Category Archives: Will To Survive

Progress Update, February

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Howdy all, it’s been a good few weeks since I last updated so I figured you were all due some progress info, how time flies eh!

Progress is marching on at a nice and steady pace, we could probably do another dev video with what we have done but we’re thinking of waiting until we have the enemy AI stuff working before we do that.

Interfaces

Interfaces are now fully ported, improved and are hooked up to drive the game through events.

Portals

I’ve recreated the portal code which allows you to move between maps based on the other improvements done already and also added Spine artwork which makes portal creation more straight forward. The portals now also use Spine based hit box detection to make them more accurate to interact with. They also now use the same interact prompt as objects so when this gets more advanced you’ll be able to choose actions such as picking the lock or kicking a door down.

Combat Animations

I’ve made a bunch of new animations for Will which are going to be used in combat. Animations such as crouching, aiming and firing along with variations for when Will is unarmed and armed with a pistol, other guns will come later. I’ve learnt a lot through working with Spine and figured out quite a few areas where I can speed up the work-flow meaning I’m now working like a well oiled machine with the entire process so I should be able to build a lot more art in a smaller space of time. Here, have a sneak peak…

Player Sprite Shooting

Combat Interface

Something else that I’ve tackled has been a brand spanking new first pass interface for the combat screen, it doesn’t have any hooks to the game code yet but it’s ready for when we start on the combat mechanic itself and uses the same event driven UI as the rest of the game meaning it’s extremely simple to have it talk to the main game screen. Here’s a sneak peak at it running in game, note though that it’s all using place holder art for now, certainly don’t take this as any inkling of what it will look like in the end…

In Game Combat UI

A sneak peak at the new in game combat interface.

Enemy AI

And finally Dan has been busy working on the enemy AI, he has them patrolling about and is currently working on player detection and vision cones. They sometimes have a tendency to not stop walking however, so when the code is a bit more stable and they are behaving themselves we’ll look at getting a dev diary up to show you it in action.

Hopefully soon we can start looking at some combat!

That’s all for now folks!

Alex

Finding The Right Path

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Good day everyone!

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have a new development diary video for you to watch, everything has started to come together this past two weeks so we finally have something worthy of being shown. I’ll get into detail about what we have been up to after the video for those who want to read the wall of text that follows.

Path Finding

So this has been a royal pain in Dan’s side over the past few months, after several re-writes on his side of things and a few changes on my side with tile map code and the like he has finally got the system working and in-game. Hurrah! It works really well so far minus a few small issues that Dan is sure to fix later down the line and it really helps when navigating around by mouse/touch input as you can see in the video. For those who don’t want to play using mouse/touch there will also be a keyboard/game pad input system available too. This system will also be used for AI patrol logic and the combat screen so it’s been really important to get this working and working right.

Tile Maps

The tile map system as I said last update has had quite a considerate re-write because quite simply it was a little broken and needed to be fixed to work with the new artwork. I’ve ironed out the last few issues that were left with it so that it is now incredibly precise when drawing and converting from screen space to map space.

I’ve also tackled some of the things I’ve been wanting to do for a while with the system so the draw order is now fixed and allows Spine artwork to be drawn behind height tiles, the combat grid and other elements can be drawn above the base tiles but below everything else, the entire map can be tinted a specific colour which is mainly used for the combat screen and the whole map is cropped to the screen so there is no drawing done off screen to improve drawing on mobile devices.

Combat Grid

Something that needed to be looked into before going head long into tackling the combat was planning the way the combat grid would work and designing it’s aesthetic. This is something else that I’ve got done and put into the game all be it in a basic manner.

Lots More

There’s also been a lot of core code updates happening that don’t entirely come across in the video. We’ve had a bit of a shift around and clean up of the main classes to improve things for what we were doing and for the future as the way I had tackled them was a bit strange.

The intro screens can now be skipped and I’ve massively improved and changed the screen and screen management system which will help later down the line. Spine artwork and the process of creating the art has also improved to allow me to make it quicker as well as supporting future clothing/skin changes. The tile map art generation and map creation has inevitably been worked on now too so we have a solid technique for creating this new style art and getting it into the game.

What’s Next?

Now the path finding is tackled to a decent state Dan is going to be looking at enemy A.I. Logic for patrolling and guarding, line of sight for player detection as well as reacting to the player once he is seen. Hopefully this should be shown in the next development diary and once done Dan will be making way with the combat mechanic… exciting!

For myself, I’m split between making sure Dan has all the art required for the combat screens as well as having a re-write of the user interface system.

Phew, I think that just about covers everything…

See you next time!

Alex

Happy New Year!

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It’s been well over a month since the last update so we wanted to make a brief update to let you know how things are progressing.

Time working on the game has been reduced a little due to freelance commitments, Christmas and various other things but we’ve been working solid whenever we can.

During the December period I’ve mainly been working on re-writing big chunks of the tile map code, the main reason was to implement the new style artwork shown last update. We also discovered that due to my rather peculiar isometric code it was a pain for Dan to tackle the path finding and combat so I also wanted to tackle that in the re-write, luckily I found a really handy guide which has helped massively. That’s all done now bar a few polishing touches so I’m moving back onto working up a small area of the map to get in game.

Dan has been hard at work writing the path finding and improved collision code which will be getting finalised this week all being well, he’s also started work on the new combat mechanic so fingers crossed in the coming month we can get some video footage of that up along with the new environment in game and the other tweaks we have been making.

Until next time.

Alex

New Environment Art

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Hi folks!

It’s been a while since the last update, everything is progressing nicely but a lot of what has been done this past month hasn’t been visual enough to show to you, until now.

New Environment Concept

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a proof of concept for the way the environment is now going to look and work. You can see this below. It’s not an 100% perfect representation as there will be cars, objects, lamp posts and more road markings in the final game but it should give you a good idea of the direction we are heading.

Environment Concept ArtThe previous set of environment art was created using tiled blocks, this technique worked well but came with a few problems and it was these problems that caused me to re-think the strategy behind how it would work and ultimately look. The new technique we’ll be using for mapping the environment will use tiled squares for the floor elements as before but for the building elements rather than using tiled blocks we’ll now be using longer cut up strips, I’ve made an example of this below.

Tile Map ExampleThe new method of mapping means that the environment art can now look more detailed and can allow me to do more interesting things with buildings such as destroying them. Previously doing this with small tiled elements would have been a chore. This new method will also speed up the creation of the artwork as well as shortening the amount of time it takes to create the final in game map files. Another benefit is that there will now be less overdraw as buildings aren’t getting drawn as lots of individual tiles layered over each other; This will greatly benefit the Android and iOS versions of the game which were previously running a tad slow. The one down side is that I’ve decided to cap the height of the buildings, this doesn’t mean that we can’t increase the height later down the line however and to be honest it looks pretty good regardless.

Hopefully you all agree that this looks much better than before.

Steam Green Lit

In other news which you may have already noticed on other gaming sites or seen me mentioning on Steam, Twitter or Facebook is that we have now been successfully green lit by the lovely folks on Steam. This is absolutely fantastic news and means we are eligible for things such as Steam Early Access which we are very much contemplating doing.

A massive massive thank you to all of you for supporting, following and of course voting. We couldn’t have done this without you all and I am incredibly honoured and grateful for your continued support! Thanks!

For those of you who like stats here a few for you.
Days it took to get the green light : 92
Total current unique visitors : 50,104
Total yes votes : 14,307
Total current followers : 980
Total current favourites : 1,012

Video Diary #2

All being well in the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing another video diary regarding some of the new features, watch this space.

That’s all for this update.

Cheers!

Alex

Giving Will Some Spine!

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Well hello there everybody!

Things have been busy and going well with the game since the last update. I’ve cleaned up the last few bits of code ready for Dan as well as doing spots of project organisation and planning but for the most part I’ve been getting to grips with a new tool called Spine.

Spine is a wonderful 2D skeletal animation tool and I’ve been wanting to play with it for a while as it will really help do some more advanced things with both the player and alien artwork especially in terms of the new combat mechanic which we will be starting soon. I’ve uploaded a short development diary for you to check out.

The artwork isn’t by any means final but it’s already looking much smoother and higher quality than before. It also uses far less texture memory and is far easier for me to create, meaning I can spend more time polishing and adding more content.

Meanwhile Dan has been getting to grips with the code and has currently been putting in some rather swish path finding then he’s going to be vastly improving the collision detection so that Will no longer gets caught up on corners and walls so easily. Hopefully we can upload a video of that next week.

Where To Next

The next stage of development will be to look at getting the new combat mechanic working, I’ve already got a battle plan written and will be starting on the artwork this weekend. Once we are ploughing through that I dare say there will be much more videos and updates for you to see… it’s quite exciting!

Steam Greenlight

We are currently doing really well on Steam, we’re number 26 but were recently at position 24. If Valve continue to Greenlight projects at the rate that they are presently going that means we stand a very strong chance of getting green lit in the next batch. That’s only going to happen if we stay pretty high up in the ranks however so any help you can give by sharing the Greenlight page with friends, family and colleagues would be greatly appreciated… LETS DO THIS! 😀

Steam Greenlight Page
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=164859338

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and supporting!

Alex

Quick Update & New Team Member

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Hello ladies & gentlemen, apologies for the lack of updates over the past two weeks; Everything has been rather busy and chaotic plus there wasn’t really much in the way of news worthy things to write.

Game Progress

I’m now done with cleaning up the code for the game and it’s many libraries so it’s nice and organised ready for some help on that front, I’m much happier with it now and have even added the ability to change resolution and toggle full screen display with some keyboard short-cuts which I had been meaning to get around to for a while.

I’ve also overhauled and fixed the weird issues I was having with collision. In the process I’ve made some handy debug display stuff to aid me diagnosing problems on that front in the future too. Hopefully fixing those issues will mean sorting out the draw order of tiles and objects will be easily fixed now as well.

And lastly I’ve started getting the new interaction controls to work, it’s still early days on this but it’ll mean that interacting with the world is much more intuitive. Hopefully I’ll be able to put a video up soon to show the new method in action.

New Team Member

I would like to give a warm welcome to Dan Ward (a.k.a. ButtonsZ) who is kindly offering his help on the code side of things. Dan is an old friend of mine who has recently graduated university with a first (clever sod) and is a programming ninja. Dan will be helping out on the game in his spare time when he’s not working which will really help speed things up. Welcome on board Dan!

Where To Next

So the plan for October is to mainly work on the exploration controls, improving collision and adding path finding which should make the game much more fun when you are wandering about the world. We’ll also be looking into further developing the map system, giving the ability to exit and enter buildings, move between building floors and also adding in a sewer system which will be an important way to get around safely. One thing we also want to look into getting working is the ability to use skeletal based artwork created using a tool called Spine. This will vastly improve the animation quality of the player and enemies but not only that it will also mean we can do some rather cool new things. Definitely go and check out the program here: http://esotericsoftware.com/

Ok, back to work I go!

Alex

From The Ashes

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The last month was pretty hectic, running a Kickstarter campaign definitely eats up all of your time so it’s been lovely to get back to working on the game. The aim at the moment is to shift from working on a prototype and moving towards developing a more polished beta candidate. I don’t have anything visual to show for this weeks progress as I have mainly been doing programming work but I thought it was good to keep you all in the loop.

The Code Bit

The first thing has been to start cleaning up and improving some of the code libraries that I’m using. The code now works more efficiently and will save me from some headaches later down the line. Cleaning up all the code also allows me to finally look at drafting in a bit of support that has been offered to me from friends which should speed things up.

The second thing has been to strip the game logic back and start rebuilding it, essentially starting from scratch but pasting in the code from before that worked well and re-writing the stuff that didn’t work so well. This should give me a good foundation and allows me to bring in the new combat scheme and defence placement mechanics with a clean slate rather than hacking it around the old code.

Game Pad & Keyboard Support!

Stripping back the code has meant I can overhaul the input controls. I’ve now enabled the game to use a game pad and you can now walk around using the WASD or arrow keys. Coupled with the options to use a mouse or touch screen this gives you a few options to choose your preferred control scheme or mix them. Which is how I think it should be.

Where To Next

This next week will be a bit more of the same really, I’ve still got more code to clean up and re-build so it may be a few weeks before I have anything new to show really. I’ve also been in talks about some freelance work which is great as that’s what is funding me at the moment due to the Kickstarter campaign not reaching it’s goal; It does mean I’ll have less time to work on the game but I need to eat and pay the rent 😉

Keeping Updated

There are lots of way to keep updated with the project now with tumblr being the latest addition. Whenever I post an update I’ll make sure it gets put up across them all so that you can choose which one works best for you.

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Steam Greenlight

Also remember that the Steam Greenlight campaign is ongoing, we are at 96% of the way to the top 100 so link it to your friends and get them to click the yes button, let’s see if we can get it into the top 100!

Vote For Will to Survive on Steam Greenlight

Until Next Time!

Alex

Kickstarter Update : Combat Change

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Today I wanted to talk a little about the new direction that I am looking into heading with regards to combat.

So far the combat in the prototype has not been met with much praise, in fact often people have been confused as to how it works as no other game features a combat mechanic like it and I’ve personally not been 100% happy with how it plays. I now feel like I know the correct direction to go in which will improve the game a lot and help cut down development time leading to a higher degree of polish and quality.

Out With The Old

Originally when I first developed the prototype the aim with the combat was to develop a system which would work well on mobile formats as well as desktops so I had the idea of using something along the lines of Pokémon style fight screens. It seemed like a sound concept and the player was taken to a different screen with the intention to help cut down art time and be a little more straight forward to develop in terms of AI logic.

The combat system was never truly locked down, it was still an early test of an idea but I needed to take that path in order to see if it was correct or not. I always had thoughts about changing it to a turn based system but wasn’t sure how it would work, if it would work and how much extra time would be involved with that process.

As usually happens with the development process eventually you have an epiphany and everything becomes clear on what direction you should take.

In With The New

The idea behind the new combat system is to scrap the idea of a separate combat screen and to tackle the combat in the world itself. This makes it work along the same lines as games such as Shadowrun Returns and X-Com.

The game will be real-time as before while moving around then should you alert a nearby enemy or choose to attack an enemy the game will go into a turn based combat scenario.

My thinking so far is that during each turn the player and the enemy (or enemies) choose an action to perform. There will be a time limit to remain in-keeping with the real-time nature of the game but it will be sufficient enough so that you can decide what to do and act upon that. Once decided the outcome will be played out and then it’s back to deciding what to do again. Rinse and repeat until either party is dead or the player manages to escape the combat area safely.

This image shows a brief glimpse at how a combat encounter may play out:

The Benefits

Scrapping a portion of the game and starting a fresh isn’t a decision that I’ve taken lightly. I’ve made sure that if this is to happen it’s certainly going to benefit the game-play but also that it will benefit the development process too. Thinking about it at great length I have come to the conclusion that it’s the best direction to go for many reasons.

  • Reduced Art Time – There is no loner a requirement to create art for two different screens meaning the world artwork benefits from better polish.
  • Reduced Memory Foot Print – The previous fight screens required quite a significant amount of texture memory due to their size and supporting high definition resolutions would increase that even more. Now there will be no need for such costly art assets.
  • Reduced Code Time – As this will all happen in the world area now I can re-use portions of AI code for moving enemies etc.
  • Chance To Fight More Than One Enemy – This was always something that I wanted to do but was unsure of how to achieve in the previous combat version. Having the chance for aliens to gang up on you leads to far more deadly combat scenarios.
  • Stealth – I wanted to include the ability to go stealthy before but was unsure again how to achieve this. With the new system this will be even easier to implement and will be far easier for the player to understand.
  • Possible Clothing Changes – Changing clothes has been on the wish list for a while especially if I am to factor climate into the survival aspects of the game. By focusing on the world environment and not having the expensive combat screen art to worry about it’s far easier to contemplate the feature of choosing clothes for Will later down the line.
  • Taking Other Survivors With You – This is another aspect that has been on the wish list for a while. With this new system it is easy to envision the ability to travel and fight alongside other NPC survivors.

Onwards And Upwards!

Hopefully that makes sense and sounds good to you all. I’m certainly quite excited to get started on the new system.

Alex

See Original Update Here

Kickstarter Update : Ammo & Survivors

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The Kickstarter campaign is now approaching the half way point, it’s crazy to think it’s been going for a couple of weeks already. Time has flown! Don’t forget to check out the reward tiers and think about pledging, it will all go towards making this a great experience.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexdawson/will-to-survive-a-real-time-survival-rpg-with-alie

Now, onto some more info…

Ammo

Ammo is a bit different in Will to Survive, you’ll be able to find different types of each round and will even be able to craft your own once you have learnt how. You could be adding phosphorus to some shotgun shells to create incendiary ammo or applying unknown alien liquids to the tips of bullets to test the effects. Everything that you can collect in the game will have a purpose, that purpose could just be to harvest chemicals or other supplies… ever wondered how much gunpowder is in a firework?

Survivors

Not many survivors live in the world now and the ones who are left tend to lead solitary lives hiding away as best as possible. They don’t want to get caught by the aliens who threaten their very existence.

Female Survivor

Male Survivor

When you do come across a new survivor you may need to gain their trust before they help you out. Once you are acquainted you may find that they have items to trade, tips or info to share and may even have quests for you complete. It’s important to try and look after your fellow humans, failing to aid them when they are in urgent need of help could mean they no longer exist. If the aliens have less humans to search for they stand a higher chance of finding you!

Until Next Time!Alex

Kickstarter Update #3 : Weapon Customisation

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In today’s update I wanted to talk a little about the role weapon customisation will have in the game.

Here in the UK we don’t have access to a lot of weaponry. We don’t have AK47’s and M1911’s lying around the place so the ones you do find will be quite precious. Adapting them and improving them will be quite important. Adding scopes for example will increase your accuracy at various distances as well as the speed you can acquire a target. You’ll be able to attach flash lights and laser targeting either by standard means or just by using some tape you once scavenged. Some of the attachments will be able to be transferred too as long as it wasn’t a permanent fixture.

Will's Gun Notes

Will’s Gun Notes

Possibly the most important feature will be the ability to adapt some of the alien tech. You may find the ability to do this yourself or failing that find a helpful survivor willing to trade you something in return for his expertise in the matter. As enemies get bigger, you’ll need something more powerful than that .22 rifle of yours!

At the end of the day Will needs as much help as possible, as time goes on the threat grows stronger and ammunition will be harder to find. Gather what you can and adapt to the ever changing world around you.

Kickstarter

The kickstarter still has 25 days to go, if you can pledge that would be great but sharing is also important. let’s get the word out there! Also if we can get this green lit then anybody receiving the game as part of a reward tier will automatically receive a free steam key.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexdawson/will-to-survive-a-real-time-survival-rpg-with-alie

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=164859338

In The Press

The game and campaign has been featured on a few more sites too, why not check them out.

GameZebo Kickstarter Picks
PCGamesN
EGamer
KaboomShark

Thank You For Your Support!

Again I would just like to end with a thank you for your continued support. Be sure to share, tweet and spread the word to help us reach the funding goal and get green lit.

Cheers,
Alex

Guns… lots of guns.

Guns!

Guns!