We didn’t waste time discussing things, and just got started on the programming with what we had designed. The game quickly progressed and now, 2 months later, we are finishing up the last few bits and pieces to go for an early access release!
So, we went full steam ahead with the development of the game, by not waiting around for things to magically happen. We worked 60 hour weeks to get somewhere with this project, and we are very happy with the results.
We started first with programming the basics of the game. Since we had a good design document with needed assets lists, our artists could already start on creating art assets for the game too.
The initial programming on the basic combat build was the hardest part. It’s starting from a blank canvas that can make it really hard to get started. But after all, progress came so quickly that it kept us motivated to keep on going at high speed. It took a few days to get the basic combat build done, because it brought a lot of problems and bugs with it. But after 3 days it was fully programmed and working as intended.
Then we moved on to programming the feature to build camp structures. Not much problems here. I had a lot of code laying around from a RTS game prototype that I made earlier in my spare time, so I could “steal” a lot of code from my old project.
After that was done, we moved on to making animal AI. The AI is split into 3 sections. Assault AI, which attacks your camp structures. Aggressive AI which attacks the player, and Critter AI, which runs away when you hit them. Not much problems with the AI, it was done in 1 day. Again, I had a lot of code to “steal” from our other project called Emberheart.
Meanwhile, our artist had created a lot of art assets to work with. It has been a relief as a programmer to have a great artist at my disposal who can deliver quality assets very fast, and so I can work with actual art while programming instead of working with grey cubes and such.
After AI, I started working on crafting systems. Again not much problems here. Everything I coded just worked right off the bat when testing for the first time! Developing Emberheart really helped me to get a lot of experience in programming. Crafting consists out of the standard recipes, where a you press a button of a recipe and the item will be crafted for you after a 3 second timer.
Then I moved on to creating things like Kill chains, Score points, Animals destroying buildings and some other minor stuff like numerous UX enhancements and bugfixes.
Right now, I am working on the last few systems that need to go in the game for an early access release. These systems include Leaderboards, Options screen and Controller support. Meanwhile our audio guy is composing final music and SFX. We aim to release the game in May
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