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[zede05]

3-22-13 Update: Alpha v0.53 is here: http://www.pathea.net

Help us reach the goal on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757963851/planet-explorers



Ok, gonna get this devlog started. I was going to do it sooner, but we got really busy trying to put the early build together for a demo at GDC, so...Anyway, I'm part of Pathea Games, a small indie studio. We've been working on this game called Planet Explorers since August 2011.

Planet Explorers is an open world voxel based sandbox adventure rpg game set on a distant planet. The game uses a proprietary OpenCL system based on the Unity 3D engine to allow players to change the terrain in anyway, create new objects in any form, and do it anywhere. The game takes elements from games such as Skyrim, Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, Tower Defense, and adds more ideas.

In this game, we're aiming for total freedom for the player (or, as much as the hardware limitations at the time of completion allows), which means, the player can build almost anything, weapons, vehicles, etc. On top of that, there will be a story driven adventure, which will probably give motivation to the player to come up with unique ways to complete such missions. The terrain of the game will not be procedural, it will be a continent of about 18X32km.

It's pretty ambitious, hopefully we can pull it off, haha.  

Here are some screens from the alpha v0.3 build:













Here are a couple of vids:

Alpha V0.5 Trailer
http://youtu.be/BxcaRhmHm18

Alpha V0.4 Trailer 1
http://youtu.be/uMBa5kLxf24

Alpha V0.4 Trailer 2
http://youtu.be/Z3wZM8SVzgI

I'll try to update this devlog as much as possible, but it'll probably be slow going, as the systems we're trying to implement are...hmm, complicated. We're aiming for a playable alpha version (probably closed) sometimes in May and an open beta in July. If you have any questions, just ask them on here and I'll try to answer to the best of my ability.

Here are some other links you can use to follow the game, we'll get a facebook account up soon-ish.

Pathea Games
http://www.pathea.net

Planet Explorers on Indiedb
http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers

Pathea Games on Twitter
https://twitter.com/#PatheaGames

[Franklins Ghost]

Liking the look of this, will be keeping an eye on it.

[Hypnohustla]

You have my attention!

[eigenbom]

Chick is so tomb-raider. :D

[Netsu]

Planet Explorers is an open world voxel based sandbox adventure rpg game set on a distant planet. [...] The game takes elements from games such as Skyrim, Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, Tower Defense, and adds more ideas.

To be honest, this sounded completely ridiculous to me at first, but I watched the trailers and I'm very curious where this game will go

[JigxorAndy]

It looks really pretty already! I'm going to be following this.

[thatshelby]

Hey.

I get a 'monster hunter' vibe from it.

i like it

[Alex Norton]

This is looking top notch! Some great artwork there. Looks like a solid concept. And a super sexy heroine is always a welcome sight!

[peous]

Looks nice. Reminds me Ryzom http://www.ryzom.com/en/

The voxel part is not yet really well integrated (these high pillars could have been rendered as stone and not grass), but seems interesting.

For now, I like the colorful animals like on this screen http://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/18/17088/03.jpg

Good luck!

[ANtY]

Gotta write about this on Pure Indie Games

BRB

//done

[zede05]

Thanks for the comments everyone, it's nice to hear some outside opinions after we've been working hard on it for so long.

Chick is so tomb-raider. :D

The character will actually be customizable, so the main character can be either male or female. Of course we just had to do the sexy female first, heh.

Looks nice. Reminds me Ryzom http://www.ryzom.com/en/

The voxel part is not yet really well integrated (these high pillars could have been rendered as stone and not grass), but seems interesting.

For now, I like the colorful animals like on this screen http://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/18/17088/03.jpg

Good luck!

Yep, we're still in the process of getting the multi-materials to work properly in the voxel system, the math is a little hard, so it'll probably take a month to get it working properly. 

Here's a concept art for this grassland area.



Notice how there should be water? Geez, I'm not looking forward to doing that (we haven't even decided what to use for water yet, haha)

[zede05]

We've updated the character customization scene with better lighting, next step would be to add some plants sticking in from the right side (it's inside a crashed ship...er...spoiler!).



We're also tweaking with the face customization. It's done through moving a lot of different bones, it's tough to rig. There's probably a better way...we don't have time to look into it. Unless anyone out here might know.

[zede05]

And then we said let there be flowers, and flowers bloomed.



I think we're going to figure out multi-materials sooner than we think...you don't hear that too often in the dev process.  But I think the ground texture doesn't really fit the slightly cartoony overall look, so we probably need to change that.

[PsySal]

Stupendous! Keep going, this looks awesome!

[Netsu]

But I think the ground texture doesn't really fit the slightly cartoony overall look, so we probably need to change that.

Maybe it would be different if you changed the ground texture, but I didn't get a cartoony feel at all from the trailers. The graphics looked rather realistic to me, and I was actually surprised when I saw the cartoony face in the character creation screenshot.

The flowers are nice, I really like the environment. Will there be more alien elements? Like the arching plants? Maybe some weird rock formations?