Fork69 , futuristic (cyberpunk'ish) game

[achiestdragon]

been working on this for about a year , since ue5.0

solo one bit at a time ,
most of the time taken with disigning a large world partition map for the project
(not shown or included in the current version of the game but planned to be re imported
once i got the game logic sorted ) and meshes for the building sets ( over 10,000 lines of openscad script for the meshes and not all of the parts are added into the games build system at present )

i could go into detail about the game and its background story , cover the quests / missions and all the other usual stuff , but will do as time goes on

anyway the first level a private free build island map (shown above) is near to beta
and although its some time away from finishing the main level in the mean time
i have decided to release a free preview alpha version of the game on this level

just ported the project to win10 and updated to ue5.1 and now have win10 and linux builds available on the website allong with a short portion of the story background

this packaged version is only a demo version of the island map that will let you explore / build / drive/fly and use the build drone if you wish , but no multiplayer or quests , still a bit rough at the edges and more build items are going to be in the final version , so just a taste of whats to come

its still ALPHA but its going to be good to get some feedback on the game , and have some idea of issues if any others get in running it , hopfully the game should go beta by xmas 2023 or sooner where it is hoped to get it on steam , and then look at ps5 xbox ports

https://fork69.com/

have fun

[achiestdragon]

the final game will include multiplayer online , quests , missions , and a adventure to solve , looking at including a monthy score board with global rankings and , score and such is biased towards co-op play , and helping others on missions , and a balanced strict rules pvp system (to prevent players beeing greefed by others )

unlike other survival games , since its set in the future , the grind of collecting resauces is not there , as its replaced by robots , but leaving the player to defend those robots and there shipments , with rewards for helping other players in these tasks also
like i said in the previous post the beta 6 to 12 months away is planed as a (early adoption game , at arround £10 to 15 with the final version at arround £20 to £25 on all platforms when its ready)

also please note the demo version at present only has partial keyboard /mouse support so you will need to use a ps4 joypad to get all functions

feedback on if the game installs and runs would help , so i know its packaging right , game wise i think the current bug list covers most of the game issues and is work in progress at fixing them so i dont realy need input on that at present

[achiestdragon]

updated the project to UE5.1 , and windows ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIaDzBCYpE0&t=6s

plus a couple more tweeks and additions not shown

the updated (alpha preview version 3.2) is now on https://www.fork69.com
for download both windows and linux shipping build versions
have fun

[Get_DOVAH_it]

Wow @achiestdragon ! Has it been a year already?! How time flies!

I took a look at your test video. Being able to build structures on the island looks pretty cool! I know you’re not getting into the details of everything as of yet, so I will withhold some of my questions.

Is this the project that you’re building together with your son? Is it possible to save your game or structures in alpha to be incorporated in beta?

I’m so excited to see FORK69 come to fruition! What program(s) did you end up using to create your assets?

[achiestdragon]

at present the alpha version has 1 save game slot , thats actualy 2 sepperate files , removed_trees.sav storing any trees you removed on the island map and island.sav that stores what you built

i have not added a slot loading for different named files as yet , but you can copy and rename them manualy to keep them , renaming them back when you want to use them, but manualy for the time beeing

the demo version at present is a free build map , basicaly a creative mode single player map , the main map will not have build anywhere but has designated camp slots (slot allocated and your active camp placed in that slot , so you always get a camp placed at one slot on entering a multiplayer server

there is a seperate little camp build level where you can create your camp , that has build space limit (although quite large )

its worth pointing out it individualy auto saves on placing a build component or removing a tree so you dont need to worry about saving your changes each time you make one

at present i am not sure of how much you can build before it starts to cause game lag ,

you should be able to load structures created in one version into the next , unless that item has been removed (parts labled dep… are dew to be removed ) , there are many more parts and items to add as yet , and some parts to finish off,

parts that need finishing off , like gutters to roof edges , and staircase raillings will update on loading old saves and replace the updated bits
but if i need to change the part origin points then it may cause issues that will need you to edit the structure to fix (hopefuly not but who knows )

at present some of the parts dont have correct collision detection so you may be able to place parts where other parts intersect , or directly over the top , with some parts this is unavoidable but some do need fixing , this should not affect old saved files as the load does not check collision and will place them anyway

bigest setback at the moment is i had spent a few months doing the main map , using world partition about 32km*32km, but when testing find half the cells are not loaded and dont load till your almost ontop of that cell , so i stated another main map , where at least now you see all the cells loaded while flying over it , going to have to do some sub level maps for some of the quests that will need loading in , but leaves more scope for later expantion this way

not planning another alpha demo relese in the short term , working on the main level , but once i add in the slot loading system , and extra build items i am planning on updating it also, no deadline set for that yet, i need to get the main map upto about the level of what the preview map is at initaly, one step at a time

ho yea alpha preview v3.3 should be on the site for download , the weather system still needs a bit of work and the day night system sometimes shows the ambiant light source like a sun perminantly at noon , known bugs that i will get arround to before beta

[achiestdragon]

to answer your other question , “What program(s) did you end up using to create your assets?”

i used openscad to create the meshes , i know theres other cad programs i could of used but its a scripted programmed model CSG application that produces standard STL files , normaly used to provide .stl files for 3d printing

anyway using scad , for a wall with doorway i would split the output so meshes are produced for each uv colour

then using blender to inport the stl files , create the uv for each colour and apply it to the individual meshes , then combine the mesh (noteing not to adjust the scale or origins of each ) then combine the meshes to produce a single mesh that has individual material slots for each part of it , and export to fbx ready to inport into unreal

this way its easy to edit the original parts or add to them or do changes, theres over 500 items in my build sets in total , and although a lot of copy and paste was done to code some items with minor changes for differences like a full dome → left half dome → right half dome where the main dome mesh is cut for left or right side there must be over 10,000 lines of code in total , example like this (one section of the framework for a 30m arched roof )

its great for structual items , keeping scale etc but for organic shapes i would probabaly use blender sculpting tools to deform the meshes where needed
and by using the same functions but changing the paramiters i was able to also get this

both not in game at the moment but have them to use if i need them

[achiestdragon]

months later , progress update ,
although the free preview is still the same , been working on the main map and improving things allong the way

taking time as its a 16km*16km world partition with the landscape all manualy sculpted
also had to upgrade machine to one with windows 10 and dx12 upgraded graphics card to a rtx3080(11mb) 64mb ram and nvme hdd , this has forced a drop to linux support for the time ,

but things are comming allong nicely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXTrowYFndo
even though youtube only puts it in 1080 the game /editor is running in 4k here