Blogs - ProjectFrontier

I'm no longer going to be updating this account. Here are all my social media to follow the game's development.

Discord - Discord.gg
Youtube - Youtube.com
Twitter - Twitter.com
Reddit - Reddit.com

Shells & Shell Core Effects

A shell is a set of armor that runs on Espa energy in the area and the ability to serve as the ultimate tool for a Phygan soldier. It has shields and methods way of extending your ability to survive. Every shell has stats that directly effect your Espa abilities and vitality: Maximum Health, Maximum Shield, Maximum Espa, Movement Speed, Espa Efficiency, Espa Duration, Espa Strength, Espa Range, Siphon Range, Siphon Efficiency, Fortification and Armor. All of these stats help buff your casting of Espa abilities, vitality and siphoning. I will explain siphoning in the near future in greater detail. The shell is integral to playing Frontier and isn't just a set of armor with stats. Each set of armor has a core. This core adds a a brand new mechanic that you have to get used to in your load-out. This brand new mechanic can allow shells to be more offensive, defensive, swift, or more of a support type. There of course will be shells that fall into hybrid and utility as well that borrow elements from 2 or 3 of these areas of focus. Core effects also add a theme to the shells design. This will make all shells stand out greatly from one another. I hope you all enjoyed this insight to Shells and their core effects.

Weapon Skills & Weapon Passives

Weapons in Frontier overall work like any other fps weapon. It can fire, look down sights, reload and have recoil in all the same ways you are used to in other games. However, I personally enjoy weapons being more accurate instead of a random and unpredictable recoil. So, what else do I have to talk about then? That leaves the actual unique mechanic called Weapon Skills or Weapon Passives. Every weapon will have a behavior that can change how its used to add more mechanics to make mastering weapons far more skill based and strategic. Just because a weapon has more damage doesn't make it more effective. Its all about how well you can pull of the weapon skills and how consistent you can be with using it in the right situations. Weapon skills have 2 uses and one passive effect that alters the behavior of the weapon regardless of using the ability. Weapon skills have a easy ability and a difficult ability but far more power-full usages. The harder the effect is to pull off the more rewarding it will be in battle by doing far more damage or possessing CC or some kind of unique effect. What about passives? I glossed over that earlier. Passives can add a brand new way of using the weapon entirely or give it traits such as naturally do more damage to different kinds of things like shields, players, vehicles, deploy-able items, etc. Its a method of changing how a weapon works to allow for some unique effects to happen without enabling the skill. Weapon skills will have cool-downs to balance out their usage and depending on how power-full it can be it can be a longer cool-down then others. I hope this gives you all a interesting look in to the Weapon Skills.

Welcome To The Complete Weapon Systems Update 0.2.8

Hello, again! Its been a while since I last posted. A lot of work has been done and I'm going to go into depth explaining whats been done. This took more than 2 weeks to complete. If you want to watch my videos then please click the links for a game demo to see what this looks like ingame.

Youtube Video Demonstation

Part 1 Youtube.com [This Explains System]

Part 2 Youtube.com [This is the Actual Gameplay]

Load-out System

The new load-out system is quite simple but effective. Currently you can hold up to 2 weapons and you can switch between them with your scroll wheel. Your ammo is properly carried over if you switch off a weapon and switch back. Sidearms like grenades are also controlled here and Espa abilities are too. This system creates the models and spawns in the weapon in your hands. This is all built on the player controller.

Weapon & Recoil System

The weapon system works using 2 scripts. The system works based on a helper script and a unique weapon script. The helper script is mandatory for the weapon to communicate to the player controller and is on the weapon model itself. The helper script mirrors specific needed values that the unique weapon script has. It also contains a reference to the player that is holding it to understand who its' owner is. Important properties to be mirrored is current recoil, reload state, etc. With this helper script I can always call to 1 script reference no matter what to grab the unique weapon's script value. And now I don't have to make a new reference for every weapon in the game on the player controller. Now all I need is to call 1 reference that will never change. Which simplifies the code by a lot for the future.

Now the other script is the unique weapon script for whatever the weapon is. This update had any existing weapons were deleted and the only one in the game is a pistol called the Maga. The Maga Pistol is the newest weapon in Frontier. This script handles firing using a ray-cast fire system(aka hit-scan). This was very easy to implement. However the toughest part of this was the recoil system. The recoil system works on a empty that is parented to a camera. This is where the ray-cast is fired. The recoil works by using an amazing function i discovered on unity. its called Vector3 SmoothDamp. This function moves the empty object. The reason why this function is so powerful is because it smoothly takes its current position and moves it to the goal position and never undershoots or overshoots this goal position(its reliable everytime its calculated). However, it does not snap it to the goal position. It actually smoothly moves overtime to that position based on a built in value that can be set to a smoothing value. This smoothing value will move the object to its goal faster or slower depending on how high the number is. The higher it is the slower it will go. If it is 0 it is instant. So allowing this to have a Higher value allows more shots to be fired during this adjustment time to make more natural looking progression of bloom. This function is used in rotating the empty up/down and left/right. On this base idea I built a random recoil gain per shot that allows for more varied recoil that isn't so static. I also have a value that caps your recoil at a certain point. And currently with this weapon specifically, it has a unique pattern. if the Y axis (left/right) ever hits maximum recoil, and that is positive or negative it will reset it not to 0 but to the opposite direction with offset. So if it is -2 which is the farthest left i can apply recoil too. Then it will reset it to say 1 or 0.5. If it was 2 it would be -1 or -0.5. That's why when you look at the recoil pattern, it looks like a horizontal line. I will try to see other patterns i can do in the future. Looking down sights currently increases accuracy by 2 times. Firing farther away from your target will have falloff damage. This is the best summary that I can give without writing other pages of trial and error for this system.

Weapon Feedback

This was quite important. This is built into to the weapon unique script. This handles weapon swaying, weapon fire kickback, camera fire kickback and FOV zooming. All of these elements make the weapon feel like it is alive in a sense. The fact the camera reacts to every shot. The arms holding the gun moves back after every shot too. Moving your mouse makes your arms align to the camera naturally and allows for more natural movement of the arms. This is very simple. All of the kickback is using the same Vector3 SmoothDamp function. Instead of changing and objects rotation to create recoil like the weapon system. I'm physically moving the position of the arms and camera back. It has a smooth value that makes it move slower and smoother depending on how high the value is just like the weapon recoil but instead of rotation its changing the position like I said earlier. When looking down your sights your FOV smoothly zooms in to make it easier to fire at longer ranges.

Grenade Physics

A new sidearm has been added and any old ones have been deleted. The new grenade is called the Plosion Grenade. This grenade has new explosion physics and also now has proper throw physics! Now you can see the grenade in your hand and watch it release properly. It looks much better then before. The explosion physics are the most note worthy mention in this category. The explosion can be set a radius and falloff damage. The explosion physics work by creating an invisible sphere around the grenade upon detonation. this sphere checks for any hit-boxes that have a damage script on it. When it creates the sphere it checks if you are behind an object by drawing a line to you and the grenade. If your hit-box is not obstructed and it has a script to allow it to take damage the grenade will deal damage to the objects. There's also a epicenter that i can give a radius where 100% damage will be taken and it wont have any falloff.

Crosshair/UI Indicators

The last addition to this update are to the UI. Damage Indicators have been added. Dealing damage spawns a UI element on screen of the damage dealt. There are different colored UI Text for different damaged objects. This will be talked about in greater detail in the future. The other UI addition is a non static cross-hair. The cross-hair follows the recoil of the gun by getting the information through the weapon helper. It also has as multiplier value for moving the cross-hairs. This UI also uses Vector3 SmoothDamp! Yes this amazing function even works on UI. I love this function so much. The recoil speed for the cross-hair is slightly quicker then the actual recoil to have a better visual representation. And the cross-hair is added onto the UI via the Weapon Helper too. This means I can make custom cross-hairs and then put in any unique cross-hair i create for each weapon and reuse them or make the cross-hair the same for every weapon. Firing increases the cross-hair parts in the direction it needs to move and resets itself when not fired.

See You Next Blog!

I hope you all enjoyed this post. I wanted to put some content here. I know its been awhile since the last blog. I was very busy so I would have had this out sooner but things had my hands tied.

I have a video out explaining the weapon systems. This pre-update video goes into what is being added specifically. A few new additions are: New models, New Animations, Firing, Recoil, Grenade throwing physics and more. Find out whats being worked on here:

This video goes in depth what was worked on the last 3 months in Frontier's Development cycle. This also goes into why I was inactive on social media. Despite being gone for this long the game in the next update will be in a state where I can finally begin to make a lot more regular content and show game-play. The next video I will make will detail what Frontier will be in 2019. 2019 will be a big year for Frontier since It will finally look visually more polished, have all animations in place and begin working on the very first map along with multiplayer functionality and other things to come soon like weather.

Youtube.com

Latest Completed Update

This update was the most important system update to date. It is a combination of 2 years worth of work of building many systems and having the cohesively work in a single organized and very well optimized script. There have been so many improvements that I cannot list them all. Most of the bugs that were in the game have been squashed. This update aimed to refine the custom player physics, fix bugs, combine all game mechanics that were in separate scripts and fix any poorly working systems or redesign older systems to be more efficient. To make a long story short this update was really important for building content for the future on these new and improved systems. However there is one group of systems that were not touched and were purposely left for the next update. That is combat based scripts.

The Upcoming Weapon Systems Update

While the hit-boxes have been re-coded and are working the best they ever have with it being very simple to communicate damage to the player, the next thing to tackle is the fps weapons. The Next update which is called the Weapon Systems Update. (Frontier U 0.2.8) This update will be building everything at which every weapon in the game will be based on. I have attempted to make this in the past. And now I have the knowledge to make it properly this time and never again do I have to disable it! This means Frontier in its final concept will exist by the end of this year. Which means next year is all about making things look great and polished along with content drops. I cant wait for 2019 for Frontier.

Social Media

If you enjoy these blog posts and want to follow the development follow the YouTube channel and Twitter for updates and to get into contact with me if you have any questions!

Youtube - Youtube.com

Twitter - Twitter.com

Frontier Is Still Being Worked On Regularly

Hey guys, its been a while. I wanted to finally post on here again to let you all know that I have been updating the game. A new update has been completed and I'm on my way completing the next one. The previous one was about the armor system. Shells now have there own stats and all factor in to your health and other values like movement speed, damage reduction, etc. They also have attachment system working. You can now equip parts on to the shell and add augments or brand new abilities which change up your play-style dramatically. Examples of these attachments are: Jet Pack that allows for flight, Gauntlet that augments how you siphon energy back, a shield projector that creates a shield, a pair of boots that grants you a quick directional dash. This is just the first iterations to get the system in a proof of concept state.

Frontier Item Shop Update

Frontier 's current update is adding a item shop. In a match you will have currency that you get for doing things like getting kills. This currency is called Poly and it is naturally generated overtime. You will be able to buy a limited number of mods with Poly. Mods can be for weapons or shells such as damage reduction or a fire rate increase. Vehicles can be repaired by Poly and you can acquire them to be loaded into your capture device to spawn a vehicle. Capture devices are also new to this update. Vehicles are broken down and held in a spherical device and can be thrown to spawn the vehicle or recalled to return it to the device. There will be different kinds of devices in the future too.

Social Media Updates

I hope that this post lets you guys know that I am back and much work has been done and that this game is still currently being worked on. Don't forget I will be posting videos at the end of this month or the beginning of December on my YouTube channel. I'll post here on IndieDB more often. I also have a twitter account to keep up with smaller updates on the game too and info on my YouTube channel. Hope you all have a great day!

Youtube: Youtube.com
Twitter: Twitter.com

This Video Explains In detail how long Frontier has been a idea and how it has gotten all the way from a blender project to a unity project along with the trials it took to get to this point so far. Hope you guys enjoy.

This Update In General

I've redone how the weapons were being handled from prior updates this time. Previously I used a really bad system for shooting in general and the recoil attempted to try out really didn't work well at all and made the aim unusable at range. It was a simple random rotation script. Even though I see a ton of areas that really need improving I can still say this new system is a massive improvement from the original 3 that I have done in the past. I Now have a system that can be improved since what its based on is very efficient just not really polished and needs more attention to other aspects of shooters like visual feed back and camera tilts and such.

This Update Changes

In this update I rebuilt shooting ray-casting to be very accurate and working well. I also have 2 different fire types. Tap firing and Automatic firing. They both work as you imagine they would work. Tap recoils only if u tap very quickly. Automatic fire randomly sprays in different rotations. The major flaw with this is how the recoil system is fully random. That will be completely changed in the future. Arm/Weapon Sway has finally been added. When you now move the camera to look around you now see your arms slightly move in the opposite direction to show you arms trying to catch up to your rotation by aligning its position. it sways really nicely when looking down sites. I also finally have IK automated with this!!! This is huge. I had to code from the ground up a special IK system to work with my model since built in Unity IK wont work with my model's rig. This is both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that I have 100% control on IK's so now I can have the hands be positioned to any part of the gun and keep things seamless. There have been some other touch ups. Overall, this system is the best fps update I ever done for the weapons. And I cant wait to improve all the other aspects of it in the future!