There’s this little joke I recently heard most RPG games about how lucky you are to grow up in the one town where the monsters are all at the starting level, rather than the level 100 terrors you see in the final areas. As players, we might chuckle at this, but we’re able to accept bits of “game logic” like this. As developers though, it’s our goal to try and obfuscate this as much as possible. One of the base progression systems we have in place is based around mining; essentially, there are some resources that are more valuable and we need some way to make sure you’re not getting too much too soon. How do we accomplish this? By creating layers that require different levels of drills to reach. This actually plays into the general structure of an asteroid, but I’m a writer, not a scientist, so my explanation might probably be lacking.
Why am I telling you all this? Because we have just completed Sprint Three, which was all about resource allotment and the levels of drill bits! We’re even able to actually use our drill animation now! We’ve been sitting on that for so long, using an auto-pickup system in it’s place. I actually hadn’t even thought to use it with this latest build, only coming across it when I realized the auto-pickup no longer worked! So, now gathering resources includes a drill animation, time-sinks, and the first iteration of our dynamic mining user interface (seen in the image above). Of course, having completed Sprint Three means we’re onto the next stage of development.
Asteroids … are boring. At least to look at. If you Google “asteroid” right now and go to images you’ll probably just see a lot of porous rocks. This is, basically, what the asteroid of our demo looks like. Now, there is a place for realistic and there are a lot of games doing a wonderful job of that. Here are Gears of Eden, though, we want exploring our environments to feel like an adventure! That’s why a big part of Sprint Four will be involved with making the asteroid fun to look at and drive around on! This will include rocky structures to shape the horizon and to give you something to circumnavigate. We’ll also be working on systems for wheel trails and dust kick up, to make it feel like you’re actually driving around.
One last note before I conclude this week’s Dev Update; congratulations and thank you to the winners of our #LoveGoE giveaway! It was such a blast to put it on, we can’t wait to put on more in the future! The best way to get a heads up on that and all of our other updates is to follow us on Twitter and Facebook! You can also sign up for our newsletter for the chance to win a free alpha key for Gears of Eden. Or, if you want a sure fire way of getting that key (and other goodies to thank you), you can always head over to our donations page! Thank you so much and have a wonderful rest of your day!
~e
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