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[MinskWorks]

Hi Tigsource,

I'd like to share with you the birthing stages of a game I've been working on during the last few weeks.

I'm an ex-AAA racing game developer who is now in the early stages of working on Hac - A first-person game about driving 1990's Europe, with a focus on meaningful interactions and a "true" driving experience. The closest comparison I'd imagine is Euro Truck Simulator with a narrative. More recently I've been having visions of Blood Money meets Gone home, though this seem a bit more ambitious.

If you're into scrappy prototypes, there's a dev build I'm making available to the public here:

Current Build - Unavailable (05/04/2015)

Osx : Unavailable[/url]
Win : Unavailable[/url]

It's early days, so all criticisms are valid at this point.

If you'd like to follow development of this game, check out my dev log over at www.minskworks.tumblr.com

Thanks,
Greg

[tristydee]

I like the art style a lot! Both the interior and exterior look really nice.

The idea itself also seems really interesting. I'm very curious about the narrative and what type of story you're going to tell

[ted_dancin]

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO MAKE THIS GAME FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE

[pikkukatti]

Wow, I love the idea and the car looks really nice. Can't wait to see what kind of environments you're planning and off course the whole narrative. Blood Money meets Gone Home definitely sounds like something I really, really want to play.

[macepoodle]

I really like the low poly art style, I wouldn't complaint one bit if you decided to go low poly for the entire project Keep up the good work!

[Siilk]

Looks interesting. What is it being done in? Unity?

[puffintoast]

Have I gone mental, or is there something obvious I am missing in the OSX build? Tried several different unzippers and suchlike, but cannot get a functional item out of the dropbox link...

[Armageddon]

Woah man! This looks amazing. Could you share how you're doing that full model gradient for the building? Very Killer7-ish. Also even if I turn off smoothing groups on my models I still get a gradient effect from the lighting. How are you making each tri a solid color?

This reminds me a lot of

Which is a good thing.

[MinskWorks]

Thank you all so very much for taking the time to reply!

The art style is definitely a conscious one. I've tried to tackle projects in the past and have found progress gets bogged down by a overly long art pipeline. I'm not traditionally trained in this stuff, and I'm no shader whiz, so I'm glad it resonates with people as is.

@Siilk
The game is being built in Unity - the free addition at the moment, but I'll move over to pro sometime soonish.

@Puffintoast
No you haven't, I've only placed the executable for Osx online, try this zipped file over here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/6o856v0n2xce6c5/Build_009_OSX.zip?dl=0

@Armageddon
Yes! Killer 7 was the target visual for this, such a crudely beautiful thing. The environments are being done through a simple vertex height shader. It takes two colour values and calculates both their starting and end points and at which point they should intersect.

The Car and Interactive elements are using a modified Toon Shader (Though I'm contemplating swapping it out for a normal diffuse for a number of reasons). All models are sharp edge modified, but this means that the ink edge outline seen on most cell shaded stuff comes out a bit of a mess, so I've removed that from the shader.

I didn't manage to get much done yesterday as I was fiddling with the environment layout for the start, but here's some kitchen appliances to give you an idea of what I'm aiming for with the environments:

Right back to work! Thanks again all.

[sk2k]

Oh, my god!!! A Trabant, in a game, driveable....heaven.
I think you need better sounds for the Trabant, specially when starting the car. :D


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

[Tuba]

This sounds pretty interesting.

Keeping my eye on it! 

[jiitype]

Oooh cool prototype. Really like the art style!

90's Europe is an interesting setting. Makes me feel nostalgic. Road trips were the best as a kid

[Rethunk]

I downloaded the demo earlier after seeing it on RPS and it's satisfyingly tactile! Love the brutalist building... the style in itself adds a lot of intrigue even in the small demo space! I've never played Euro Truck simulator but I imagine the upkeep of the car will be integral (I really liked taking the battery out after lifting the bonnet), pulling you off on emergent side-quests as the need arises?

Can't wait to see more 

[puffintoast]

@Puffintoast
No you haven't, I've only placed the executable for Osx online, try this zipped file over here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/6o856v0n2xce6c5/Build_009_OSX.zip?dl=0[/url

Huzzah! Thankyou muchly. Fantastic thus far - hoping the small gods of game design smile upon your continued efforts!

[MinskWorks]

Hey all, thought I'd share with you all how cupboards work in Hac.

Those of you that have played Gone Home may or may not have noticed it features a fairly clever cupboard system that prevents cupboards from ever clipping through the player or environment.

As the opening scene in Hac takes place in the cramped confines of a Vertragsarbeiter (contract workers) housing complex, the interactions within this building need to be somewhat self aware.

Clever cupboards should not clip one another or the player

Here, you can see that when the cupboard collides with the player, it takes not of it's current state and stops itself from proceeding any further. This is fine for a basic level, but our cupboards want to be smarter than that, next we look at taking into player intent into account.

If the path of the cupboard door, when the player wishes to open that cupboard, risks colliding with an already open - or slightly open - cupboard door, we'll fire a message off to close that one too.

This is essentially interaction clean up for the player. With asking the player to 'fiddle' with so much within their environment, we want to avoid exhausting them with any interactions that don't offer an immediate benefit to them. I'm essentially trying to interpret the language of the player without them speaking (if that makes sense? From an interaction point of view).

Anyway, I'll see how successful I am with this when I send a new build your way at the start of next week.

Any questions I'll try my best to answer,

Cheers,
Greg

[Fenrir]

OK now I want a remake of Interstate 76 with the same art style...

[puffintoast]

That was quite definitely the most interested I have ever been watching cupboards.
Looking forward to the next build!

[MinskWorks]

Some more gifs! Ooo-er, how mysterious.

Cheers,
Greg

[pikkukatti]

Nice, I love the tinkering and the little details while still keeping it all really simple. I wanna see more car stuff though

[MinskWorks]

So I'm making a list of any potential items that you'd take with you on a significant road trip, and wondered if any one had any suggestions?

So I have the essentials: Maps, sleeping bags, food / water, cash for tolls, car jack, spare tyre, etc but what about personal trinkets?

What kind of items do you like to take with you when travelling?

I want the start of the game to be that, the essentials are packed into the car, and you then have the opportunity to take a certain amount of items along with you on the journey. The items you choose to take will, at certain points, allow you to interact in unique ways.

I want to make sure I don't overlook anything.