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Yeah, that "we take what we find" thing is key here. So there'll be a bunch of objects of all varieties in the game, some just as junk to be processed, but other stuff could still be used.

Glad you like it.

I honestly don't know at this point. It feels like multiplayer can some along in a new revision once the basic game feels right. Its more work to support it, but I guess it might be worthwhile.

I wish I had a time machine to actually make it with :)

Interestingly enough I saw that the other day too. I find a lot of animated films/series quite visually interesting. Hope to get some of that visual quality in the game, especially the sense of scale and detail.

I'm from Hull originally. Live in Lancs now (ptooey), but mostly a yorkshire lad yes.

Hehe.. we're getting there slowly. Look forward to showing more.

Thanks. Yes its still an ongoing debate with myself about the change. I might do some quick prototypes in Unity and see how they go. There are various pro's and con's. Its really about having time to implement all the features. Unity does at least provide some of them (animation features are a lot better than my engine for example).

Dilemma :)

Thanks. Glad you like it.

I'd settle for "this was fairly well done and felt different" right now :) thanks though.

Yeah, borderlands and fallout 3 are definitely in a similar vein, although I think we're a bit more "positive" than those. And no guns.

There's an ultimate goal yeah. You build the rig for a purpose. You won't get quests so much, but you'll have requirements a bit like a city sim game. So power, or food or whatever. You'll have to trade for many of them.

yep, thats coming next. Will post when its done.

I'm lucky in that I already have that part-time job I need to support myself (I teach game dev at a University). That provides enough funds to pay for living expenses and doesn't take a huge amount of time away from development. If I didn't have that, it'd be a far harder thing to do.

Hope to show you some new cool stuff. It does look plain for now, but thats mostly because it hasn't been textures properly yet. Soon enough you'll see how weird it is :)

Thanks for the comment.

Thanks. I like it too, Lance did a great job.

OK, so the answer was so long had to split it into three parts. Please read the parts below in reverse order (bottom first). Sorry about that :)

Part Three

Second to last answer: The engine is all written to be cross platform, but I've been lazy in actually doing the build setup for it all. Essentially all of the code SHOULD just work but inevitably it wont. If it takes more than a couple of weeks for supporting any of the non-windows platforms It'll be because I have less experience on them. Getting the game to run on the android tablet is a sort of side-project. I doubt it'll run the main game as-is, so maybe there'll be some limits there (more about trade, less about social/physics).

Last answer: sure :) physics test is coming soon. As is always the case with these things. I had planned to start sending out versions this weekend, but found a pretty nasty bug in physics update once I went to get the build together. So we'll have to see. Certainly should have an early "lets see how quickly it breaks" build ready soon though. Expect it to be really bad :)

Anyway, thanks for the great questions. Will send you a message when the test build is ready.

Part Two

Currently the team is me (programmer/designer) and Valentin (artist). I do some part time work to pay both of our (meagre) wages. As regards the game. Its not primarily intended as an online game initially, so the f2p p2p thing doesn't really matter right now. It'll be a simple purchase. Although once the network stuff gets implemented (in a subsequent release) we'll likely have to find a model that funds the servers etc. The reason I want to make the singleplayer experience first is really down to the logistics of servers and such being hard to support. Longer term plan is to expand the game outwards into a far larger experience (online and various forms of asynchronous play). Key is to get the world feeling right in singleplayer.

Regarding the barrels and such. There's going to be a mix of cosmetic items and value items. Barrels might well be used as units of resource for something (ships do used fuel for propulsion). The main resource in the game is refined metal from scrap (in various forms of refinement). I'll show a vid of that soon hopefully. Some things really are just to make the place look more interesting though. Barrels/crates will likely be used by traders to indicate how many goods they have for trade too. So they serve a purpose in that sense. Trading and requiring space and such is a good question. Right now I've implemented a few options and I've not had enough time to test which one I prefer yet. I'm probably going to go with having storage objects like containers which have inventory space. You can essentially but unlimited numbers of containers with a fixed size inventory for storing things. So its kind of an unlimited supply of limited inventories. Its going to be a balancing act to figure out when all the inventory management becomes too cumbersome though, so I reserve the right to just have a single inventory if it all feels wrong ;)

Hey FoxnEagle! Thanks for the questions.. will try and answer them all :)

Part One

Wiring is functional, so I figured I'd work on making more things that are worth wiring for now. Then go back and rework the wiring system. It should be a quick change to make it better (I had an idea when I first wrote it, but now realize that was too complex). So I'm adding in the compactor/processor (a machine that turns junk that gets delivered into raw metal resource for sale) and generator etc. Then will likely go back over wiring (these things need wiring up and maintaining). Hopefully will show you that in the next update.

The main view you have in game is first person. I wanted that because it puts you inside the world. There's a "build drone" mode that puts you into a sort of third person mode and lets you zoom around. The idea is that you're controlling a small robot that is controlling buildings of larger structures for you. Haven't put in the robot yet, but its pretty trivial. So yes, mostly first person, sometimes third person. Its pretty easy to jetpack around the world to get to different views though.

About the mayor/leader thing. You start off as one of a few inhabitants of the default rig. The idea is to make the rig more attractive so that new inhabitants join you. I guess you could think of yourself as defacto leader/major. I doubt anyone will address you that formally though. Unless you want to impress them with formal items aboard the rig (there's a bunch of items you can but for the rig that will change the social structure of the rigs inhabitants a bit). Have to be vague about that for now, but at some point I'll show you the ideas for that. I think its very interesting.

I actually posted the news after the original feature got archived. Figured the artwork Valentin has been doing was worth telling people about.

Good to know that people who are following get to know about it anyway.

Fallout: yes in a way there are going to be similarities, post-catastrophe civilization is going to have a very similar feel to post-apocalyptic, although I think we'll have a far more up beat vibe than fallout did. I like to think people who survive an apocalypse might actually want to band together and hold each other in more regard.

I think you will feel like you are working on the rig, because for the most part you will be the one to build it. The rig starts off pretty small, but over time you can add structure to it, the aim being to enhance the rig to attract more community members, a bit like the Sims or Sim City I guess.

Erm, no comment on the barrels. Probably just a bad day at the office.

Yeah, its a relatively simple thing to tweak, so I've not really worried about that yet until we start putting in final artwork and such.

Glad you like it though!

Not sure to be honest. It requires shader model 2 though, so I guess you wouldn't be able to run it. Unless there's some way of running a software renderer that pretends to be OpenGL.

Sorry about that. Shader model 2 is pretty much what is required for mobile phones etc. So its a baseline for us to support that level of graphics capability.

The player is just another inhabitant of the rig, but your role is to essentially become the leader and build up the rig for the good of everyone. Its a very positive community building game, so I want people to feel good as they do it.

I guess you could think of the player as mayor or something, but in reality its just offering the chance to be a leader.

Good questions FoxnEagle! I'll try and take them in turn.

Lore: Yes, but its mostly in my head. I tend to be a more mechanical designer.

Multiplayer: Long term yes, ideally it would be nice to support multiplayer, but honestly after seeing so many indie multiplayer games fail to find an audience, it isn't a top priority right now.

However there are SOME features that can be made multiplayer without necassarily having to go all he way. So for instance sharing rigs with others for instance, might be done first.

Weaponry: Right now the plan is to release the first version of the game with no combat. Its really not about combat in this release, its more about building a home for yourself and really feeling like the place you built has value. That's not to say in later releases there will never be combat. Its just not planned for the first phase release.

Starting out: OK, so you will start with a small rig structure that is basically just a starting skeleton. There's a couple of others on the rig, but your role will be to put meat on the bones and entice others to the rig. Building up the rig, a community and trade network is the focus for the first game.

I see it as sort of a sandbox style game, but with progression and development aspects. You'll be able to extend and upgrade the rig, plus trade goods to get more funds for further extensions. All the while you will be trying to build a community, keeping the inhabitants happy etc. Its kind of like garry's mod/minecraft sandbox meets simcity/sims/rpg character progression. Sounds complex but its not really.

So for the majority of the game, you'll be using tools to build, repair, connect, upgrade, socialize, trade and craft. Hopefully that will be in enough depth to keep you engaged with the world.

Glad you like the idea. More updates and proper artist graphics will be coming soon.

Thanks. I think there's an interesting area of gameplay to explore here. Hopefully you'll enjoy what the game becomes!

Yeah, I know. To be fair I did include the TF2 engineer in my reference, so I think Lance took it a bit too literally. The issue is that we want something that has the qualities of TF2 (non "realistic") without actually being like TF2 if that makes any sense.

Will share the end result so you can see how he changes.

Yep, you do a lot of trading. Essentially you build up the rig, which costs money, but you can build the rig to make money. Only usually making money involves doing things that lower morale on the rig. So you have to find a balance of trade and social activity as well as balancing the building to accommodate both.

Thanks guys. Eventually of course you'll have plenty to do, keeping the rig maintained, building more space, keeping the locals happy and trading for new equipment etc. But I figured I had to get building to feel workable first.

I'm not using unity. I was just using unity to test out beast and maybe use it as a level editing tool. Unity is great, but it has a few restrictions that I can't live with right now.

Metalspy: Good question. The game will never be "realistic" looking, but I think we'll end up with something thats a hybrid of team fortress 2's painted style and mirrors edge's aesthetic. Right now all of this stuff is programmer art, hence the pretty shoddy visuals.