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[XRA]

[McMutton]

Intriguing!

[QOG]

Looks quite nice. I am looking forward to some none-cryptic information on it.

[Gabriel Verdon]

Watching this one really closely, it looks insanely cool.

[Sigz]

Color me interested.

[boxedlunch]

so this was going to becoming a game.

looking forward to it a lot.

[Attacklife]

So I've been lurking for a bit and just joined up. I saw pictures of this several times around the forum and was so interested I checked out your profile in an attempt to locate some information about this game. of course i found nothing

But now I shall be watching this devlog with the utmost curiosity. WAITING TO CONSUME THIS GOODNESS

[XRA]

some more random info!
been working on the FPS camera last night and I think it is in a good feeling state, I'm attempting to make it feel far-removed from the twitchy FPS cameras many are used to.  That might frustrate some, but my goal is to have lots of subtle or graceful movement, and avoid the "i can flip around 180 degrees in 2 milliseconds" thing.

The next thing to work on related to camera is adding in some old school parallax scrolling behavior into the interference/noise effects, that react to the movement of the camera... turning the camera should feel like swiping a sensor through a dense electromagnetic fog.

Ideally everything the player sees or hears should be modulated in some way for sensory feedback related to their position, speed, etc...


Right now I'm roughing out a more complete puzzle and navigation challenge, still in the process of developing a toolbox of challenges (and finding standards that work) that can be combined in interesting ways to build levels.

[SolarLune]

Really glitchy and stuff. Interesting idea - what kind of game will it be?

[XRA]

at the moment kinda a heavily atmospheric FPS exploration / puzzle game, and also a way to experiment with narrative.  
The main thing with the narration is ideally at times it would be awesome if the Player feels as if they are the main character, using a tool (playing the game) to solve puzzles and discover things.  Though that may be tough since I need to provide other scenes where it isn't from the Player's point of view, but I've been thinking of doing something a bit like montages, and keeping all the camera viewpoints from familiar positions that make sense for a point of view shot or even actual cameras surveying things.  Still really in the early stages of planning that stuff!  

[unsilentwill]

Sounds fantastic. Find a good story for it.

[XRA]

been working on quasi-functional ground-based observatory and satellite plotting... using coordinates of real observatories.   Orbits are a bit simplified, areas become accessible based on line of sight to satellites and their streams of data... not sure what to do with the observatories yet.  
  

*edit*
stuff like HAARP, Arecibo, EISCAT, the Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility, the Very Large Array, etc + other interesting things as I find them for sending/receiving signals...  There will also be fictional ones too.

[XRA]

got some faked elliptical orbits working and the line of sight stuff works too from ground locations.  the ground stuff probably will gradually become available (based on something) allowing more uninterrupted connections to satellites and increased time in levels...

[XRA]

I think I'm in a bit of a slump, trying to figure out what to focus on... momentum has slowed. I was at a 10 hour game jam this weekend and burnt too much time on the satellite/selection UI stuff, I think it needs to be simplified.  I did get some eyes on what I'm doing, most people were satisfyingly confused/wtf  

This evening I took post-it notes and wrote down all the important level themes, montages/scenes or key moments I could think of, and stuck them on the wall.  That helped give an overview of what I'm dealing with and I can move them around as needed, I haven't tried ordering them just yet.
http://twitpic.com/5zoomn

The level themes seems like a good idea though, there are six total at the moment, well seven if you count the potential final one.


I think my goal for this week is to get a skeleton of the game in place, even if it means absolutely placeholder box levels, I think having all the pieces I can think of, in-place and linked, will help me balance the actual content creation / building process, along with identifying what is lacking etc.... what do you think?

[SolarLune]

Good idea with the post-it notes. That'll help to keep sure that you don't go crazy with lack of direction.

Having props pre-designed can help a lot, though you probably won't be able to get every item you could think of designed, and will most likely go back to designing something you need later. I think that just going about things logically, and especially having logical bounds on the levels can help a lot. Not having boundaries can really kill development, as you don't know which direction the level should go in (which is part of the reason why I stopped development on one such project of my own).