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[richardeflanagan]

OFFICIAL SITE

GREENLIGHT PAGE

AHOY!

Kind of late to start one of these maybe, but could be fun if I keep it snappy and informal (there's lots of game making left to be done). Let me know!

THE SPIEL:Experience the world of FRACT, a first-person puzzle adventure game inspired by electronic music, specifically synthesizers.

Explore an abstract, broken-down world built on sound, rebuild its forgotten machinery, and create your own sounds and music within the world. Features an expansive and open world to explore and discover, stylized visuals and sounds that combine to deliver a unique and synaesthetic experience.


MEDIA:A dev diary we did for FRACT OSC a little over a year ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vySfT1zVseg

The Teaser Trailer for FRACT OSC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv184qi8WEw

A timelapse of me making stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttnc10vaFhM

The old prototype trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3k6n5_KYDo

Our youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/PhosfiendSystems

Our Flickr Stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fractgame/

WHAT'S THE DEALAfter snagging the best student game award at the 2011 IGF, my wife and I decided to take this thing full time and build the FRACT I originally envisioned. Needless to say, we didn't really have any idea WTF we were doing, but have gotten lots of help and advice along the way. We hired Henk Boom (Waiting for Horus, Pax Pritanica, and much more good stuff) to join as our techlord, and have had help from Paul Forey on some early sound prototyping and Aliceffekt on some environment art a bit later. Now we're back to the three of us (plus my wife's and my new daughter Zoe) and are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The game has gone through a lot of iteration, we've even changed direction a *little* bit since the dev diary last year (no major changes, promise). At this point we're in the 'just finish it already' stage. With no major design questions still remaining (plenty of tweaks I'm SURE) it's just a matter of wrapping this monster up.

Anyway I'll try to update this devlog regularly, if not not in super deep detail. If you have any questions, please let me know! And if you dig it, please give us some love on Greenlight!


SOME MORE PRETTY STUFF

[Malky]

You released your student build from the IGF, right?  I'm pretty sure I played that, it was great.

I really, really can't wait to get my hands on the new Fract.  It sounds... I mean, it's freaking amazing.  I'm so impressed.

Keep it up.

[caiys]

Oh gawd I remember being impressed with the beta of this a while back, looks like you've been beavering away it looks even more super delicious. Best of luck with it.

[hube]

Lovin this art style 

[PeteDevlin]

It's terrific, so striking and memorable, good luck with it

[richardeflanagan]

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement everyone!

BIG MACHINESSo, to get this started, today I'm working on some late game stuff. The world of FRACT OSC is divided into 3 primary areas. The end of each culminates at an XXXXXXXXXX. Not only am I working on the architecture for that space today, but finalizing its transition (supposed to be dramatic, so far so good).

Also, Henk whipped up some new tech that swaps simple static meshes for the complicated ones during animation. These machines have A LOT of moving parts, so this should help optimize them when they're not XXXXXXXing. Also, I'll be UVing this monster today too, and tidying up the animation and the asset in general.


SNEAK PEEK  (don't worry these colours are temporary to help me organize the UVing)

[richardeflanagan]

Also, if anyone is curious about how the project has changed, check out this killer preview by Phill Cameron on Eurogamer:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-01-07-exploring-the-music-of-fract-ost

[Christoffer]

I love FRACT so so much. If you're not excited you should be.

(Posted to follow)

[richardeflanagan]

OPTIMIZATION, DRAWCALLS BEGONE!So, with the Tech that Henk whipped up last week, and a script that he's fixing right now to determine which assets are the worst offenders, I'm trying to optimize some assets that are eating drawcalls BADLY.

Those big machines I mentioned before, well there are a few in the world already and THEY ARE HUNGRY. So first up is optimizing them.

ASSET SERVER, WE HATE YOUAlso, the unity asset server is misbehaving again; this thing has wasted so much of our time. Next project we'll start fresh with some other SVN (any recommendations for big projects?). But for now we're stuck with something that works barely enough - shame it cost us so much money!

[seagaia]

composing in a game!

sweet!

[Christoffer]

(any recommendations for big projects?).

We use Tortoise SVN at Might and Delight. It works alright (pretty certain it works better than the Unity Asset Server). It helps that one of the programmers wrote a script to make sure assets couldn't be added without their meta file.

[eigenbom]

Played a demo of this a while back, it's looking great. Look forward to the day when it's released.

[SolarLune]

The game looks astounding. Great tech-y electronic graphics!

[GrinningPickle]

This looks glorious 

BTW we also use tortoise but we haven't put it under a lot of stress yet so I can't outright recommend it.

[richardeflanagan]

Thanks for the recommendations everyone - even with hiccups Tortoise has to be better than the Asset Server. Anyone using it remotely, or are you guys all using it on a LAN. Even on a gigabit LAN the Unity Asset Server still chokes a lot.

*EDIT* We do remote on occasion - we'd do more, but it's a pain in the ass. Would love to have something I don't have to babysit when Henk wants to make a commit from outside the office.