaks the player out of prison and they will then adventure through sewers, cellars, a refugee camp, a sunken part of the city, crypts, ancient tombs, mines, caves, etc until building enough skills in order to find a way back up into the colony above, where this first game will end.
The next game after that will be called the City of the Floating Gates, and after that Land of the Floating Gates, then Battle of the Floating Gates and so on, and eventually the questions you asked will be answered! A more interesting immediate question would be “what is a floating gate”? (And at the moment, a fun answer for developers reading this which I can give is that it serves, amongst other things, as the in-universe explanation for monster spawning.)
We used Unity for VR at work. Some years ago, a customer requested that we’d switch to Unreal to easier get more realistic graphics. I could not keep two game engines in my head at once, so this hobby project had to follow, and now I’m using Unreal to make the most unrealistic graphics possible!
Dialogue is core to the game, hence why the text is so large (which is also an accessibility reason… apparently, for a 32-inch living room TV, I’m using the smallest recommended size even). You can communicate and develop a relation with every single person and creature you meet in the game, and there will be peaceful options to finish it as well.
@eobet , thank you so much for being so detailed in your response! Beneath the Floating Gates reads as an epic, open-ended adventure that I am sure will create fond memories! I admire you taking on this project as a solo dev and I wish you continued success!
I really appreciate the Retro Chic. You could have chosen to go completely retro with 2D, but I dig what you’re doing with the Unreal Engine. Considering how robust UE is in photorealistic projects, making the game’s style minimalist is an art in and of itself! I’m eager to see more!
Yes, Yes…what is a floating gate? Things that make you go hmmmm… I’ve no idea…but I won’t ask anymore spoiler-potential questions. LOL! I will wait for the creative works to be revealed through your updates and eventual release of your game(s)!
Does Mastodon GIF links work here? I posted a small UI update:
Ouch, no… apparently not… (EDIT: Or maybe? I can see it now, but not when I was making the post.)
So here’s what I wrote on this:
Re-wrote my menu system twice because I wasted a whole month with #CommonUI which I had to give up on in the end. I have no idea why it wasn’t made compatible with #EnhancedInput in #UE5 from the start. I don’t even think it’s possible to write a game where two players share a keyboard…
PS. I don’t use the built in focus support in #UMG either because it was too rudimentary for even this!
PPS. Before someone points out that there’s probably a solution in C++ my brain is unfortunately not compatible with that. It’s Blueprints or not doing any game development at all, for me.
I’ve since learned that there’s a “synthetic cursor” in CommonUI but since that plugin is experimental, it’s still not 100% usable with only BP, and besides, having a different styled menu depending on how you use an input method like you can see in the video above will probably never be supported.
A single person made the archetype of this game back in 1983 in one year (as their second game), so I figure that with all the modern tools available these days, I should be able to complete something similar within at least the decade… 
A more interesting immediate question would be “what is a floating gate”? (And at the moment, a fun answer for developers reading this which I can give is that it serves, amongst other things, as the in-universe explanation for monster spawning.)
I’ve no idea…but I won’t ask anymore spoiler-potential questions. 
LOL! I will wait for the creative works to be revealed through your updates and eventual release of your game(s)!
