Very cool art style, you should play Fract on steam, it’s a music/synth type puzzle game. But art style looks very similar. Great work…
I feel honoured to be mentioned in the same breath as Fract! Actually it’s funny you mention that in particular because my girlfriend and I were having a conversation about it just the other day, specifically how similar it seemed to (certain parts of) my idea for a full commercial game that I’m probably going to pursue immediately after DOGEcrash.
Current working title is Dysgraphia. It was going to also be a very technodreamy puzzle game with heavy musical integration, but I imagine that my execution will turn out quite differently than theirs. The plan is for it to be a real time, possibly permadeath, SpaceChem-inspired logic puzzle game, but aesthetically presented in the ridiculous way that various generations of Hollwood have depicted hacking.
I was thinking perhaps that if the player gets traced by whatever corp they’re hacking into, they jump out the window in meatspace and have to basically play DOGEcrash to escape!
Added some simple hue randomization to the sky sphere’s blueprint. It picks a new one every playthrough, giving the lighting a subtle flavour difference while remaining within the general colour scheme:
This is coming along quite nicely.
I added a subtle “dirt mask” to the jam effect’s bloom that shows up if you stare into a bright light, like the sun:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmBWqUDCMAAL1OG.png:large
After that I started working on the propaganda signs. My first attempts were based on the built in 3d text actors.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmBumE6CYAAj61-.png:large
They were going to essentially look like scrolling pixelboards. A few experiments later and I realized that light functions were more efficient, more attractive, and far easier to implement:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmFnu4sCQAACI9a.png:large
Then I realized that they also allowed the quadrotors to serve a second purpose, as projectors:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmGx_B7CUAAJQg9.png:large
This also makes the source of the jamming more clear to the player:
need another video to see all those updates visually
I think this game is looking really good.
Hi SF,
Love the look of your game so far, when you get a video going let me know so I can check it out!
Your wishes are my command! Here’s some in-editor footage of the procedurally generated cityscape:
https://.com/watch?v=O1yg224HS30
I’m not going to record any gameplay yet as I feel that the physicality of the player’s movement doesn’t come across well right now with so many of the sounds and visual effects still missing. Aiming to fix that by the end of the week!
Thank you all for the kind words. Your comments keep me going :3
The drones now have a cool emissive effect that makes them stand out very well even at long range:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmKkirJCYAEmdCB.png:large
It also makes them look pretty spooky when your eyes are getting jammed:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmKg4V3CQAAQmU4.png:large
The rockets now have a much better looking, much more efficient GPU particle effect:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmkxOflCUAAILy3.png:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmkxi1cCMAE4FCI.png:large
They react to collisions and come out of the rockets in a spiral! (It’s based off that rotating spark effect in the content examples)
I added a post volume to the kill smog that gives it a more ominous, claustrophobic feel that’s difficult to navigate if you’re panicking:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmkzrnWCIAAv8Ty.png:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmk5I7sCIAAg6nw.png:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmk8AanCUAI39UR.png:large
If you manage to launch yourself really exceptionally high, there’s a post volume up there now too, which gives this blinding, searing effect of being out in the sun with little atmosphere in between:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmlFq-lCIAE3CKK.png:large
It’s quite exciting floating up there for a moment, then plummeting back down and seeing all the city’s lurid colours wash back in.
I’ve also done a lot of gameplay and sound design that doesn’t screenshot well, but I hope to demo that soon. I’m still pulling my hair out trying to figure out a way to make the grappling wire look decent.
Have a couple more glitch screens:
This is coming along nicely! Just a suggestion, you should make the buildings fade into the flame below them, rather than stop abruptly above it. It looks a little odd like that at the moment. Other than that, great progress. I just love the atmosphere of this thing. =) Can’t wait to see video of the gameplay.
Thank you for all of the cool videos and screenshots you have been updating this thread with! Looking forward to gameplay footage.
Also, as a side note, seeing all of the interesting things folks can create with UE4 is such a huge inspiration to our team. Hearing conversations between devs discussing the WIP projects that people are posting about has been fantastic, and this one has one come up a few times while I have been in earshot. Very cool, and very different stuff!
Keep the updates coming and godspeed! =)
Hey SF,
The screenshots and video look outstanding!! I love the cyberpunk feeling of both the visual and audio aspects. Keep up the great work!
-Sean
I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to hear such positivity from you guys in particular! I remember that growing up, games like Unreal seemed like they came from this fantasy land a million miles away and were part of a magical world of creativity that I’d never get to be a part of. Knowing that something I’ve made has been so much as mentioned around the Epic offices gives me this immense sense of fulfillment and motivation that I can’t properly put to words.
So as for progress, I’ve decided after a lot of failed experiments with the grappling hook that it just wasn’t a very good mechanic, at least for a project of this scope. I’m reintroducing the jump button in its place, and adding the ability to triangle jump off of walls. This fits a lot better with the objective of “kissing” as many surfaces as possible anyway, and removes some awkward balancing issues with stacking upward velocity.
As such the gameplay still isn’t ready to show yet, but I tossed a demo of the jammer effect together with some ugly iMovie transitions (headphones warning):
https://.com/watch?v=O9ecm34FhvQ
I agree 100% about the bottoms of the buildings by the way. I’m going to add something to visually represent them going down pseudo-infinitely but not until I have the level generator finalized, in case that affects it somehow.
Nothing new being shown here but here’s the batch of screenshots I posted for #ScreenshotSaturday. This is the same vertical slice of city being shown each time with no editor-made lighting changes between shots!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmrqiaoCEAEmk-U.png:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmv0seJCUAEPeJ9.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmv0WaUCQAAnk7y.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmvz1IDCMAAkM98.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmvxVZgCIAARfIR.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmvwXEsCEAABMO4.jpg:large
I think I need a shower after participating in that Twitch stream chat.
Anyway, not much to show visually this update, but the movement system is completely functional now! The walljumps already blend really nicely with rocket usage, and are significantly more challenging to use well than the “get out of jail free card” the grappling hook provided.
Rocket jumps work basically as you’d expect with two exceptions:
- The force applied is constant within a radius with no falloff, unlike Quake derivatives.
- You can’t (currently) jump while standing on a horizontal surface (It didn’t add any meaningful depth).
Wall jumps launch you in the direction you’re holding on the XY plane + a slight upward kick. They also cancel Z velocity. This completely changes how the player moves from earlier builds. It has way more of the momentum-driven feel I was going for, encouraging launching yourself at walls with shallow angles so that you can kick off them and gain more speed, while also allowing you to 180 without too huge a penalty if needed. You also have to work for your height, making skimming the top of the traffic (kill volume) much more intense.
Both mechanics run on an energy system now, which recharges over time. You can burn a number of walljumps all at once to run up a vertical surface, but you’d better be confident you won’t need to cancel a lethal fall right after!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnEayYECcAAR5hS.png:large
I made one other change which was really subtle but still had a huge visual impact; I added a directional light roughly the colour of the sun pointing toward the sun’s general direction rather than away from it. This really put a bow on the two-toned look I was going for, and made it less dependent on flattering view angles.
But where is doge? I don’t see it 
Doge is projected onto the buildings by the jammers from what I have seen of the footage.
He is there, staring into your soul Max. He is always there. =P
Kabosu’s bewildering gaze does in fact grace the walls of flickering skyscrapers at the moment, but in the final product she’ll probably just appear on coins metaphorically spewing out of the locations you’re vamping currency from.
Honestly I kind of regret having the meme reference in here because it’s a stupid unclever macro that the internet has driven into the ground and I don’t really want to be seen as invested in it. It made more sense to use in the context of the original little 7 day joke project. That said I do enjoy Dogecoin’s particular satire of irrational crypto enthusiasm by means of it appropriating exactly such a fad, so it still works to frame the surreal futuristic thieving premise.
Anyway, I took a short break from my day job of arguing with people on Twitter to finally implement the security drones. These ones don’t jam you or passively display propaganda, but rather send messages of the “bullet” kind if you catch my drift (they shoot you).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnOGqlHCAAAnaDK.png:large
First step was making them track the player. It was very simple to check for overlaps with a collision sphere that only cares about pawns, and then alter the drone’s rotation to look straight at the target. Aggro is lost when the player leaves the sphere. They level out again after by interpolating their pitch and roll to 0. Easy in Blueprint!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnOywVVCcAAkszl.png:large
After some initial experiments with more “Blood Dragon” looking projectiles, I settled on a modified version of the ShooterGame assault rifle’s beam emitter.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnO1NKqIYAIPDUZ.png:large
I found it very interesting and sad that it started to feel like a “real game” only once there was some direct form of existential threat. Quite the comment on the state of the industry.
At the end of the day I finally fixed the explosion lighting which never really worked properly. Switching away from the inverse squared falloff gave me a lot more control and made the speculars less ridiculously bright at lower roughness values.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnPJXogCAAAwqtS.png:large
I wondered at first if dynamic shadows were really necessary, but in testing they turned out to give important visual cues regarding depth and blocking volumes.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnPK5vSIQAAZiEx.png:large
I ran into an interesting issue where distant surfaces were being lit by explosions but not nearby ones. I fixed(?) this by pushing the point light on the explosion blueprint forward a few hundred units, then making sure the explosions were always rotated to match their hit normals.
Will video demo the shooter drones tomorrow! They look much scarier in motion.
This looks very cool yo. I like the idea of mixing cyberpunk with rocket jumping
I could just post more screenshots showing off how pretty the drones look
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTkyaaCAAAXxOv.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTm4TQCAAAr9dD.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTngADCAAAMSur.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTq2ROCMAENx_H.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTtgaqCEAAfM2Z.jpg:large
BUT HOW ABOUT SOME GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE INSTEAD? 
https://.com/watch?v=TcGjLORHs1s
The player is currently invincible and the game’s actual primary objective is still missing, but this should give you a good idea of what the movement looks like.
It’s all really taking shape now! I’m super excited.