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[K1lo]

Hot on the heels of that, Z level targeting and weapon blast animations are now in :-D

[K1lo]

Huge amounts of progress in the last couple of weeks!

To start off with, I've completely redone the combat/weapon fire system. Units now fire different weapon types at each other and the projectiles can now damage friendly units, terrain or miss altogether. :-)

Also added are are craftable demolition charges, proximity mines and of course explosive effects for when they detonate.

There is also a Youtube channel now for development worklog videos so if you're interested please subscribe !

[K1lo]

First off my apologies for not updating in a few weeks, things have been busy and time has flown here getting Isomer ever closer to alpha. It has always been my intention to get the core features of Isomer complete before hitting alpha, the last thing I wanted was to ship an incomplete fraction of the game even at such an early stage. Extra content and polish can come later during alpha, but the game has to be fundamentally ready to play.

Unfortunately it turns out that getting the 'core features' done represented about 80% of the total work on Isomer which is way greater than I predicted at the start and that has slowed things down a bit. A lot of work has gone in to Isomer in the last few months including back-end stuff including our website (take a look - everything is new and shiny www.ionisingsoftware.co.uk/isomer/) and discussions with the Desura team and others to support the alpha launch. We are now weeks rather than months away from getting an alpha build released and I expect things to ramp up progressively now.

After a little bit of feature creep on the initial 'core feature set' for Isomer (and a lot of nervous fiddling and experimenting) we've finally arrived at an exciting point. There is now a concise list of things that are left to do and amazingly it all fits on a single page of paper! It feels really good after so much work to have a small and concise list of tweaks, enhancements and bugs still to tackle. Investing many months on a project working almost solo means the sense of excitement (and a fair amount of relief to be approaching this stage) is magnified.

What all this means is that Isomer is in the final sprint until the first alpha version becomes available. What is going to be in Isomer from the first alpha build you ask?

• We have a number of different types of random procedurally generated worlds that are different every time you start a new game.
• These worlds are large - teeming with hostile forces, loot and resources.
• You command a group of units set down in a dropship to establish a mining colony. Build structures, explore the world and defend your facility from the hostile forces on the world.
• Units gain experience and can be mutated into specialist unit types with complimenting abilities.

What can you expect in the final version of the game? You will be able to change the weapons and equipment your units carry, see a greater variety of friendly, hostile (and possibly neutral) units. There will be even more variety in be worlds, loot types and things to build (like transporter pads, spawning structures, portable power cores etc) and encounter. This is by no means a final list, a huge amount of work has gone into the alpha version to make the world come alive, feel responsive and challenging but it is only the start of where Isomer can go. Ideally I'd love to continue adding more and more variation and content as we progress from alpha to the official release.

Aside from the features already planned, any new ideas that arise either during development or from feedback have a great chance of making it into the final build! Anyway, for now - bear with me while I get the last bits sorted, working on Isomer has been really exciting and I can't wait until I can get a public build out.

[pluckyporcupine]

We are now weeks rather than months away from getting an alpha build released and I expect things to ramp up progressively now.

Ooo. Can't wait. Been looking forward to actually playing this one for a while.

[Impmaster]

Hey. Great job! One thing, are you going to change the name of the game? I assume you chose the name because of it's isometric view, but to anyone unaware of the name, it's a little hard to remember.

[K1lo]

We are now weeks rather than months away from getting an alpha build released and I expect things to ramp up progressively now.

Ooo. Can't wait. Been looking forward to actually playing this one for a while.

Thanks :-) I can't wait to get it out into the hands of players!

Hey. Great job! One thing, are you going to change the name of the game? I assume you chose the name because of it's isometric view, but to anyone unaware of the name, it's a little hard to remember.

I'm still undecided about changing the name. It started off as a project placeholder and I've just gotten used to it. I had expected to replace it during development. An isomer is a chemical term for a compound that is made up of the same components as others but has different properties. I thought that worked quite well as a name given that everything in Isomer is made from the same basic components (i.e. biomass, minerals, stone, rare minerals etc etc ).

[K1lo]

This is a partial cross post from the screenshot saturday thread, but I wanted to update my worklog with the same info.

A lot of progress this week although most of it is in polishing and improving existing features as we get ready to hit alpha. Something new from yesterday which I think is pretty cool is the craftable terraforming blossom tree. Crafting and placing this tree will send spores into the surrounding areas growing biomass plants which can be harvested for resources!

Something else that's new this week is the addition of critical damage hit boxes. When a weapon blast hits a character in the head there is a 50% change of a critical hit. Which is pretty nifty

[K1lo]

So what's new this week? Not much visually, most of the work has been in improving procedural world generation and enemy structure placement. The worlds are now much larger than in previous builds providing a lot more space to explore, enemy installations to uncover and caverns with loot.

Here are some screenshots showing chunks of the generated worlds. Unfortunately to show entire worlds would take a huge number of screenshots and manual stitching together (I tried this once before and it took forever)

[K1lo]

It's been a little quiet on the news front of late - most of the work has been under the hood which is somewhat harder to post news post about. Nonetheless, here's an overview as to what I've been up to with this project.

More than three quarters of these items on my 'pre-alpha checklist' are now complete with work continuing at a good pace and things are coming together.

From a coding prospective, after spending a fair few hours pouring over game logic timing outputs like the one above, the AI and logic processing now far better utilise the available execution time between each game 'tick' thanks to some new time slicing code and a number of general enhancements. There is still a bit of work to be done on the enemy AI but all the basic behaviour is in place already. The underlying game engine also has received tweaks and enhancements.

Along with this, I got the profiler working (finally) in Visual Studio. It turns out it was well worth the couple of hours of less than polite rhetorical muttering and painstaking fiddling as, once I managed to get Isomer instrumented and running, I discovered a few surprising hotspots in the code relating to pathfinding calculation and weapon projectile iteration. These are now fixed and the result is the game runs better especially on less powerful hardware.

More artwork has been completed too, with new and updated block and item sprites making their way into the game. Music is also coming along nicely with one track completed and one well under way.

[K1lo]

Lots of new things have been added to Isomer in the few weeks since my last update here! There's now an official forum (come join us! ) for the game where news and updates are posted regularly!

There have been no fewer than five new internal Isomer builds (the latter two bug fixes and extra debugging features) for internal testing which, given we've been averaging a build every three weeks was a bit of a change of pace!

I tweeted about it a few times, but it is so useful to get your work in progress game in front of players and people who don't normally play games alike to see where the rough edges are. From doing this over the last couple of weekends a number of minor but important additions have surfaced, the most noticeable of which is the game notification area.

I've also found a fun bit of software called LICEcap (hence the demo of the notification feature above) thanks to ananasblau on Twitter which makes it nice and easy to create GIF files. I'll try to keep them small and relevant so as not to usurp the bandwidth of everyone who checks these forums.

More artwork is being completed and replacing development placeholders. Units still need a lot of work but the world and environment sprites are coming along nicely.

Aside from this (and slightly by accident) Biomes are now in Isomer! Previously worlds were generated using one ruleset depending on the type of world i.e. Temperate, Frozen or Desert. The entire world would have this single ruleset and therefore corresponding blocks belonging to this type throughout.

During a bit of experimenting with unrelated code, I started generated worlds comprised of different zones or biomes. I like the added variation to the worlds so I decided to clean it up and introduce it properly.

After careful tweaking of the random distribution code (for those interested, Isomer uses different forms of Perlin noise for a number of things like world features and shape) and pouring over many outputs from a variety of seeds and parameters from my noise visualiser test application (below) to get the right world construction, I finally arrived at a good mixture of world types.

Each generated world still have a main type (e.g. temperate, arctic or desert) but now can have a number of different biomes mixed throughout. Here is what is looks like:

Different biomes don't just serve as a visual distinction to parts of the world. Various biomes have varying amounts of resources, for example - rare mineral resources (light blue crystal blocks) are found in much larger concentrations in frozen biomes than in deserts where they are very rare. Similarly the rate of growth of biomass plants  varies between biomes with reduced growth rates in the arctic areas and massively reduced in desert areas.

Also changed is the frequency of all resources types through the biomes. Instead of being frequently occurring in individual blocks, resources are now more scattered but occurring in veins of several blocks. The deeper the resource vein, the greater the distance it will stretch.

[ananasblau]

Don't thank me, I found LiceCAP here at tigsource. Isomer is more and more looking like all the promised but not delivered features of Star Command. Awesome.

[K1lo]

Don't thank me, I found LiceCAP here at tigsource. Isomer is more and more looking like all the promised but not delivered features of Star Command. Awesome.

Oh hey! I didn't realise you we're on here too 

Thanks a lot - a lot of work has gone in so far to Isomer with much more planned! I had a look at star command, it's the first time I came across it, it looks fun !

[K1lo]

A couple of screenshot Saturday pictures showing new things from the last few days. 

[K1lo]

It's been a couple of weeks since the last news item so here's an update. First of all, I casually mentioned previously that I would aim to get an initial alpha version of Isomer available for the end of July. Currently (and I don't want to jinx it too much) this is looking like a very achievable goal. After nearly a year of development work I'm really excited to announce that my target date for making the first alpha build of Isomer available is Thursday 1st of August.

Now this isn't going to be the finished game by any means, there are still many features, animations and bits of the game either in an early stage or will be added after this. However, almost all of the core elements of the game are now in place and include:

• World generation and exploration
• Enemy facilities that spawn units that will actively come looking for a fight
• Resource mining and collection
• Base building
• Full sandbox gameplay

The great thing about opening up Isomer to alphafunding is you can play Isomer before it is finished and, in so doing, know you've helped support development. What's more, you get a degree of input into the final game by being able to provide feedback and suggestions which have a good chance of making it into the finished game.

What is the minimum (there's a lot more planned but I'm holding off announcing it for now) you can expect in the future from Isomer ?

• Lots of enhancements to world generation (more buildings and facilities, different 'natural' world features to discover and explore)
• Enhancements to enemy unit AI and game AI
• More enemy and friendly unit types
• More things to build like transporters
• Customising your units with different equipment and weapons
• Special abilities for units
• Combat modifiers like smoke screens
• More dynamic lighting
• .. much more!

A lot of work has gone in to making this a possibility in the last couple of weeks, many bugs have been found and fixed. More importantly there have been a couple of rounds of internal playtests which have been so valuable in pointing out areas that required more attention. The most immediately noticeable change has been in the motion of units. Previously when units moved they would jump from one block of the world to another and whilst this was ok - it didn't make the action fluid enough. Consequently unit motion between points is now smoothly drawn (although animations etc are not done yet and may have to come a little later) and it's amazing how such a small change can bring so much more life into an environment.

Other less immediately noticeable things that have been added include better notifications when your units are under fire, when enemy units are spotted for the first time etc. Also, there is now an in-game hint system which will periodically pop up suggestions and information about portions of the game to get new players more accustomed to some of the nuances, for example that biomass seeding trees require light to function or that only some types of key resources can be found in different biomes.

Lastly, units now display health and energy bars when selected and under fire making damage from combat more obvious.

So, keep checking back in the next few weeks as more information shall be provided closer to the alpha release date. Also, if you haven't already, you can sign up to our mailing list to be notified whenever the website is updated.

[K1lo]

After a shaky July it has been a really productive couple of weeks here and I wanted to update everyone waiting on the alpha with our current progress.

An enormous win earlier in the week arose from what seemed like a relatively minor change to how we defined each block in the world. Technically these 'blocks' are referred to as voxels, and whilst they are fairly simple in their code definition, there are many many many of them - the worlds Isomer generate contain more than a whopping 12 and a half million voxels. Small and relatively minor changes (which I'm considering writing a full post on later in case it can help others) ended up saving 16 bytes.. that may not sound like much, but it constituted a roughly 30% space reduction for each voxel in memory, together over the whole world this shaved 200MB off the RAM usage for Isomer which is a phenomenal result. Currently Isomer uses around 700MB of RAM so the previously posted system requirement of 'At least 2GB of RAM' seems on the money.

Explosions are now more realistic, for each detonation Isomer now performs a line of sight calculation for the explosive spread making it easier to duck into cover when placing demolition charges or channel explosions from proximity mines. The result looks quite good!

The energy system has also received a significant update, each entity has both an energy and stamina statistic. Every action a unit can perform (moving, building and shooting) comes with a minor energy cost, the energy stat governs how much the unit can do before becoming exhausted (when their energy drops to less than 10%), exhausted units take longer to complete actions and received combat penalties, so it's important to keep an eye on your units to make sure they get enough down time between orders to fight off any enemy raiding parties. The stamina statistic governs the rate at which a unit recharges their energy reserves. Enemy units have exactly the same mechanics and their AI also ensures when it attacks and performs actions, it does so without being overly exhausted - it wouldn't be fun if the enemy units arrived exhausted and were a push over now would it? :D

Aside from this, we've got a lot more decorative items for the world including my favorite - explosive barrels (treat with care) and created a few more building definitions for the procedural world generator. Here are some screenshots of the new buildings you can encounter in Isomer.

One of the last major tasks still in progress is updating the game sprites to support display of the weapon in the hand of each entity. This is well underway as well as a number of last minute tweaks and enhancements, things are looking good for a release towards the end of the month. After much work, all the back end to support the release is in place so it's just a case of finishing the last few bits of art and coding. Stay tuned for more soon!

[Impmaster]

Good to see how this is progressing. Keep up the good work, and maybe post a little more often?

[K1lo]

Thanks! Yes I should do, it's been a while. It's just hard to juggle all the work involved in making a game like this single handed  I normally update the game website more frequently I just have been forgetting to post on here of late 

[ITS_Mike]

I like that the game is from the perspective of the alien invaders, rather than the other way around; the way you have told it so far, they are made to seem like the good guys (and maybe they are!)

In a similar vein to what Impmaster suggested, more video updates on your YouTube channel would be good   Based on your trailer, it looks like you managed to get sound working, so adding a voice-over would be cool.

Personally, I prefer a graphics style that is less blocky, but I can understand that using blocks simplifies the process. How will the final art style look (assuming this is all still programmer art )?

[K1lo]

I like that the game is from the perspective of the alien invaders, rather than the other way around; the way you have told it so far, they are made to seem like the good guys (and maybe they are!)

In a similar vein to what Impmaster suggested, more video updates on your YouTube channel would be good   Based on your trailer, it looks like you managed to get sound working, so adding a voice-over would be cool.

Personally, I prefer a graphics style that is less blocky, but I can understand that using blocks simplifies the process. How will the final art style look (assuming this is all still programmer art )?

I do need to do more videos, I tend to get caught up just doing dev work and not updating as much as I should. Part of the problem is I still haven't worked out a good way of capturing video - in the latest one I still don't have sound, I just used one of the music tracks as the background.

Most of it is now polished art although of course it will continue to evolve over time.

[K1lo]

Previously I mentioned one of the last things that still needed doing before the start of alpha was drawing the guns each entity was equipped with. Well I'm happy to say that final hurdle (and a few other smaller ones) has been cleared thanks to an exceptional amount of work in the last few days by my artist. This is something that is really going to look good when we start to add lots more weapons later, creating real variation between both your own troops and enemy units of the same class.

Aside from this, since the last update we've made lots of little additions including a lot of work making secondary explosions 'feel' more exciting and dangerous (low frame rate GIF below), tweaking unit exhaustion mechanics and a suggestion from forum member sieferdarkstar who suggested stealth mechanics. Units now hiding in the shadows are not seen by others (unless they open fire giving away their position) so take care to build lights in your base and underground as you explore.

The 'game over' screen now shows you what happened in your base if you were unlucky enough to miss the warnings raised when enemy troops attack your powercore. The score is also now correctly calculated (this makes us one better than the Minecraft alpha ...right?  ) !

Still reading? Good, because this is the most important bit - the Isomer alpha should be available this weekend! The plan is to build the public version on Saturday 31st, once I receive confirmation the distributor has it available, I will update the website to point to the store page.

We're using the Humble Store to sell Isomer and the guys have been extremely good in getting back to us quickly, however because I'm not sure how long it will be between my giving them the build and them updating their store, the buy page has been updated to show Isomer as being available between 31st August and 2nd Sept. I will of course update again when we go live, see you soon!