next »

[capnbubs]

Blastronauts (working title) is a game that me and a friend have been working on for a few weeks. It's a game about exploring a mysterious, dangerous world and discovering its secrets.

Before I start nattering on about it, here are a few pics!

Outside1
Outside2
Inside
Underground

The game is set on an alien planet a few generations after a colony ship broke up in the atmosphere scattering large pieces of the enormous ship over the surface. You play as one of the descendants of the survivors who are living off the salvaged technology plundered from the ruins of the ship. There will be a lot of lore and secrets for players to discover if they want to look for them!

Gameplay

In practice the game takes a lot of inspiration from Super Metroid, Megaman, Turrican and other shooting based platformers of that age. It also includes a diving dodge that grants temporary invincibility similar to the game Wild Guns. A lot of focus is going into making the player movement satisfying and fun.

When you find a save room you will have the opportunity to customise your equipment by choosing between different backpacks and suits you have acquired and different weapons. The aim is to make all bosses beatable with any set of equipment, however having just the right equipment could make your job easier, similar to Megaman. The different suits might allow you to walk at the bottom of water or survive in extreme heat allowing passage to previously inaccessible areas.

Progress

So far a lot of the basics are ready and we are working on implementing the UI system (inventory, equipment, map etc.) and various monsters. The game is built in Unity and uses a few neat graphical tricks, we've got dynamic lighting and shadows which will hopefully make the indoor areas nice and creepy once you get deep underground and also allow us to utilize things like light switches, torches and flares.

I am taking the game to PAX Prime to demo in a few weeks so we're trying to get a demo build of the game ready in time for that. I'll post progress a couple times a week on this thread as we get closer to PAX so anybody interested in the game can follow! Our hope is to secure funding through either kickstarter or pre-orders once there is a good enough demo to ask for it.

I think that's enough information for now, nothing is totally set in stone yet so any of this could change. We are very passionate about this game, as I hope will be evident from our work, and we just want to get it made! I'll update the percentage as we get closer to an alpha build we're ready to show at PAX.

[Rat Casket]

Wonderful! I was hoping you were still alive.

[capnbubs]

Wonderful! I was hoping you were still alive.

Hi!

Yep still alive, just been real busy the last couple weeks getting set up to work on this game full time!

[capnbubs]

Finished the player movement including shooting while crouched now so I put a gif together to show people a little bit of gameplay. The view is cropped to make the gif smaller, you'll have a larger field of view in the actual game.

[JigsawDisease]

this looks great!! are there lighting effects on the lasers? how is that done?

[Tazi]

Really cool visual style, I'll keep an eye on this project! 

[mono]

ah, finally a devlog!

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Aaaaah those laser blasts! Everything looks gorgeous man im excited to see how this develops.

[capnbubs]

Thanks for the encouragement everybody :D

this looks great!! are there lighting effects on the lasers? how is that done?

I used a 2D volumetric light plugin from the Unity asset store and then modified it to work how I wanted. The lighting is all rendered seperately and then multiplied with the unlit scene. Everything is rendered at the resolution of the pixel art so there is no disparity between the pixel art and the rendered lighting, particles etc.





Here's a youtube video demonstrating the lighting effects a bit better, sorry for the terrible quality I don't really know what I'm doing with recording stuff for youtube.

[DrunkDevs]

I love the movement. It looks super meaty and satisfying. It looks like shooting forward in air keeps you aloft a bit longer. Is this just temporary, or will you be keeping this (think it would be cool if you kept it). Also, are you planning on allowing the player to fire in 8 directions, or just the 2. Sorry for all the quests, this just looks really cool. I'm excited to see where this goes.
 

[capnbubs]

The pause in the air when you fire is an intended gameplay feature. You'll be able to use it to keep yourself in the air a little longer to avoid enemy attacks or land extra hits on an enemy weakspot.

I'm keeping the firing in only two directions. There will be multiple weapons, suits and backpacks in the game so i'm being economical with the number of animation frames I have to draw. I don't think it will negatively impact the game as long as I design enemies with it in mind.

[Games Inquirer]

Wow that first screen was great but in motion this is spectacular.

[dhontecillas]

Is the game resolution the one seen in this video? or do you plan to have a wider view of the environment ?

Can you tell the exact resolution that are you using ?

Thanks for the encouragement everybody :D





Here's a youtube video demonstrating the lighting effects a bit better, sorry for the terrible quality I don't really know what I'm doing with recording stuff for youtube.

It looks pretty nice. Keep on with the work, I would like to see more gameplay!

[capnbubs]

Yes, that video is the field of view you will have in the game.

The exact resolution I'm using is 320 by 200.

[JigsawDisease]

I used a 2D volumetric light plugin from the Unity asset store and then modified it to work how I wanted. The lighting is all rendered seperately and then multiplied with the unlit scene. Everything is rendered at the resolution of the pixel art so there is no disparity between the pixel art and the rendered lighting, particles etc.





Here's a youtube video demonstrating the lighting effects a bit better, sorry for the terrible quality I don't really know what I'm doing with recording stuff for youtube.

looks very cool indeed mate! im off to find a volumetric lighting tute for game maker..

[Rat Casket]

How are you getting your sprites to be lit using 2d toolkit?

Whenever I change it to vertex lit or whatever it is nothing happens.

[capnbubs]

How are you getting your sprites to be lit using 2d toolkit?

Whenever I change it to vertex lit or whatever it is nothing happens.

[edit] I added the alpha images to show how I keep some pixels fully bright and the lights foggy.

I don't light the sprites directly at all. Because I wanted everything to match the pixel art resolution I rendered everything on to a render texture that matched it. I render the lighting on to a second render texture and then I render that to the screen on top of the unlit game using multiply, then using add masked with the alpha of the lighting.

So all my sprites are fully bright, then multiplying the lighting over the top is what makes the shadows, so really I'm starting bright and adding the shadows. The reason I do the add pass afterwards is for the foggy volumetric effect on the lights.

Here's a quick image showing the two renders and then the composited final image.

[Rat Casket]

Aha, thats pretty slick.

[SolarLune]

That is indeed really slick, but I think the light from outside should be tinted blur, or perhaps yellow. White makes it look artificial, like a test room from Portal.

Anyway, posting to follow. Great looking art!

[Irock]

The visuals are spectacular. Can't wait to see some proper gameplay.